Tractates on the Gospel of John (continued)
INTRODUCTION 21 of good or his love of the good impossible of realization unless he is further aided by other graces given by God through the Savior, Jesus Christ. God seeks to restore man to his original condition, and he does this through grace which aids the free will in effecting its choices. And so this second kind of grace is as essential for man's salvation as the other kind is for his very existence. So man retains freedom of will, yet requires grace to reach perfection.
(28) In addition to the doctrines of original sin, grace, and free will, Augustine gave much thought to the complex and intricate concept of predestination.^'^ Because he does not present us with a detailed, coherently expounded explication of his theory of predestination and because, therefore, the disparate elements found in various writings and sermons are difficult to combine into a logical exposition of this theory, there is much and sharp disagreement on how to explain what Augustine meant. Here are presented only certain elements in his theory for whatever elucidation of the Tractates they will provide.
(29) Pelagius, in asserting that freedom of will enables a man by his own efforts to achieve perfection, considered the concept of grace as being totally deterministic. It rendered an active life of struggle for perfection meaningless, in that grace meant that God predetermined who would or would not be saved, and this made free will pointless. Augustine sought to defend th active life of constantly striving by free moral choices toward holiness and perfection, the necessity of grace to achieve this, and at the same time God's foreknowledge and foreordination of election and damnation. Grace is an aid
68. This is perhaps a too simple presentation of complex ideas. For a fuller, yet brief, treatment see E. Gilson, 143-164; P. Lehman, "The AntiPelagian Writings," A Companion to the Study of St. Augustine, ed. R. Battenbouse (New York, 1955), 203-234; and Portalie, 177 — 213. A very thorough examination of Augustine's positions on the nature of evil, both in itself and as it relates to the question of free will and grace, both in response to the Manichaeans and to the Pelagians, is found in G. Evans, Augustine on Evil (Cambridge, 1982).
69. See Brown, Augustine, 398—407; Grabowski, 605-649; J. O'Donnell, Augustine (Boston, 1985), 74—79; Portalie, 213 — 223; and TeSelle, 319—332.