Tractates on the Gospel of John
22 ST. AUGUSTINE which assists the free will in exercising choice; it is necessary for man because of the disordered nature of his soul, but it is enabling, not compelling. God wills the salvation of all men; he wills to provide the enabling grace to whoever will make use of it. But God already knows who will choose good and who will choose evil.
(30) Among human beings knowing and willing are sequential and arise from separate functions of the rational soul; but in God knowing and willing are one and the same.
In God to know is to will.^" Consequently God, by knowing that some will be elected and some will be damned, wills that some be elected and some be damned, and he prepares graces for the elect to enable them to achieve their election; he predestines them. Nonetheless this predestination occurs in the context of the particular creation he has made; and he made a world of men who exercise free choice. That he already knows how they will choose does not remove their freedom of choice because they do not know and must strive by the means he freely gives them, his Son, Jesus Christ, the Church, and grace, to achieve the perfection that leads them to the prepared reward, salvation. Why he wanted this kind of world and why he allows some to be damned lies in the unfathomable depths of God's transcendent and infinite being. (31) Augustine's treatment of Arianism and other Trinitarian heresies is primarily his own explanation of the Western orthodox theology of the Trinity. While composing his Tractates on the Gospel of John, he wrote a special treatise, the De Trinitate, devoted to this important mystery. But Arianism and the other heresies seem to have had little real impact on his congregation, though the coming of the Arian Goths around 417 represented a potential threat to his people. Their increased numbers and increased activity drew his more ardent attention at a later date.^^ But his treatment in these Tractates shows more of the schoolroom than of the passion with which he assails Manichees, Donatists, and Pelagians.
70. Cf. Tractates 18.9, 20.8, 21.2-5 and 10, 23.11, 38.10, 40.5, 99.4. 71. See e.g.. Tractate 40.7; A. -M. La Bonnardiere, Recherches de chronologic augustinienne (Paris, 1965), 94-99; Van der Meer, 1 19-123.