Book I, Chapter 42

CHAPTER XLII. That God, naturally prior to grace, effects every good act of the created will. 1

Now that it has been shown in the last chapter, with God and the grace of God as guides, that God and the created grace of God properly effect every good act of the created will, and that each is prior by nature to the created will, it must be shown further that God and the Holy Spirit of God effect every such act naturally prior to the grace called his. Who does not admit this as a well-known principle? Who does not assent? Who dissents? But for the sake of some slower minds, here is a brief proof of it. Since God and grace both effect the good act of the created will, either both are equally first in nature, or God is naturally prior to grace, or the reverse. They are not both equally first, because then those two agents and movers would be reduced to some third thing prior to each of them, by whose power both would act and move, as Philosophy fully attests, and as can be shown from the second Supposition, from the twelfth and the thirteenth of this book. 2 Nor is God naturally posterior to grace, as was briefly shown in the proof of the immediately preceding corollary. Who, moreover, does not know that it is worthier and more perfect to be a cause prior and principal by nature than posterior, instrumental and subservient? God, therefore, is such a cause, as the first Supposition shows. Who, besides, does not know that God is universally the first cause of all things and the first mover? Again, it is true that grace acts, and this is not a first truth simply, as is clear from the eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth of this book, but is caused by him; God, therefore, is the cause of this truth and makes it true. God therefore acts naturally prior what grace acts, before grace itself does. So in the production of a good human act we should apparently imagine it thus. As the thirty-ninth touches on, God, most freely and most generously, anticipated in no way and roused by no other, first wills eternal life for man; and because he does not will it for the adult without his own merits, he most freely and most generously wills those merits, and also the grace by which he may merit. This grace he likewise most freely and most generously pours into him, creating it and moving it, and through it moving the man to act well. So God in this motion is simply the first mover and not moved; grace is the second mover and moved; the created will, or the rational creature, is the third mover and moved; and the good act produced is moved and not moving. Again, as sin separates us from God, so charity and grace joins us with him, and is in a certain way the union of God with man and of man with God, through which he heals the sick, raises the crushed, rouses the idle, and directs the one at work. It was shown in the last chapter that grace goes before man and, naturally prior, effects good acts. But it would seem unreasonable that an inanimate and irrational thing, namely grace or charity, should regulate an animate and rational thing, above all in its free and rational acts, unless grace itself were chiefly regulated, and governed from above, by some rational thing. Now grace or charity is regulated in its acting by the Holy Spirit, as by a more principal and superior agent. Hence the Apostle says: "The charity of God has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit," E1 Rom 5. And again: "May the Lord direct your hearts in the charity of God"

2 Thess 3. And again: "No one can say 'Lord Jesus' except in the Holy Spirit." A1 "There are distinctions of graces, but the same Spirit; and there are distinctions of ministries, but the same Lord; and there are distinctions of workings, A2 but the same God, who works all things in all," 1 Cor 12. And further: "All who are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God," Rom 8. And below: "You have received the spirit of adoption of sons, in whom we cry, Abba, Father." And further down: "The Spirit helps our weakness, and pleads for us with unutterable groanings," that is, according to the Gloss and the expositions of the saints, he makes us plead. Hence also Augustine, On the Perfection of Justice 21, says: 3 "What is done by loving, not by fearing, is not burdensome. The Jews labor under the precepts, who try to fulfil them by fearing; but perfect charity casts out fear, and makes ‖A3 the burden of the precept light, not only not pressing with the weight of loads but even relieving it like wings. Yet for this charity to be possessed, even as great as can be possessed in the body of this death, the choice of our will is little, unless the grace of God helps through Jesus Christ our Lord; for it is poured out in our hearts, a point that must often be made, not through ourselves, but through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us." And below, at 22: "To the charity of God the commandment of God is not burdensome, which 4 is poured out in our hearts only through the Holy Spirit, not through the choice of the human will; by giving more to that will than is right, they are ignorant of the justice of God." And further down, at 33, he says that God makes us, and helps us, to be perfect and without the weakness of sin; and he adds: "The grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord does this with us not only by precepts and holy examples but also by the Holy Spirit, through whom charity is secretly poured out in our hearts, and pleads with unutterable groanings, until health is perfected in us and God, as he is to be seen, is shown in eternal truth." B1 The same, in On Free Choice, to Hilarius 2, says: "That which they say, that free choice suffices for a man to fulfil the Lord's commandments, even though he is not helped to good works by the grace of God and the gift of the Holy Spirit, must be anathematized in every way and detested with every execration; for those who assert this are altogether strangers to the grace of God, because, being ignorant of the justice of God, as the Apostle says of the Jews, and wishing to establish their own, they are not subject even to the justice of God. For the fullness of the law is nothing but charity, and the charity of God has certainly been poured out in our hearts not through ourselves, nor through the powers of our own will, but through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us." The same, in On the Spirit and the Letter 13, says: "What are the laws of God written by God himself in our hearts, if not the very presence of the Holy Spirit, who is the finger of God, by whose presence charity is poured out in our hearts, which is the fullness of the law and the end of the precept?" The same, in Against Julian 6, 26, addresses Julian thus: "You do not depart from your doctrine, by which you think that the grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord consists solely in the remission of sins, so that it does not help us to avoid sins and to overcome fleshly desires, by pouring out charity in our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us by him." The same, in On Grace and Free Choice 36, says: "Charity, however small and imperfect, was not lacking in Peter when he said to the Lord, 'I will lay down my life for you'; for he thought he could do what he felt he wanted. And who had begun to give him this charity, even if small, if not the one who prepares the will, and by cooperating brings to perfection what he begins by working? For he himself works in us, beginning, that we may will; he cooperates with those who will, perfecting. Therefore the Apostle says: 'I am certain that he who works a good work in us will bring it to perfection until the day of Jesus Christ.'" Augustine shows this same thing at length in Sermon 13 on the words of the Apostle, treating the authorities of the Apostle just mentioned, and in many other places.

Corollary

Corollary: that God and the Holy Spirit are called, in some way, charity and grace, by which not only God loves himself and man dearly and freely, 5 but also by which man likewise loves God and neighbor.

From these things it can be gathered, in some way, that God and the Holy Spirit is called charity and grace, by which not only God loves himself and man dearly and freely, but also by which man likewise loves God and neighbor. For according to the distinction concerning charity and grace set out earlier in the twenty-fifth, charity and grace is called, purely and supremely, God's dear and gracious will, or the love by which he loves himself dearly and freely. Second, it is taken for the same will or love insofar as through it he loves the creature dearly and freely, that is, not on account of any preceding merits, nor on account of his own advantage. Third, by that trope, most frequent in poetry, in philosophy and in theology, by which an effect is named by the name of what makes it (which is also one colour of rhetoric, which Tullius at the end of his New Rhetoric calls denomination), 6 the name charity and grace is given to the habit infused, dearly and freely, into the creature by the second charity, that is, by the divine will. This habit, also for another cause, namely its likeness to charity taken in the first or second way, can likewise be named charity and grace, in a way, by transference. For according to the Philosopher, Topics 6, Transference makes known in some way what is signified, through likeness: 7 "for all who transfer, transfer according to some likeness." In this they are alike: that as God loves himself and the creature dearly and freely through charity and grace taken in the first or second way, so also does the creature through such a habit freely infused into it. Fourth, for the same reasons, charity and grace can be the name of the act by which God and neighbor are loved dearly and freely, derived from the third charity, that is, from the habit of charity and grace. Fifth, by a similar transference, that is called grace which is ‖A1 freely repaid for a grace freely done, as poets, philosophers and theologians teach, and as is a manner of speaking most frequent among all. These things are in some way clear from the twenty-fifth of this book. They are likewise clear from Robert, Bishop of Lincoln, 8 who in a certain treatise on the grace and justification of the sinner says: "Grace is the good will of God, by which he wills to give us what we have not merited, so that it may go well with us from what is given, and not so that anything may come from it to the giver himself." So also such a will of one man toward another has been accustomed to be called grace. Consequently, from grace so called, the very gift that is given from such a will is also called grace. Third, grace is called the ‖B1 affection and due praise repaid by the recipient himself. It is clear, therefore, that every good that is in us, whether gratuitous or natural, is from the grace of God, because there is no good that he does not will to be, and his willing is making. So nothing is good that he does not make good, and the perseverance in the good he himself makes. Nevertheless our free will does these same things, just as a grain germinates both by a certain intrinsic germinative force and by the heat of the Sun together with the moisture of the earth. And below: "A good will, by which a man is conformed to the divine will, is a grace given from grace, which is the divine will; 9 and grace is said to be infused when the divine will begins to work in our will. But every good which God's good will works in us, as has been said, is called grace given; yet only the conformity of our will to the divine will is the grace given which makes us pleasing to God; and God's good will, effecting this conformity in us and

preserving it, is alone, among God's other wills, called gratifying grace; and this will of God, which is gratifying grace, is naturally prior to the turning of our will to the good. There is another gratifying grace, namely the divine will to preserve in the good the will that has been turned to the good." But charity or grace, which is God, is taken in two ways: essentially, and commonly to the whole Trinity and to each of the persons; or otherwise, personally and properly, and so it is appropriated to the Holy Spirit alone, as Augustine plainly teaches in On the Trinity 15, chapters 17, 19 and 20. Hence in that twentieth chapter he says: "If any person in the Trinity is properly to be called the Will of God, this name befits the Holy Spirit rather, as does charity; for what else is charity than will?" The Holy Spirit is therefore the first and highest charity, by which God dearly loves himself and man, and by which man also dearly loves God and neighbor; through this highest charity itself the habit of charity is given to man, and is poured out into the act by which we dearly love God and neighbor. Now I judge this to be Augustine's meaning in the eighth and fifteenth books On the Trinity and elsewhere, where he strives most intently to show that charity is God, and the Holy Spirit of God, as Lombard recites at length in the Sentences I, distinction 17. 10 He too perhaps might likewise be understood and explained so, 11 although he labors most obstinately to prove that there is no other charity in man than the Holy Spirit alone, as his procedure and his words, which admit no gloss, assert, as it seems. Perhaps it will be objected that in a similar way God and the Holy Spirit could be called our faith and our hope, because from him come the faith and the hope, both habit and act, by which we believe and hope. D1 Peter also says, in Sentences I, distinction 17, that "God is charity" is not said by way of expressing a cause, namely that charity is from God and is not God himself, as "our Patience" and "our Hope" are said, not because he is those, but because they are for us from him; to prove which he adduces the authority of Augustine, On the Trinity 15, written in its seventeenth chapter. To the first of these it must be said that, if usage allowed it, God could be called our faith according to the aforesaid trope, as he is called our hope, and our patience too. But it must be observed further that God and the Holy Spirit can be called our charity much more fittingly and closer to the proper truth, and less by transference and less metaphorically, than our faith or hope. For, as I touched on above, one cause of this tropical manner of speaking, and of the denomination of one thing by the name of another, is that one of them is the efficient cause of the other; another cause, according to the Philosopher, is the likeness of one thing to another. And in each of these ways God and the Holy Spirit can be called man's charity: for man's charity, both habit and act, is made by him; and God, or the Holy Spirit, and man's charity are very much alike in reality and in name, so much so that each is in a manner univocally called charity, because it is called charity in agreement in reality and in name. For who is ignorant that God and the Holy Spirit is charity, and that man's created charity is charity? And who does not know that God and the Holy Spirit by his charity dearly loves first God, second man for God's sake; and that man also by his charity dearly loves first God, second man for God's sake? But God cannot be called our faith or hope in the same univocal way: for he does not believe anything in a riddle, but sees all things clearly; nor does he hope for anything, but always has the fullest certainty about all things; yet he makes us believe and hope; so that in the first way mentioned he could also be called, in a manner, our faith and hope. To the second it could be said that Peter understands God to be called charity not by the expression of cause ‖A1 alone, as "our patience and hope" are said, but also because of the univocal likeness mentioned above. Nevertheless it must be noted that Augustine's authority does nothing there for Peter, and he does not grasp it in its due sense. For Augustine intends by it to show that the Holy Spirit is the charity by which we love God and neighbor, and this not by expression of cause, but properly, according to himself. Hence, after reciting Augustine's words, he adds: "From what has been said it is clear that the Holy Spirit is the charity by which we love God and neighbor." But to anyone who looks carefully at that seventeenth chapter of the fifteenth book On the Trinity, which he cites, it is evident without doubt that Augustine is chiefly treating 1 John 4, and shows that it is not spoken by signifying a cause, as it is said to God, "You are my patience," and "Lord, my hope"; and therefore it was not said "Lord, my charity," or "You are my charity"; but truly and properly by substance, as it is said, "God is Spirit"; and he shows that charity is taken commonly, so that any person in the Trinity may be called Charity, and properly, so that it befits the Holy Spirit alone. He also understands there, and speaks of, the charity by which God loves himself and man, not the reverse, as his words quoted above attest: "It was not said, 'Lord, my charity,' or 'You are my charity'; but it was said thus: 'God is charity.'" And below, in the same place, he says that John the Apostle recalled God's love, not that by which we love him, but that by which he himself loved us, and that this love is the Holy Spirit.