Book I, Chapter 45

CHAPTER 45.

That predestination must be posited as something real; what it is; in how many ways it is spoken of; that it is not on account of works, but according to God's gratuitous will.

Now that we have established what predestination means as a name 1, it remains to inquire whether it is itself to be posited as something real. That it must be posited as real, 27 and what follows sufficiently prove, and the whole course of both Testaments bears witness to it. D1 Hence Exodus 32: "Either forgive them this offence, or if you do not, blot me out of your book which you have written." What else can this book, written by God, be understood to be than his predestination concerning future things, as all Catholic expositors affirm? D2 So also Psalm 68 [69]: "Let them be blotted out of the book of the living"; and Psalm 138 [139]: "In your book all will be written"; and Isaiah 4: "Everyone who is written in life, in Jerusalem, shall be called holy"; and Daniel 12: "In that time my people shall be saved, everyone who shall be found written in the book." In the New Testament likewise the Apostle bears witness to predestination, not suppressing the name but expressing it, where in Romans 1 he speaks of the Son of God predestined. E1 And below, in chapter 8, he speaks of those whom he predestined to be made conformed to the image of his Son; and in Ephesians 1, of those whom he chose before the foundation of the world and predestined unto adoption as sons. The Truth itself likewise taught this truly in Matthew 20, speaking of sitting at the right hand or the left, a seat prepared by the Father for those who are to sit there; and below, in chapter 25, of the kingdom prepared from the beginning of the world for those who are to reign. Of this predestination Acts 10 also writes, speaking of witnesses preordained by God, and below, in chapter 13: "As many as were preordained to eternal life believed." The authorities concerning divine election, with many others like them in both Testaments, also plainly suggest it. All the Doctors, indeed all Catholics, learned and unlearned alike, confess it too, catholically.

Now that the question whether predestination exists is settled, it remains in consequence to inquire what predestination, now found to exist, is in reality. As can be had from 9 and 27 and what follows, with the help of 23, it is God's eternal pre-willing 2, or the pre-ordination of the divine will concerning something future. This can be taken in two ways. In one way it is taken generally, that is, for divine pre-ordination with respect to anything whatever that is future, and so it is convertible with providence, as will appear from 27 and what follows. So the Philosopher speaks in the Secret of Secrets, part 1, chapter 16 3: "God," he says, "destined all things by his wisdom with equal weight and fixed number and order." And below, in the same book and part, chapter 22, he says that the exalted Destiner did not so predestine future things as to detract in any respect from his power. In the other way it is taken specially, that is, for the pre-ordination of the divine will concerning the rational creature, angelic or human; and this is the common manner of speaking of canonical Scripture and of the Doctors. And further, just as God's willing is taken in two ways, simply and in a qualified sense, that is, of good things and of evil, as 34 and what precedes taught, so a twofold predestination of this kind corresponds to it, simple and qualified, of the good and of the evil.

That there is a predestination of the good, no theologian is ignorant; but because some perhaps doubt whether there is likewise one of the evil, I shall show this. For this follows, as was touched on before, from 34 with what precedes, and from 27 and what follows, and from the corollary of chapter 23, and the reasons and authorities it adduces, and from that 23 taken together with this fact, most familiar to every Christian, that God wills, both in the final judgement and afterwards will will, that many evil angels and men be tormented in eternal fires. Again, Augustine says in City of God 21, chapter 25, that some in this life are predestined to go into eternal fire with the Devil, as 23 alleged more fully. The same Augustine, in his work on John, part 2, homily 53 (or 107 of the whole), expounding that text of John 17, "None of them has perished except the son of perdition, that the Scripture might be fulfilled," says: "The son of perdition was called the betrayer of Christ, predestined to perdition according to the Scripture, which prophesies most of all about him in Psalm 108 [109]." And the same says in Enchiridion 80 that God justly predestined some to punishment and kindly predestined others to grace. The same can be found concerning the good of perseverance in On the Good of Perseverance 4, 45 and 49, and in many other places. But some who do not hold this opinion always explain predestination in such cases as simple foreknowledge. If that explanation is fitting, it seems it could fit all of sacred Scripture, our Doctors and the Saints, wherever they make mention of the predestination even of the good, and it is sufficiently established that this is contrary to Catholic truth. Again, if God has foreknowledge of such persons, then he has also volition, as chapter 18 showed; hence also some predestination of the will. Again, the opposite of this is rather what is found, namely that the name of foreknowledge is put for predestination. Hence the Apostle in Romans 11: "God has not rejected his people whom he foreknew"; and he is speaking there of the remnants of the Jews predestined to the kingdom, who are made safe by grace. To this effect Augustine says in On the Good of Perseverance 54: "Sometimes predestination is signified even by the name of foreknowledge, as the Apostle says, 'God has not rejected his people whom he foreknew,' which is not rightly understood unless he predestined." The context of that very reading shows this, and, as I touched on briefly, he sets it out more fully.

Again, Isidore plainly posits this twofold predestination, in On the Highest Good 2, chapter 6, in these words: D1 "Twofold is predestination, whether of the elect to rest or of the reprobate to death. Marvellous is the ordering of the heavenly distribution, by which here the just man is made more just and the impious more foul; the bad man is sometimes converted to the good, the good man sometimes turned back to evil." Anselm agrees with this in On Concord 7, saying: "Not only the predestination of the good, D2 but also that of the evil can be spoken of. It is not therefore unfitting if in this way we say that God predestines the wicked and their evil works, when he does not correct them and their evil works; but he is said more specially to foreknow and predestine good things, since in them he makes both that they are and that they are good, whereas in the wicked he makes only that they are essentially, not that they are evil." Very often, however, the Saints say that predestination is only of the good. That is because the "predestination" of the evil is not predestination simply and per se, but only per accidens, and an accidental being is close to a non-being, as was said of willing in chapter 33; the predestination of the evil is commonly called reprobation. And since, according to Augustine, On Genesis Literally 4, chapter 6, so long as the thing is conceded one must not labour over words, and according to the Philosopher, Topics 2, in names, as to what a thing is to be called, one must go as most people do, ‖E1 but as to which things belong under this name or not, the many are not to be heeded 5: let the predestination of the good be called predestination absolutely, and let the predestination of the evil be named reprobation. Predestination, then, can be described thus: Predestination is the eternal preparation, by the divine will, for the rational creature, of final grace on the way and of everlasting beatitude in the homeland. Augustine defines it more briefly in On the Predestination of the Saints 12, saying that it is the preparation of grace; but he must be understood in the manner just stated.

For grace is prepared for, or given to, many who fall away from it and are finally damned; but of the predestined no one has ever perished or will perish. The effects of this predestination are the conferral of grace in the present, justification from sin, good merits, final perseverance, and perpetual beatitude in the future. It is to be known also that this predestination, in the case of the good, is twofold: of grace and merits in the present, and of glory and rewards in the future, as can be drawn from its description given above and from chapter 31, and as is had expressly from the statements of the Apostle in Ephesians 1 and 2, with the gloss, cited in chapter 31. Reprobation and its effect are known through the opposites of these. Because, however, the saints and Doctors say frequently that God predestined and prepared for the reprobate fire and punishment, but not sins, nor [predestined] them to sinning, someone might argue against that by the nearest chapter 6, with chapter 23 helping; or by this saying of the Saints he might argue against chapter 34, with the same 23 coming to his aid. And here one can answer concerning predestination in the same way as was answered concerning volition in chapter 34, and as was touched on at the beginning of this chapter.

Now it remains to inquire whether on the part of the predestined there is any cause of divine predestination; and chapter 20 makes clear that there is not. Again, if there were any cause, it would seem most of all to be the good works of the predestined; but these, before they exist, cause nothing. No one, therefore, is predestined before he works. God's predestination is therefore temporal and new, contrary to the nearest chapter, and to 23, and to the canonical Scripture alleged in the nearest chapter, and to all the Catholic Doctors who treat this matter. Nor can it be said that foreknowledge of the works of the predestined is the cause of divine predestination, because those works are predestined by God for the predestined himself naturally prior to being foreknown by God. For God naturally first wills that he have such merits, and through them the kingdom of heaven, before he knows this; and by the fact that he so wills, he knows that it is or will be so, as chapter 18 showed. Therefore the knowledge or foreknowledge of merits does not cause predestination in God. Moreover, God predestined for Peter first the kingdom, and merits finally on account of the kingdom, not the reverse, as is clear from chapter 35 of this book. Again, for whatever cause God prepared from eternity grace to be conferred on someone, for that same cause he confers it on him in time, by chapter 23; and otherwise God's will would be frustrated, against chapter 10. For from eternity he willed to confer grace now on account of works, and yet he does not; but, by the hypothesis, God prepared from eternity grace to be conferred on the predestined on account of his works. Therefore he confers it on him in time on account of works, against chapter 35 and the others that follow. Or otherwise, by direct proof: on account of whatever God does not confer grace in time, he did not prepare from eternity grace to be conferred; every work is that on account of which God does not confer grace in time.

Again, as gratuitously as God confers grace in time on anyone, just so gratuitously did he prepare from eternity grace to be conferred on him 7; but God confers grace in time most gratuitously, not on account of preceding merits, as chapter 35 and what follows taught. Again, predestination is the grace of God that makes the predestined acceptable unto life, according to the distinction of grace set out in chapters 35 and 42; therefore it is not from works or from any merits whatever, as chapter 35 and what follows demonstrated. That predestination is the grace of God is plain, because every volition of God with respect to some extrinsic good to be conferred on someone flows forth gratuitously, not from any inferior cause causing it a priori, as is plain from chapter 20 of this book. To this the Apostle also speaks in Ephesians 1: "He predestined us for adoption as sons, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of the glory of his grace"; which chapter 25 treated more fully. Besides, nearly all the arguments proving that grace is given gratuitously will likewise prove that predestination is made gratuitously. Moreover, this is plainly against the Apostle in Romans 9, speaking of Jacob and Esau: "When they were not yet born, nor had done anything good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not from works but from him who calls, it was said that the elder shall serve the younger, as it is written, Jacob I have loved, but Esau I have hated." In these words, under the name of "sons of the promise," he shows the sons of predestination, as is plain there from the sequence of the reading and from the exposition of all the Catholic Doctors who expound that passage.

And below, the Apostle shows through sacred Scripture that predestination is from the mercy of the divine will, not from works, saying thus: "The Lord says to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will show mercy to whom I will show mercy"; and he concludes: "Therefore it is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs," that is, not of one working in whatever way, "but of God who has mercy." And, another place of Scripture, concerning Pharaoh, having been cited, he again concludes thus: "Therefore he has mercy on whom he wills, and hardens whom he wills."

If, however, that volition were caused by the works of such persons and followed upon them, he would not speak fittingly, but ought rather to speak in this manner: Whoever acts well or will act well, him he wills to have mercy on; and whoever acts badly, him he wills to harden; and this would be originally and principally of the one who wills and runs, not of God who has mercy. And therefore he said above, most plainly, "Not from works but from him who calls, that the purpose of God according to election might stand," not according to any merits in any way. Nor do I believe there is anyone so dull, so brazen, so shamelessly and frivolously quibbling as to say that the Apostle did not mean works that were then future, but only present ones, of which at that time there were none. For how could so great a teacher, a vessel of election, having the first-fruits of the Spirit, who neither learned nor received it from man but through the revelation of the Lord Jesus Christ, who also spoke wisdom among the perfect, among perfect and learned men such as the Romans, have taught so unlearnedly as to say that, when Jacob and Esau were not yet born and had done nothing good or evil, it was said, "The elder shall serve the younger," and "Jacob I have loved," and so on, not from works then present? For who, however unlearned, would not know that, when they were not yet born and had done nothing good or evil, nothing could be said to be owed them on account of works then present? Or to whom would it not seem ridiculous if he had said, "He predestined them before they were, and before the foundation of the world, on account of works which they then had in presence," when not even a simpleton has ever doubted this? But all Christian teaching ought to concern something useful and unknown; and this is useful to no Christian, nor can it be unknown to anyone:

and how could he have brought forward, so zealously, if fruitlessly, the testimonies and examples of the Old Testament, with so vigilant an argument, to prove that conclusion, which never could have been doubtful or unknown? And how, from that conclusion so understood, namely as concerning the works of persons who are not presently working and have never worked, would he proceed further to conclude the other conclusions ‖B1 that follow? Of these the first is, "Therefore it is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who has mercy"; the second, "Therefore he has mercy on whom he wills, and hardens whom he wills." For unless he meant his saying generally, of works past, present or future, there would be no connection in the reasoning, nor would he have said "that the purpose of God according to election might stand." For if God's purpose follows future works, it is not according to his own election, but according to the future meritorious election of those who will merit. Nor should he have said "not from works, but from him who calls," but rather the reverse: not from him who calls, but from their future works, through which God is first and originally stirred, in a way, and called to predestine; and so God would rather be said to be called, and they the callers. Nor should he have concluded, "Therefore it is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who has mercy," but rather, "not of God who has mercy, but of him who will run and will will": for here is the beginning and origin of why God has mercy, not in God. Nor again should he have concluded, "Therefore he has mercy on whom he wills, and hardens whom he wills"; but thus: therefore God has mercy on whoever will will well, and hardens whoever will will ill.

Again, suppose the Apostle there denied that God's predestination and calling is from past or present works only, not from future ones, but allowed that it is from future ones. This is what some of the converted Jews then living at Rome wished to assert, namely those who said that on account of their own merits and those of their parents in the observance of the Mosaic law they had received the grace of Christ and the faith of the Gospel, as is plain from the course of the Epistle to the Romans, and as Lombard in the prologue of his gloss on that Epistle reports this from Haymo and Augustine; and it is what the Pelagians now assert, namely that the elect are predestined on account of their future merits. How, then, would he refute them and commend grace, which nevertheless was his chief intention, as is plain from the whole epistle, and from Lombard in the prologue cited before, and from the many authorities of Haymo and Augustine adduced there by him?

That he specially intended this through that line of argument, cited from chapter 9, is plain from Augustine, Enchiridion 78, who says: "The Apostle was commending grace, and for its commendation he had already spoken of those twins in Rebecca's womb, of whom, not yet born, nor doing anything good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might remain, it was said, not from works but from him who calls, that the elder shall serve the younger." Again, according to the same Apostle, God does not confer grace in the present on account of works, as chapter 35 and what follows alleged more fully; therefore neither did he prepare it on account of future works. For he has immutability of counsel, as the same Apostle testifies in Hebrews, chapter 6; indeed, just as he calls those who exist to grace not on account of their present works, so he does not predestine those who will exist on account of future works, but both these and those alike purely gratuitously. Hence, in Romans 4, he calls the things that are not as though they were; and how he calls them, the same called Apostle testifies of himself: "He called me," he says, "through his grace," in Galatians 1; and in 2 Timothy 1: "He called us with his holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and the grace which was given to us in Christ Jesus before the ages of time, but made manifest now through the illumination of our Saviour Jesus Christ." This, then, is the meaning of the Apostle in his words to the Romans, treated above: that God calls and predestines purely gratuitously, not from works past, present or future.

Augustine bears witness to this expressly in his sermon On the Predestination and Grace of God, where he treats the aforesaid authority of the Apostle in these words: "If it is said that the divine judgement decreed in accordance with their future conduct, then surely what the Apostle put first will be made void, when he says, 'Not from works but from him who calls it was said, that the elder shall serve the younger.' For he does not say 'from past works'; but when he said generally 'not from works,' he wished past works to be understood there and future ones: past ones, that is, which were none, and future ones, which were not yet. Jacob was predestined a vessel unto honour, but not from works, because it was said 'not from works, but from him who calls,' 'The elder shall serve the younger.' And lest perhaps the vessels predestined unto honour, attributing something to their own powers, should deny glory to the Creator, the Apostle in another place named them vessels of mercy, that they might acknowledge that whatever they were, they were it altogether according to mercy. For so the same Apostle says elsewhere too: 'And this not from yourselves, but it is the gift of God.'"

The same is plain from Lombard's Gloss on the passage cited. For there, according to his exposition, the Apostle shows that Jacob was not predestined and Esau reprobated either on account of preceding merits or on account of future ones; hence he says thus: "The elder," that is, Esau, "shall serve the younger," that is, Jacob. And lest anyone think this happens from a preceding merit of theirs, because this was said to her, that is, to the mother, when they were not yet born, and because they might seem truly to have merited something in the womb and in their struggling, he adds: "Or when they had not yet done anything good or evil." "But it was said so that the purpose of God might stand," that is, be fulfilled, "according to election," that is, according to the grace by which he chose, not according to a debt of merits, by which grace he himself makes those to be chosen and does not find them, "not from works." As he shows that this was not said on account of preceding merits, so he shows that it was not said on account of the future merits of both either 8. Therefore I say, it was not said on account of their preceding merits. Again I say, it was not from good or evil future works (which would not be good or evil in the future unless grace were added or withdrawn) but from him who calls, or from the calling, that is, from the grace of God.

The same Lombard says in Sentences 1, distinction 41 9: God chose Jacob and reprobated Esau; this was not on account of merits which they then had, for they had none, since they themselves did not yet exist; nor did he choose the one or reprobate the other on account of the future merits which he foresaw. Some, however, have supposed that God chose Jacob because he foreknew him to be such as would believe in him and serve him. Augustine says he himself once thought this, in the book of Retractations, where he shows openly that if he had been chosen on account of future merits, election would no longer be of grace. He was not, therefore, chosen by God because he was going to be such, but by election he was made such.

The same Apostle teaches this same view in Ephesians 1, saying: "He chose us before the foundation of the world that we might be holy and without blemish." He does not say because we were, or were going to be, holy and without blemish, but that we might be holy and without blemish. And it continues: "who predestined us for adoption as sons according to the purpose of his will," not according to the merits of our will; and it continues: "We were called by lot 10, predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will," not ours, nor according to our future works. In saying "We were called by lot," he seems to have imitated the Psalmist in Psalm 23 11, who says to the Lord: "In your hands are my lots." On this Augustine, tractate 3, speaks thus: "Why 'lots'? A lot is not something evil, but a thing which, in human uncertainty, indicates the divine will. By 'lot,' then, he meant, so far as I judge, the grace by which we have been saved; and that is why they call the grace of God 'lots': because in a lot there is no election, that is, of merits, but the will of God. For where it is said, 'this one does, that one does not,' merits are being considered; and if merits are considered, it is election, not a lot. But when God finds no merits of ours, he makes us safe by the lot of his will, because he willed it, not because we were worthy. This lot is rightly the Lord's tunic woven from above, which signifies the eternity of Charity; since it could not be divided, a lot was cast upon it. Those to whom it comes it signifies to be those who are seen to come to the lot of the Saints; this lot is the hidden will of God."

The same says in the sixth book against Julian, chapter 21: "They are born condemnable by his creation, who is the Creator of all, and through the Mediator they are delivered from the condemnation that was due, by gratuitous mercy that was not due, those whom he chose before the foundation of the world through the election of grace, not from works, whether past or present or future; otherwise grace would no longer be grace. This appears most of all in infants, whose works cannot be called past, because there were none, nor present, because they do nothing, nor future, because they die at that age." And the same says above, in the fifth book of the same work, chapter 6: "They are the elect, and this before the foundation of the world, he who calls the things that are not as though they were 12, but the elect through the election of grace." Hence the same Teacher also says of Israel: "A remnant has been saved through the election of grace." And lest perhaps they be thought to have been elected before the foundation of the world from foreknown works, he went on to add: "But if by grace, then no longer from works; otherwise grace is no longer grace."

Again, this was one of the errors of Pelagius the heretic: to say, namely, that God predestines on account of foreknown future merits, as Augustine touches on in many places in On the Predestination of the Saints. Hence in chapter 24, treating the saying of the Apostle in Ephesians 1 alleged above, he speaks thus: "He foreknew, as Pelagius says, who would be holy and without blemish by the choice of a free will, and therefore he chose them before the foundation of the world in that very foreknowledge by which he foreknew that they would be such. He chooses them, then, he says, before they were, predestining his sons whom he foreknew would be holy and without blemish." Augustine rejects him thus: "Let us look at the words of the Apostle and see whether he chose us before the foundation of the world for this reason, that we were going to be holy and without blemish, or that we might be. 'Blessed,' he says, 'be God, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, as he chose us before the foundation of the world, that we might be holy and without blemish.' Not, therefore, because we were going to be, but that we might be: this is certain and manifest. We were going to be such precisely because he himself chose us, predestining, that we might be such by his grace."

Augustine himself was once deceived by this error too, as he testifies above, in the same, 4; several of his short works sufficiently show this error of his, as he says. One of these was an exposition of certain propositions from the Epistle to the Romans, which he reports that he retracted in his book of Retractations, arguing in these words: "What did God choose in the one not yet born, to whom he said that the elder would be subject, and what did he reprobate in that elder, likewise not yet born? These matters are recalled for this reason, although the prophetic testimony, 'Jacob I have loved, but Esau I have hated,' was uttered long afterwards; to this point I brought my reasoning, so that I said: God did not, therefore, choose in foreknowledge anyone's works, which he himself would give, but chose faith in foreknowledge, so that he might choose the one whom he foreknew would believe in him. I had not yet inquired more diligently, nor found out, what the election of grace is, of which the Apostle says, 'A remnant has been saved through the election of grace,' which assuredly is not grace if any merits precede it." And this is the retraction in Retractations 1, 23. Augustine's first opinion, then, was that God did not predestine on account of future works, as distinguished from faith, and this he does not retract but approves; but that he predestined on account of future faith, that is, on account of the act of faith, or the believing itself, as his words show. For he says: "He chose faith in foreknowledge, so that he might choose the one whom he foreknew would believe in him"; and below: "Hence what I said immediately after, for the same Apostle says," 13

"The same God who works all things in all"; it is nowhere said, "God who believes all things in all" 14; and then I added: "For what we believe is ours, but what good we work is his who gives the Holy Spirit to believers." I would certainly not have said this if I had already known that faith itself is also to be found among the gifts of God. And he rejects and retracts that opinion as senseless. This, then, is Augustine's last opinion: that God predestines no one on account of a future act of believing, that is, because he will believe in him, nor on account of any works of his that are to come. Augustine set down an error like the earlier one on the matter of predestination in the Eighty-Three Questions, q. 68. He retracts it in Retractations 1, 26, partly expressly and partly in its like. For since he retracts one opinion as erroneous, it is certain that he wishes any other like it to be held as retracted, because like cases are to be judged alike. Lombard also holds this, Sentences 1, dist. 41 15. And it can be said that he retracted this error more expressly after he had finished the book of Retractations, namely in On the Predestination of the Saints, 4, where he says, as was recited above, that some of ‖C1 his opuscula sufficiently indicate this error.

There, then, he rejects and retracts this error of his, wherever it occurs in all his opuscula. Below, in the same [work], 11 and 12, he likewise makes a similar retractation of a similar opinion from his little work against Porphyry, on the time of the Christian religion 16. Again, Augustine, On Rebuke and Grace, 56, treating of the promise of multiplying Abraham's seed that God made to him, Gen 15, says this: "For he did not promise Abraham those, namely the predestined, because he foreknew that they would be good of themselves; for if that were so, what he promised would be not his own but theirs." Again, if God predestines someone on account of his future works, why does he predestine those works for himself, as chapter 31 showed? It cannot be on account of other, prior works, with those on account of others again, lest perhaps this should proceed without end. It remains, then, that he predestines merits as well as rewards purely gratis. Again, God in a certain way predestines the reward for someone before the merit. For he predestines the reward as the end, and the merit as a means to that end, as chapter 35 argued; therefore he predestines the future merit on account of the future reward, and not the reverse. Again, reprobation, of which this seems more evident, is not on account of future works; therefore neither is predestination. For the Apostle in Romans 9 puts them on a par. For he says: "When they were not yet born, nor had done anything good or evil, in order that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not from works but from him who calls, it was said to her that the elder shall serve the younger, as it is written: Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated." On which Augustine says, Enchiridion 70: "The Apostle, sensing how this saying, 'Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated,' might disturb those who cannot penetrate by understanding this depth of grace, says: 'Is there injustice with God? Far from it.'" For it seems unjust that God, without any merits of good or evil works, should love one and hate the other. The same is clear from the same Apostle, below, in the same chapter, saying: "He has mercy on whom he wills, and whom he wills he hardens"; and again: "Or has the potter no power over the clay, to make from the same lump one vessel for honor, another for contempt?" Here, however, it must be known, following Lombard, Sentences 1, dist. 41, that both predestination and reprobation can be taken in two ways. For predestination is taken for God's eternal preparation of grace to be conferred on someone, and for its temporal effect, namely the conferring of that grace itself. Reprobation, on the other hand, is taken for God's eternal unwillingness of grace for someone 17 *A1 and for its temporal effect, namely the deprivation or desertion of grace; and this is called hardening. Here Lombard also says that for God's eternal reprobation itself there is no merit. And below, in the same distinction: "God reprobated whom he willed, not on account of future merits which he foresaw, in a truth altogether right, yet remote from our senses." But if anyone hateful to God should wish to quibble sophistically, saying that future works are not the principal cause of predestination, and that everything said above should be understood accordingly, but that they are a sine qua non cause, since God confers grace in time just as he predestined it eternally, as was argued above, it follows that God confers grace in time on account of the merits of works, as on account of a sine qua non cause, though not as on account of a wholly principal cause,

which the thirty-sixth chapter rejected. And this effrontery can be refuted in the same way, as the sixteenth chapter refuted a similar one. Again, who would be so foolish as to say that blessed Augustine thought foolishly and insipidly? When he expounded certain propositions of the Epistle to the Romans, and wrote the book of the Eighty-Three Questions, or rather the sixty-eighth question of them, and said that future merits were the cause of divine predestination, as was recited above, did he believe that future merits were the principal cause of divine predestination, so that God would not be the more principal cause of it? Indeed, no wise man doubts that Augustine then understood it as such a saying is commonly wont to be understood, and as such words sound among ordinary men. For according to the same Augustine, On Christian Doctrine, every teacher ought so to speak; and according to the Philosopher, Topics 2, in naming, a thing is to be called, as far as possible, what the majority call it 18. For what is in the voice must make known the passions of the soul, as the same Philosopher teaches in On Interpretation 1, and Augustine in On the Trinity 15, 10, as the Apostle also teaches at length in 1 Corinthians 14. For he says: "Brethren, if I come to you speaking in tongues, what shall I profit you, unless I speak to you either in revelation, or in knowledge, or in prophecy, or in teaching? Yet things without soul that give voice, whether pipe or harp, unless they give a distinction in the sounds, how shall it be known what is piped or harped? For if the trumpet gives an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself for battle? So you also, through the tongue, unless you give an intelligible speech, how shall it be known what is said? For you will be speaking into the air. There are, to take an example, so many kinds of tongues in this world: if then I do not know the meaning of the voice, I shall be a barbarian to him to whom I speak, and he who speaks will be a barbarian to me. But in the church I would rather speak five words with my understanding, so as to instruct others also, than ten thousand words in a tongue." Hence also Nehemiah 8: "He read in the book of the law of God distinctly and plainly, so that it might be understood." And what is said of speech is to be understood in the same way of Scripture, since according to the Philosopher, On Interpretation 1, and Augustine, On the Trinity 15, 10, what is written consists of the signs of what is in the voice; and according to the Apostle, Romans 15, "whatever was written, was written for our instruction." Therefore when Augustine first taught that predestination occurs on account of future merits foreknown by God, he meant it as such words commonly convey among everyone, and likewise when he recounted this. According, then, to Augustine's later opinion, it is not true, in the common understanding of men, that anyone is predestined on account of his future works. And the common understanding of men concerning such a proposition as "Jacob is predestined on account of his future works" is this: that Jacob's future works, foreknown by God, were some cause, at least a partial one, moving God to predestine him to the kingdom. It is not that they were the total and principal cause, such that God would do nothing there, or that God would not act more principally in predestination than they. From this also it is apparent that all the Catholic doctors and councils, indeed the whole Church of God, in condemning the heretical errors of Pelagius, who posit that grace is given according to our merits and that whoever are predestined are predestined on account of their future merits, understand it in the way just stated. Hence it is established that that assertion is heretical which asserts that merits are a sine qua non cause, namely a partial cause moving or stirring God to predestine anyone, or to confer grace on anyone. And if this is not the common understanding of the Church and of the Doctors of the Church concerning the causation of merits in respect of grace and predestination, let this falsifier without understanding 19 assign, if he can, another common understanding, more fitting, or even merely fitting, at least according to the fiction of his own fantastic head. And that understanding of his, and his error according to that understanding, will be convicted, by what has been established before and better perhaps by other things that escape me, as no understanding and not catholically intelligible, and convicted, as I hope, intelligibly enough by those who understand catholically. But let such men consider, I beg, and fear, since "the Holy Spirit of discipline will flee the deceitful" and will withdraw "from thoughts that are without understanding" 20. Therefore let them humbly pray in the sight of the Lord that he give them understanding according to his word, and by no means that the word of the Lord be given to them according to their own understanding; and this is "a good understanding to all who always do it."

Corollary

Corollary: that no one is predestined or reprobated on account of the works that he would do if he lived longer, nor is anyone saved or damned on account of works 21.

From these things this porism is gathered: No one is predestined or reprobated on account of the works that he would do if he lived longer, nor is anyone saved or damned on account of works. For according to what has been established, no one is predestined or reprobated on account of his works that are truly future, and it seems still less that anyone is predestined, or even reprobated, on account of works that he would do if he lived longer. And if no one is predestined or reprobated on account of works of this kind, then neither is he saved or damned *B1, since no one is saved or damned on account of anything other than that on account of which he was predestined to be saved or reprobated to be damned. For the salvation and damnation of anyone proceed from the divine will, which is altogether ‖B2 unvarying, as the twenty-third chapter showed. Yet for some reasons that distinction concerning "on account of," premised in the thirty-ninth of this [book], can have force here. And lest I, the lowest, seem alone to define something in so lofty a matter, behold the manifest Catholic faith on this point, which is faithfully professed in the Creed of Athanasius: "At whose coming all men are to rise again with their bodies, and are to render account of their own deeds" (of deeds, it says, not of deeds to be done had they lived longer), "and those who have done good will go into eternal life, but those who have done evil into eternal fire." That is, according to the good or evil that they did, not what they would have done had they lived longer. Behold, on this point also, the same pre-eminent Doctor, holy Paul, in 2 Corinthians 5, saying: "We must all be made manifest before the judgment seat of Christ, that each may receive what belongs to the body, according to what he has done, whether good or evil." "According to what he has done," he says, not according to what he would have done had he lived longer. The form of the future judgment, written in Matthew 25, will agree well enough with this opinion. For at the final judgment the good or evil that those being judged have done will be recited, and for these glory or punishments will be adjudged; but of the good or evil which they would have done had they lived longer, no mention will be made. Augustine proves this same conclusion at length in On the Predestination of the Saints 14, and through the long discussion that follows, and in On the Gift of Perseverance 21 and in many chapters after it, and below, in the same work, 34 and 35, plainly.