Book II, Chapter 28

Chapter 28. He raises an objection against the twentieth, and replies.

An objection is also raised against the twentieth chapter, in this way. If God is necessarily required for properly performing any act of a created will, then, since God's acting is not in the power of the created will, no act would be in its power. Hence none would be free, and the will itself would not be mistress of its own free acts. Yet the Philosopher says in Ethics 3, 13 that we are masters of [our] actions from beginning to end,1 and he says a like thing elsewhere in many places. The Lord also seems to attest the same thing in the first institution of mankind. For Genesis 4 reads that the Lord said to Cain: "If you do well, will you not receive? But if ill, will not sin straightway be at your door? But its desire shall be under you, and you shall have dominion over it." Again, if man could not carry out his acts by his own powers alone, it would seem unreasonable that anything should be commanded him, or even forbidden him, since it would not be in his free power so to do or to avoid.

Hence it is written in Ecclesiasticus 15: "God from the beginning established man, and left him in the hand of his counsel; he added commands and precepts. If you are willing to keep the commands, they will keep you, E1 and to do a pleasing fidelity for ever. He has set before you water and fire; stretch out your hand to whichever you will. Before man are life and death, good and evil; whichever pleases him will be given to him."

Again, if God made a man's act evil, he would punish unjustly for it. For if God makes it, he makes it by the divine will, which man cannot resist, as the tenth of the first teaches. Again, if God by his will makes an evil act, he wills and loves that act, and indeed also wills it by the will of good pleasure. For that is his essential and intrinsic will, through which he makes whatever he makes externally, as is plain from what was premised. Therefore evil is well-pleasing to God, and therefore he does not justly punish for it. And 3 Kings 11 A1 writes, "And Solomon did what was not pleasing before the Lord," namely by loving foreign women and worshiping idols. And Romans 8: "Those who are in the flesh cannot please God." A2 And Hebrews 11: "Without faith it is impossible to please God." Again, there are many willings, both good and bad, that are never fulfilled. If then God caused these by willing, he would make and will a willing to arise toward something willed which he would not will to be effected. Indeed he would will it not to be effected, as can easily be seen from the 10th and 23rd with the 22nd of the first. So he would both will and make it in vain.

Again, Augustine, On the Spirit and the Letter 27: B1 "The Apostle says, 'There is no power except from God.' But nowhere do we read in the holy Scriptures, 'There is no will except from God'; and rightly it is not written, because it is not true." The same, City of God 5, 8: "All powers are from God, although the wills of all are not from him." B2 The same, in the Sentences of Prosper, proposition 288: "The desire to harm can come from each person's own perverse mind; but there is no power except from God." The same, Confessions 12, 11: B3 "You said to me, Lord, in my inner ear, with a strong voice, that you made all natures and substances that are not what you are, and yet are; and this alone is not from you, that which is not; B4 and the movement of the will away from you who are toward that which is less is likewise not from you, because such a movement is an offense and a sin." And the same proves this at length in On Free Choice 2, last chapter. The same, against Julian 5, 6: "God does not make evil wills, but uses them as he wills, since he cannot will anything unjustly." The same, Hypognosticon 33:2 "We confess that free choice exists in all human beings, having indeed a judgment of reason. By this it is not made fit, in what pertains to God, either to begin or indeed to complete anything without God. It is fit only in the works of the present life, bad as well as good. I call good those which arise from the good of nature, that is, to want to labor in the field, to want to drink, to want to eat, to want to have a friend, to want to have clothing, to want to build a house, to marry a wife, to raise livestock, to learn the art of various good things, or whatever good pertains to the present life. None of these subsist without divine governance; indeed they are from him and through him, and began to be. The bad ones are these: to want to worship an idol, to blaspheme, and the like."

C1 Again, John of Damascus in his Sentences, 39, headed "On what is in us, that is, on free choice," having listed six effective causes,3 says thus: "To which of these, then, shall we ascribe the things that happen through men, if man is not the cause and principle of acts? For it is not right to ascribe shameful and unjust acts at any time to God; nor to necessity, for they are not among the things that always behave in the same way; nor to fortune, for it is not a matter of contingent things, but of necessary things which ‖C2 hold sway over fortune; nor to nature, for the works of nature are animals and plants:

"nor to an occurrence, for the acts of men are not rare and unlooked-for; nor to accident, for they say that accidents are the incidental happenings of inanimate or irrational things. It remains, therefore, that the man himself, acting and doing, is the principle of his own operations and free in choice." And to the same conclusion he at once adds another reason: "Furthermore," he says, "if man is the principle of no act, he has a counselor superfluously; for to what purpose will he use counsel, being the master of no act? For all counsel is for the sake of an act." But to declare superfluous what is best and most precious of the things in man would surely be among the most unsuitable of all claims. And in the following chapter, headed "On the things that are not in us," he says: "Of the things that are not in us, some have their principles from those that are in us, namely causes, that is, the rewards of our acts, both in the present age and in the future; but all the rest depend on the divine will." Therefore, according to him, our acts do not depend on the divine will, and therefore not on God either.

D1 Again, Ammonius, on 1. ⟨…⟩ hermenias, last chapter:4 "The gods, however, use us as ‖E1 autolomici, that is, as movable by ourselves; and in this way they govern what is about us, and distribute all things to us according to our own worth."

To the first of these, let this brief reply suffice for the present. In the administration of temporal and spiritual things we see that, with respect to one and the same thing, there are several powers and several dominions, ordered as higher and lower. Hence in some places the Mayors or Provosts of cities are called Powers, yet they are in all things subject to the superior, namely imperial, power. In the same way a certain middle order of Angels, likewise called Powers, is subject to the divine power, and another middle order of others, called Dominions, to the divine dominion. Therefore that Centurion also rightly said, E2 "I am a man set under power, having soldiers under me," Matthew 8.

Therefore no one ought to doubt that, although a created will has power and dominion over its act, the superior and ruling power, namely God himself, is not thereby excluded from superior power, dominion and efficiency with respect to the same act. Hence also St. Thomas, A1 in his book On the Power of God, question 20,5 where it is asked whether God works in every operation of nature, argues thus. The will is mistress of its act; but it would not be, if it could not act unless God were working in it, since our will is not mistress of the divine operation; therefore God does not work in our will as it works. And he replies thus: "It must be said that the will is said to have dominion over its act, not by exclusion of the first cause. But the first cause does not act in the will so as to determine it of necessity to one thing, as it determines nature, and so the determination of the act is left in the power of reason and will." The Gloss on Genesis 4 expounds in agreement with this, "Under you shall be its desire, and you shall have dominion over it," saying thus: "Not over you, because you are of free choice; in your power, because you are of free choice."

The second argument ought to move no one who is unwilling to cleave to Pelagius the heretic. For as Augustine recounts in On Heresies 88, and Peter in Sentences 2, dist. 28, and Isidore in Etymologies 8, 14, and the Canon 24, question last, Quidam autem,6 his heresy was that man could fulfill the commands of God by the powers of free choice alone; and he strove to establish this by this very same argument. Hence Augustine, On Grace and Free Choice 35, says: "The Pelagians think they know something great when they say, 'God would not command what he knew could not be done by man.' Who is unaware of this? But he commands some things that we cannot do, so that we may know what we ought to ask of him. For it is faith itself that by praying obtains what the law commands. Finally, he who said, 'If you are willing, you will keep the commandments,' says in the same book of Ecclesiasticus somewhat later: 'Who will set a guard over my mouth, and upon my lips a cunning seal, lest perhaps I fall from it, and my tongue destroy me?' Surely he had already received the commandments: 'Keep your tongue from evil, and your lips from speaking guile.' Since, then, it is true what he said, 'If you are willing, you will keep the commandments,'

why does he ask that a guard be given over his mouth, like him who says in the Psalm, 'Set a guard, Lord, over my mouth'? Was not God's commandment and his own will enough for him, since if he is willing he will keep the commandments? How many commandments of God are against pride! He knew them; if he is willing, he will keep them. Why then does he say a little after, 'Lord, Father and God of my life, do not give me haughtiness of eyes'? The law had already said to him, 'You shall not covet.' Let him therefore will and do what is commanded, since if he is willing he will keep the commandments; why does he go on and say, 'Turn concupiscence away from me'? How many things has God commanded against lust! Let him do them, since if he is willing he will keep the commandments. Why is it that he cries out to him that the appetite of the belly and of sexual union may not seize me? If we said these things to him in the present, he would most rightly answer us and say: 'From this prayer of mine, in which I ask these things from God, understand in what sense I said, "If you are willing, you will keep the commandments." For it is certain that we keep the commandments if we will; but because the will is prepared by the Lord, it must be asked of him that we may will as much as suffices, so that by willing we may do.'"

"It is certain that we will when we will, but he makes us will the good. Of this it was said, as I set down a little before, that the will is prepared by the Lord; of which it was said, 'By the Lord the steps of man are directed, and he will want his way': for it is God who works in us even to will. It is certain that we act when we act, but he makes us act, furnishing most efficacious powers to the will; he says, 'I will cause you to walk in my justifications, and to keep my judgments and do them.'" The same, On Rebuke and Grace 7, teaches the same. Peter also, Sentences 2, dist. 28, recounts and refutes this Pelagian argument. Julian also, the disciple and follower of Pelagius, in his letter to Demetrias, of which mention is made in 35 of the first, hints at a similar argument.7 "We ascribe iniquity to the just one," he says, "when we complain that he has commanded something impossible." This argument, as heretical, the venerable Bede recounts with six other heresies in Against Julian 12, from the aforesaid letter; and below, in 18, he replies thus: D1 "In saying that the Lord, who is just, has commanded nothing impossible, he surely speaks truly, if he looks to the help of him to whom the Catholic voice prays, saying, 'Lead me in the path of your commandments.' But if he trusts in the powers of his own mind, he refutes the truthful statement of the same just one, in which he says, 'Without me you can do nothing.'"

Again, in On the Perfection of Righteousness 7, E1 Augustine recounts such an argument of Caelestius the Pelagian: "It must be asked whether it is commanded to man to be without sin. For either he cannot, and it is not commanded; or because it is commanded, he can. For why would it be commanded, what could not be done at all?" And Augustine's reply follows: "It is answered that it is most wisely commanded to man to walk with straight steps, so that when he sees that he cannot, he may seek the medicine. This, for healing the lameness of sin in the inner man, is the grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord." E2 The same, On the Predestination of the Saints 13: "When it is said," they say, namely the Pelagians, "'If you believe, you will be saved,' one of these is demanded, the other offered."

"What is demanded is in the power of men; what is offered is in the power of God." He refutes them by adding: "Why is not both in the power of God, both what is commanded and what is offered? For it is asked that what he commands be given. Believers ask that their faith be increased; they ask for those who do not believe that faith be given to them. Therefore both in its increases and in its beginnings faith is a gift of God. And it is said, 'If you believe, you will be saved,' in the same way as it is said, 'If by the spirit you put to death the deeds of the flesh, you will live.' For here too, of two things one is demanded, the other offered. 'If,' he says, 'by the spirit you put to death the deeds of the flesh, you will live.' That we put to death the deeds of the flesh by the spirit is demanded; that we live is offered. Is it then pleasing that we should say that putting to death the deeds of the flesh is not a gift of God, because it is demanded of us, with the reward of life set before us if we do this? Heaven forbid that this should please the partakers and defenders of grace! That damnable error belongs to the Pelagians, whose mouths the Apostle soon stopped, adding, 'For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God,' lest we should believe that we put to death the deeds of the flesh not by God's spirit but by our own. Of this Spirit of God he was speaking also there where he says, 'But all these things are worked by one and the same Spirit, dividing to each one as he wills,' and among all these things he named faith too. Just as, then, although putting to death the deeds of the flesh is a gift of God, it is nevertheless demanded of us with the reward of life set before us, so also faith is a gift of God. Yet even it, when it is said, 'If you believe, you will be saved,' with the reward of salvation set before us, B1 is demanded of us."

The same, On Holy Virginity 17: "The voices of pious prayers in the holy Scriptures are witnesses, by which it is shown that the very things commanded by God are not done unless he who commands gives and helps. For they are asked for falsely, if we could do them without his grace helping." B2 The same, Confessions 10, 30: he says to the Lord, "Give what you command, and command what you will. You command us continence; and when I knew," he says, "that no one can be continent unless God gives it, this very thing was wisdom, to know whose gift this was. O my God, attend to me: you command continence; give what you command, and command what you will." From these authorities of Augustine it is sufficiently shown, with respect to willing itself,8 that the act commanded is not from man alone without God, nor from God alone without man, nor partly from man alone and partly from God alone, but wholly and totally from both, as corollary 20 of this second part demonstrates.

Hence also the Prophet, Psalm 118: "Give me understanding, and I shall search your law, and keep it with my whole heart." C1 See, first he asks for a divine action: "Give me," he says, "understanding." Then he promises his own as well: "and I shall search," he says, etc. And again, asking for divine action, he adds: "Lead me in the path of your commandments; incline my heart to your testimonies." And below, expressing his own action: "I have inclined," he says, "my heart to doing your justifications." But to incline the heart is to make it will, as is plain from the Psalmist's progression and from the exposition of Augustine in 20 of the second, cited more fully. Again, Ezekiel 36: "I will cause," says the Lord, "that you walk in my precepts, C2 and keep my judgments and carry them out." On which Augustine says, in On the Predestination of the Saints 13: "For these things are commanded of us, and shown to be gifts of God, so that it may be understood that we both do them, and God makes us do them, as he says most plainly through the Prophet Ezekiel. For what is plainer than where he says, 'I will cause you to do'?

"Look at the very place in Scripture, and you will see that God promises that he will cause them ‖D1 to do what he commands to be done. He does not conceal their merits, but their bad ones, by which he shows that he repays good for evil: by this very thing, that he makes them thenceforth have good works, since he himself makes them do the divine commands." And if you ask why God commands man those things that he is not able to fulfill by his own powers without God, 35 of the first answers that this ‖D2 is so in order to show that man has free choice of will, by which he can freely accomplish the commands of God. "For why should man not be commanded what he can freely do whenever he wills? But because he can do nothing by his own powers alone without God, he is taught therefore to think nothing proud of his own virtue and to presume nothing, but always to implore the divine help humbly, to put his hope in it, and to trust in it in all things." Does not the master of a ship, I ask, command his sailor quite reasonably to haul the ship this way or that, to raise the mast, to lift the sail, and the like, none of which the sailor can do without him? The authorities of 35 of the first, cited more fully, expressly prove all this.

Again, Augustine, On Grace and Free Choice 39: "All these commands of love, that is, of charity, are so great and of such a kind that whatever a man thinks he does well, if it is done without charity, is by no means done well. They would be given in vain to men who did not have free choice of will. But since they are given through the law, both old and new, and the law without grace is the letter that kills, but in grace the spirit that gives life, whence is there charity in men except from God himself? For if not from God but from men, the Pelagians have won; but if from God, we have conquered the Pelagians. Let John then sit as judge between us, and say to us, 'Beloved, let us love one another.' In these words John, when they begin to exalt themselves and to say, 'Why is this commanded to us, unless because we have it from ourselves to love one another?',9 there follows at once that saying of John confounding them and saying, 'For love is from God.'

"Why then was it said, 'Let us love one another, for love is from God,' unless because free choice was admonished by the command to seek the gift of God? That admonition would indeed be wholly without fruit unless it first received some measure of love, so that it might seek to have added to it that by which it might fulfill what was commanded. When it is said, 'Let us love one another,' it is law; when it is said, 'For love is from God,' it is grace. For the wisdom of God bears law and mercy on its tongue; hence it is written in the Psalm, 'For he who gave the law will give blessing.'" The same, On the Perfection of Righteousness 21: "Commands that they be done would not be given, A1 if our will did nothing there; nor would prayer be made, if it alone sufficed." And above, 12: "For to this end this law commands, that when man has failed in fulfilling these things, he may not exalt himself, swollen with pride, but flee wearied to grace, as if the law, by terrifying him, were leading him to love Christ by the office of a tutor." To that authority of Ecclesiasticus saying that God left man in the hand of his counsel, it must be said that by this it shows that man was set in the possibility of free choice, A2 by which, if he had willed, he would have kept the commands of God.

Hence Augustine, Hypognosticon 28, having recited the whole aforesaid authority, adds: "What is 'and left him in the hand of his counsel,' if not that he released him into the possibility of his free choice? For by 'hand' power is understood. That is the first grace by which the first man could have stood, if he had willed to keep the commands of God. But not even then could he have willed this without another special help of God, as the same Augustine shows when touching on the same authority in On Rebuke and Grace 47 and in many other places, as 9 and 10 of the second have cited more fully." The same, On the Perfection of Righteousness 32, recounts Caelestius alleging this authority with many like it: "The Apostle," he says, "says of someone, 'Let him do what he wills.' Again he says to Philemon about Onesimus, whom I had wished to keep with me, to serve me on your behalf, 'but without your counsel I would do nothing, so that your good might not be as of necessity, but voluntary.' Again in Deuteronomy: 'He has set before your face life and death, good and evil; B1 choose life that you may live.' Again in Solomon: 'God from the beginning established man, and left him in the hand of his counsel,' etc. Again in Isaiah: 'If you are willing and listen to me, you will eat the good things of the land; but if you are unwilling and do not listen to me, the sword shall devour you; for the mouth of the Lord has spoken these things.'"

Thus the wicked Caelestius, no "heavenly" one;10 and heavenly Augustine adds: "Here, however, however much they cover themselves, they are laid bare. For they declare that they are arguing against the grace and mercy of God, which we wish to obtain when we say, C1 'Your will be done, as in heaven so on earth'; or, 'And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.' Why else do we ask these things in prayer with such great groaning, if it is of the man who wills and runs, and not of God who has mercy? Not because this is done without our will, but because the will does not fulfill what it does unless it is helped from above. This is the soundness of faith, which makes us seek, that it may be found; ask, that it may be received; knock, that it may be opened to us. Whoever argues against this shuts against himself the door of God's mercy. I will not say more on so great a matter, because I commit it better to the groans of the faithful than to my words. Yet see, I beg you, what sort of thing it is. Therefore, for the one who wills and runs, the mercy of God is not necessary, which even went before him so that he might run, because of someone the Apostle says, 'Let him do what he wills'? There, I think, where it follows and is said, 'He does not sin if he marries,' as if willing to marry were to be reckoned a great thing, in a passage where the help of divine mercy is being argued more laboriously. Or does willing anything profit even there, unless God by providence, by which he governs all things, joins male and female? Or because the Apostle wrote to Philemon that his good should be not as of necessity but voluntary, as if a good were voluntary in any other way than when God works in us both to will and to work according to good will? Or because in Deuteronomy it is written, 'He has set before the face of man life and death, good and evil,' and he admonished him to choose life, as if the admonition itself did not come from mercy, or as if it would profit anything to choose life, unless God inspired the love of choosing and furnished the having of what is chosen; of which it is said, 'For wrath is in his indignation, and life in his will'? Or because it has been said, 'If you will, the commandments will keep you,' as if a man should not give thanks to God because he willed the commandments, who, deserted by all light of truth, could not will these things.

"With fire and water set before man, he stretches out his hand to whichever he wills; but higher is he who calls, and 'No one can come to me,' says the prince of faith, 'unless the Father who sent me draw him.' But he supposed he had [found] something great for his cause in Isaiah the Prophet, because God said, 'If you are willing, and listen,' etc. As if the whole law were not full of conditions of this kind! Or as if these commands had been given to the proud for any other reason than that the law was laid down on account of transgression: that is, so that man might receive commands, trusting proudly in his own powers, and failing in them, and made also a transgressor, might seek a liberator and savior; and so the fear of the law, having made him humble, like a tutor might lead him to faith and grace. Thus, their infirmities being multiplied, afterward they hastened." And to this same end goes directly the whole of his book entitled On the Spirit and the Letter.

Again, St. Thomas, in On the Power of God, E1 the question 20 mentioned above, argues thus. Ecclesiasticus 15 says that God made man and left him in the hand of his counsel; but he would not have left him if he were always working in the will; therefore he does not work in the will as it works. And he replies: "It must be said that God is not said to have left man in the hand of his counsel in the sense that he does not work in the will, but because he gave the will of man dominion over its act, so that it would not be bound to one side of a contradiction. This dominion he did not give to nature, since by its form it is determined to one thing."

Blessed Prosper also, Against Cassian,11 A1 after he showed in chapter 16 that the act of the will comes about as much from God as from man, recounts in chapter 17 a similar argument of Cassian the Pelagian. By a similar authority, to the conclusion premised, Cassian says that liberty of choice lies with man. The Book also that is said to be the Shepherd's A2 teaches most plainly, in which two Angels are said to cleave to each one of us, that is, a good one and a bad one. It teaches that it lies in man's choice to choose which he will follow, and for that reason free choice always remains in man, which can either neglect or love the grace of God.12

Prosper, replying in chapter 19, first says that the book of the Shepherd has no authority, B1 and consequently proves at length from many places of Scripture that the will is not so free that it can do anything without God, but can do whatever it does with him. Hence he adds: "Thus this freedom is not so free that from itself it has so much loathing as to neglect the grace of God, or from itself so much delight as to love it." And he proves it, because concerning ‖B2 Lydia the seller of purple it is written that God opened her heart to attend to what was said by Paul; and because, according to the Apostle, the charity of God is poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit; and because, according to John, love is from God. Concluding from these, he adds: "Let human poverty then recognize that what is rightly said of any good things is said much more rightly of that without which all good things profit nothing: 'What do you have that you have not received? But if you received it, why do you boast, as if you had not received?'"

For the third argument the 34th of the first sufficiently answers; for the fourth the next chapter answers, with the same 34th of the first. Yet for this one it can be said specially that when it is argued that an evil act is well-pleasing to God, this word "well" can determine "pleases God" by reason of the divine pleasing. In that sense no one doubts that, as the evil act pleases him, so it pleases him supremely well, as the first supposition of the first and the third part of its corollary prove. Or it can be taken by reason of the act's being well-pleasing, and this either by reason of the substance of the act or by reason of its malice. If by reason of the act, there are again two ways: either "well" naturally, and so it is true, or "well" morally, and so it is false. If by reason of its malice, then it is not properly effected by man, nor by God, since by 26 of the first it is thus not something effected, nor anything, but merely a pure privation.

The fifth argument was that of Cassian the Pelagian, to prove the same conclusion, as holy Prosper recounts in the book that he published against him, chapter 15, in these words: "Wishing, namely Cassian, to prove that religious thoughts and holy counsels, conceived with no inspiration of God, can proceed from natural wisdom, he sets down the words of Solomon, who says: 'And David my father wished to build a house for the name of the Lord God of Israel; and the Lord said to David my father: That you thought in your heart to build a house for my name, you did well, in pondering this very thing in your mind; nevertheless you shall not build a house for my name.' This thought, then, and this deliberation of King David: must it be said to have been good and from God, or bad and from man? For if that thought was good and from God, why is the result denied to the one in whom it was inspired? But if it was bad and from man, why is it praised by the Lord? It remains, therefore, that it be believed both good and from man, in which way we too can judge our own thoughts daily. For neither has it been granted to David alone to think something good from himself, nor is it denied to us, so that we could never naturally perceive or think anything good."

Prosper, replying to him, adds: "In no way can it be proved by this testimony and argument that pious thoughts are born from free choice alone, and not from the inspiration of God. For the will of David, which was surely good, is not to be thought not to have been from God because the Lord willed that the temple be built for him not by David but by his son. And that this may shine out more clearly from examples,"

let us ask where God was unwilling that which men, with God willing, willed to do. The Lord commanded the Apostles, saying: "Go, teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you." When the Apostles heard this, they doubtless did not receive bare words, through bodily sounds, merely with their outward ears. Rather, by the power of the living Word an inextinguishable flame of charity was kindled in their hearts, and with it they most ardently wished to preach the Gospel among all nations. Yet when they were forbidden to speak the word in Asia, and were prevented by the Spirit of Jesus from going into Bithynia, did they not have this wish from God, that they longed to turn to the faith the hearts even of those to whom God, by a hidden judgment, did not then will the Gospel to be heard? Or, because the Church daily prays for her enemies, that is, for those who have not yet believed in God, does she not do so by the Spirit of God? Who would say this, except one who does not do it himself, or who thinks that faith is not a gift of God? And yet what is asked for all is not obtained for all; nor is there injustice with God, who often does not grant what he has given us to ask. Augustine teaches the same in City of God 22, 2, as the thirty-third of the first adduced more fully. A1 Nor should this seem astonishing: the saints, willing in this holy way, even if they lack one thing willed, nevertheless attain another thing willed, namely God himself, for whose sake they finally will the other things in a holy manner. And likewise they are not defrauded of their merit and reward; and perhaps they do not will any such thing altogether absolutely, but only under this condition, expressed or tacit, "If this shall be pleasing before God," as had been argued in the twenty-fifth of the first. Hence it cannot be proved that willings of this kind come to nothing. The twenty-fifth of the second and the thirty-fourth of the first answer the sixth argument. As for that authority from the Hypognosticon, 33,13 which says,

that the free choice of men cannot accomplish anything pertaining to God without God, but only the good and bad works of the present life, it must be said that Augustine understands only this: that free choice cannot accomplish any work of its own pertaining to God without God, that is, without God's grace and his charity poured out through the Holy Spirit in our hearts, as the thirty-ninth of the first shows well enough. It can, however, perform the works of the present life, though not without his general influence and providence and special efficiency. Hence, having enumerated various works of the present life and comprehended all the rest universally, he adds: "All of which things subsist not without divine governance; indeed they are from him and through him, and have begun to be." And that Augustine understands such expressions in the manner stated, B1 he himself is witness in On the Perfection of Righteousness 32. There, after reporting the argument of Caelestius, by which he wished to show that man can will from himself alone, because the Apostle says of someone, "let him do what he wills," Augustine adds: "See, however, I beg you, what sort of thing it is, that for the one who wills and runs the mercy of God is not necessary, which even preceded him that he might run, because the Apostle says of someone, 'Let him do what he wills.' There, I suppose, where there follows, 'He does not sin if he marries,' as if it were to be reckoned a great matter to will to marry, where the help of divine mercy is discussed with more labor. Or indeed does even willing anything there avail, unless God, by the providence by which he governs all things, joins man and woman?" Hence also Proverbs 19: "House and riches are given by parents, but from the Lord properly a prudent wife." C1 The Gloss: "from the Lord properly," that is, a good wife is given immediately and per se. Therefore Holy Scripture and other authors, where they speak similarly, are to be expounded similarly, just as the thirty-fourth of the first also expounded certain like passages. As for the seventh argument, it must be said C2 that if that Damascene14 understood inwardly as his words sound outwardly, he is to be denied without hesitation and simply by all philosophers and theologians. And in truth, according to the rule of truth of our Master, Matthew 12, "By your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned." Conjecturing his understanding from his words, I believe that as he uttered it verbally,

so also he understood it mentally; especially since he expresses that understanding so often, and weaves the whole course of the argument chapter by chapter according to it, and brings forward no side remarks from which a different understanding could reasonably be drawn. Therefore when he says that God is not the efficient cause of human acts, I plainly reject that. To his first reason, which says, "For it is not right to ascribe at times shameful and unjust acts to God," the twenty-fifth of the second and the thirty-fourth and twenty-sixth of the first answer. To the second it must be said that it does not prove that man is lord of his free act of will in any different way than he is lord of the counsel of his intellect. But he is not so lord of his counsel as not to be the servant and instrument of a superior Lord, namely of the agent intellect of the Lord our God, as the sixth of the first and the twenty-second of the second taught. Hence also the Philosopher, in On Good Fortune 2,15 as the sixth of the first adduced more fully: "For the one deliberating was not deliberating—even before he deliberated—but there is a certain principle; nor did the one understanding understand before he understood, and so on to infinity. For the principle of that which is to understand is not understanding, nor of deliberating, deliberation. What then?" And he answers: "Either there is some principle outside which there is no other, or [it is a principle] because, being such in its being, it can make such. But what is sought is this: what is the principle of motion in the soul? Plainly, as in the whole, God: for the divine in us moves in some way all things that are in us. But the principle of reason is not reason, but something better. What then will be better than both knowledge and intellect, if not God? For virtue is the organ of intellect." He himself too, according to the Prophet, is "terrible in his counsels over the sons of men," 573E·1 Psalm 65,16 and Job 12: "In whose hand is the soul of every living thing, and the breath of all human flesh; with him is counsel and understanding. If he destroys, there is none who builds; if he shuts up a man, there is none who opens; if he holds back the waters, all things will dry up; if he sends them out, they will overturn the earth." Hence also Joseph in Egypt said to his brothers, 574E·117 "Not by your counsel, but by the will of God was I sent here."

Nor is this surprising; for he himself is the spirit of wisdom and understanding, and the spirit of counsel, Isaiah 11. "For all these things one and the same Spirit works, distributing to each as he wills," 1 Corinthians 12. "He himself will direct counsel," Ecclesiasticus 39. This reason, therefore, does not conclude that man is lord of his free act of will, without also being the servant and instrument of a superior Lord, A1 as was shown concerning the act of counsel. And since, according to the Philosopher, Physics 1, 22,18 "when one absurdity is assigned, others follow"; and, according to the same, On the Heavens 1, 31, "He who has strayed a little from the truth at the beginning, in departing becomes far more than ten thousand times [farther off]": so too in this one absurd principle, straying from the truth, namely that man alone, without God, produces his acts, A219 he has been led, proceeding further, into many other absurdities, indeed absurdities ten thousand times greater. For from this first absurdity there follows this second, that all things which praise and blame follow are done by us alone; and from this a third, that all things for which persuasion or law is laid down can thus be done by us, as is clear from the fortieth chapter [of the first.]

If this is understood without divine grace helping us, it is the heresy of Pelagius, as is clear above in this same chapter and in the thirty-ninth of the first. If, however, it is understood with grace of this kind, that grace brings about our praiseworthy acts and the observance of the divine law, as ‖3 the fortieth of the first teaches, and not without God specially co-acting, as the forty-second of the same teaches. And it seems that he means it without grace, since in the whole course of his argument he makes no mention of it.

The fourth also follows from this, that it is in us alone, without God, to acquire every art; which he also concedes in chapter 40, against what was shown about the agent intellect in the twentieth of this second [book].

The fifth absurdity—though it is also a consequence—is this: that our rewards in the present and in the future, and consequently the whole predestination of the elect, depend on the human will and not on the divine. Hence in chapter 42 he says: "Of those things that are not in us, some have their principles and causes from those that are in us, that is, the rewards of ‖5 our acts in the present and in the future age; but all the rest depend on the divine will."

Therefore, according to him, these do not depend on the divine will but only on the human; and so predestination itself is not the preparation of grace in the present and of glory in the future. Therefore predestination too would be from the works of the predestined, not from God predestining; which is the Pelagian heresy, as the forty-fourth and the forty-fifth of the first show throughout.

The sixth is that human acts are in no way contained under divine providence, because if God does not make them, then he does not will them, as the tenth of the first shows; hence he never willed them, as the twenty-third of the first shows; hence he never provided for them, as the twenty-seventh and following of the first show. 6 Whence, relying himself on this deduction, or on the principle of this deduction, in chapter forty-two, noted above, on providence, he says: "For it is necessary that the same be the maker of the things that are, and their provider. For it is neither fitting nor suitable that one be the maker of all things and another the provider; for thus both are altogether in weakness, the one in making, the other in providing." And further on he shows consequently that all those things which are not in us are contained under divine providence just as under divine efficiency, but those that are in us are by no means so contained. Hence he says: "Our thoughts, and actions, and what is future, are known to him alone. By 'all things' I mean those that are not in us; for what is in us does not belong to providence, but to our free choice." This is contrary to the thirtieth and following of the first book.

The seventh follows evidently from this sixth, namely that God predestined to no one his own good works, nor anyone as one who will be good. For he predestined nothing that he did not provide for; which is contrary to the forty-fourth and the forty-fifth of the first. Hence he himself also, in chapter forty-four, entitled "On foreknowledge and predestination," says: "It must be known that God foreknows all things indeed, but does not predetermine all things; he foreknows indeed even the things that are in us, but does not predetermine them, that is, predestine them." And in chapter ninety-one: "It must be known that it is the custom of divine Scripture to call God's permission his action, as

when the Apostle says in the Epistle to the Romans, E2 'Or has the potter no power, from the same lump of clay, to make one vessel for honor, and that other for dishonor?' For since he himself made both these and those—for he alone is the maker of all things—yet it is not he himself who builds the honorable or the dishonorable, but each one's own will. And this is manifest from the passage in which the Apostle himself says in the second Epistle to Timothy: 'In a great house there are not only vessels of gold and silver, but also of wood and clay; and these indeed for honor, but those for dishonor. If anyone therefore has purged himself of these, he will be a vessel sanctified for honor [for the honor of God], and useful to the master, prepared for every good work.' It is manifest, however, that the purging is done voluntarily: for he says, 'If anyone has purged himself.' And he shows the same from the other side, in the case of evil, and adds: 'All these things are to be received not as God acting, but as God permitting.'"

From this seventh there follows this eighth, that every adult sinner can by himself, without God's grace and without any help of his, rise again from sins. For if God did not predestine for the sinner the act of repentance by which he rises again, then he never willed it, nor does he will it now, since he is immutable, by the twenty-third of the first. Therefore he does not do it either, because he does nothing outside himself purely naturally, but only voluntarily, as the ninth of the first taught. And his saying just cited plainly attests this. For he says that the saying of the Apostle to the Romans, asserting that God makes a vessel for honor, is understood only of permission, and that it is not [God himself] who establishes honorable vessels, but each one's own will. Nor is his reason valid: "It is not God himself," he says, "who establishes honorable ones, but each one's own will; because the Apostle says, 'If anyone has purged himself, he will be a vessel for honor.' It is manifest, however, that voluntarily the purging is done." For the Apostle says, "If anyone has purged himself"; now it does not follow, "man purges himself, therefore God does not purge him." For a man cleans his hands, and water likewise, and moreover the one who pours the water; and by the corollary of the twenty-first of this second, God as much as man does the whole act of the human will. Hence, as the Apostle says here, "If anyone has purged himself"—or, according to Jerome's translation, "has cleansed himself"—so elsewhere he says the same: B1 "Making purgation of sins," namely the Son of God, Jesus Christ, to the Hebrews 1. And further on in chapter nine of the same: "The blood of Christ will cleanse our conscience from dead works." B2 And the Lord says of Christ: "He will sit refining and cleansing the silver, and he will purge the sons of Levi," Malachi 3. And the Son says of the Father: "Everyone who bears fruit, he will purge him," John 15; and Acts 15: "‖B3 purifying their hearts by faith." And Ezekiel 36: "I will pour clean water upon you, and you will be cleansed from all ‖B4 your defilements, and from all your idols I will cleanse you; and I will give you a new heart, and I will put a new spirit in the midst of you, and I will take away the heart of stone from your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh." And Isaiah 43: "I am, I am he, says the Lord, who blot out your iniquities for my own sake"; and further on: "Tell, if you have anything, that you may be justified," as if he said, "from yourself, nothing." Seeing this indeed, the Prophet ‖C1 of the Lord humbly prayed: "According to the multitude of your mercies, blot out my iniquity. More fully, wash me, God, from my injustice, C2 and cleanse me from my sin. You will sprinkle me, Lord, with hyssop, and I shall be cleansed; you will wash me, and I shall be made whiter than snow," Psalm 50. But because, as was said before, God does not wash an adult sinner C3 unless he too washes together [with him], or acts together with the one who is washing,20 therefore the same Prophet says: "Every night I will wash my bed; with my tears I will water my couch," Psalm 6. And Isaiah 1: "Wash yourselves, be clean, and take away the evil of your thoughts." C4 And Jeremiah 4: "Wash your heart from malice, Jerusalem, that you may be saved." And James 4: "Cleanse your hands, sinners; purify your hearts, you double-minded." And Augustine, On the Words of the Apostle, Sermon 15:21 "He who created you without you does not justify you without you." How impiously this aforesaid eighth sounds in pious ears, what Catholic does not know? For it is worse than the Pelagian heresy, which said that grace is not necessary

for meriting, and that all of it is given according to our merits, with this alone excepted, by which sins are forgiven a man, as Augustine says in On Grace and Free Choice 16. It is also contrary to the forty-third of the first book. And from this eighth follows this ninth, that man can merit God's first grace, together with the whole Pelagian heretical depravity. For if man, a sinner, an enemy of God and ungrateful to God, can by himself alone purge himself, he can by himself alone transfer himself from God's wrath and enmity to his love and friendship, and consequently to first charity and grace. Hence also in chapter 43 he says: "It must be known that the choice of operations is in us, but the end of good ones indeed belongs to God's operation, justly cooperating with those who choose the good beforehand with a just conscience, according to his foreknowledge."22 This, however, is contrary to the thirty-fifth of the first, and the others that follow. From this ninth follows the tenth, that man by himself alone can follow God who calls. Hence also in chapter 44 he says: "It must be known that virtue indeed was given by God to nature, and he himself is the principle and cause of all good; but it is in us to follow God calling to this, or to withdraw." And above, in 43: "Final abandonment is when, God doing all things that make for salvation, the man remains insensible and unhealable—or rather incurable—by his own purpose." Here he evidently implies that God's outward calling, or knocking, suffices for man without inward calling and the opening of the human heart by the right finger of God. This, however, is contrary to the thirty-eighth of the first.

The eleventh also clearly follows from these things 23, namely that a man by himself alone can persevere finally in virtue. Hence in chapter forty-four he also says: "But one must know that virtue was indeed given to nature by God, and he himself is the principle and cause of all good; but it is in us either to remain in virtue or to withdraw from virtue, which is to come to be in wickedness." This is against the eighth of the second, and the others that follow. The twelfth inconvenience following from the premises, or rather from that from which the premises follow, is this: that if God were to bring about the voluntary acts of men, he would do violence to the will and compel it; for he did not know how to see how God's action in men's volitions and freedom of choice could stand together 24. And this, as I think, was the original cause of his whole error. Hence also in chapter nineteen, treating first how God makes one vessel for honor and another for dishonor, he shows that this is only by permission and not properly by effecting, as was recited above in the seventh inconvenience; and after listing other similar passages from Scripture he adds: "All these things are to be taken not as God acting but as God permitting." And immediately, stating the cause, he says: "Because free choice is not subject to violence with respect to the good"; or, according to another reading, "because it belongs to free choice not to be subject to violence with respect to the good." And in chapter forty-four he speaks thus: "But one must know that God foreknows all things, but does not predetermine all things. He foreknows also the things that are in us, but does not predetermine them; for he does not will wickedness to come about, nor does he compel virtue." As if he were saying plainly:

"Therefore God does not predetermine the virtuous works that are in us, because then he would compel us to them." This error, however, was condemned and excommunicated by the Lord Stephen, Bishop of Paris, in this form: B1 "That some things can happen by chance with respect to the first cause; and that it is false that all things are preordained by the first cause, because then they would happen from necessity" 25. This likewise is the error of Pelagius condemned in the Synod of Palestine, as the book of Prosper against Cassian sufficiently attests; B2 hence thirteen errors of Pelagius are also recited at its end. This one is put eleventh, in these words: "And that free choice does not exist if it needed God's help, since each one has it in his own will to do something or not to do it." Not only in this, but in many other points as well, he falls into the articles condemned at Paris. One of them is that human acts are not ruled by divine providence. Another is that in efficient causes the second cause has an action which it does not receive from the first. A third is that in efficient causes, when the first ceases, the second does not cease from its operation, provided that the second operates according to its own nature. A fourth is that all voluntary motions are traced back to the first mover: an error, unless it is understood of the first mover as simply uncaused, and understood of motion according to substance, not according to deformity 26.

Besides all this there is yet another inconvenience, of contrariety and self-contradiction. For in chapter thirty-nine he says that God does not effect our acts; 13 and in chapter forty-four he says: "But one must know that virtue was indeed given to nature by God, and he himself is the principle and cause of all good, and without his cooperation and help it is impossible for us to will or do good." And in chapter forty-two he says that our permanence is to be ascribed to God, for it belongs to his sustaining power. If, therefore, a substance cannot persist by itself but necessarily needs the divine power to contain it and continually hold it in being, much more can no accident do so, and hence no act of a created will either. Therefore, just as an act of will that has already been made cannot persist unless he especially conserves it, 13·2 so too it cannot come to be unless he especially makes it as well.

Likewise in chapter forty-three he first proves ‖D1 that all things are governed by divine providence; but second he says that the things that are in us do not belong to providence but to our free choice. And if you say on his behalf that he does not understand that first universal statement, "All things are governed by divine providence," universally and absolutely, but only of all natural things, at least all the arguments he made to prove that universal in that sense prove equally well, or better, about voluntary things, as will easily appear to anyone who cares to consider it. In the same chapter he first says that providence is the will of God on account of ‖D2 which all things that exist receive their fitting direction. Second, however, he says that the things that are in us do not belong to providence but to our free choice. If, therefore, our acts do not belong to providence, they do not belong to the divine will either, and God does not will them, because he wills nothing anew, by the twenty-third of the first book. Third, he says: "Of the things that are in us, however, he wills and accepts antecedently those that are good." Despite this, if anyone wished to gloss him, he can say plausibly that he does not intend to prove that God in no way effects human acts, but that God does not effect them in such a way that man does not likewise do his own acts. Nor does God make human acts in such a way as to compel or do violence to man for acting, taking from him the free use of his will and excluding praise and blame of man. Hence in the same chapter thirty-nine he speaks thus: "To which of these, then, shall we subject what is done by men, if man is not the cause and principle of acts?" etc., as recited at the beginning. And in chapter forty-one: "Everyone who deliberates, being in himself, deliberates by choice about things to be done, so as to choose what has been judged beforehand by counsel, and having chosen, to act. But if this exists in the rational being from necessity, free choice will not be rational, or the rational being will not be lord of his actions and free in choice. Hence irrational things also are not free

in choice: for they are driven by nature more than they drive, and therefore do not contradict natural appetite, but at once desire something and make an impulse toward the act. But man, being a rational being, rather drives nature than is driven by it; and therefore, when he desires, if indeed he wills, he has the power to restrain the appetite or to follow it. Hence irrational things are neither praised nor blamed, but man is both praised and blamed." To this same point can be adduced other sayings of his about compulsion and violence, recited above in showing the eleventh inconvenience. The last authority, namely Ammonius's own, is no obstacle but proves the point intended. For he says: "The gods use us as ‖A1 autolomics" 27, that is, as things moved by ourselves. He means, then, that God in our motions uses us as his instruments, yet not as inanimate instruments, or as animate irrational ones that are moved of necessity, but as rational ones that are moved from themselves, that is, by their own free will. Hence he adds: "and in this way they govern the things that are about us." This they would not do unless they also governed our free acts, and they could not govern these except by means of providence; and providence cannot exist without the divine will, and that will is necessarily efficacious, as the tenth of the first teaches. Therefore, according to him, God by his provident will effects every free act of the human will.