AUGUSTINE
98
AUGUSTINE
the contrary such another Divine appeal had been
heard in the heart of Judas, he would have done
penance and been saved. Thus, for each man in
particular there are in the thought of God, limitless
possible histories, some histories of virtue and sal-
vation, others of crime and damnation; and God will
be free in choosing such a world, such a series of
graces, and in determining the future history and
final destiny of each soul. And this is precisely what
He does when, among all possible worlds, by an
absolutely free act, He decides to realize the actual
world with all the circumstances of its historic evo-
lutions, with all the graces which in fact have been
and will be distributed until the end of the world,
and consequently with all the elect and all the repro-
bate who God foresaw would be in it if de facto He
created it.
Now in the Divine decree, according to Augustine, and according to the Catholic Faith on this point, which has been formulated by him, the two elements pointed out above appear: (a) The certain and gratuitous choice of the elect — God decreeing, indeed, to create the world and to gi\'e it such a series of graces with such a concatenation of circumstances as should bring about free'y, but infallibly, such and such results (for example, the despair of Judas and the repentance of Peter), decides, at the same time, the name, the place, the number of the citizens of the future heavenly Jeru-salem. The choice is immutable; the list closed. It is evident, indeed, that only those of whom God knows beforehand that they will wish to co-operate with the grace decreed by Him will be saved. It is a gratuitous choice, the gift of gifts, in virtue of which even our merits are a gratuitous benefit, a gift which precedes all our merits. No one, in fact, is able to merit tliis election. God could, among other possible worlds, have chosen one in which other series of graces would have brought about other results. He saw combinations in which Peter would have been impenitent and Judas converted. It is therefore prior to any merit of Peter, or any fault of Judas, that God decided to give them the graces which saved Peter and not Judas. God does not wish to give paradise gratuitously to any one; but He gives very gratuitously to Peter the graces with which He knows Peter will be saved. — Mys- terious choice! Not that it interferes with liberty, but because to this question: Why did not God, seeing that another grace would have saved Judas, give it to him? Faith can only answer, with Augus- tine: O Mystery! O Altitudo! (De Spiritu et littera, x.xxiv, n.60). — (b) But this decree includes also the second element of the Catholic dogma: the very sin- cere will of God to give to all men the power of saving themselves and the power of damning them- selves. According to Augustine, God, in his creative decree, has expressly excluded every order of things in which grace would deprive man of his liberty, every situation in which man would not have the power to resist sin, and thus Augustine brushes aside that predestinationisui which has been attrib- uted to him. Listen to him speaking to the Manich- aans: "All can be saved if they wish"; and in his "Retractations" (I, x), far from correcting this as- sertion, he confirms it emphatically: "It is true, entirely true, that all men can, if they wi.sh". But he always goes back to the providential preparation. In his sermons he says to all: "It depends on you to be elect" (In Ps. cxx, n. U, etc.); "Who are the elect? — You, if you wish it" (In Ps. Ixxiii, n. 5). But, you will say, according to Augustine, the lists of the elect and reprobate are closed. Now if the non-elect can gain heaven, if all the elect can be lost, why should not some pass from one list to the other? You forget the celebrated explanation of Augustine: When God made His plan. He knew infallibly, before His choice, what would bs the response of the wills
of men to His graces. If, then, the lists are definitive, I
if no one will pass from one series to the other, it ia >
not because anyone cannot (on the contrary, all can),
it is because God knew with infallible knowledge that
710 one would wish to. Thus I cannot effect that God
should destine me to another series of graces than that
which He has fixed, but, with this grace, if I do not
save myself it will not be because I am not able, but
because I do not wish to.
Such are the two essential elements of Augustinian and Catholic predestination. This is the dogma common to all the schools, and formulated by all theologians: predestination in its entirety is absolutely gratuitous {ante nierita). We have to insist on this, because many have seen in this immutable and gratuitous choice only a hard thesis peculiar to ist. Augustine, w-hereas it is pure dogma (barring the mode of conciliation, which the Church still leaves free). With that established, the long debates of theologians on special predestination to glory ante or post merita are far from having the importance that some attach to them. (For a fuller treatment of this subtile problem see the "Diet, de theol. cath., I, coll. 2402 sciq.) I do not think St. Augustine entered that debate; in his time, only dogma was in question. But it does not seem historically permissible to main- tain, as many writers have, that Augustine first taught the milder system {post merita), up to the year 416 (In Joan, evang., tract, xii, n. 12), and that afterwards, towards 418, he shifted his ground and went to the extreme of harsh assertion, amounting even to predestinationism. We repeat, the facts absolutely refute this view. The ancient texts, even of 397, are as affirmative and as categorical as those of his last years, as critics like Loots and Renter have shown. If, therefore, it is shown that at that time he inclined to the milder opinion, there is no reason to think that he did not persevere in that sentiment.
(5) The part which Augustine had in the doctrine of Original Sin has been brought to light and deter mined only recently.
In the first place, it is no longer possible to maintain seriously, as was formerly the fashion (even amon certain Catholics, like Richard Simon), that Angus tine invented in the Church the liitherto unknown doctrine of original sin, or at least was the first to introduce the idea of punishment and sin. Dorner liimself (Augustinus, p. 146) di.sposed of this as.ser tion, which lacks verisimilitude. In this doctrine of the primal fall Augustine distinguished, with greater insistency and clearness than his predecessors, the punishment and the sin — the chastisement which strips the children of Adam of all the original privi- leges — and the fault, which consists in this, that the crime of Adam, the cause of the fall is, without having been committed personally by his children, nevertheless in a certain measure imputed to them, in virtue of the moral union established by God be- tween the head of the human family and his de- scendants.
To pretend that in tliis matter Augustine was an innovator, and that before him the Fathers affirmed the punishment of the sin of Adam in his sons, but did not speak of the fault, is a historical error now proved to demonstration. We may discuss the thought of this or that pre-Augustinian Father, but, takin^them as a whole, there is no room for doubt. The Protestant R. Seeberg (Lehrbuch der Dog- mengeschichte, I, p. 256), after the example of many others, proclaims it by referring to Tertullian, Commodian, St. Cyprian, and St. Ambrose. The expressions, fault, sin, stain {culpa, peccatum, macula) are repeated in a way to dispel all doubt. The truth is that original sin, while being sin, is of a nature es- sentially different from other faults, and does not exact a personal act of the will of the children of Adam in order to be responsible for the fault of their father.
