St Augustine Still Isn’t Protestant

I’ve devoted a number of posts to demonstrating the folly of Protestant attempts to paint St Augustine with their own colors. In short: it cannot be done—not, at any rate, if one wishes to avoid running his works through a shredder and pulling out tiny little bits that have that Geneva ring to them when you turn up the music really loud. Okay, I’m going bonkers with the metaphor-mixing. Let’s move on.

Here is yet another small snippet showing the unambiguously Catholic character of his writings. St Augustine opens the Soliloquies with a prayer, part of which go like this:

God, through whom we disapprove the error of those, who think that there are no merits of souls before You. God, through whom it comes that we are not in bondage to the weak and beggarly elements. God, who cleanses us, and prepares us for Divine rewards, to me propitious come Thou. [I, 3; emphasis added]

This passage flatly contradicts the Protestant errors that there is no sense at all in which we merit anything but condemnation from God, and that there is no sense at all in which we could be said to receive rewards from Him.

In the very next section of this opening prayer, he writes:

God, by whose ever-during laws the stable motion of shifting things is suffered to feel no perturbation, the thronging course of circling ages is ever recalled anew to the image of immovable quiet: by whose laws the choice of the soul is free, and to the good rewards and to the evil pains are distributed by necessities settled throughout the nature of everything. [I, 4; emphasis added]

This passage repeats the fact that the good will be rewarded, just in case we didn’t get the point the first time. And it adds the extra observation that man’s will is not in bondage in the way that at least some Protestants think. He doesn’t discuss the reasons for these facts in this context, but we have seen elsewhere (here, for one example) why he says so. In short: if we do not have free will, or if God does not reward the good, then He is not just. But this is obviously impossible. Consequently it is the Protestant claims to the contrary that are in error.

St Augustine doesn’t get this wrong. He wasn’t some crypto-proto-Protestant. He was Catholic. He wouldn’t be a Doctor of the Church if he wasn’t. That very fact really ought to induce Protestant hangers-on to think seriously about how they view his teaching.

Edit: It is probably necessary (unfortunately) to respond to the suggestion that St Augustine wrote the Soliloquies early in his career and that consequently it supposedly does not reflect his mature thought. The problem with this is that the Retractations related to this work say nothing about rejecting the ideas I've quoted here. The portion of the Retractations related to the Soliloquies is included in this edition of his works (pp. 17-18), and it says nothing whatsoever about these ideas. It is therefore unreasonable to suppose that he rejected free will or merits later in life.

St. Augustine and Goodness in Human Nature

In another post we saw that St. Augustine disagrees with certain forms of the Reformed/Presbyterian doctrine of total depravity. Some folks think that non-Christians are completely incapable of doing anything that God would view as good. This is not St. Augustine’s view.

It is no trifling matter that even before the merit of good works, the soul has received a natural power of judgment by which it prefers wisdom to error and peace to difficulty, so that it achieves these not simply by being born, but instead by its own endeavor. If the soul is not willing to act, it may justly be regarded as sin, for it has not put to good use the faculty that it received. For although it was born in ignorance and difficulty, nevertheless it is not compelled by necessity to remain in the state in which it was born. [On Free Choice of the Will, III.xx, p. 131-132]

If we are created so that we prefer wisdom to error, which is a good thing, it cannot be said to be evil or wicked when a man pursues wisdom. Of course it is possible for a man to “fail” to find wisdom deliberately, by prejudiced searching or deliberately hiding from it; but if we have free will as St. Augustine insists throughout the book, then it cannot be the case that we are compelled to shun wisdom.

This isn’t to say, of course, that a man may merit initial justification. It is to say that it is irrational to suggest that non-Christians never do good; it is to say that to hold that the non-Christian cannot do good is decidedly not an Augustinian view: “even before the merit of good works” a man has some powers for good. They cannot save him, of course, but that is not why God gave them to us.

St. Augustine: The Purpose of Free Will

God did not give us free will as part of some kind of crapshoot. He gave it to us for a reason, says St. Augustine.

If man is a good, and cannot act rightly unless he wills to do so, then he must have free will, without which he cannot act rightly. We must not believe that God gave us free will so that we might sin, just because sin is committed through free will. It is sufficient for our question, why free will should have been given to man, to know that without it man cannot live rightly. That it was given for this reason can be understood from the following: if anyone uses free will for sinning, he incurs divine punishment. This would be unjust if free will had been given not only that man might live rightly, but also that he might sin. For how could a man justly incur punishment who used free will to do the thing for which it was given? When God punishes a sinner, does He not seem to say, “Why have you not used free will for the purpose for which I gave it to you, to act rightly”? Then too, if man did not have free choice of will, how could there exist the good according to which it is just to condemn evildoers and reward those who act rightly? What was not done by will would be neither evildoing nor right action. Both punishment and reward would be unjust if man did not have free will. Moreover, there must needs be justice both in punishment and in reward, since justice is one of the goods that are from God. Therefore, God must needs have given free will to man. [On Free Choice of the Will, II.I, p. 36; emphasis added]

If God gave us free will with the intention that we should be free to use it to sin, then it would be unjust for him to punish us if we sin, says St. Augustine: for we would only be putting it to one of the uses for which God gave it to us. But this is wrong; God did not give us free will for that purpose. He gave us free will in order that we might freely do that which is good. Consequently when we sin, we abuse the gift that he has given to us, and thereby become subject to just punishment.

Note also that he insists upon what we have seen before. That is, justice in punishing us for sin demands that we have free will: “What was not done by will would be neither evildoing nor right action. Both punishment and reward would be unjust if man did not have free will.” If we lack free will, and if our sins are compelled in some way, then they are not actually sins, properly speaking; it would therefore be unjust to punish them as though we were actually responsible for them. This is why Catholic moral teaching insists that compulsion removes guilt, either partly or completely (depending upon the compulsion).

Lastly, note again that St. Augustine insists upon the reward that is justly due to those who do good. But this would only be just if there is a sense in which our good works may be truly said to be our own, and this cannot be said if we do not have free will. St. Augustine was Catholic; he firmly believed that our good deeds merit a reward from God (although, of course, they are completely inadequate as a means by which we may receive initial justification; we may only receive that by means of God’s grace alone, as we have seen many times).

We are not worthy; we pray to be made worthy

I post on this subject often, because I find the lies spread by our enemies about it (whether they do so wittingly or not) to be particularly vexing.

A standard prayer said by Catholics when they pray the Rosary is this:

Pray for us, O holy Mother of God, that we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.

Note: we do not ask the Blessed Virgin to pray for us because we are worthy; we ask it in order that we may be made worthy. We pray this because we long to be worthy of Christ’s promises; we pray this because we understand that unless we receive grace to be worthy of them, we shall never be.

So much, once again, for the lie of our enemies that we think we can earn our way to heaven based upon our own merits.

St. Augustine and the merit of human works

I have often appealed to St. Augustine’s teaching that when God rewards us, he is rewarding what he has given us. The point of course is that the Christian life is a life of grace, even with regard to the obedience that we offer to God. But the Doctor does not say this to the exclusion of the fact that our works are also our own, and that our good deeds merit reward no less than our sins merit punishment.

When we take pity upon a man and care for him, it is for his advantage we do so; but somehow or other our own advantage follows by a sort of natural consequence, for God does not leave the mercy we show to him who needs it to go without reward. Now this is our highest reward, that we should fully enjoy Him, and that all who enjoy Him should enjoy one another in Him. [On Christian Doctrine, I.32; emphasis added]

So we see once again that St. Augustine was not some sort of proto-neo-crypto-quasi-Protestant. Protestants (generally) deny that the good works of Christians merit reward, an error that Trent rightly condemns. But St. Augustine affirms that our works will receive a reward. He was a Catholic.

Point of clarification concerning what faith is

In a prior post we saw that faith is required for justification. I think it's worth taking a moment to clarify what it was that St. Thomas means by that.

What he does not mean simply is the Protestant notion of faith as trust – although of course one must trust God (it must be said that if one knows God by grace in the way that St. Thomas says in ST I-II Q113 A4, then it's absurd to suggest that one could do other than trust him: for if you do not trust him, then by the very nature of the case you do not have that knowledge of him that comes by grace; so that while trust is necessary, it seems also to be an inescapable concomitant of the knowledge of which Thomas speaks) – is assent.

That this is so seems clear, for example, from his usage of Hebrews 11:6:

But without faith it is impossible to please God. For he that cometh to God must believe that he is: and is a rewarder to them that seek him.

Believing that God is does not amount to an act of trust, which would be absurd. Clearly it must be an act of assent – in other words, to believe in fact that God really does exist: not by way of trusting someone's word about it, but rather by assenting to the fact that he is.

(Of course, as Hebrews says we must also believe that he rewards those that seek him. Reward implies merit, but Protestants say there is no sense in which God can be said to reward us, which makes this a difficult passage for them to say the least. Meanwhile we as Catholics know that we can affirm what the passage says, because we know that God does reward the merits that he gives to us. But I digress.)

Faith in the Catholic sense – in the sense intended by St. Thomas – implies assent to the dogmas of the faith. This faith need not be explicit, as we have also seen, but it cannot be absent.

St. Thomas on Justification - Grace and Merit

Merit implies a certain sort of debt: that is, it may be said that something is owed to the man who merits that thing. Is there some way in which it could be said that man merits justification or salvation from God? Aquinas says that there is not:

Grace, inasmuch as it is gratuitously given, excludes the notion of debt. Now debt may be taken in two ways: first, as arising from merit; and this regards the person whose it is to do meritorious works, according to Romans 4:4: "Now to him that worketh, the reward is not reckoned according to grace, but according to debt." The second debt regards the condition of nature. Thus we say it is due to a man to have reason, and whatever else belongs to human nature. Yet in neither way is debt taken to mean that God is under an obligation to His creature, but rather that the creature ought to be subject to God, that the Divine ordination may be fulfilled in it, which is that a certain nature should have certain conditions or properties, and that by doing certain works it should attain to something further. And hence natural endowments are not a debt in the first sense but in the second. But supernatural gifts are due in neither sense. Hence they especially merit the name of grace. [ST I-II, Q111, A1, ad 2; emphasis added]

God does not owe us salvation, and there is no way that he can become indebted to us so as to owe it to us. Consequently, as St. Thomas says here, "supernatural gifts ... especially merit the name of grace."

Theology of St. Thomas - Merit

In light of recent posts touching on the subject, here are some portions from St. Thomas relating to merits.

On whether there is a sense, with regard to providence, in which it may be said that merits are the cause of predestination:

The Apostle says (Titus 3:5): "Not by works of justice which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us." But as He saved us, so He predestined that we should be saved. Therefore, foreknowledge of merits is not the cause or reason of predestination.

...

Others said that pre-existing merits in this life are the reason and cause of the effect of predestination. For the Pelagians taught that the beginning of doing well came from us; and the consummaion from God: so that it came about that the effect of predestination was granted to one, and not to another, because the one made a beginning by preparing, whereas the other did not. But against this we have the saying of the Apostle (2 Corinthians 3:5), that "we are not sufficient to think anything of ourselves as of ourselves." Now no principle of action can be imagined previous to the act of thinking. Wherefore it cannot be said that anything begun in us can be the reason of the effect of predestination.

And so others said that merits following the effect of predestination are the reason of predestination; giving us to understand that God gives grace to a person, and pre-ordains that He will give it, because He knows beforehand that He will make good use of that grace, as if a king were to give a horse to a soldier because he knows he will make good use of it. But these seem to have drawn a distinction between that which flows from grace, and that which flows from free will, as if the same thing cannot come from both. It is, however, manifest that what is of grace is the effect of predestination; and this cannot be considered as the reason of predestination, since it is contained in the notion of predestination. Therefore, if anything else in us be the reason of predestination, it will outside the effect of predestination. Now there is no distinction between what flows from free will, and what is of predestination; as there is not distinction between what flows from a secondary cause and from a first cause. For the providence of God produces effects through the operation of secondary causes, as was above shown (22, 3). Wherefore, that which flows from free-will is also of predestination. We must say, therefore, that the effect of predestination may be considered in a twofold light--in one way, in particular; and thus there is no reason why one effect of predestination should not be the reason or cause of another; a subsequent effect being the reason of a previous effect, as its final cause; and the previous effect being the reason of the subsequent as its meritorious cause, which is reduced to the disposition of the matter. Thus we might say that God pre-ordained to give glory on account of merit, and that He pre-ordained to give grace to merit glory. In another way, the effect of predestination may be considered in general. Thus, it is impossible that the whole of the effect of predestination in general should have any cause as coming from us; because whatsoever is in man disposing him towards salvation, is all included under the effect of predestination; even the preparation for grace. For neither does this happen otherwise than by divine help, according to the prophet Jeremias (Lamentations 5:21): "convert us, O Lord, to Thee, and we shall be converted." Yet predestination has in this way, in regard to its effect, the goodness of God for its reason; towards which the whole effect of predestination is directed as to an end; and from which it proceeds, as from its first moving principle [ST I, Q23, A5; emphasis added].

Whether man can wish or do any good without grace:

The Apostle says (Romans 9:16): "It is not of him that willeth," namely, to will, "nor of him that runneth," namely to run, "but of God that showeth mercy." And Augustine says (De Corrept. et Gratia ii) that "without grace men do nothing good when they either think or wish or love or act."

...

Man's nature may be looked at in two ways: first, in its integrity, as it was in our first parent before sin; secondly, as it is corrupted in us after the sin of our first parent. Now in both states human nature needs the help of God as First Mover, to do or wish any good whatsoever, as stated above (1). But in the state of integrity, as regards the sufficiency of the operative power, man by his natural endowments could wish and do the good proportionate to his nature, such as the good of acquired virtue; but not surpassing good, as the good of infused virtue. But in the state of corrupt nature, man falls short of what he could do by his nature, so that he is unable to fulfil it by his own natural powers. Yet because human nature is not altogether corrupted by sin, so as to be shorn of every natural good, even in the state of corrupted nature it can, by virtue of its natural endowments, work some particular good, as to build dwellings, plant vineyards, and the like; yet it cannot do all the good natural to it, so as to fall short in nothing; just as a sick man can of himself make some movements, yet he cannot be perfectly moved with the movements of one in health, unless by the help of medicine he be cured.

And thus in the state of perfect nature man needs a gratuitous strength superadded to natural strength for one reason, viz. in order to do and wish supernatural good; but for two reasons, in the state of corrupt nature, viz. in order to be healed, and furthermore in order to carry out works of supernatural virtue, which are meritorious. Beyond this, in both states man needs the Divine help, that he may be moved to act well [ST I-II, Q109, A2].

Whether man without grace and by his own natural powers can fulfil the commandments of the Law:

Augustine says (De Haeres. lxxxviii) that it is part of the Pelagian heresy that "they believe that without grace man can fulfil all the Divine commandments."

...

There are two ways of fulfilling the commandments of the Law. The first regards the substance of the works, as when a man does works of justice, fortitude, and of other virtues. And in this way man in the state of perfect nature could fulfil all the commandments of the Law; otherwise he would have been unable to sin in that state, since to sin is nothing else than to transgress the Divine commandments. But in the state of corrupted nature man cannot fulfil all the Divine commandments without healing grace. Secondly, the commandments of the law can be fulfilled, not merely as regards the substance of the act, but also as regards the mode of acting, i.e. their being done out of charity. And in this way, neither in the state of perfect nature, nor in the state of corrupt nature can man fulfil the commandments of the law without grace. Hence, Augustine (De Corrupt. et Grat. ii) having stated that "without grace men can do no good whatever," adds: "Not only do they know by its light what to do, but by its help they do lovingly what they know." Beyond this, in both states they need the help of God's motion in order to fulfil the commandments, as stated above (2,3) [ST I-II, Q109, A4; emphasis added].

Whether man can merit everlasting life without grace:

Acts conducing to an end must be proportioned to the end. But no act exceeds the proportion of its active principle; and hence we see in natural things, that nothing can by its operation bring about an effect which exceeds its active force, but only such as is proportionate to its power. Now everlasting life is an end exceeding the proportion of human nature, as is clear from what we have said above (5, 5). Hence man, by his natural endowments, cannot produce meritorious works proportionate to everlasting life; and for this a higher force is needed, viz. the force of grace. And thus without grace man cannot merit everlasting life; yet he can perform works conducing to a good which is natural to man, as "to toil in the fields, to drink, to eat, or to have friends," and the like [ST I-II, Q109, A5; see also the same subject at I-II, Q114, A2].

And so forth. But there is more, and rather than turn this blog post into a dissertation, I'll summarize.

• Can we prepare ourselves for grace? No.
• Can we rise from sin without grace? No.
• Can we avoid sin without grace? No.
• Once we've received grace, can we do good and avoid sin without more grace? No.
• Once we've received grace, can we persevere in it without more grace? No.
• Can we merit the first grace? No.

And that really ought to be sufficient. In short: the Catholic view of salvation begins, continues, and ends with the grace of God. Merit - to the extent that we have it - is an effect of grace. That doesn't make it less real, but it certainly removes from it any sense by which it could be said that we "merit" salvation apart from grace. We don't and can't.

Monergistic Incoherence

I'm at a loss exactly how to reconcile these two statements.

The Reformed position is that sanctification is monergistic

(followed by quotations from the Westminster Standards to support the claim)

And this, from the same individual, eighteen hours later, reacting to a quotation from a Reformed theologian who calls sanctification "synergistic":

I would expect that [the theologian]'s comments were aimed at countering "easy believism" in which people "get saved" and then sit on their laurels, waiting to be sanctified. Such an attitude is improper for a Christian, although the entire progress in sanctification is the work of God in our life.

But if sanctification is monergistic, then it is something that is done to you. So why on earth would you then say that waiting for God to do it is "easy believism"? How is that "improper" if monergism is presumed?

Now I happen to agree that the "easy believism" attitude is indeed "improper" to say the least. But how is the Catholic's synergism (which the individual in question rejects as some flavor of "Pelagianism") sufficiently different in kind as to warrant condemnation? He doesn't want Christians sitting on their rears waiting for God to make them holy - well and good. This implies that he expects them to strive to live holy lives - well and good. He insists that actually managing to live a holy life "is the work of God in our life" - well and good. There is not a thing in this that Catholics would reject, as far as I can tell.

I suppose the "scandal" to the author in question is that Catholics say that the good things we do are meritorious. But this is a merit that must be understood in context. It is not the case that we believe we can do things that in and of themselves merit salvation. No. Rather we believe that the very power to do meritorious things comes from God, by his grace. This is why we say with St. Augustine, as I have often repeated (and as is perfectly consistent with Trent and the Catechism (§2006-2011)), "what else but His gifts does God crown when He crowns our merits?"