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IntroductionThis essay concerns the Jansenist controversy. As an ex-Methodist, I find Calvinism and all its fellow travellers horrible. It distresses me that historically, not a few Catholics have argued in favour of theological positions that I find difficult to distinguish from this most malign heresy. Indeed one arch-conservative has said that:"the Jansenists did not hold to the heresy of 'Jansenism' as we now 'know it'. Their doctrine on grace would appear to be within the limits of what the Church has permitted to other groups, such as the Thomists and the Augustinians." HistoryThe Dominicans and the Jesuits have had a long-standing dispute over sufficient and efficient grace. Cornelius Jansen, bishop of Ypres, thought that the Jesuit doctrines encouraged moral laxity. He wrote a book called "Augustinus", a review of the teaching of St. Augustine, in which he condemned the theological stance of the Jesuits. This book was only published in 1640, after his death. It is unclear whether in accordance or in opposition to his will.Luis de Molina .... maintained that efficacious grace does not move the free will to cooperate with it but that the free will makes grace efficacious by co-operating with it. The Molinists emphasized an universal divine salvific Will and often maintained that God elects to salvation those whom He foreknows will cooperate with his grace. Thus God's foreknowledge, the scientia media, was held to act as a sort of “middle” mechanism between the human free will on the one hand, and the efficacy of grace and of divine election on the other. The doctrine caused a massive theological row between the Thomist Dominicans and the Molinist Jesuits..... Those opposed to the doctrine termed it “Semi-Pelagianism” because it was considered to have important features in common with the heretical doctrine of the fifth century monk Pelagius, against which St. Augustine had fought.Contrary to the proposition that Jansenius was orthodox, the Catholic Encyclopedia (quoted in blue) contends that: "Already, in 1619, 1620, and 1621, his correspondence .... spoke of coming disputes for which there was need to prepare; of a doctrine of St. Augustine discovered by him, but little known among the learned, and which in time would astonish everybody, of opinions on grace and predestination which he dared not then reveal "lest like so many others I be tripped up by Rome before everything is ripe and seasonable."
 The orthodox
doctrine is that original sin is nothing more than
the loss of supernatural
grace, the friendship that
the first human beings had with God. In our present
ethical state: characterized by imperfect knowledge of what is just; coupled
with moral responsibility and independence of will, we are often induced
to act unjustly by the short term advantages or pleasure perceived to result
from sin. This "concupiscence"
is not identical with original sin. Neither does it represent any loss
of integrity of human nature, which is not
corrupted or depraved at all. It simply reveals the condition of finite
beings left to fend for themselves in the world, without the continual
support of God. The dilemma of such beings is that they appreciate that
certain things are good for them and that others bad: but are uncertain
as to which are which. As knowledge of what is good (justice) grows in
the soul, by the action of God's grace: so the
attraction of sin dies away and the possibility of the exercise of
Free Will declines, until the Beatific
Vision is achieved.
In practice, Calvinism and its fellow travellers is characterized by attitudes exactly opposed to such a happy-go-lucky outlook. The reason for this is the following. It is psychologically very important to the proponent of such a doctrine of grace that they are personally one of the Elect: not a Reprobate travelling the Highway to Hell. Unfortunately, they can do nothing, according to their hypothesis, to effect this: all is at the whim of God. Nevertheless, if they happen to show obvious behavioural signs of being "godly" then they can hope to belong to the Elect. Hence, they set out to be "godly" in order to prove to themselves that "they have godliness in them", and so must be Heaven Bound. Of course, the manifestations of "godliness" typical of such misguided folk are not at all godly: dour legalism, prudery and sanctimoniousness. The playwright Ibsen's masterpiece "Ghosts" is in part a critique of such attitudes. There was no general doctrinal unanimity amongst the Jansenists. They were united only in opposing what they saw as "Jesuitical tendencies". They had succeeded in having some Jesuits and their works condemned. The Jesuits and their sympathizers were angered by this attack. They set out to destroy the reputation of Jansenius and that of his followers at the Convent of Port Royal in France. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, in 1649 Cornet, a syndic of the Sorbonne .... extracted five propositions from the "Augustinus":
In 1650, eighty-five bishops wrote .... to Innocent X, transmitting to him the five propositions [and asking for him to rule on their orthodoxy]. The propositions were rejected as heretical in the Bull "Cum occasione" (31 May, 1653), the first four absolutely the fifth if understood in the sense that Christ died only for the predestined. "... In my last letter I succeeded in showing that you accuse them of one heresy after another, without being able to stand by one of the charges for any length of time; so that all that remained for you was to fix on their refusal to condemn “the sense of Jansenius,” which you insist on their doing without explanation... you have attempted to fortify your position by decrees, which... gave no sort of explanation of the sense of Jansenius, said to have been condemned in the five propositions... Had you mutually agreed as to the genuine sense of Jansenius... the decisions which might pronounce it to be heretical would have touched the real question in dispute. But the great dispute being about the sense of Jansenius... It is clear that a constitution which... only condemns in general and without explanation the sense of Jansenius, leaves the point in dispute quite undecided." [Blaise Pascal]It became clear that the Jesuits were accusing the followers of Jansen of being crypto Calvinists. Everyone was agreed that Calvinism was heretical, because Trent had anathematized it. "... 'It is not sufficient', say you, 'for the vindication of Jansenius, to allege that he merely holds the doctrine of efficacious grace, for that may be held in two ways – the one heretical, according to Calvin, which consists in maintaining that the will, when under the influence of grace, has not the power of resisting it; the other orthodox, according to the Thomists and the Sorbonists, which is founded on the principles established by the councils, and which is, that efficacious grace of itself governs the will in such a way that it still has the power of resisting it.'The controversy went down hill from there: the convent of Port Royal was demolished and the nuns scattered. The Jansenists remained influential though, in France, and in Ireland too as Irish priests were trained in France. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia: "[Eventually, the main part of the Jansenist party] abandoning the plainly heretical sense of the five propositions, and repudiating any intention to resist legitimate authority .... confined themselves to denying the infallibility of the Church with regard to dogmatic facts. Then, too, they were still the fanatical preachers of a discouraging rigorism .... and, under pretext of combating abuses, openly antagonized .... the legitimate part which heart and feeling play in its worship. With all their skilful extenuations they bore the mark of the levelling, innovating, and arid spirit of Calvinism." |
Pascal on GraceHere is an account of the Jansenist system of grace, from the Provincial Letters of Blaise Pascal, written at the height of the controversy.[The followers of Jansenius acknowledge that]... an effective resistance may be made to those feebler graces which go under the name of exciting or inefficacious, from their not terminating in the good with which they inspire us... they are, moreover, as firm in maintaining, in opposition to Calvin, the power which the will has to resist even efficacious and victorious grace, as they are in contending against [the Jesuit theologian] Molina for the power of this grace over the will, and fully as jealous for the one of these truths as they are for the other.  This
is the exact point at issue. First, Pascal equates the status of Molinism
with that of heterodox Calvinism. Second, he confuses the ability
of God to force the will, with the unwillingness of God to do any
such thing. The fact that God, being almighty, has the power to intellectually
and spiritually rape His creation does not mean that He, being
kind, has the slightest inclination to do so!
They know too well that man, of his own nature, has always the power of sinning and of resisting grace;This is because of Free Will, based on a degree of moral ignorance. and that, since he became corrupt, he unhappily carries in his breast a fount of concupiscence which infinitely augments that power;This is heterodox, as explained above. but that, notwithstanding this, when it pleases God to visit him with His mercy, He makes the soul do what He wills, and in the manner He wills it to be done, while, at the same time, the infallibility of the divine operation does not in any way destroy the natural liberty of man, in consequence of the secret and wonderful ways by which God operates this change.Here Pascal makes the situation clear, for he says that God "makes the soul do what He wills, and in the manner He wills it to be done". Moreover, Pascal sees the only role of the human will as being the cause of sin, and sees its "power" in this regard being "infinitely augmented" by "concupiscence". While it is true that the only outcome that the exercise of Free Will is ever fully responsible for is sin, to dwell on this is to miss the point of Free Will. It is by the exercise of Free Will that we learn what is good and just, by a process of trial and error. We learn this for ourselves as independent ethical agents, rather than simply adopting a prescriptive programme from Our Creator. At the end of the process, we can say openly and honestly to God that - entirely thanks to His patience, forbearance and help - we have come to understand what is good and why it is so for ourselves. We can say that we agree with and approve of it: and so chose it. This is far removed from a mere acceptance or willingness to conform to certain norms, on the say-so of authority. As St Thomas teaches, friendship is a relationship between persons who are not entirely unequal. If God's creatures are to become not just His "children": a relationship characterized by uncritical trust; but pass beyond this to become His friends: a relationship characterized by understanding and dialogue, then an independence of view and experience is absolutely necessary. This has been most admirably explained by St. Augustine [who taught that] God transforms the heart of man .... inducing him to feel, on the one hand, his own mortality and nothingness, and to discover, on the other hand, the majesty and eternity of God, makes him conceive a distaste for the pleasures of sin which interpose between him and incorruptible happiness. Finding his chiefest joy in the God who charms him, his soul is drawn towards Him infallibly, but of its own accord, by a motion perfectly free, spontaneous, love - impelled; so that it would be its torment and punishment to be separated from Him.  This
is a very interesting passage. It is highly Platonist
in character, Augustine
being a great Christian proponent of the heritage of Socrates. As a Platonist,
I acknowledge that if a rational being clearly knows (has episteme
of) what is the case, then (s)he can do nothing other than chose to do
what is right. There is no possible motive for them doing otherwise.
"Quod
enim amplius nos delectat, secundum operemur necesse est." St Augustine's
use of the word "delectat" is a little unfortunate, however. He seems thereby
to equate subjective pleasure
with objective good. Although subjective pleasure
generally indicates objective good, this is not inevitable: take the counter
example of the use of the drug heroin. The rational being is motivated
by episteme, not by delectation: with the proviso that the wise find
their greatest pleasure in truth.
However, God's grace does not work by giving episteme. The best that the justified can hope for in this life is ortho-doxy, coupled with "sanctifying grace": the indwelling of charity which is the substantial Love that is God HimSelves. This is an intuition of the heart rather than an episteme of the mind. The latter is reserved until the Beatific Vision is attained: at which point Free-Will necessarily ceases. The verbs that Pascal here says that Augustine attributes to God are all unfortunate. "Inducing", "makes", "charms", "impells" and "drawn" are all deterministic, even mechanistic or magical in connotation. Moreover, it is not the experience of the saints (in particular, the Apostle Paul) that sin ceases to have any allure. Even Our Lord was tempted by Satan. Moreover, the Church has condemned the idea that those who are at any time justified are thereby certainly saved. She rather commends the practice of praying for the grace of final perseverance: which practice is contrary to Pascal's doctrine. Moreover, if Pascal's doctrine were to be true, how could the fall of Lucifer be explained? Why should not have God granted to the greatest Angel infallibly efficient grace? The truth of the matter is as follows:
... it follows that we act of ourselves, and thus... that we have merits which are truly and properly ours; and yet, as God is the first principle of our actions... “our merits are the gifts of God,” as the Council of Trent says.This is a playing with words. Of course God enables us to do whatever it is that we do in advance of our sanctification. However, enabling is not at all the same thing as coercing. God enables by offering us His friendship: by cajoling, encouraging, persuading and seducing. ... in this way we reconcile all those passages of Scripture... such as the following: “Turn ye unto God” – “Turn thou us, and we shall be turned” – “Cast away iniquity from you” – “It is God who taketh away iniquity from His people” – “Bring forth works meet for repentance” – “Lord, thou hast wrought all our works in us” – “Make ye a new heart and a new spirit” – “A new spirit will I give you, and a new heart will I create within you”.This all turns on the exact meaning of the word "making". I am no great fan of St Augustine's theology of grace, and have no particular wish to defend his every teaching. Nevertheless, his juxtaposition of "enables" with "making" signals a subtlety and tension in his thought that is lacking in Pascal's presentation. In one sense, God is inevitably the cause of everything that we do. In this sense He "makes" us do everything that we do. To a degree, He is the "cause of evil": but only in that He does not to frustrate our ill-will by opposing to it His almighty power: but rather continues to ratify, support and establish our own will independent of His own. No reality comes to pass unless God wills it, and so no evil arises unless God permits it. ... the Thomists hold... both the power of resisting grace, and the infallibility of the effect of grace; of which latter doctrine they profess themselves the most strenuous advocates, if we may judge from a common maxim of their theology... “When efficacious grace moves the free will, it infallibly consents; because the effect of grace is such, that, although the will has the power of withholding its consent, it nevertheless consents in effect.”This is not to say a great deal. It amounts to the truism that when the will does consent to the influence of grace, then the grace is said to be efficacious. Hence, if one is told that grace is in some case efficacious then one knows necessarily and infallibly that the free will consented to it! [St Thomas teaches that:] “The will of God cannot fail to be accomplished; and, accordingly, when it is His pleasure that a man should consent to the influence of grace, he consents infallibly, and even necessarily, not by an absolute necessity, but by a necessity of infallibility.”This is again inevitable, and not to the point. For the Divine Pleasure is of certain foreknowledge, not of coercion. |
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A model Disputation between a Molinist and a ThomistGranted equal grace to each of two sinners, a Molinist would say that one can be converted, the other not. Even with a smaller aid of grace one can rise, while another with greater grace does not rise, and remains hardened.A Thomist would object to this, arguing that this amounts to "a good" (a saving action), which does not entirely come from God, who is the source of all good. If, with equal grace, and amid equal circumstances, one sinner is converted and the other not, then the convert has a good which he has not directly received from God, but it would seem randomly. The Molinist would agree with the principle that all good comes from God. He would seek to establish this here by asserting that God, foreseeing that placing Peter in some situation would result in him being converted, consequently wills to bring those favourable circumstances into being, rather than others in which he would be lost. The Thomist would object that this explanation reduces the absolute principle of intrinsic efficacy of grace to a relative principle of extrinsic efficacy only. The Molinist makes grace efficacious, not of itself and intrinsically, but only by circumstances which are extrinsic to the action of grace proper. The Molinist would deny this, replying that the consequent willing of circumstances is part and parcel of the Divine Act of grace that is efficacious: so the efficacy of grace is intrinsic, not extrinsic. The Molinist would counter attack by demanding how, if self-efficacious grace is necessary to do good, how can it be said that sufficient grace truly gives a real power to act? It would seem that the main and absurd characteristic of such a real power to act is that it never ever produces any action!
The Molinist would reply that the Thomist has now acceded his point. The granting of efficient grace has now being made contingent on a sinner not resisting sufficient grace! The only point at issue is why in some cases God seems to persevere and in others He seems not to. If God knew from all eternity that Judas would not profit by the sufficient grace that was in fact accorded to him, why did God not give to Judas, those additional graces to which He knew that Judas would respond? The Thomist would respond by asserting the principle: "all good results from God's efficacious will and all evil arises with God's permission". Hence God permitted the (supposed) final impenitence of Judas. Had God not permitted it, it would not have come to pass. If God had not considered permitting it, He could not have foreseen that it would occur. Now, God would not have permitted it, had He willed efficaciously to save Judas. For reasons unknowable to us, it might seem that God did not so will. It should be remembered that God did not owe it to Judas in simple justice that he should escape damnation. "Faith, then, as well in its beginning as in its completion, is God’s gift; and let no one have any doubt whatever, unless he desires to resist the plainest sacred writings, that this gift is given to some, while to some it is not given. But why it is not given to all ought not to disturb the believer, who believes that from one all have gone into a condemnation, which undoubtedly is most righteous; so that even if none were delivered therefrom, there would be no just cause for finding fault with God." [St Augustine of Hippo: "Predestination of the Saints" Ch 16]The Thomist would counter-attack by demanding to know if there is in God's foreknowledge any passivity: a dependency on the course of events? Is God's knowledge causal and determining, as befits the Uncaused First Cause, or itself contingent on merely cosmic events? |
Appendix II : Catholic CalvinismThis appendix was written in reaction to an article claiming that Calvinism was not so very estranged from Apostolic Tradition [James Akin: September 1993 issue of "This Rock"]. Its author intended to show that it was possible to affirm a set of propositions that closely approximated classical Calvinism while remaining within the bounds of Orthodoxy. As a "Wesleyan Catholic", I find such an attempt distasteful, to say the least. I here attempt to establish the stark contrast between Calvinism and Orthodoxy. I give my own attempted resolution of the problems raised here elsewhere.Sacred Scripture uses the term predestination [Rom 8:29-30, Eph 1:5,11], but what is meant by the term is unclear.
Perseverance of the saints. |
Total depravityBoth Calvinists and Lutherans claim that (wo)man's free will has been injured by original sin to the point that, unless God gives us special grace, we cannot choose to do good. They assert that human nature is so vitiated by sin that it is incapable of either objectively just acts or dependable rational thought. They also contend that it is irreformable by grace and that the elect remain just as sinful after they are justified as they were before. These doctrines are condemned by the Council of Trent."If any one saith, that all works done before Justification, in whatsoever way they be done, are truly sins, or merit the hatred of God; or that the more earnestly one strives to dispose himself for grace, the more grievously he sins: let him be anathema." [Oecumenical Synod of Trent: session VI: canon 7]James Akin comments: What would a Catholic think of this teaching? While he would not use the term "total depravity" to describe the doctrine, he would actually agree with it. The accepted Catholic teaching is that, because of the fall of Adam, man cannot do anything out of supernatural love unless God gives him special grace to do so. Thomas Aquinas teaches that special grace is necessary for man to do any supernaturally good act, to love God, to fulfil God's commandments, to gain eternal life, to prepare for salvation, to rise from sin, to avoid sin, and to persevere. "For every salutary act internal supernatural grace of God (gratia elevans) is absolutely necessary"I reply that all this is quite obvious in fact and quite misleading in tone. For a (wo)man to do anything that is worthwhile in forwarding his/her relationship with God, it is first of all necessary that (s)he has such a relationship with God. One cannot earn God's friendship: this is "Pelagianism" - as Augustine presents it. One cannot even do something that might incline God towards offering His friendship: this is "Semi-Pelagianism". Sinners are not, of themselves, attractive to God. God has nothing to gain from any association with them! When God offers friendship to sinners it is always unmerited and absolutely gracious. Moreover, the offer of friendship is always at God's initiative and on God's terms. Fallen, finite and sinful (wo)man is in no position to make the first move! |
The doctrine of unconditional election means God does not base His choice
of individuals on anything other than His own good will. God chooses
whomsoever He pleases and passes over the rest. The ones God chooses
will desire to come to Him, will accept His offer of salvation, and will
do so precisely because He has chosen them.
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Calvinists believe the atonement is limited: that Christ offered it for
some men but not for all. They claim Christ died only for the elect. They
attempt to prove this by citing Scriptural texts which say that Christ
died for his sheep, for his friends, and for the Church. Now, a person
may be said to have given himself for one person or group without denying
that he gave himself for others as well. Hence, these statements do not
prove that Christ did not also give himself for all men. Sacred Scripture
explicitly states that Christ is "the Saviour of
the world," [Jn 4:42] and "the
propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the whole
world" [1Jn 2:2]. These passages,
as also the teaching of the Church [Ott III.2.10]
make it clear that Christ died to atone for all (wo)men. Above all, it
must be remembered that God "desires all men to be
saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth"
[1Tim 2:4], see also Ezekiel 33:11.
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Calvinists believe that when God gives a person the grace that enables
him to come to salvation, the person always responds and never rejects
this grace, this is the doctrine of irresistible grace. This makes it sound
as though God forces people against their will to come to him. This doctrine
is contrary to Scripture, which gives clear indication that grace can be
resisted. Stephen Protomartyr tells the Sanhedrin, "You
always resist the Holy Spirit!" [Acts
7:51]. For this reason some Calvinists prefer the term "efficacious
grace." According to Blaise Pascal, this idea: that God's enabling grace
is intrinsically efficacious so that it always produces salvation is common
territory with Jansenists and Thomists.
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Perseverance of the saintsCalvinists believe that if a person enters a state of grace he never will leave it but will persevere to the end of life. This doctrine is normally called the perseverance of the saints. It is entailed by the idea of predestination. If a (wo)man is predestined to be saved it follows necessarily that (s)he must persevere to the end: else (s)he would not be saved. This doctrine differs subtly from the "once saved, always saved" teaching common in Baptist circles. According to that theory, a Christian can never can lose his salvation, no matter what he does. Even if he leaves the faith and denounces Christ he will still be saved. Classical Calvinist doctrine states that, while a person would lose his salvation if he failed to persevere in faith and holiness, in fact all who do come to God will persevere. If a person does not persevere, it shows he did not come to God in the first place! The Calvinist doctrine admits that mortal sins can be identified: but says that no one once justified is capable of committing these sins. The Baptist doctrine says that no sins are mortal for a Christian.James Akin becomes becomes quite exercised about this doctrine, which in my mind is the silliest and least important of the five TULIP heresies. He asserts that: If one defines "saint" as one who will have his sanctification completed, a Catholic can say he believes in a "perseverance of the saints" (all and only the people predestined to be saints will persevere).I reply that Catholic doctrine affirms that there are people who become friends of God for a while - hence are justified, in this sense, though not finally sanctified - and yet do not persevere. Others receive the gift of final perseverance. According to St Thomas, this is "... the abiding in good to the end of life. In order to have this perseverance man... needs the divine assistance guiding and guarding him against the attacks of the passions... [A]fter anyone has been justified by grace, he still needs to beseech God for the aforesaid gift of perseverance, that he may be kept from evil till the end of life. For to many grace is given to whom perseverance in grace is not give." [Summa Theologica I-II:109:10]The grace of final perseverance is, however, no more a magical divine fiat than efficacious grace, of which it is the asymptote. It is the continuing divine assistance and encouragement offered to all of God's friends. It is given and received when the justified soul continues, by God's grace to correspond to God's grace. It is offered and rebutted when, for some reason, the justified soul falls from grace and somehow and suddenly becomes so entangled in sin that it fails to repent and turns away from its Divine Lover, contrary to all His beseeching. Hence Christians pray "Lead us not into temptation". The only sense in which a Catholic could affirm a version of this Calvinist doctrine is in the specious form that "those who achieve sanctification" certainly persevere until they have done so. |
Appendix III : A defense of PascalThis is an edited correspondence between "Mike" and "Pharsea".Much as I enjoyed your article on Jansenism, I cannot but feel that you do less than justice to Pascal’s doctrine of grace. The passages you quote are not distinctively “Jansenist” and contain nothing that Jansenists did not share with the New Thomists. Pascal was simply too astute a controversialist to use the Provincial Letters to defend purely Jansenist doctrines and here he is setting out the doctrine of efficacious grace in such a way as to elicit support from the Dominicans and their supporters. Only think how his Jesuit adversaries would have exulted, had they been able to show a single sentence in the Provincial Letters was formally heretical or how they would have endeavoured to secure the condemnation of even a doubtful expression. Indeed. I want to make it clear that I have nothing against Pascal, personally. I think it is very easy for people - like Pascal, Pelagious and Origen - to be condemned for heresy when they were doing nothing more than honestly struggling with difficult ideas that lesser minds wanted to make go away.This, I believe, is clear enough, if you look at the points of agreement that he lists at the end of the first Provincial Letter, the first of which is: - Que la grâce n'est pas donnée à tous les hommes. [Grace is not given to all men] This is from St Augustine’s "Duodecim sententiae antipelagianae in Ep 217 ad Vitalius: -For the Jansenists, this is axiomatic; it was qualified by the New Thomists, with their distinction between “sufficient” grace (which is given to all) and “efficacious” grace (which is not). The doctrine of efficacious grace, the teaching of which was permitted by Paul V, after the Congregatio de auxiliis failed to come to a conclusion and which, as you note, was unaffected by Cum Occasione, is, perhaps, most clearly expounded by St Augustine in De Correptione et Gratia 17(8). I trust you will excuse me for quoting from it at some length, because it was one of the most important texts for all the opponents of Molinism. I give the original and my own rather literal translation. Quoting Luke 22:32 "I have prayed for you, Peter, that your faith fail not," the Doctor of Grace asks: - An audebis dicere etiam rogante Christo ne deficeret fides Petri, defecturam fuisse si Petrus eam deficere uoluisset, hoc est, si eam usque in finem perseuerare noluisset? Quasi aliud Petrus ullo modo uellet, quam pro illo Christus rogasset ut uellet.[On the subject of St Peter, it is worth mentioning that St John Chrysostom thought that Peter denied Christ because grace failed him and that this was permitted as an example to the whole Church that “without me you can do nothing.” It would seem, therefore, that he held the view that (efficacious?) grace is not always given to all the righteous.] Augustine adds, quoting Proverbs 8.35: - Nam quis ignorat, tunc fuisse perituram fidem Petri, si ea qua fidelis erat, uoluntas ipsa deficeret; et permansuram, si eadem uoluntas maneret? Sed quia praeparatur uoluntas a Domino, ideo pro illo Christi non posset esse inanis oratio.Later, St Augustine concludes with a remark that was another favourite quotation, both of the Jansenists and the New Thomists: - Voluntas quippe humana non libertate consequitur gratiam, sed gratia potius libertatemThey were, of course, painfully aware that Calvin relies on this remark and, indeed, on the whole chapter in the Institutes (2.14) As I see it, Pascal was faced with the problem of explaining the doctrine of efficacious grace in a way that avoided three errors, namely, the Calvinist doctrine that the will is not free to resist grace, the Lutheran and Calvinist denial that we co-operate, in any way, with grace and, hence, their denial of the merit of good works. To do this and, at the same time, maintain St Augustine’s doctrine in its integrity, That is what has to go! Augustine simply went too far in his enthusiasm to oppose Pelagious.Pascal maintains that free will consists in doing what we choose to do. Indeed - as long as it is added that this choice is not pre-determined by God.Grace does not, and has no need, to interfere with our power of choice; rather, it affects what we want to do – In other words, it is the delectatio coelestis victrix of St Augustine. Fine. Except that a clear knowledge of what is objectively good would destroy all possibility of choice. As Plato points out, episeteme is contrary to freedom. Hence, for us to become mature moral agents and merit God's friendship it is necessary for us to spend a time in "educative ignorance".Free will requires freedom of choice, but not freedom to determine our own likes and dislikes. Agreed, up to a point; but if the appetite were to be absolutely fixated on what was good there would be nothing to exercise choice over. Free will is tied up in the fact that we do not have clear knowledge of what is objectively good; neither intellectual discursive knowledge nor emotional instinctive knowledge.St Augustine says somewhere – but I cannot put my finger on it – words to the effect that the first motion of our thoughts is not under our control. He hints that this is how both temptation and grace can operate on us. Neither is it under God's control. It is infinitesimal and yet its consequences are finite.In fact, Pascal’s view’s are remarkably, and, possibly, not coincidentally, close to those of Laurentius Berti (1696-1766), himself suspected of reviving Jansenism, but declared orthodox by Benedict XIV, possibly the greatest canonist to occupy the see of Peter. I think you are wrong to describe Pascal’s doctrine of original sin as heterodox. The fathers at Trent were so divided that they did not venture on a definition and contented themselves, in the Fifth Session, with declaring that concupiscence is not truly and properly sin, whilst acknowledging that it is from sin and inclines to sin "quia ex peccato est et ad peccatum inclinat" and Pascal nowhere explicitly claims more. As I said earlier, he would studiously avoid anything smacking of heresy in the Provincial Letters. Note that Jansen’s doctrine of original sin is nowhere condemned in Cum Occasione. Amusingly, I'd say that concupiscence is worse than "sin properly so called". Individual unjust acts that are each finished with as soon as they are done - though the consequences continue, of course. The complex of bad habits that concupiscence represents are endemic to the moral agent and vitiate their very nature.My brief reference to concupiscence was taken from chapter 5 of the decree of the Fifth Session of the Council of Trent. The earlier chapters, having declared that everything that is truly and properly sin is remitted in baptism, chapter 5 says: - Manere autem in baptizatis concupiscentiam vel fomitem, hæc sancta synodus fatetur et sentit: quæ cum ad agonem relicta sit, nocere non consentientibus, sed viriliter per Christi Iesu gratiam repugnantibus non valet: quinimmo qui legitime certaverit, coronabitur. Hanc concupiscentiam, quam aliquando apostolus peccatum appellat, sancta synodus declarat, ecclesiam catholicam nunquam intellexisse peccatum appellari, quod vere et proprie in renatis peccatum sit, sed quia ex peccato est et ad peccatum inclinat. Si quis autem contrarium senserit, anathema sit.This is plainly aimed at Luther’s doctrine of imputed righteousness, who taught concupiscence really is sin, but is simply covered over or not imputed. The Council Fathers said nothing else about the condition of man after the Fall, because they disagreed amongst themselves, with views ranging from something pretty close to Total Depravity to a merely privative view of the loss of the supernatural and praeternatural gifts. It would appear to follow that views ranging from St Augustine’s and St Prosper of Aquitaine’s, both of whom speak of “corruption” to that of the Eastern Fathers, who speak of loss only, are all within the allowable limits of theological opinion. I personally repudiate Augustine and Prosper, if they say what you say! Nevertheless, I rejoice in the fact that Orthodoxy tolerates a considerably wider spectrum of views than many conservatives would like to have it be the case!For the sake of completeness, I should add that nowhere in his writings does Pascal discuss the Proemotio physica [Physical promotion] and Proedeterminatio physica [Physical predetermination] of Bañez, the founder of the New Thomist school, who provided it with its philosophical underpinning in the concept of God as primal cause (causa prima) and prime mover (motor primus). I think Pascal's profound philosophical scepticism would have prevented him from relying on any support for sacred doctrine other than Holy Scripture and the Fathers. And this reticence itself is problematic, in my view!I am not concerned to defend the truth of Pascal’s doctrine of grace (or St Augustine’s for that matter), but only to show that it fell within the bounds of theological opinion permitted by our church. In the context of this discussion, it is interesting to consider, whether the Fifth Oecumenical Council merely condemned the doctrines they anathematised, or whether they condemned them “in the sense of Origen.” This is precisely the issue, in regard to Jansen, discussed by Pascal in the 17th of the Provincial Letters. To add to the irony, one only has to read St Robert Bellermine SJ’s defence of Pope Honorius against his condemnation by the Sixth Oecumenical Council; the very reverse of the Jesuits’ insistence on subscription to the condemnation of the Five Propositions "in the sense of Jansen". I agree. All that the magesterium can do is condemn a proposition. It is then up to individuals whether they wish to hold to that proposition. I understand the problem that the Magesterium had with the Jansenists and and sympathetic with what was done - after all I'm more of a Molinist, myself - but it was unjust, without doubt and hence invalid, without doubt.If I am right about Pascal, and that his views on original sin, grace and free will (which he always calls “free choice”) fall, at the very least in the class of tolerated opinion (opinio tolerata) it follows that one can go a lot further in defence of a “Calvinist” position, whilst remaining within the bounds of catholic orthodoxy than you seem to allow in your criticism of him and of James Aiken. Perhaps, but I wish to personally repudiate any such defence! Although it may be within the range of non-condemned theological opinion, I am personally convinced that such views are objectively wrong and utterly repugnant to the moral sense!As to where the truth lies, three hundred years have passed since the compromise that followed the Congregatio de auxiliis and the bulls Cum Occasione, Vineam Domini and Unigenitus, since when the Magisterium has had little to say on the nature of grace, free will, original sin or predestination, nor does the topic seem to exert the fascination it once held for theologians, amateur or professional. Indeed, and with the present turmoil in the Church, now is not the time to open up this Pandora's Box again.Personally, I agree with Mgr Ronald Knox: “Grace all-powerful, yet the human will free - it sounds a paradox; yet is there not paradox already in the reaction of the free human will upon the motives which "determine" it?” So, I accept it as a mystery of faith. I largely agree. The problem here is not theological but philosophical.
Je n'ai fait celle-ci plus longue que parce que je n'ai pas eu le loisir de la faire plus courte. [Seizième lettre aux révérends pères jésuites] |
It
does so, the Thomist would reply, because the real power to act
is easily distinguished from the act itself. All that God wills can come
to pass without our freedom being forced, because God gently seduces that
freedom without destroying it. If the sinner does not resist sufficient
grace, he will undoubtedly receive efficacious grace. God wills efficaciously
that we freely consent and we do freely consent. While the will always
has the real power to resist grace, actual resistance is something else.
In the case of efficient grace, God simply perseveres until the will's
free resistance is overcome, and the sinner is finally persuaded to do
what is right.
