I explained here recently that “Reformed theology presently has no middle position between mere covenantal [i.e. extrinsic] union, and a fusion that obliterates the Creator-creature distinction.” In “Nature, Grace, and Man’s Supernatural End: Feingold, Kline, and Clark,” I wrote:

One problem with a merely covenantal notion of union with Christ is that it reduces heaven to the equivalent of Abraham’s bosom. (Luke 16:22) A merely covenantal union with Christ is what we have now in this present life, and what the saints in Abraham’s bosom had as well. It is not the Beatific Vision. Hence if [Scott] Clark holds that in the eschatological consummation our union with Christ is only covenantal, and not ontological, then his position denies the possibility of attaining heaven, and offers to men in its place something infinitely lower. But if he admits that in the consummation our union with Christ is ontological, then he has no principled reason for claiming that grace cannot be a participation in the divine nature in addition to divine favor.

In other words, the difference between the Protestant and Catholic conceptions of grace (see here) leads to different conceptions of what heaven is and what is our essential happiness in heaven. If grace is mere favor, and union with God is only covenantal, then the happiness of heaven is having Christ and the saints near us forever, and being free from sin in our souls, and free from suffering and death in our bodies forever. But if grace is a participation in the divine nature, then the essence of eternal life is union with God in the Beatific Vision, which is not everlasting existence, but is eternity itself, namely, the “simultaneously-whole and perfect possession of interminable life.”¹ Any Protestant conception of ‘heaven’ without the Beatific Vision is something like Abraham’s bosom or the Garden of Eden, and is infinitely surpassed by the supernatural happiness of the Beatific Vision, God’s own infinite happiness. But that supernatural end requires grace as a participation in the divine nature, not merely divine favor. (Cf. Scott Clark’s claim that grace is merely divine favor.)

On December 14, Professor Lawrence Feingold of Ave Maria University’s Institute for Pastoral Theology and author of The Natural Desire to See God According to St. Thomas and his Interpreters and the three volume series The Mystery of Israel and the Church gave a lecture titled “The Beatific Vision” to the Association of Hebrew Catholics. This is the last lecture in his series on God’s gracious elevation of man to the divine life. The audio recordings of the lecture and of the following Q&A session, along with an outline of the lecture and a list of the questions asked during the Q&A are available below. The mp3s can be downloaded here.

Lecture: The Beatific Vision

Spe Salvi (1′)

Eternal life is not merely continuing to live forever
Most people don’t have the faintest idea of what eternal life is.

Lawrence Feingold

What eternal life is not (4′)

Our final end has to involve a relationship of love with someone who transcends us (14′)

What eternal life is (14′)

Why our final end can lie only in God (15′)
Objective end and subjective end (18′)

Three different ways of knowing and loving God (20′)

Knowing God perfectly requires seeing God through the Logos (26′)

The Beatific Vision is infinitely above what we can presently imagine or conceive (29′)

He enlarges the receiver, so it can receive the living God (32′)
Sanctifying grace, the seed of glory (33′)

Growing in this life in our awareness of our ignorance of heaven (35′)

The essence of heaven (36′)

Dante on heaven (38′)
1 Cor 13 (39′)
Psalm 36 (45′)

Perfect love — spousal love, total self-giving (46′)

St. John of the Cross (51′)

Heaven is being inserted into the Trinitarian Life (56′)

Eucharist as the image of heaven (59′)

Eternity [not time without end] (62′)

Who receives the Beatific Vision? (65′)

The Last Judgment (69′)

The New Jerusalem (74′)

Questions and Answers

1. Is sanctifying grace finite? (1′)

2. Is time in purgatory endless days? (5′)

3. In this life one of our greatest pleasures is discovery. Will discovery be part of the beatific vision? (7′)

4. On Mt. Tabor, three of the Apostles were privileged to see Jesus in His glorified state. Was that a glimpse of the beatific vision, or a glimpse of his glorified body? (9′)

5. Is there any change or growth within the beatific vision? (12′)

6. Why is it then that we need a Last Judgment if we’ve already had a particular judgment? (17′)

7. In that returning back to God what we’ve received from Him, could that be understood like a person who has been blessed by education or medicine to be a teacher or a doctor, in order to give that gift back? (18′)

8. What is a vomitorium? (19′)

9. Do the parents stand in for the child in asking for faith [at the child's baptism], because they are in the mystical body, because they have the sacrament of marriage, or something else? (20′)

10. How do we know that there is an ultimate good instead of an ultimate frustration? (21′)

11. What part will the resurrected body have in the beatific vision? If the beatific vision is our essential happiness, why do we need the resurrection of the body? (26′)

12. Is the state of heaven for those souls now in heaven less perfect or less complete because the Last Judgment has not occurred? (28′)

13. Did God change in the incarnation? If God is immutable, how could He become man? (29′)

1. Summa Theologica I. Q.10 a.1.

Lecture: Sufficient and Efficacious Grace (November 30, 2011)

Lawrence Feingold

The question: What makes actual grace efficacious or inefficacious? (1′)

What is the meaning of ‘efficacious’? (1′ 50″)

What is the meaning of ‘sufficient’? (4′)

Is there an intrinsic difference between sufficient-but-inefficacious grace and sufficient-and-efficacious grace? (5′)

For Lutherans, Calvinists and Jansenists, all grace is intrinsically efficacious, and God does not give such grace to the reprobate. (6′)

The heresy of limited atonement (9′)

Does God command the impossible? (10′)

See Denzinger 2001, 2002, 2005 (here.)

The Controversy over Grace and Free Will Between the Dominican and Jesuit Schools (12′)

Molina — there is no intrinsic difference between efficacious grace and merely sufficient grace.
Báñez — there is an intrinsic difference between efficacious grace and merely sufficient grace.

Domingo Báñez

Position of Báñez (20′)
Description of the position of Báñez (20′)
Four problems with the Position of Báñez (22′)

1. Seems excessively close to Calvinism/Jansenism (22′ 38″)
2. Seems to annihilate free will, with respect to self-determination
3. Seems that ‘sufficient grace’ is not truly sufficient (24′)
4. Seeming incompatibility with God’s universal salvific will (25′)

Position of Molina and the Jesuit School (33′)

How sufficient grace is truly sufficient
How this position preserves the sovereignty of God (34′ 50″)
How this position differs from Calvinism (37′)
Role of St. Ignatius of Loyola (39′)

Luis Molina

Objections to the Jesuit position (40′)

The charge of Pelagianism (40′)
The principle of predilection (51′)

On the Concern about Boasting (58′)

Why boasting is excluded
Why, in Calvinism, the sinner could accuse God for not giving sufficient (irresistible) grace (60′)

Two Models of God’s Providence (64′)

(a) God moves all creatures with intrinsically efficacious movements.
(b) God infallibly governs free creatures by giving resistible graces, knowing infallibly our cooperation or refusal to cooperate.

Questions and Answers

1. What about vocational graces? Aren’t these specific, and are they operative or cooperative? (1′)

2. Could you comment on the enormous pressures against cooperating with grace in our very secularized culture? (10′)

3. If Christ died for us all, why does the change in the new liturgy say “died for many”? (13′ 54″)

4. God doesn’t waste anything. So why does He give graces that He knows will not be used? (16′)

5. What is it about the Báñezian position that avoided the label of heresy if it is so similar in your view to Calvinism? (21′ 47″)

6. If God knows our choices by foreknowledge, and not by decree, how does that avoid putting passivity in God, who is Pure Act? (24′ 25″)

7. What makes free will free? (30′)

8. Couldn’t God have placed the reprobate in situations in which He knows that they would freely choose Him? If so, then why didn’t He do so, since He wills all men to be saved? (33′ 13″)

9. Why did God give the devil a chance to tempt us? It seems that we have enough trouble for ourselves? (36′)

10. Perhaps we shouldn’t say that we block or annihilate grace, but that by sinking into nothingness, I become a subject in which grace has no effect. There is nothing for grace to work on. (39′ 32″)

11. Is an action that is done with mixed motives something that can block grace? (41′)

12. What do we do if we are not in St. Francis’ position of thinking we’re the worst person in the world? (43′)

The Elect
Luca Signorelli (1499-1502)

Lecture: Predestination and Perseverance (November 16, 2011)

Lawrence Feingold

When we talk about predestination, we always have to keep in mind God’s universal salvific will. (1′)

What does predestination add to God’s universal salvific will? (2′)
A summary of the meaning of the word ‘predestination’ in Catholic doctrine (2′ – 5′)

Predestination includes foreknowledge, and is a part of divine providence. (6′)

Predestination has only one fundamental cause: God’s love. (7′)

Predestination is the part of God’s eternal plan by which the just reach their supernatural end through a series of graces God has prepared for them.

Predestination has two elements:

(a) God’s gracious aid directing us to an end we cannot reach ourselves, and
(b) foreknowledge of our correspondence with His grace. (9′)

St. Augustine’s definition of predestination: (11′)

St. Thomas Aquinas on predestination: (13′)

It is fitting that God should predestine men. For all things are subject to His providence, as was shown above (Question 22, Article 2). Now it belongs to providence to direct things towards their end, as was also said (Q. 22, a.1, ad 2). The end towards which created things are directed by God is twofold; one which exceeds all proportion and faculty of every created nature; and this end is life eternal, that consists in seeing God which is above the nature of every creature, as shown above (Question 12, Article 4). The other end, however, is proportionate to created nature, to which end created being can attain according to the power of its nature. Now if a thing cannot attain to something by the power of its nature, it must be directed thereto by another; thus, an arrow is directed by the archer towards a mark. Hence, properly speaking, a rational creature, capable of eternal life, is led towards it, directed, as it were, by God. The reason of that direction pre-exists in God; as in Him is the type of the order of all things towards an end, which we proved above to be providence. Now the type in the mind of the doer of something to be done, is a kind of pre-existence in him of the thing to be done. Hence the type of the aforesaid direction of a rational creature towards the end of life eternal is called predestination. For to destine, is to direct or send. Thus it is clear that predestination, as regards its objects, is a part of providence. (Summa Theologica I, a.23, a.1)

Example of the arrow and archer (14′)

The idea or blueprint in the mind of God of the way by which we will be saved is predestination. (19′)

Two causes of predestination: one primary, the other secondary (20′)

Reprobation (21′)

Predestination in the Letters of St. Paul (22′)

Romans 8:28-31 (23′)

We know that in everything God works for good with those who love Him, who are called according to His purpose. For those whom He foreknew He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, in order that He might be the first-born among many brethren. And those whom He predestined He also called; and those whom He called He also justified; and those whom He justified He also glorified. What then shall we say to this? If God is for us, who is against us? (Rom 8:28-31)

The set of those called, is not the same set as those justified, because some reject the actual grace given to them. Example of the wedding feast (29′)

Difference between foreknowing and predestining (32′)

Calvinist interpretation of the passage (33′)

Ephesians 1:3-6 (34′)

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him. He predestined us in love to be His sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of His will, to the praise of His glorious grace which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved. (Eph 1:3-6)

Relation between predestination, the Incarnation, and the Church (37′)

Election and predestination in an ecclesiological sense (38′)

1 Corinthians 2:7-9 (39′)

We impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed [predestined] before the ages for our glorification. . . Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man what God has prepared for those who love Him. (1 Cor. 2:7-9)

1 Thessalonians 5:6-10 (42′)

For you are all sons of light and sons of the day; we are not of the night or of darkness. So then let us not sleep, as others do, but let us keep awake and be sober. … But, since we belong to the day, let us . . . put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation. For God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us so that whether we wake or sleep we might live with Him. (1 Thess. 5:6-10)

St. Paul’s notion of predestination was already contained in the Old Testament understanding of the election of the Jews. (45′)

Parable of the sower: election isn’t enough; there has to be perseverance. (48′)

Two senses of the term ‘election’ (49′)

God Does Not “Predestine” Anyone to Hell (50′)

Distinction between predestination and foreknowledge (51′)
God has a universal salvific will, but not all are predestined; only those who cooperate (54′)

Predestination according to Luther and Calvin (54′)
Luther and Calvin’s notion of predestination differs in two fundamental ways from the Catholic doctrine of predestination.

(1) Double predestination (54′)

Why did Luther hold this? Because he denied free will. (57′)
In his On the Bondage of the Will, Luther wrote: (58′)

Now the highest degree of faith is to believe that He is merciful, though He saves so few and damns so many; to believe that He is just, though of His own will He makes us perforce proper subjects for damnation, and seems (in Erasmus’ words) “to delight in the torments of the poor wretches.”

In his Institutes of the Christian Religion, Calvin wrote: (59′)

By predestination we mean the eternal decree of God, by which He determined within Himself whatever He wished to happen with regard to every man. All are not created on equal terms, but some are preordained to eternal life, others to eternal damnation; and, accordingly, as each has been created for one or other of these ends, we say that he has been predestinated to life or to death. (Institutes of the Christian Religion, III.21.6)

The problem here is the notion of irresistible grace. (62′)

(2) Luther and Calvin deny our ability to cooperate with grace. (63′)

The Lutheran and Calvinist thesis of double-predestination was condemned at the Council of Trent: (64′)

If anyone says that the grace of justification is shared by those only who are predestined to life, but that all others who are called are called indeed but receive not grace, as if they are by divine power predestined to evil, let him be anathema. (Session VI, Canon 17)

Predestination and God’s Antecedent and Consequent Will (64′)

St. Thomas explains this in Summa Contra Gentiles III 159-161: (66′)

[S]ince one cannot be directed to the ultimate end except by means of divine grace, without which no one can possess the things needed to work toward the ultimate end, such as faith, hope, love, and perseverance, it might seem to some person that man should not be held responsible for the lack of such aids. Especially so, since he cannot merit the help of divine grace, nor turn toward God unless God convert him, for no one is held responsible for what depends on another. Now, if this is granted, many inappropriate conclusions appear. (SCG III.159.1)

To this problem St. Thomas replies:

To settle this difficulty, we ought to consider that, although one may neither merit in advance nor call forth divine grace by a movement of his free choice, he is able to prevent himself from receiving this grace: Indeed, it is said in Job(21:34): “Who have said to God: Depart from us, we desire not the knowledge of Your ways”; and in Job (24:13): “They have been rebellious to the light.” And since this ability to impede or not to impede the reception of divine grace is within the scope of free choice, not undeservedly is responsibility for the fault imputed to him who offers an impediment to the reception of grace. In fact, as far as He is concerned, God is ready to give grace to all; “indeed He wills all men to be saved, and to come to the knowledge of the truth,” as is said in 1 Timothy (2:4).But those alone are deprived of grace who offer an obstacle within themselves to grace; just as, while the sun is shining on the world, the man who keeps his eyes closed is held responsible for his fault, if as a result some evil follows, even though he could not see unless he were provided in advance with light from the sun. (SCG III.159.2)

Final Perseverance (71′)

Second Council of Orange: (72′)

God’s help is always to be sought even for the regenerated and holy, that they may come to a happy end, or that they may continue in the performance of good works. (Denz. 183)

Can Final Perseverance be Merited? (73′)

St. Thomas addresses this in Summa Theologica I-II, q. 114, a.9.

Can the Faithful Have Complete Assurance of Final Perseverance? (75′)

Luther taught that faith had to include faith in one’s own justification. (76′)
Calvin taught that faith had to include faith in one’s own final perseverance to glory. (77′)

The problem with the claim that faith must include belief in one’s own final perseverance (77′)

The Council of Trent condemned this: (77′)

Canon 15. If anyone says that a man who is born again and justified is bound ex fide to believe that he is certainly in the number of the predestined, let him be anathema.

Canon 16. If anyone says that he will for certain, with an absolute and infallible certainty, have that great gift of perseverance even to the end, unless he shall have learned this by a special revelation, let him be anathema. (Session VI)

St. Francis de Sales on God’s Universal Salvific Will (79′)

First He willed, with a genuine will, that even after the sin of Adam all men should be saved, but in a way and with means suited to the condition of our nature, which is endowed with free-will; that is to say He willed the salvation of all those who would contribute their consent to the graces and favours which He would prepare, offer and distribute for this purpose. Now, among these favours, He willed that the call be first, and that it should be so accommodated to our freedom that we might at our good pleasure accept or reject it. And to those whom He foresaw would receive it, He willed to give the sacred movements of repentance; and to those who would follow those movements He determined to give holy charity, those again who were in charity, He purposed to supply with the helps necessary to persevere, and to such as should make use of these divine helps He resolved to impart final perseverance, and the glorious felicity of his eternal love. … Without doubt, God prepared heaven only for those whom He foresaw would be His. … But it is in our power to be His: for although the gift of being God’s belongs to God, yet this is a gift which God denies no one, but offers to all, and gives to those who freely consent to receive it. (Treatise on the Love of God, 3.5)

Questions and Answers

1. In light of all you have said, then why do we pray for anyone else? (1′)

2. The gospel readings of last Sunday and this morning dealt with the servants receiving talents from their master. How does that relate to predestination? (3′)

3. God knowing from the beginning who and how many would be saved, why didn’t He set the bar lower, to save more? (7′)

4. How did Luther and Calvin ever give the early Protestants incentive to love God more or live moral lives if it didn’t matter or change predestination? (10′)

5. Paul himself seemed to know that he himself was saved. How is that possible? (13′)

6. Because the Church allows many views on this subject, can you distinguish the view of the Dominican Bañez from that of Calvin? (14′)

7. I understand that God gives sufficient grace for all to be saved, but it seems unfair that God gives more grace to some than to others. It seems the ones that He gave more grace to would have a better chance at salvation than someone to whom He gave less grace. (17′)

8. Shouldn’t Jesus have said more accurately “All are called and some are chosen”? (21′)

9. What does it mean that Herod and Pilate were predestined to do what God had planned to take place (Acts 4:28)? (23′)

10. What about Jude 4, which speaks of present persons long ago “designated” for condemnation? (25′)

11. Why does St. Paul say regarding Jacob and Esau that God chose Jacob over Esau before either had done anything good or bad (Rom 9:11)? (27′)

12. Why doesn’t the notion that men can successfully resist God’s grace detract from His omnipotence? If He really wants all men to be saved, why doesn’t He overwhelm all men with irresistible grace? (33′)

13. If God’s knowledge is the cause of what happens, rather than the other way around, how can man’s response to grace be the cause of God’s foreknowledge of who is predestined? (37′)

14. What about Limbo? (39′)

The Preaching of Paul at Ephesus
Eustache Le Sueur (1649)

Lecture: God’s Universal Salvific Will (November 9, 2011)

Lawrence Feingold

God’s universal salvific will, and predestination, must always be considered together. (1′)
“God desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Tim 2:4)
God desires all to be saved, because He loves all men, and wants us all to enter into His own life.¹ (1′)

God truly wills the salvation of all men: Scripture

1 Tim 2:1-4 (2′)
Christ gave Himself “as a ransom for all” (1 Tim 2:6) (3′)
John 3:16 (5′)
How do we reconcile the universal salvific will of God with the fact that some are lost? (6′)
2 Peter 3:9 “not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance” (7′)
1 John 2:2 “expiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world” (8′)
Sermon on the Mount (8′)
Parable of the Sower (9′)
Parable of the Wedding Feast (Mt. 22:1-14) (11′)
Parable of the Sheep: “So it is not the will of my Father who is in heaven that one of these little ones should perish.” (Mt. 18:14) (15′)

Universal Means of Salvation

To say that God wills all men to be saved would be empty if it did not include some kind of universal means so that all can be saved. (16′)

Christ through His Church and sacraments is the universal means (17′)

Four steps (18′)
(1) Christ’s incarnation and passion for all men²
(2) Grace merited by Christ
(3) Universal Church
(4) Sacraments in His Church, by which men can receive His grace.

All men who attain the age of reason are given operative grace, sufficient for salvation if men cooperate (20′)
Cooperative grace is given only to those who cooperate with operative grace. (21′)

The Old Covenant not yet Catholic, and not yet a universal means of salvation, but hints at it (23′)

The Book of Jonah (25′)

The Fathers and Doctors on the Universal Salvific Will³ (26′)
All are agreed that God wills all men to be saved in a manner fitting for free creatures.

St. John Chrysostom (28′)
St. Ambrose (28′)
St. Augustine (29′)
St. John Damascene (31′)

Two senses of God’s salvific will: antecedent and consequent

Also one must bear in mind that God antecedently wishes all to be saved and come to His Kingdom. (1 Timothy 2:4) For it was not for punishment that He formed us but to share in His goodness, inasmuch as He is a good God. But inasmuch as He is a just God, His will is that sinners should suffer punishment. The first then is called God’s antecedent will and pleasure, and springs from Himself, while the second is called God’s consequent will and permission, and has its origin in us. (De Fide Orth 2.29) (34′)

St. Thomas Aquinas (36′)

Objection: It seems that the will of God is not always fulfilled. For the Apostle says (1 Timothy 2:4): “God will have all men to be saved, and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” But this does not happen. Therefore the will of God is not always fulfilled.

Response: According to Damascene (De Fide Orth. 2.29), they are understood of the antecedent will of God; not of the consequent will. This distinction must not be taken as applying to the divine will itself, in which there is nothing antecedent nor consequent, but to the things willed. To understand this we must consider that everything, in so far as it is good, is willed by God. A thing taken in its primary sense, and absolutely considered, may be good or evil, and yet when some additional circumstances are taken into account, by a consequent consideration may be changed into the contrary. Thus that a man should live is good; and that a man should be killed is evil, absolutely considered. But if in a particular case we add that a man is a murderer or dangerous to society, to kill him is a good; that he live is an evil. Hence it may be said of a just judge, that antecedently he wills all men to live; but consequently wills the murderer to be hanged. In the same way God antecedently wills all men to be saved, but consequently wills some to be damned, as His justice exacts. Nor do we will simply, what we will antecedently, but rather we will it in a qualified manner; for the will is directed to things as they are in themselves, and in themselves they exist under particular qualifications. Hence we will a thing simply inasmuch as we will it when all particular circumstances are considered; and this is what is meant by willing consequently. Thus it may be said that a just judge wills simply the hanging of a murderer, but in a qualified manner he would will him to live, to wit, inasmuch as he is a man. Such a qualified will may be called a willingness rather than an absolute will. Thus it is clear that whatever God simply wills takes place; although what He wills antecedently may not take place. (Summa Theologica I Q.19, a.6.)

God wills all men to be saved, and prepares for them a series of graces sufficient (and in fact, superabundant) to bring them to salvation. But we have to correspond to them. God leaves us free will, by which we either cooperate with His grace, or freely impede it, and His consequent will takes into account our cooperation and resistance. (37′)

Denial of the Universal Salvific Will at the Reformation (38′)

Luther and Calvin denied our ability to cooperate with grace.⁴ (39′)
That denial eliminates the distinction between antecedent and consequent will (40′)⁵
This entails that God’s salvific will is not universal (41′)

Luther’s On the Bondage of the Will: (41′)

In a word: if we are under the god of this world, strangers to the work of God’s Spirit, we are led captive by him at his will, as Paul said to Timothy (2 Tim. 2.26), so that we cannot will anything but what he wills. For he is a ‘strong man armed,’ who keeps his palace to such good effect that those he holds are at peace, and raise no stir or feeling against him — otherwise, Satan’s kingdom would be divided against itself, and could not stand; but Christ says it does stand. And we acquiesce in his rule willingly and readily, according to the nature of willingness, which, if constrained, is not ‘willingness’; for constraint means rather, as one would say, ‘unwillingness’. But if a stronger appears, and overcomes Satan, we are once more servants and captives, but now desiring and willingly doing what He wills — which is royal freedom (cf. Luke 11.18-22). So man’s will is like a beast standing between two riders. If God rides, it wills and goes where God wills: as the Psalm says, ‘I am become as a beast before thee, and I am ever with thee’ (Ps. 73.22-3). If Satan rides, it wills and goes where Satan wills. Nor may it choose to which rider it will run, or which it will seek; but the riders themselves fight to decide who shall have and hold it.’ (On the Bondage of the Will, 103-104)

Luther applies this to Cain (43′)

This leads to the notion of double-predestination (45′)

John Calvin (46′)

Claimed that Christ did not die for all, but only for the elect. “Limited atonement”
Leads to the notion that some are predesined by God to hell.

Denial of the Universal Salvific Will by Jansenism (47′)

The following five Jansenist positions were infallibly condemned by Pope Innocent X in 1653: (48′)

1. Some of God’s precepts are impossible to the just, who wish and strive to keep them, according to the present powers which they have; the grace, by which they are made possible, is also wanting.

2. In the state of fallen nature one never resists interior grace.

3. In order to merit or demerit in the state of fallen nature, freedom from necessity is not required in man, but freedom from external compulsion is sufficient.

4. The Semipelagians admitted the necessity of a prevenient interior grace for each act, even for the beginning of faith; and in this they were heretics, because they wished this grace to be such that the human will could either resist or obey.

5. It is Semipelagian to say that Christ died or shed His blood for all men without exception. (Denzinger 1092-1096)

Real Possibility of Salvation for All (53′)
Sufficient grace to be saved is given to everyone who reaches the age of reason. Christ died for all men. God wills all men to cooperate with that grace, and thus God predestines no one to hell.

What about those who never hear the gospel? (53′)
What about “outside the Church there is no salvation”?

Lumen Gentium: (55′)

Basing itself upon Sacred Scripture and Tradition, it teaches that the Church, now sojourning on earth as an exile, is necessary for salvation. Christ, present to us in His Body, which is the Church, is the one Mediator and the unique way of salvation. In explicit terms He Himself affirmed the necessity of faith and baptism and thereby affirmed also the necessity of the Church, for through baptism as through a door men enter the Church. Whosoever, therefore, knowing that the Catholic Church was made necessary by Christ, would refuse to enter or to remain in it, could not be saved. (Lumen Gentium, 14)

Vincible ignorance and invincible ignorance (57′)
Bl. Pope Pius IX on invincible ignorance (59′)

Lumen Gentium: (60′)

Those also can attain to salvation who through no fault of their own do not know the Gospel of Christ or His Church, yet sincerely seek God and moved by grace strive by their deeds to do His will as it is known to them through the dictates of conscience. Nor does Divine Providence deny the helps necessary for salvation to those who, without blame on their part, have not yet arrived at an explicit knowledge of God and with His grace strive to live a good life. (Lumen Gentium, 16)

Creed of the People of God (Pope Paul VI) (61′)

We believe that the Church is necessary for salvation, because Christ, who is the sole mediator and way of salvation, renders Himself present for us in His body which is the Church. But the divine design of salvation embraces all men, and those who without fault on their part do not know the Gospel of Christ, but seek sincerely, and under the influence of grace endeavor to do His will as recognized through the promptings of their conscience, they, in a number known only to God, can obtain salvation. (Creed of the People of God)

Catechism of the Catholic Church (62′)

“Since Christ died for all, and since all men are in fact called to one and the same destiny, which is divine, we must hold that the Holy Spirit offers to all the possibility of being made partakers, in a way known to God, of the Paschal mystery.” Every man who is ignorant of the Gospel of Christ and of his Church, but seeks the truth and does the will of God in accordance with his understanding of it, can be saved. It may be supposed that such persons would have desired Baptism explicitly if they had known its necessity. (CCC 1260)

Explicit desire and implicit desire (65′)

Letter of the Holy Office to the Archbishop of Boston, August 8th, 1949 regarding Feeneyism. (67′)

However, this desire need not always be explicit, as it is in catechumens; but when a person is involved in invincible ignorance God accepts also an implicit desire, so called because it is included in that good disposition of soul whereby a person wishes his will to be conformed to the will of God. (Letter of the Holy Office to the Archbishop of Boston)

Salvation outside the visible Church requires perfect contrition (69′)
God gives the grace to everyone to make an act of perfect contrition (69′)

Some faith is necessary for salvation (70′)
Hence missionary activity of the Church is not rendered useless by the fact that it is possible for those to be saved who have never heard the gospel.

It is much more difficult to be saved when not in full communion with the Catholic Church, and therefore without the fullness of the truth and the means of grace Christ has established in His Church.

Mystici Corporis Christi (71′)

They who do not belong to the visible Body of the Catholic Church, … We ask each and every one of them to correspond to the interior movements of grace, and to seek to withdraw from that state in which they cannot be sure of their salvation. For even though by an unconscious desire and longing they have a certain relationship with the Mystical Body of the Redeemer, they still remain deprived of those many heavenly gifts and helps which can only be enjoyed in the Catholic Church. (Mystici Corporis Christi, 103)

Questions and Answers

1. How does the Catholic understanding of the universal salvific will compare to that of the Orthodox Jewish or Islamic view? (1′)

2. Is inculpable ignorance holding views contrary to the Church because you run out of time before you can investigate the reasons for the truth on all the issues, or is it necessary to hold the principles of the Church by faith before you dismiss them by investigation that confirms your conscience? (3′ 19″)

3. Luther said that in Genesis God was simply telling Cain what he ought to do. But if as Luther believed, Cain had no choice in the matter, why would God bother telling him at all? (4’42″)

4. In many places in Scripture we see God hardening people’s hearts. In Deuteronomy 2:30 He hardens the heart of Sihon King of Heshbon. In Joshua 11:20 He hardens the hearts of the Canaanites. In 1 Sam. 2:25 He hardens the hearts of Hophni and Phineas, so that they would not listen to Eli. Jesus thanks the Father for hiding things from the wise and prudent (Matt. 11:25,26), and quotes Isaiah saying that God has blinded their eyes and hardened their hearts, so that they should not see with their eyes, nor understand with their heart, and be converted. (John 12:37-40) St. Paul says the same in Romans 11:8, and in 2 Thess 2:11 he says that God sends them a strong delusion to make them believe what is false. How is all this compatible with a universal salvific will? (6’30″)

5. In John 10:26 Jesus says, “but you do not believe, because you do not belong to my sheep.” If God wants all men to be saved, why doesn’t Jesus say, “you are not of my sheep because you do not believe”? (17′)

6. If God wants all men to be saved, then why does St. Paul say (Rom. 9:22) that there are “vessels of wrath made for destruction” and why does St. Peter say “for they stumble because they disobey the word, as they were destined to do”? (1 Pet. 2:8) (19′)

7. If our being saved or being lost depends fundamentally on whether we cooperate or do not cooperate with grace, then why does St. Paul say that “it is not of him that wills or runs, but of God that shows mercy” (Rom 9:16) Why does St. Paul in Romans 9 seem to make election depend not on human choice but on God’s sovereign and inscrutable will? (24′)

8. Does the possession of sanctifying grace require conscious explicit faith in Jesus as the Son of God? If not, how is the Council’s teaching different from Rahner’s “anonymous Christian”? If it requires faith, then how can the Catechism speak of atheists possibly attaining salvation? [Note: the Catechism does not speak of atheists as such possibly attaining salvation. The questioner was referring to Lumen Gentium 16] (26′)

1. The doctrine of God’s universal salvific will is not to be confused with universalism, the claim that all men are saved, or with what is called ‘hopeful universalism,’ which I have addressed here.
2. The Church, following the apostles, teaches that Christ died for all men without exception: “There is not, never has been, and never will be a single human being for whom Christ did not suffer.” [Council of Quiercy (853)]. (CCC 605)
3. For more excerpts from the Church Fathers on this subject see section 54 of Fr. Mosts’s book Grace, Predestination, and the Universal Salvific Will of God.
4. This denial was in turn based on their notion of original sin, explained here, and their not distinguishing between actual grace and sanctifying grace, explained here.
5. The distinction between antecedent and consequent will should not be confused with the Reformed distinction between preceptive will and decretive will. The former distinction allows for it to be true without contradiction that God desires all men to be saved and yet not all men are saved; but without the former distinction the latter distinction undermines the possibility of an authentic universal salvific will in God. If God commands that a person repent, but then, not on the basis of foreseen rejection of grace by that person, refuses to give sufficient grace for that person to repent, not only does God not truly desire that person’s salvation, but God has fallen into a performative contradiction, saying one thing, but doing something contrary to what He says. Either He does not mean what He says, in which case He is not the Truth, or He rebels against Himself, in which case He is in need of salvation. The notion that there are two actual contrary wills in God (in which neither will involves an abstraction from what God knows about human choices) is not only a theological schizophrenia, it is also a form of Manichean dualism. Calvinists use Scriptural examples of the difference between what is in fact divine antecedent will and divine consequent will, as though this supports a decretive-preceptive distinction not based on an antecedent-consequent distinction. John Piper does that, for example, in his “Are There Two Wills in God?,” and so do Luther, Calvin, Turretin, etc. — see here. But while an antecedent-consequent distinction avoids theological schizophrenia, because the former is an abstraction, the decretive-preceptive distinction without the antecedent-consequent distinction does not avoid theological schizophrenia, because neither the decretive nor preceptive will is an abstraction.

Martyrdom of St. Paul
Giotto di Bondone (c. 1330)

Here I will first present Prof. Feingold’s lecture, and Q&A following the lecture. Then I will examine John Calvin’s position on the subject of merit. Then I will give a brief survey of the Church Fathers’ teaching on merit, the teaching of Scripture on the subject of merit, and a summary of the Catholic teaching on the subject of merit.

Outline:

I. Lawrence Feingold Lecture on Merit
II. Questions and Answers Following the Lecture
III. John Calvin on Merit
IV. Church Fathers on Merit
V. Scripture on Merit
VI. Catholic Teaching on Merit
VII. Conclusion

Lawrence Feingold

I. Lawrence Feingold Lecture on Merit (November 2, 2011)

The subject of merit is a point of dispute between Protestants and Catholics. Protestants tend to think that the Catholic view of merit is Pelagian. (1′)

What do we mean by ‘merit’? (1′)

Here we are speaking of good works done in a state of grace, in the context of a covenant. (2′)

Biblical Texts on Merit (2′)
Old Testament

Ezekiel 18
Conversion cannot be merited (7′)
Meritorious work is what is done out of agape by one having sanctifying grace; it merits more grace. (8′)
St. Paul on works of the law (9′)

New Testament (10′)

Matthew 25
Rev. 20:13 (25′)

This present life as a trial (26′)

Wisdom 3:1-6 (26′)
Rev. 21:7 (27′)
2 Tim. 4:8 (27′)
Gen. 22:16 (31′)

Theological Reflection on these Texts (32′)

Two kinds of good works: natural good works, and works done in agape (36)
[For the distinction between natural and supernatural, see here.]
Why natural good works (purely human works) cannot merit; the error of Pelagianism.
Protestant’s rejection of merit is an overreaction to Pelagianism.

Why faith alone is not enough, because “if I have all faith … but have not love, I am nothing.” (1 Cor 13:2) (38′)
The source of merit (39′)

St. Thomas Aquinas addresses this: (41′)

Man without grace may be looked at in two states, as was said above (Question 109, Article 2): the first, a state of perfect nature, in which Adam was before his sin; the second, a state of corrupt nature, in which we are before being restored by grace. Therefore, if we speak of man in the first state, there is only one reason why man cannot merit eternal life without grace, by his purely natural endowments, viz. because man’s merit depends on the Divine pre-ordination. Now no act of anything whatsoever is divinely ordained to anything exceeding the proportion of the powers which are the principles of its act; for it is a law of Divine providence that nothing shall act beyond its powers. Now everlasting life is a good exceeding the proportion of created nature; since it exceeds its knowledge and desire, according to 1 Corinthians 2:9: “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man.” And hence it is that no created nature is a sufficient principle of an act meritorious of eternal life, unless there is added a supernatural gift, which we call grace. But if we speak of man as existing in sin, a second reason is added to this, viz. the impediment of sin. For since sin is an offense against God, excluding us from eternal life, as is clear from what has been said above (q. 71, a. 6; q. 113, a. 2), no one existing in a state of mortal sin can merit eternal life unless first he be reconciled to God, through his sin being forgiven, which is brought about by grace. (Summa Theologica I-II q.114 a.2.)

Question: Without the sacrament of confession, how do Protestants receive grace after sin? (42′)(63′)
Baptism of desire

Two kinds of merit: condign and congruous (47′)

Cornelius (50′)
Prayers for others (51′)

St. Thomas explains how man, in a state of grace, can merit eternal life:

Man’s meritorious work may be considered in two ways: first, as it proceeds from free-will; secondly, as it proceeds from the grace of the Holy Ghost. If it is considered as regards the substance of the work, and inasmuch as it springs from the free-will, there can be no condignity because of the very great inequality. But there is congruity, on account of an equality of proportion: for it would seem congruous that, if a man does what he can, God should reward him according to the excellence of his power. If, however, we speak of a meritorious work, inasmuch as it proceeds from the grace of the Holy Ghost moving us to life everlasting, it is meritorious of life everlasting condignly. For thus the value of its merit depends upon the power of the Holy Ghost moving us to life everlasting according to John 4:14: “Shall become in him a fount of water springing up into life everlasting.” And the worth of the work depends on the dignity of grace, whereby a man, being made a partaker of the Divine Nature, is adopted as a son of God, to whom the inheritance is due by right of adoption, according to Romans 8:17: “If sons, heirs also.” (Summa Theologica I-II q.114 a.3)

Sanctifying grace gives a supernatural dignity to those who have it, giving supernatural worth to the acts that flow from grace and charity. (53′)
God crowns His own gifts (54′)

Council of Trent (54′)

Therefore, to men justified in this manner, whether they have preserved uninterruptedly the grace received or recovered it when lost, are to be pointed out the words of the Apostle: Abound in every good work, knowing that your labor is not in vain in the Lord. For God is not unjust, that he should forget your work, and the love which you have shown in his name; and, Do not lose your confidence, which hath a great reward. Hence, to those who work well unto the end and trust in God, eternal life is to be offered, both as a grace mercifully promised to the sons of God through Christ Jesus, and as a reward promised by God himself, to be faithfully given to their good works and merits.

For this is the crown of justice which after his fight and course the Apostle declared was laid up for him, to be rendered to him by the just judge, and not only to him, but also to all that love his coming. For since Christ Jesus Himself, as the head into the members and the vine into the branches, continually infuses strength into those justified, which strength always precedes, accompanies and follows their good works, and without which they could not in any manner be pleasing and meritorious before God, we must believe that nothing further is wanting to those justified to prevent them from being considered to have, by those very works which have been done in God, fully satisfied the divine law according to the state of this life and to have truly merited eternal life, to be obtained in its [due] time, provided they depart [this life] in grace, since Christ our Savior says: If anyone shall drink of the water that I will give him, he shall not thirst forever; but it shall become in him a fountain of water springing up into life everlasting.

Thus, neither is our own justice established as our own from ourselves, nor is the justice of God ignored or repudiated, for that justice which is called ours, because we are justified by its inherence in us, that same is [the justice] of God, because it is infused into us by God through the merit of Christ. Nor must this be omitted, that although in the sacred writings so much is attributed to good works, that even he that shall give a drink of cold water to one of his least ones, Christ promises, shall not lose his reward; and the Apostle testifies that, That which is at present momentary and light of our tribulation, worketh for us above measure exceedingly an eternal weight of glory; nevertheless, far be it that a Christian should either trust or glory in himself and not in the Lord, whose bounty toward all men is so great that He wishes the things that are His gifts to be their merits.

And since in many things we all offend, each one ought to have before his eyes not only the mercy and goodness but also the severity and judgment [of God]; neither ought anyone to judge himself, even though he be not conscious to himself of anything; because the whole life of man is to be examined and judged not by the judgment of man but of God, who will bring to light the hidden things of darkness, and will make manifest the counsels of the hearts, and then shall every man have praise from God, who, as it is written, will render to every man according to his works. (Council of Trent, Session 6, Chapter 16)

The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains: (55′)

The merit of man before God in the Christian life arises from the fact that God has freely chosen to associate man with the work of his grace. The fatherly action of God is first on his own initiative, and then follows man’s free acting through his collaboration, so that the merit of good works is to be attributed in the first place to the grace of God, then to the faithful. Man’s merit, moreover, itself is due to God, for his good actions proceed in Christ, from the predispositions and assistance given by the Holy Spirit. (CCC 2008)

Operative grace [see here] is the principle of all merit, but is not in itself meritorious (56′)

Charity is the Principle of Merit (57′)

St. Thomas writes:

For we must bear in mind that everlasting life consists in the enjoyment of God. Now the human mind’s movement to the fruition of the Divine good is the proper act of charity, whereby all the acts of the other virtues are ordained to this end, since all the other virtues are commanded by charity. Hence the merit of life everlasting pertains first to charity, and secondly, to the other virtues, inasmuch as their acts are commanded by charity. (Summa Theologica I-II q. 114 a.4.)

Growth and Loss of Merit (60′)

Does every good act done in a state of grace, motivated by charity, merit? (64′)
Does it merit an increase in sanctifying grace, an increase in the theological virtues, and eternal life?
Are all meritorious acts equal? (67′)
Can we merit for others? (72′)

The Protestant Rejection of the Possibility of Merit (72′)

Council of Trent (78′)

Canon 32. If anyone says that the good works of the one justified are in such manner the gifts of God that they are not also the good merits of him justified; or that the one justified by the good works that he performs by the grace of God and the merit of Jesus Christ, whose living member he is, does not truly merit an increase of grace, eternal life, and in case he dies in grace, the attainment of eternal life itself and also an increase of glory, let him be anathema. (Council of Trent, Session 6, Canon 32)

II. Questions and Answers

(1) Did Christ have infinite grace; how is it that Christ could merit for us and for all men? What kind of grace did He have in His soul? (1′)

(2) How does one know that one is in a state of grace? (2′)

(3) Why did the Jews confuse the works of the law with the double commandment of love? Is it like today bad catechesis? (10′)

(4) I can’t seem to remember, but did St. Thérèse say there was merit in picking up a pen off the floor if done out of love for God? (14′)

(5) Why has God made salvation a game of musical chairs? A person who is in a state of grace most of his life can be damned for the unlucky timing of his last sin. (15′)

(6) An important versed used by Protestants regarding merit is “For it is by grace you are saved through faith … not by works, so that no one may boast.” (Eph 2:8-9) How do Catholics understand this verse, and why can’t Catholics boast? (18′)

(7) Why exactly is merit not communicable, and why is Christ’s merit able to be communicated to all men? (29′)

(8) Why is it right to say that those in sanctifying grace merit eternal life if being in a state of grace they already have eternal life? In other words, what is the significance of the distinction between meriting eternal life, and meriting the attainment of eternal life? (32′)

(9) What exactly does it mean to make an “intense act”? Does it mean to work up one’s passions? (35′)

III. John Calvin on Merit

In light of Prof. Feingold’s lecture on the subject of merit, it would be helpful to consider whether John Calvin’s position was in keeping with the teaching of the Church Fathers, because most Protestants have followed Calvin on this question. On the subject of merit Calvin wrote:

First, I say, that the best thing which can be produced by them [i.e. believers] is always tainted and corrupted by the impurity of the flesh, and has, as it were, some mixture of dross in it. Let the holy servant of God, I say, select from the whole course of his life the action which he deems most excellent, and let him ponder it in all its parts; he will doubtless find in it something that savors of the rottenness of the flesh, since our alacrity in well-doing is never what it ought to be, but our course is always retarded by much weakness. Although we see that the stains that bespatter the works of the saints are plainly visible, though we admit that they are only the slightest spots, will they not offend God’s eyes, before which even the stars are not clean? We thus see, that even saints cannot perform one work which, if judged on its own merits, is not deserving of condemnation. (Institutes III.14.9)

From Calvin’s point of view, every act by a believer is impure, because it is never done out of entirely pure motives, or with the highest degree of alacrity possible. Even if these deficiencies are “the slightest spots,” they are enough, claims Calvin, to make every ‘good’ work of every believer worthy of damnation, and therefore in no way meritorious for any heavenly reward. In that same chapter he writes:

We must strongly insist on these two things: That no believer ever performed one work which, if tested by the strict judgment of God, could escape condemnation; and, moreover, that were this granted to be possible (though it is not), yet the act being vitiated and polluted by the sins of which it is certain that the author of it is guilty, it is deprived of its merit. (Institutes III.14.11)

So Calvin entirely denies merit. He affirms that God gives different ‘rewards’ to different individuals. But these ‘rewards’ are not merits, not only because for Calvin whatever the believer does is polluted with mixed motives, and thus damnable, but also because whatever good is in the act is only worked by God, not by the believer. And therefore, the ‘rewards’ God gives for the good works of the believer are in no way merited by the believer. Hence Calvin writes:

Accordingly, in the passage already quoted from the Apostle Paul, he attributes the whole operation to God, “It is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure,” (Phil. 2:13). The first part of a good work is the will, the second is vigorous effort in the doing of it. God is the author of both. It is, therefore, robbery from God to arrogate anything to ourselves, either in the will or the act. Were it said that God gives assistance to a weak will, something might be left us; but when it is said that he makes the will, every thing good in it is placed without us. Moreover, since even a good will is still weighed down by the burden of the flesh, and prevented from rising, it is added, that, to meet the difficulties of the contest, God supplies the persevering effort until the effect is obtained. (Institutes II.3.9.)

Regarding that same verse (Phil. 2:13) he writes also:

For, after saying, “It is God which worketh in you both to will and to do,” he [i.e. St. Paul] immediately adds, “of his good pleasure,” (Phil. 2:13); indicating by this expression, that the blessing is gratuitous. As to the common saying, that after we have given admission to the first grace, our efforts co-operate with subsequent grace, this is my answer: — If it is meant that after we are once subdued by the power of the Lord to the obedience of righteousness, we proceed voluntarily, and are inclined to follow the movement of grace, I have nothing to object. For it is most certain, that where the grace of God reigns, there is also this readiness to obey. And whence this readiness, but just that the Spirit of God being everywhere consistent with himself, after first begetting a principle of obedience, cherishes and strengthens it for perseverance? If, again, it is meant that man is able of himself to be a fellow-labourer with the grace of God, I hold it to be a most pestilential delusion. (Institutes II.3.11.)

Calvin treats whatever is good in the believer’s good work as done only by God. He attributes the “whole operation” to God. Because the believer contributes nothing at all, or only something impure and therefore damnable, the believer merits no heavenly reward when he does any good works. This creates a very strange kind of notion, as though when God is at work in the believer, the believer becomes something like a zombie, entirely passive, not freely willing the good, but having his will moved entirely by someone else, such that he is entirely not responsible for what he does, and therefore he in no way merits any reward. For Calvin, to claim that man in grace merits a heavenly reward would be to rob God of the credit. Calvin’s only way of conceiving divine-human synergism is in terms of parts; any part contributed by one takes away the part contributed by the other. Therefore the notion that man is a “fellow-labourer with the grace of God” is, for Calvin, a “most pestilential delusion.” In his view, when God ‘rewards’ us, He treats what was entirely His doing as though it was our doing:

And yet those good works which the Lord has bestowed upon us he counts [as] ours also, and declares, that they are not only acceptable to him, but that he will recompense them. … There cannot be a doubt, that every thing in our works which deserves praise is owing to divine grace, and that there is not a particle of it which we can properly ascribe to ourselves. If we truly and seriously acknowledge this, not only confidence, but every idea of merit vanishes. I say we do not, like the Sophists share the praise of works between God and man, but we keep it entire and unimpaired for the Lord. All we assign to man is that, by his impurity he pollutes and contaminates the very works which were good. The most perfect thing which proceeds from man is always polluted by some stain. Should the Lord, therefore, bring to judgment the best of human works, he would indeed behold his own righteousness in them; but he would also behold man’s dishonor and disgrace. Thus good works please God, and are not without fruit to their authors, since, by way of recompense, they obtain more ample blessings from God, not because they so deserve, but because the divine benignity is pleased of itself to set this value upon them. (Institutes III.15.3)

Calvin seems to shift between two different opinions: either (a) God working through the believer makes the believer’s good works not only entirely God’s and truly good, but God then counts them as the believer’s even though the believer contributed nothing to them, or (b) despite the believer’s good works each being utterly damnable, God is pleased to set value on them on account of His utterly gratuitous favor. Either way, the implication of Calvin’s position is that there are neither merits nor rewards for believers; there are only gifts that are designed to seem like rewards, but are not rewards for the believer’s good works. First God gives the gift of doing many good works through the believer (the believer himself contributing nothing, or nothing good, in the doing of these good works); then God ‘rewards’ the believer for those goods works, as though they were rewards for the good works that the believer did, even though the believer himself did not do them, instead God did these good works through him.

Calvin takes St. Augustine’s “what else but His gifts does God crown when He crowns our merits?” and uses it to justify the claim that God alone is the agent in our good works. But that was not St. Augustine’s position. As I will show below, for St. Augustine and the Church Fathers, the believer’s capacity to merit is itself a gracious gift from God through infused grace elevating the believer to the supernatural order, and God moves the believer by actual grace. But nevertheless the good work done in grace is still also truly the work of the believer, who freely wills the good work and who thereby merits the supernatural reward to which that work is ordered. But it is not as though God does some percentage of the work, and the believer does the remaining percentage; rather, God works through the believer while the believer retains his full natural functional and causal integrity, though now elevated by grace to participate in the divine movement ordered toward the beatific vision. In this way it is simultaneously true that in crowing the believer’s good works God crowns His own gifts, and that in crowning the believer’s good works God justly crowns the believer’s good works with a reward his free choices truly merited.

Regarding Luke 17:7-10, Calvin writes:

With respect to merit, we must remove the difficulty by which many are perplexed; for Scripture so frequently promises a reward to our works, that they think it allows them some merit. The reply is easy. A reward is promised, not as a debt, but from the mere good pleasure of God. It is a great mistake to suppose that there is a mutual relation between Reward and Merit; for it is by his own undeserved favor, and not by the value of our works, that God is induced to reward them. By the engagements of the Law , I readily acknowledge, God is bound to men, if they were to discharge fully all that is required from them; but still, as this is a voluntary obligation, it remains a fixed principle, that man can demand nothing from God, as if he had merited any thing. And thus the arrogance of the flesh falls to the ground; for, granting that any man fulfilled the Law, he cannot plead that he has any claims on God, having done no more than he was bound to do. When he says that we are unprofitable servants, his meaning is, that God receives from us nothing beyond what is justly due but only collects the lawful revenues of his dominion.

There are two principles, therefore, that must be maintained: first, that God naturally owes us nothing, and that all the services which we render to him are not worth a single straw; secondly, that, according to the engagements of the Law, a reward is attached to works, not on account of their value, but because God is graciously pleased to become our debtor. It would evince intolerable ingratitude, if on such a ground any person should indulge in proud vaunting. The kindness and liberality which God exercises towards us are so far from giving us a right to swell with foolish confidence, that we are only laid under deeper obligations to Him. Whenever we meet with the word reward, or whenever it occurs to our recollection, let us look upon this as the crowning act of the goodness of God to us, that, though we are completely in his debt, he condescends to enter into a bargain with us. So much the more detestable is the invention of the Sophists, who have had the effrontery to forge a kind of merit, which professes to be founded on a just claim. The word merit, taken by itself, was sufficiently profane and inconsistent with the standard of piety; but to intoxicate men with diabolical pride, as if they could merit any thing by a just claim, is far worse.

We have done what we were bound to do. That is, “we have brought nothing of our own, but have only done what we were bound by the law to do ” Christ speaks here of an entire observance of the law, which is nowhere to be found; for the most perfect of all men is still at a great distance from that righteousness which the law demands. The present question is not, Are we justified by works? but, Is the observance of the law meritorious of any reward from God? This latter question is answered in the negative; for God holds us for his slaves, and therefore reckons all that can proceed from us to be his just right. Nay, though it were true, that a reward is due to the observance of the law in respect of merit, it will not therefore follow that any man is justified by the merits of works; for we all fail: and not only is our obedience imperfect, but there is not a single part of it that corresponds exactly to the judgment of God. (Calvin’s commentary on Luke 17:7-10)

John Calvin

Calvin claims that our good works done in grace do not deserve the reward of heaven. God is induced to ‘reward’ the good works of the saints not because those have any value, but simply because of His undeserved favor. For Calvin, all a believer’s good works are “not worth a single straw.” So according to Calvin’s theology the ‘rewards’ God gives the saints are no rewards at all, but merely gifts made to look like rewards, even while all parties know (on this theory) that these ‘rewards’ are not rewards at all, but only gifts made to look like rewards. Calvin thinks that believers in a state of grace cannot merit anything from God because he thinks that to do so would require perfect law-keeping. But Calvin seems not to have understood that love fulfills the law, and that love cannot itself be reduced to a law.¹

The possibility of loving more does not entail that one does not have love, or that one’s love is imperfect or incomplete. That is because our capacity to love can grow. By infusion, our love can truly be God’s love; the Apostle John teaches, “because as He is, so also are we in this world.” (1 John 4:17) The love that the Holy Spirit graciously pours out into our hearts (Rom 5:5) is the love by which we are sons and daughters of God, and truly merit a greater share in the love which is His eternal life. Also Calvin treats the presence of concupiscence in the lower appetites as imperfect love, but love for God is essentially in the will, and therefore can be truly present even when concupiscence is present in the lower appetites.²

Of course we cannot boast; hence the saint will see himself as only doing his duty, not merely doing his duty according to the law, but doing his duty on account of love. Hence while Calvin thinks of the believer as a mere slave of God, Jesus teaches the disciples that they are His friends. (John 15:15) See Question 6 in the Q&A following the lecture above.

Calvin’s position concerning merit turns rewards into a farce, by depicting God’s ‘rewarding’ the believer’s good works the way a small child might reward its dolls for activities the dolls did by the hands of the child. In this way he turns God into someone who by imputation not only calls believers perfectly righteousness while in fact knowing that they are unrighteous, but gives believers what He calls rewards, even while knowing that their good works either deserve no reward at all, or were done entirely by Him and not also done by the believers. Either way, God is doubly made out to be a liar.³

What is missing from the picture in Calvin’s theology of merit is an understanding of the role of sanctifying grace, and agape as an infused virtue by which our good actions (still truly ours) are supernaturally ordered toward our supernatural end, and by actual grace are a genuine participation (i.e. κοινωνίᾳ), not monergism, in God’s own work of moving us to that supernatural end. Calvin’s notion of union with God is that God monergistically does everything good that comes out of the believer. In Calvin’s account of the believer’s good works, the believer does not participate in the life and agape of God.

According to Catholic doctrine, by contrast, the believer’s good works are by participation both the action of God and the action of the believer, not 50/50, but 100/100, because grace builds on nature and does not squelch or obliterate it. When God works through and in the believer, the believer truly and freely acts as a rational agent. God does not merely make use of his body like a machine; God moves us according to our nature, that is, in a way that preserves and upholds the nature He gave us. And the nature He gave us is human nature, which includes the power of free choice. So God moves us by actual grace to a supernatural end, and by this elevation grants us a participation in Him, all while preserving our nature and our natural operation. In this way, the good works that we do in grace and agape are both from Him, and ordered to Him, but also truly done by us, out of our love for Him, a love (apape) that is supernatural and infused, but is by that infusion truly made to be ours, and not merely existing inside of us. That is the very difference between sanctifying grace and actual grace.⁴

IV. The Church Fathers on Merit

Does Calvin’s view of merit comport with that of the Church Fathers? The teaching of the Church Fathers on the subject of merit is summarized well in the teaching of the Council of Orange (AD 529):

The reward given for good works is not won by reason of actions which precede grace, but grace, which is unmerited, precedes actions in order that they may be accomplished meritoriously.

In other words, according to the Council of Orange, Semipelagianism is false, because those not having sanctifying grace cannot merit sanctifying grace. But those who have received sanctifying grace can thereby merit rewards through their good works done in a state of grace.

Here are some relevant passages from Church Fathers and early Church teachers, roughly in chronological order:

St. Ignatius of Antioch

Let yours works be deposits, so that you may receive the sum that is due to you. (Letter to Polycarp, 6)

“Due to you” does not fit with Calvin’s position.

St. Justin Martyr

We have learned from the prophets, and we hold it to be true, that punishments, and chastisements, and good rewards, are rendered according to the merit of each man’s actions. Since if it be not so, but all things happen by fate, neither is anything at all in our own power. For if it be fated that this man, e.g., be good, and this other evil, neither is the former meritorious nor the latter to be blamed. And again, unless the human race have the power of avoiding evil and choosing good by free choice, they are not accountable for their actions, of whatever kind they be. But that it is by free choice they both walk uprightly and stumble, we thus demonstrate. (First Apology, 43)

St. Justin’s claim that good rewards are rendered “according to the merit of each man’s actions” is contrary to Calvin’s position.

St. Theophilus of Antioch

But do you also, if you please, give reverential attention to the prophetic Scriptures, and they will make your way plainer for escaping the eternal punishments, and obtaining the eternal prizes of God. For He who gave the mouth for speech, and formed the ear to hear, and made the eye to see, will examine all things, and will judge [with] righteous judgment, rendering merited awards to each. To those who by patient continuance in well-doing Romans 2:7 seek immortality, He will give life everlasting, joy, peace, rest, and abundance of good things, which neither has eye seen, nor ear heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man to conceive. (To Autolycus, I.14)

St. Theophilus’ claim that God will judge with righteous [i.e. just] judgment, rendering merited awards to each, does not fit with Calvin’s position. The Fathers commonly speak of God’s righteous (or just) judgment, in giving both rewards and punishments. But if God gave to the saints rewards for what they did not do, this would not be just. In the Catholic doctrine found throughout the Church Fathers, God’s grace does not merely give gifts, it also gives by infusion the power and dignity of being able truly to merit those heavenly gifts, such that God does not have His fingers crossed behind His back when He says, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”

St. Irenaeus

We deem the crown precious, namely, that which is acquired by our struggle, but which does not encircle us of its own accord. And the harder we strive, so much is it the more valuable; while so much the more valuable it is, so much the more should we esteem it. (Against Heresies, IV.37)

“Acquired by our struggle” again does not fit with Calvin’s notion of merit.

Tertullian

A good deed has God as its debtor, just as an evil has too; for a judge is a rewarder of every cause. (On penance, 2)

The notion that a good deed has God as its debtor is incompatible with Calvin’s position. If the early Church were Calvinist, Tertullian and the Fathers would not have said these things.

St. Hippolytus

For all, the righteous and the unrighteous alike, shall be brought before God the Word. For the Father has committed all judgment to Him; and in fulfilment of the Father’s counsel, He comes as Judge whom we call Christ. For it is not Minos and Rhadamanthys that are to judge (the world), as you fancy, O Greeks, but He whom God the Father has glorified, of whom we have spoken elsewhere more in particular, for the profit of those who seek the truth. He, in administering the righteous judgment of the Father to all, assigns to each what is righteous according to his works. And being present at His judicial decision, all, both men and angels and demons, shall utter one voice, saying, Righteous is Your judgment. Of which voice the justification will be seen in the awarding to each that which is just; since to those who have done well shall be assigned righteously eternal bliss, and to the lovers of iniquity shall be given eternal punishment. And the fire which is un-quenchable and without end awaits these latter, and a certain fiery worm which dies not, and which does not waste the body, but continues bursting forth from the body with unending pain. No sleep will give them rest; no night will soothe them; no death will deliver them from punishment; no voice of interceding friends will profit them. For neither are the righteous seen by them any longer, nor are they worthy of remembrance. But the righteous will remember only the righteous deeds by which they reached the heavenly kingdom…. (Against the Greeks, 3)

In the Judgment, Christ assigns to each what is righteous (i.e. just) according to his works. Eternal bliss is “righteously” (i.e. justly) assigned to those who have done well. This reward is the just due for those good works. Again, this is incompatible with Calvin’s position.

St. Cyprian

Listen to the voice of your Lord in the Apocalypse, rebuking men of your stamp with righteous reproaches: You say, says He, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and know not that you are wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked. I counsel you to buy of me gold tried in the fire, that you may be rich; and white raiment, that you may be clothed, and that the shame of your nakedness may not appear in you; and anoint your eyes with eye-salve, that you may see. Revelation 3:17-18 You therefore, who are rich and wealthy, buy for yourself of Christ gold tried by fire; that you may be pure gold, with your filth burnt out as if by fire, if you are purged by almsgiving and righteous works. Buy for yourself white raiment, that you who had been naked according to Adam, and were before frightful and unseemly, may be clothed with the white garment of Christ. And you who are a wealthy and rich matron in Christ’s Church, anoint your eyes, not with the collyrium of the devil, but with Christ’s eye-salve, that you may be able to attain to see God, by deserving well of God, both by good works and character.

You promise eternal life to those who labour for You; … although they are honoured by You with divine wages and heavenly rewards.

Let us give to Christ earthly garments, that we may receive heavenly raiment; let us give food and drink of this world, that we may come with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob to the heavenly banquet. That we may not reap little, let us sow abundantly.

What, dearest brethren, will be that glory of those who labour charitably— how great and high the joy when the Lord begins to number His people, and, distributing to our merits and good works the promised rewards, to give heavenly things for earthly, eternal things for temporal, great things for small; to present us to the Father, to whom He has restored us by His sanctification;… An illustrious and divine thing, dearest brethren, is the saving labour of charity; … assisted by which the Christian accomplishes spiritual grace, deserves well of Christ the Judge, accounts God his debtor. For this palm of works of salvation let us gladly and readily strive; let us all, in the struggle of righteousness, run with God and Christ looking on; and let us who have already begun to be greater than this life and the world, slacken our course by no desire of this life and of this world. If the day shall find us, whether it be the day of reward or of persecution, furnished, if swift, if running in this contest of charity, the Lord will never fail of giving a reward for our merits: in peace He will give to us who conquer, a white crown for our labours; in persecution, He will accompany it with a purple one for our passion. (On Works and Alms, 14,22,24,26)

St. Cyprian urges Christians to “buy” for themselves gold tried by fire and white raiment, in order to attain “to see God” (i.e. the beatific vision) by “deserving well of God, both by good works and character.” That is directly contrary to Calvin’s position. St. Cyprian notes that not only are those who labor for Christ promised eternal life, but they are honored by Christ with divine wages and heavenly rewards for those labors. Again, that is contrary to Calvin’s position. St. Cyprian sees almsgiving as a way of storing up treasure in heaven, meriting the “heavenly raiment.” On that Day there will be great joy when Christ distributes “to our merits and good works” the promised rewards (heavenly things), for these good works. By doing good deeds in grace and love, the Christian “deserves well of Christ the Judge and makes God his debtor.” St. Cyprian assures us that Christ “will never fail of giving a reward for our merits.” Again, this is incompatible with Calvin’s position.

St. Ambrose

All men rise again, but let no one lose heart, and let not the just grieve at the common lot of rising again, since he awaits the chief fruit of his virtue. All indeed shall rise again, 1 Corinthians 15:23 but, as says the Apostle, each in his own order. The fruit of the Divine Mercy is common to all, but the order of merit differs. (On the Death of Satyrus, II.)

According to St. Ambrose, all Christians who die in a state of grace receive eternal life and the resurrection of the body, but each according to the order corresponding to his merit. Calvin’s position is not compatible with the differences in the orders of the saints being due to merit.

St. Jerome

And at the same time regard must be had to the sense of Scripture: I might tell you, He says, that I go to prepare a place for you, if there were not many mansions in my Father’s house (John 14:2), that is to say, if each individual did not prepare for himself a mansion through his own works rather than receive it through the bounty of God. The preparation is therefore not mine, but yours. This view is supported by the fact that it profited Judas nothing to have a place prepared, since he lost it by his own fault. And we must interpret in the same way what our Lord says to the sons of Zebedee, one of whom wished to sit on His left hand, the other on His right: (Matthew 20:23) My cup indeed you shall drink: but to sit on my right hand, and on my left hand, is not mine to give, but it is for them for whom it has been prepared of my Father. It is not the Son’s to give; how then is it the Father’s to prepare? There are, He says, prepared in heaven, many different mansions, destined for many different virtues, and they will be awarded not to persons, but to persons’ works. In vain therefore do you ask of me what rests with yourselves, a reward which my Father has prepared for those whose virtues will entitle them to rise to such dignity. Again when He says: (John 14:3) I will come again, and will receive you unto myself: that where I am, there ye may be also, He is speaking especially to the apostles, concerning whom it is elsewhere written, That as I and thou, Father, are one, so they also may be one in us, inasmuch as they have believed, have been perfected, and can say, the Lord is my portion. … Now our work is, according to our different virtues, to prepare for ourselves a different future. . . . If we are all to be equal in heaven, in vain do we humble ourselves here that we may be greater there. . . Why do virgins persevere? widows toil? Why do married women practise continence? Let us all sin, and when once we have repented, we shall be on the same footing as the apostles. (Against Jovinianus, II.28,32)

In explaining the many mansions, and who gets to sit at Christ’s right hand, St. Jerome says that it is vain to request this of Christ, because it “rests with yourselves,” being “a reward which My Father has prepared for those whose virtues will entitle them to rise to such dignity.” Calvin would not have said that it rests on our good works, or that these good works would entitle believers to rise to such dignity. Likewise, St. Jerome’s argument at the end of this quotation would make no sense if he were a Calvinist. Why do virgins persevere? widows toil? married women practice continence? Why toil and suffer and beat our bodies, rather than just eat, drink and be merry? The Calvinist answer is that it does not depend on the believer at all, but only on God who moves (or doesn’t move) the believer to do (or not do) good works. But St. Jerome’s line of argument shows that for St. Jerome, it also depends on us. If we choose to struggle and suffer, and obey, we will be rewarded, and the reward will both rightly due to us, and at the same time the result of God’s gracious work in us and through us. But if we choose not to labor and struggle and suffer in this present life, our eternal reward will be diminished.

What is diminished is our participation in the Life of God. As St. Jerome wrote, “The Lord is my portion.” The Church Fathers do not teach that the heavenly rewards for Christians are created things. Believers want more of God, who is Eternal Life, and this is why they give up money, houses, wives, and so many other created things. It would be absurd therefore, for God to reward the saints with more created things. The martyrs did not endure all the sufferings and tortures they endured, just to get a bigger mansion made of gold or precious stones. To interpret it that way is to misunderstand what heaven is all about.

Christ explains the parable of the talents, saying, “he who has, more will be given to him.” (Matt 25:29) Our rewards are not creatures. Our reward is a greater participation in what we already have been given: grace (i.e. participation in the eternal Life of God). Our heavenly rewards for loving obedience are a greater share in the Life of God. No one in heaven has a longer life than another. But we should not conflate eternal life with everlasting life. There are different ‘mansions’ in the Father’s house, because there will be different degrees of participation in the Life of God, depending (in part) on what we do in this present life with the grace we have been given. The notion that there is not any more eternal life to be merited either reduces eternal life to everlasting existence, or it treats our rewards as created things, i.e. mere creatures, rather than a greater share in God Himself. That is the Muslim and Mormon way of thinking about heavenly rewards, e.g. seventy virgins and/or a whole planet for oneself.

St. Augustine

St. Augustine writes:

Gracious and upright is the Lord (Ps 24:8). The Lord is gracious, since even sinners and the ungodly He so pitied, as to forgive all that is past; but the Lord is upright too, who after the mercy of vocation and pardon, which is of grace without merit, will require merits meet for the last judgment. (Exposition on Psalm 25.)

St. Augustine taught the position that was later affirmed by the Council of Orange, quoted above. According to St. Augustine, man cannot merit apart from grace, but for those in grace, God will require from believers merits meet [fit] for the last Judgment. For Calvin, the believer is incapable of producing merits meet for the last Judgment.

St. Augustine writes:

Now there would be no great merit and glorious blessedness in believing, if the Lord had always appeared in His Risen Body to the eyes of men. The Holy Ghost then has brought this great gift to them that should believe, that Him whom they should not see with the eyes of flesh, they might with a mind sobered from carnal desires, and inebriated with spiritual longings, sigh after. (Sermon 93.3)

For St. Augustine, the act of [living] faith is meritorious for eternal life. Calvin directly denies this.

In his work On Patience St. Augustine writes:

But, moreover, grace not only assists the just, but also justifies the ungodly. And therefore even when it does aid the just and seems to be rendered to his merits, not even then does it cease to be grace, because that which it aids it did itself bestow. (On Patience)

St. Augustine explains that grace is that by which we do good works, and grace is also merited by those good works. But these works are nevertheless still truly ours, even though made possible by grace. And therefore they are truly meritorious. Calvin mistakenly thought that if God is working in the believer to assist the just, then the believer cannot do anything truly meritorious. Calvin therefore seems to have not been able to conceive that God could aid the believer so as to make the believer capable of meritorious good works.

In his Exposition on Psalm 43, St. Augustine writes:

If you give your bread reluctantly, you have lost both the bread, and the merit of the action. Do it then from the heart: that He who sees in secret, Matthew 6:6 may say, while you are yet speaking, Here I am. (Exposition on Psalm 43)

For Calvin, if you give your bread reluctantly, you don’t lose any merit, because even if you give your bread cheerfully, there is no merit.

Elsewhere St. Augustine writes:

What merit, then, has man before grace which could make it possible for him to receive grace, when nothing but grace produces good merit in us; and what else but His gifts does God crown when He crowns our merits? For, just as in the beginning we obtained the mercy of faith, not because we were faithful but that we might become so, in like manner He will crown us at the end with eternal life, as it says, ‘with mercy and compassion.’ Not in vain, therefore, do we sing to God: ‘His mercy shall prevent me,’ and ‘His mercy shall follow me.’ Consequently, eternal life itself, which will certainly be possessed at the end without end, is in a sense awarded to antecedent merits, yet, because the same merits for which it is awarded are not effected by us through our sufficiency, but are effected in us by grace, even this very grace is so called for no other reason than that it is given freely; not, indeed, that it is not given for merit, but because the merits themselves are given for which it is given. …

After he had said: “The wages of sin is death” (Rom. 6:23), anyone would have agreed that he could have made a most consistent and logical conclusion if he had said: “But the wages of justice is eternal life.” And it is true, because eternal life is awarded as if it were the wages which justice deserves, just as death is the wages which sin deserves. …

That to which eternal life is owed is true justice, but if it is true justice, it does not originate in you, ‘it is from above, coming down from the Father of lights.’ In order to have it, if you do have it, you must have received it, for ‘what good hast thou that thou hast not received?’ Therefore, O man, if you are to receive eternal life, it is indeed the wages of justice, but for you it is a grace just as justice itself is a grace. It would be paid as something due to you if the justice to which it is due had its origin in you. But now, ‘of his fulness we have received,’ not only the grace by which we now live uprightly and in labors unto the end, but also ‘grace for this grace,’ that afterward we may live in repose forever. (Letters, 194)

St. Augustine

Here a simplistic reading might take “nothing but grace produces good merit in us” as meaning that nothing but grace is operative and therefore there is no actual merit. But by carefully studying the context (including his other writings) we see that St. Augustine means just what all the other Church Fathers teach concerning merit, namely, that only by grace is merit made possible. St. Augustine is not teaching that only God is operative when believers do good works in a state of grace, or that the works of the believers done in grace are not meritorious. St. Augustine holds a middle position between Pelagianism, which would treat merit as possible without grace, and Calvinism, which would treat merit as impossible even with grace. So for St. Augustine, the believer does not merit eternal life without grace, but God has made it possible by grace for the believer in unmerited grace truly to merit eternal life by grace. By a grace that did not originate in the believer, the believer is able to merit eternal life. St. Augustine summarizes it by saying, “[eternal life] is indeed the wages of justice, but for you it is a grace just as justice itself is a grace.” By “justice itself is a grace” he means that being made just (through sanctifying grace) is an unmerited grace. Therefore, while the believer is able in justice to merit eternal life, that is only because the believer was made just by sanctifying grace, and was first enabled to merit at all by an elevation to the supernatural order by unmerited grace.

In his Tractates on the Gospel of John, St. Augustine writes:

But having obtained that grace of faith, you shall be just by faith (for the just lives by faith); and you will obtain favor of God by living by faith. And having obtained favor from God by living by faith you will receive immortality as a reward, and life eternal. And that is grace. For because of what merit do you receive life eternal? Because of grace. (Tractates on the Gospel of John 3.9)

Believers already in a state of grace then “obtain favor of God” by living in faith, receiving two things as a reward for their lived faithfulness: immortality and eternal life. Grace makes possible the merit through good works by which the believer receives the rewards of immortality and eternal life. This is incompatible with Calvin’s position. In another Tractate, St. Augustine writes:

[B]ut when they now hear, “In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you,” they are revived from their trouble, made certain and confident that after all the perils of temptations they shall dwell with Christ in the presence of God. For, albeit one is stronger than another, one wiser than another, one more righteous than another, “in the Father’s house there are many mansions;” none of them shall remain outside that house, where every one, according to his deserts, is to receive a mansion. All alike have that penny, which the householder orders to be given to all that have wrought in the vineyard, making no distinction therein between those who have labored less and those who have labored more: (Matt 20:9) by which penny, of course, is signified eternal life, whereto no one any longer lives to a different length than others, since in eternity life has no diversity in its measure. But the many mansions point to the different grades of merit in that one eternal life. For there is one glory of the sun, another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars: for one star differs from another star in glory; and so also the resurrection of the dead. The saints, like the stars in the sky, obtain in the kingdom different mansions of diverse degrees of brightness; but on account of that one penny no one is cut off from the kingdom; and God will be all in all in such a way, that, as God is love, (1 John 4:8) love will bring it about that what is possessed by each will be common to all. For in this way every one really possesses it, when he loves to see in another what he has not himself. There will not, therefore, be any envying amid this diversity of brightness, since in all of them will be reigning the unity of love. (Tractates on the Gospel of John, 67.2)

Here St. Augustine teaches that the many mansions signifies that each receives a mansion “according to his deserts.” Each believer (who dies in a state of grace) receives eternal life, and in that sense they all receive the penny, since in eternal life no one lives longer than anyone else who receives eternal life. But the many mansions “point to the different grades of merit in that one eternal life.” And these different grades of merit depend on labor, for some labored less and some labored more. What differs from saint to saint in heaven is not the length of life, but the degree of participation in God who is eternal life and pure happiness. Hence those saints who have merited more are eternally happier than are those saints who have merited less, though each saint is perfectly happy. The greater merit allows for a greater capacity for participation in God, and hence a greater capacity for eternal happiness. In another Tractate St. Augustine writes:

You signified by the preparation of those mansions, that the just ought to live by faith. (Rom 1:17) For he who is sojourning at a distance from the Lord has need to be living by faith, because by this we are prepared for beholding His countenance. (2 Cor 5:6-8) For blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God; (Matt 5:8) and He purifies their hearts by faith. (Acts 15:9) The former we find in the Gospel, the latter in the Acts of the Apostles. But the faith by which those who are yet to see God have their hearts purified, while sojourning at a distance here, believes what it does not see; for if there is sight, there is no longer faith. Merit is accumulating now to the believer, and then the reward is paid into the hand of the beholder. Let the Lord then go and prepare us a place; let Him go, that He may not be seen; and let Him remain concealed, that faith may be exercised. For then is the place preparing, if it is by faith we are living. Let the believing in that place be desired, that the place desired may itself be possessed; the longing of love is the preparation of the mansion. Prepare thus, Lord, what You are preparing; for You are preparing us for Yourself, and Yourself for us, inasmuch as You are preparing a place both for Yourself in us, and for us in You. For You have said, Abide in me, and I in you. As far as each one has been a partaker of You, some less, some more, such will be the diversity of rewards in proportion to the diversity of merits; such will be the multitude of mansions to suit the inequalities among their inmates; but all of them, none the less, eternally living, and endlessly blessed. (Tractates on the Gospel 68.3)

St. Augustine here explains that the reason why Christ had to go away, was to make merit possible. Otherwise, if we were to see Him here, there would be no room for faith, and therefore no possibility of merit. Christ’s preparing a place for us (i.e. many mansions) are different degrees of participation in the beatific vision merited by the greatness of our work in grace in this present life. Merit is now accumulating according to our good works, but then it will be paid in the form of a greater participation in God in the beatific vision. The diversity of the rewards depends on the diversity of our merits, that is, the degree to which each person participated in Christ now, in His suffering and His obedience to the Father in the mission given to Him.

In his work titled “On Grace and Free Will,” St. Augustine writes:

‘There is henceforth laid up for me,’ he says, ‘a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, shall give me at that day’ (2 Tim. 4:8). Now, to whom should the righteous Judge award the crown, except to him in whom the merciful Father had bestowed grace? And how could the crown be one ‘of righteousness,’ unless the grace had preceded which ‘justifies the ungodly’? (On Grace and Free Will, 14)

The crown laid up for St. Paul could not be one of justice unless grace had gone ahead and made St. Paul (during his life on earth) worthy to receive that crown in the life to come. St. Augustine in no way shared Calvin’s nominalistic conception of imputation. Later in that same work, St. Augustine explains in more detail:

It is such faith [i.e. faith which works by love] which severs God’s faithful from unclean demons — for even these believe and tremble, (Jam 2:19) as the Apostle James says; but they do not do well. Therefore they possess not the faith by which the just man lives — the faith which works by love in such wise, that God recompenses it according to its works with eternal life. But inasmuch as we have even our good works from God, from whom likewise comes our faith and our love, therefore the selfsame great teacher of the Gentiles has designated eternal life itself as His gracious gift. (Rom 6:23)

And hence there arises no small question, which must be solved by the Lord’s gift. If eternal life is rendered to good works, as the Scripture most openly declares: Then He shall reward every man according to his works (Matt 16:27) how can eternal life be a matter of grace, seeing that grace is not rendered to works, but is given gratuitously, as the apostle himself tells us: To him that works is the reward not reckoned of grace, but of debt; (Rom 4:4) and again: There is a remnant saved according to the election of grace; with these words immediately subjoined: And if of grace, then is it no more of works; otherwise grace is no more grace? (Rom 11:5-6) How, then, is eternal life by grace, when it is received from works? Does the apostle perchance not say that eternal life is a grace? Nay, he has so called it, with a clearness which none can possibly gainsay. It requires no acute intellect, but only an attentive reader, to discover this. For after saying, The wages of sin is death, he at once added, The grace of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. (Rom 6:23)

This question, then, seems to me to be by no means capable of solution, unless we understand that even those good works of ours, which are recompensed with eternal life, belong to the grace of God, because of what is said by the Lord Jesus: Without me you can do nothing. (John 15:5) And the apostle himself, after saying, By grace are you saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God: not of works, lest any man should boast (Eph 2:8-9) saw, of course, the possibility that men would think from this statement that good works are not necessary to those who believe, but that faith alone suffices for them; and again, the possibility of men’s boasting of their good works, as if they were of themselves capable of performing them. To meet, therefore, these opinions on both sides, he immediately added, For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God has before ordained that we should walk in them. (Eph 2:10) What is the purport of his saying, Not of works, lest any man should boast, while commending the grace of God? And then why does he afterwards, when giving a reason for using such words, say, For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works? Why, therefore, does it run, Not of works, lest any man should boast?

Now, hear and understand. Not of works is spoken of the works which you suppose have their origin in yourself alone; but you have to think of works for which God has moulded (that is, has formed and created) you. For of these he says, We are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works. Now he does not here speak of that creation which made us human beings, but of that in reference to which one said who was already in full manhood, Create in me a clean heart, O God; concerning which also the apostle says, Therefore, if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things have become new. And all things are of God. (2 Cor 5:17-18) We are framed, therefore, that is, formed and created, in the good works which we have not ourselves prepared, but God has before ordained that we should walk in them. It follows, then, dearly beloved, beyond all doubt, that as your good life is nothing else than God’s grace, so also the eternal life which is the recompense of a good life is the grace of God; moreover it is given gratuitously, even as that is given gratuitously to which it is given. But that to which it is given is solely and simply grace; this therefore is also that which is given to it, because it is its reward—grace is for grace, as if remuneration for righteousness; in order that it may be true, because it is true, that God shall reward every man according to his works.

Perhaps you ask whether we ever read in the Sacred Scriptures of grace for grace. Well you possess the Gospel according to John, which is perfectly clear in its very great light. Here John the Baptist says of Christ: Of His fullness have we all received, even grace for grace. (John 1:16) So that out of His fullness we have received, according to our humble measure, our particles of ability as it were for leading good lives — according as God has dealt to every man his measure of faith; (Rom 12:3) because every man has his proper gift of God; one after this manner, and another after that. (1 Cor 7:7) And this is grace. But, over and above this, we shall also receive grace for grace, when we shall have awarded to us eternal life, of which the apostle said: The grace of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord, (Rom 6:23) having just said that the wages of sin is death. Deservedly did he call it wages, because everlasting death is awarded as its proper due to diabolical service. Now, when it was in his power to say, and rightly to say: But the wages of righteousness is eternal life, he yet preferred to say: The grace of God is eternal life; in order that we may hence understand that God does not, for any merits of our own, but from His own divine compassion, prolong our existence to everlasting life. Even as the Psalmist says to his soul, Who crowns you with mercy and compassion. Well, now, is not a crown given as the reward of good deeds? It is, however, only because He works good works in good men, of whom it is said, It is God which works in you both to will and to do of His good pleasure, (Phil 2:13) that the Psalm has it, as just now quoted: He crowns you with mercy and compassion, since it is through His mercy that we perform the good deeds to which the crown is awarded. It is not, however, to be for a moment supposed, because he said, It is God that works in you both to will and to do of his own good pleasure, that free will is taken away. If this, indeed, had been his meaning, he would not have said just before, Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. (Phil 2:12) For when the command is given to work, their free will is addressed; and when it is added, with fear and trembling, they are warned against boasting of their good deeds as if they were their own, by attributing to themselves the performance of anything good. It is pretty much as if the apostle had this question put to him: Why did you use the phrase, ‘with fear and trembling’? And as if he answered the inquiry of his examiners by telling them, For it is God which works in you. Because if you fear and tremble, you do not boast of your good works— as if they were your own, since it is God who works within you. (On Grace and Free Will, Chapters 18-21)

First St. Augustine points out that God recompenses with eternal life the [faith that works by love] according to its works. But even these good works are from God, who has given us faith and agape, so that eternal life is at the same time also “His gracious gift.” How can eternal life be both a merited reward and a gracious gift? St. Augustine answers this question by explaining that even our good works, by which eternal life is merited, are themselves a grace. According to St. Augustine, when St. Paul says “not of works,” he is referring to works that “have their origin in yourself alone.” In other words, according to St. Augustine, St. Paul is ruling out Pelagianism, by which human works done apart from grace could merit anything pertaining to heaven. But the works God has prepared for believers are works done in “faith working through love,” and these are supernatural gifts that have come down from heaven through the sacraments Christ has established in His Church as means of grace. In this supernatural faith and agape we live the life of God, He working through us and we participating in Him. In this way, the eternal life which is the “recompense of a good life” is a grace, because that by which it is merited is not from us alone by human nature. Rather, it is from God as grace above human nature, but in which we participate by God’s gratuitious gift. The grace of eternal life is justly rewarded for the grace which is the believer’s meritorious life lived out in the supernatural gifts of faith, hope, and agape.

But there is no pretend here. God does not pretend that the work is ours when it is not, or pretend that the work is meritorious when it is not. The work is truly ours, even though it is first from God who prepared it for us, and graciously aided us in doing it through actual grace, infused grace and supernatural virtues. And the work is truly meritorious of eternal life, because it is supernatural in its principle and end. According to St. Augustine, it is “through His mercy that we perform the good deeds to which the crown is awarded.” Nor must anyone suppose, says St. Augustine, that because God is working in us, that “free will is taken away.” In these good works, which God is working out in the believer, he remains truly free and truly praiseworthy or blameworthy for what he does. Hence the reward of eternal life is not merely feigned, but rightly deserved.

In his work titled “On the Morals of the Catholic Church,” St. Augustine writes:

Let us then, as many as have in view to reach eternal life, love God with all the heart, with all the soul, with all the mind. For eternal life contains the whole reward in the promise of which we rejoice; nor can the reward precede desert, nor be given to a man before he is worthy of it. What can be more unjust than this, and what is more just than God? We should not then demand the reward before we deserve to get it. Here, perhaps, it is not out of place to ask what is eternal life; or rather let us hear the Bestower of it: “This,” He says, “is life eternal, that they should know You, the true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.” (John 17:3) So eternal life is the knowledge of the truth. See, then, how perverse and preposterous is the character of those who think that their teaching of the knowledge of God will make us perfect, when this is the reward of those already perfect! What else, then, have we to do but first to love with full affection Him whom we desire to know? Hence arises that principle on which we have all along insisted, that there is nothing more wholesome in the Catholic Church than using authority before argument. (On the Morals of the Catholic Church, I.25)

St. Augustine explains that we must not “demand the reward” of eternal life before we are “worthy” of the reward and “deserve to get it.” And we are made worthy by loving God with all our heart, all our soul, and all our mind. Calvin denies even the possibility of loving God with all our heart, soul, and mind. Hence, St. Augustine’s words would make no sense according to Calvin’s theology.

In his work titled “On Rebuke and Grace,” St. Augustine writes:

Nevertheless, since even that life eternal itself, which, it is certain, is given as due to good works, is called by so great an apostle the grace of God, although grace is not rendered to works, but is given freely, it must be confessed without any doubt, that eternal life is called grace for the reason that it is rendered to those merits which grace has conferred upon man. Because that saying is rightly understood which in the gospel is read, “grace for grace,” John 1:16 — that is, for those merits which grace has conferred. (On Rebuke and Grace, 41)

St. Augustine here states that though it is “certain” that life eternal is given as “due to good works,” nevertheless it is also a grace of God. Eternal life is called a grace because it is rendered “to those merits which grace has conferred upon man.” Here again we see the same teaching on merit throughout St. Augustine’s works, namely, that eternal life is a reward for good works, but that these good works are given to us as grace, and hence eternal life is both a due reward and a grace that we could never possibly merit on our own.

St. Prosper of Aquitaine

This evidence from Scripture — and we could gather many other texts — demonstrates abundantly, I think, that faith which justifies a sinner cannot be had except for God’s gift, and that it is not a reward for previous merits. Rather is it given that it may be a source of merit. (The Call of All Nations, I.24)

St. Prosper teaches just what we saw in St. Augustine, and just what we see in the Council of Orange, namely, that faith is not a reward for previous merits, but is given by God that it may be a source of merit.

V. Scripture on Merit

Jesus speaks of heavenly rewards in many places in the gospels. The Beatitudes are one example.

Matthew 5:11-12: “Blessed are you when men revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so men persecuted the prophets who were before you.”

We see this also in Matthew 25, where Jesus shows that heaven and hell are given as rewards for (among other things) the way we treat others. Jesus elsewhere says, “For whosoever shall give you to drink a cup of water in my name, because you belong to Christ, Amen, I say to you, he shall not lose his reward.” (Mt. 10:42; Mark 9:41)

The reward given is not a greater share in a creature, but a greater share in the only One who is not a creature, namely, God Himself. So the rewards that Jesus speaks about in the gospels, and which are spoken about throughout the New Testament, are first eternal life (merited by living faith, which is itself a both a gift and a free act), and subsequently greater participations in eternal life.

Matt. 12:36 “And I say to you, that every careless word that men shall speak, they shall render account for it in the day of judgment.”

Matt. 16:27 “For the Son of man is to come with His angels in the glory of His Father, and then He will repay every man for what he has done.”

Mt. 19:21 “If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven.”

Matthew 19:29: “And every one who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or lands, for my name’s sake, will receive a hundredfold, and inherit eternal life.”

Luke 6:35 “But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return; and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High.”

Luke 6:38: “give, and it will be given to you; good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap. For the measure you give will be the measure you get back.”

Rom 2:6-7 “For He will render to every man according to his works, to those who by perseverance in doing good seek for glory and honor and immortality, eternal life.”

1 Corinthians 3:6-9: “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. He who plants and he who waters are equal, and each shall receive his wages according to his labor. For we are God’s fellow workers; you are God’s field, God’s building.”

1 Cor 3:14-15 “If the work which any man has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If any man’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire.”

1 Cor 4:5 “Therefore do not go on passing judgment before the time, but wait until the Lord comes who will both bring to light the things hidden in the darkness and disclose the motives of men’s hearts; and then each man’s praise will come to him from God.”

If Calvin were right, then when men’s motives were disclosed, no man would receive praise from God, since each man’s motives would be impure, and therefore worthy of damnation.

2 Cor 5:10 “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may be recompensed for his deeds in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad.”

2 Cor. 9:6 “The point is this: he who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and he who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully.”

Gal 6:8-9 “The one who sows to the Spirit shall from the Spirit reap eternal life. And let us not lose heart in doing good, for in due time we shall reap if we do not grow weary.”

Ephesians 6:8: “knowing that whatever good any one does, he will receive the same again from the Lord, whether he is a slave or free.”

Col 3:23-24 “Whatever your task, work heartily, as serving the Lord and not men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward.”

2 Tim 4:8 “From now on there is laid up for me the crown of justice, which the Lord, the just Judge, will award to me on that Day, and not only to me but also to all who have loved His appearing.”

Hebrews 6:10 “For God is not so unjust as to overlook your work and the love which you showed for His sake in serving the saints, as you still do.”

Hebrews 10:35-36 “Therefore do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward. For you have need of endurance, so that you may do the will of God and receive what is promised.”

Jas. 1:12 “Blessed is the man who endures trial, for when he has stood the test he will receive the crown of life which God has promised to those who love Him.”

1 Peter 1:17 “And if you address as Father the One who impartially judges according to
each man’s work, conduct yourselves in fear during the time of your stay
upon earth.”

2 John 8 “Look to yourselves, that you may not lose what you have worked for, but may win a full reward.”

Rev. 2:10 “Be faithful until death, and I will give you the crown of life.”

Rev 2:23 “And I will kill her children with pestilence; and all the churches will know that I am He who searches the minds and hearts; and I will give to each one of you according to your deeds.”

Rev 3:11-12 “Hold fast what you have, so that no one may seize your crown. He who conquers, I will make him a pillar in the temple of my God.”

Rev 22:11-12 “[L]et the one who is righteous, still practice righteousness; and let the one who is holy, still keep himself holy. Behold, I am coming quickly, and My reward is with Me, to render to every man according to what he has done.”

VI. Catholic Teaching on Merit

Fourth Lateran Council, AD 1215

But the sacrament of baptism (which at the invocation of God and the indivisible Trinity, namely, of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, is solemnized in water) rightly conferred by anyone in the form of the Church is useful unto salvation for little ones and for adults. And if, after the reception of baptism, anyone shall have lapsed into sin, through true penance he can always be restored. Moreover, not only virgins and the continent but also married persons pleasing to God through right faith and good work merit to arrive at a blessed eternity. (Fourth Lateran Council, AD 1215)

St. Thomas Aquinas, the great Doctor of the Church, followed what Scripture, the Church Fathers, the Council of Orange, and the Fourth Lateran Council had taught before him. He did not hold Calvin’s monergistic conception of works done in the state of grace. His teaching on merit can be found in Question 114 of Summa Theologica I-II. Because of time limitations, I will not go through that Question in this post. But fundamentally, according to St. Thomas, God uses intermediate causes in order to communicate to His creatures the dignity of causality, and thereby to bring to Himself greater glory. St. Thomas writes:

In this way God is helped by us; inasmuch as we execute His orders, according to 1 Corinthians 3:9: “We are God’s co-workers.” Nor is this on account of any defect in the power of God, but because He employs intermediary causes, in order that the beauty of order may be preserved in the universe; and also that He may communicate to creatures the dignity of causality [ut etiam creaturis dignitatem causalitatis communicet].” (Summa Theologica I Q.23 a.8 ad.2.)

Notice that St. Thomas Aquinas quotes St. Paul’s statement that [the Apostles] are God’s “co-workers.” In the Greek this reads: θεοῦ γάρ ἐσμεν συνεργοί. “For we are God’s co-workers.” Of course St. Paul is speaking about the work of preaching the gospel and building up the Church through prayer and teaching and service. But, if man may be a co-worker with God in the salvation of others, then it would be ad hoc to claim that man may not in principle be a co-worker in his own salvation. St. Paul implies as much when he states explicitly to the Philippians that they should “work out [their] salvation with fear and trembling” [μετὰ φόβου καὶ τρόμου τὴν ἑαυτῶν σωτηρίαν κατεργάζεσθε]. (Phil 2:12)

This is a primary difference between Calvin and St. Thomas. Calvin views participation on the part of the creature as detracting from God’s glory. St. Thomas teaches that participation on the part of the creature glorifies God still more than if God were to do it all Himself. This is why St. Thomas explains that man in grace can merit eternal life condignly. (cf. Summa Theologica I-II Q. 114 a.3) This condign merit for heaven as our supernatural end is based on commutative justice, but made possible only by the infusion of sanctifying grace. Without the infusion of grace, there could be no merit for eternal life. Even the incarnate Christ Himself, without the infusion of grace, could not have merited eternal life in His human nature.

The Council of Trent likewise addresses Calvin’s notion that the just man only merits damnation, declaring:

[T]hose are opposed to the orthodox doctrine of religion, who assert that the just man sins, venially at least, in every good work; or, which is yet more insupportable, that he merits eternal punishments; as also those who state, that the just sin in all their works, if, in those works, they, together with this aim principally that God may be gloried, have in view also the eternal reward, in order to excite their sloth, and to encourage themselves to run in the course: whereas it is written, I have inclined my heart to do all thy justifications for the reward: and, concerning Moses, the Apostle saith, that he looked unto the reward. (Council of Trent, Session 6, Chapter 11)

Those who claim that the just man sins (either venially or merits eternal punishment) in every good work are opposed to the orthodox doctrine of the Christian religion. Those also are in error, according to Trent, who claim that the just sin in all their good works if these just persons do these good works while having the eternal reward in view.

I quoted the entirety of Chapter 16 of Session Six of the Council of Trent in the body of Prof. Feingold’s lecture above. In that chapter the Council teaches:

Hence, to those who work well unto the end (Mt 10:22) and trust in God, eternal life is to be offered, both as a grace mercifully promised to the sons of God through Christ Jesus, and as a reward promised by God himself, to be faithfully given to their good works and merits (Rom 6:22).

Notice that eternal life is both a gift and a reward. It is not either/or. Eternal life is a gift, because without grace, we could never attain it. But it is also a reward because, by grace, it is also a reward for works done in grace. This is the same teaching that all the Church Fathers taught, that the Council of Orange taught, that the Fourth Lateran Taught, and that St. Thomas taught. This shows that Luther and Calvin were the ones who deviated from the Tradition. The only alternative hypothesis is the ecclesial deism by which one dismisses the entirety of the prior Tradition, by claiming that “Catholic heresy” immediately took over the Church.

The relevant canons of the Council of Trent are:

Canon 26. If anyone says that the just ought not for the good works done in God to expect and hope for an eternal reward from God through His mercy and the merit of Jesus Christ, if by doing well and by keeping the divine commandments they persevere to the end, let him be anathema.

Canon 31. If anyone says that the one justified sins when he performs good works with a view to an eternal reward, let him be anathema.

Canon 32. If anyone says that the good works of the one justified are in such manner the gifts of God that they are not also the good merits of him justified; or that the one justified by the good works that he performs by the grace of God and the merit of Jesus Christ, whose living member he is, does not truly merit an increase of grace, eternal life, and in case he dies in grace, the attainment of eternal life itself and also an increase of glory, let him be anathema.

Canon 26 simply repeats what Scripture and the Fathers taught, namely, that for their good works done in grace, the just ought to expect and hope for an eternal reward from God through His mercy and the merit of Christ, by which sanctifying grace was won for us. Canon 31 denies that it is sinful to perform good works with a view to an eternal reward. St. Paul himself worked with a view toward an eternal reward, as shown in the passages of Scripture above. And Canon 32 denies the false dichotomy which claims that good works are either gifts of God’s grace and therefore not meritorious acts by the one justified, or they are mere human acts.

Throughout her history, when the Church speaks of merit toward heaven, she is referring to what the second Council of Orange says: recompense due (by justice) to good works if they are performed in grace. Apart from grace, we cannot merit anything pertaining to heaven, because heaven is supernatural, and our merit would at most be at the level of nature. But if a person is in a state of grace, then because his action is moved by actual grace and flows from a soul infused with sanctifying grace and agape, his action is ordered toward a supernatural end, and thereby merits a supernatural end, namely, the beatific vision. When the action flows from these supernatural principles within the soul, the action is meritorious for heaven, because in this way it is Christ who is working in and through us, by His Spirit, so that the action is supernatural, and yet at the same time the action is truly that of the human person, such that he is justly rewarded for the action. Yet also at the same time, his capacity to merit is due to God’s grace.

Absolutely speaking, no man can make a debtor out of God, because every good thing we have has come from Him as a gift. Because God has given us everything we have, we therefore stand in a relation of obligation to Him, by way of justice, even if we can never give back all that we have been given. That is all true even apart from grace. But God, by a free and tremendous gift of grace, elevates us by a participation in His divine nature such that by this grace we are proportionate to Him as our supernatural end, and thus capable of meriting that supernatural end by way of a divine covenant. By the infusion of sanctifying grace, and thus by our participation in the divine operation in us oriented toward God as our supernatural end, the very works which we do in God, fully satisfy the divine law of love and truly merit eternal life.

The key to understanding how the believer’s acts can be truly meritorious for salvation (i.e. eternal life) is found in the three word phrase “done in God.” Without grace, our acts can be more or less meritorious or demeritorious, not for heaven (which is supernatural) but for our degree of punishment and reward in a state of separation from God. Without grace, none of our acts would be “done in God,” and hence none of our acts could be meritorious for heaven, because of the infinite gap between God and what can be done in the power of our own finite nature as creatures. But by the infusion of sanctifying grace and agape (not just a co-spatial indwelling of the Holy Spirit, but an actual infusion such that we are truly made partakers in the divine nature) Christ works in and through us, and our acts done out of agape are not just ordered to God as our Creator and natural end, but to God as our Father and supernatural end. That is, by infused grace our acts done out of agape take on a supernatural character, directed toward heaven as our supernatural end. And this explains .16, what underlies those three words “done in God.”

VII. Conclusion

What do Calvinists lose by not believing in the possibility of merit? They lose merit, since by not believing that they can merit, they do not strive to merit. So what? They still can possibly go to heaven if they die as Calvinists in invincible ignorance of the truth of the Catholic Church and the necessity of entering into full communion with her, so what does it really matter?

Satan does everything he can to rob God of glory, and he does this in many ways. If he cannot lead a soul away from faith in Christ, he robs God of glory by robbing Christ’s saints of glory, by deceiving them into denying the doctrine of merit. And the consequence of this deception is that these believers are eternally robbed of merit they otherwise would have attained, had they believed the orthodox teaching of Scripture and the Church concerning merit. In this way, they are eternally robbed of the eternal happiness and joy they could have had, and would have had, had they lived a more righteous and holy life in love for God. If merit did not eternally matter, God would not have given us this time of probation. So every loss of possible merit eternally matters. The Christian whose works are burned up, and yet is saved, though he could have done many good or great works for Christ, suffers a great loss because he suffers an eternal loss. The Church thereby suffers an eternal loss. And most of all, the glory of God suffers an eternal loss, for if our obedience, sacrifice, and suffering for His sake is for the greater glory of God, then our laziness, apathy, and dissipation detracts from His glory.

Pride is rightly noted as the chief of the seven deadly sins. We are most effectively tempted to pride when it is covered in self-deprecation. And what could be more self-deprecating than claiming to give all the glory to God by denying that believers can merit anything from God? But such a denial, by going against the teaching of the Church Fathers and the Magisterium Christ established for His Church, exalts one’s own interpretation Scripture over that of the Church, and therefore over Christ Himself. By such pride, Satan seeks ever to rob God of eternal glory. But we must resist him, and humble ourselves like children, to trust Christ by trusting His Church over our own judgments. Only by such humility is faith possible.

Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam

1. See “Why Calvin did not Recognize the Distinction Between Mortal and Venial Sin,” where I explain why conceiving righteousness in terms of law-keeping is a deficient way of understanding righteousness.
2. See “Protestant Objections to the Catholic Doctrines of Original Justice and Original Sin.”
3. See “A Parable for Philosophers.”
4. See “Lawrence Feingold on Sanctifying Grace and Actual Grace.

Lawrence Feingold

Lecture: The Mystery of Grace (October 19, 2011)

The Nature of Grace (1′)

Old Testament foreshadowing of the Holy Spirit’s indwelling (1′)
New Testament fulfillment of the Jewish feast of Sukkot (2′)
Grace is the heart of the gospel (7′)
Why we need sanctifying grace to reach our supernatural end (9′)
External means and internal means (12′)
The various meanings of the term ‘grace’ (15′)
Sanctifying grace: an infused supernatural gift that makes us favorable to God as sharers in his own divine nature (17′)

Grace and nature: grace is doubly gratuitous (25′)

Why grace is above what is due to nature

The Love of God is the source of grace (35′)

We receive a greater gift on the day of our baptism than on the day of our conception.
Some receive more grace than do others; those given more grace are given more to be a source to others. (39′)

The grace given to Mary (41′)

John Paul II’s encyclical: The Mother of the Redeemer

Sanctifying grace as a participation in the divine nature and divine filiation (43′)

Sanctifying grace and adoption (48′)

The theological virtues that come with sanctifying grace: faith, hope, charity (50′)

Nature –> Powers –> Actions
Sanctifying grace is an elevation of human nature by participation in the divine nature.
Theological virtues are elevations of human powers by infused supernatural inclinations.
Actual grace is the supernatural movement from God through which, with our free cooperation, we perform acts ordered to a supernatural end.

Blasphemy against the Holy Spirit (58′)

The theological virtue of charity (61′)

Questions and Answers:

(1) What form of grace motivates us to repent, to receive the sacrament of penance? (1′)

(2) Can grace be created, or is it infinite? (1′)

(3) Was the giving to humans of the divine life shown in other ways than just in Scripture, saying that there is an afterlife for the Jews? (9′)

(4) Is confirmation a second seed after baptism? (13′)

(5) Can the theological virtues be compared to the Trinity in that one proceeds from the other? (14′)

(6) In Romans 4:18, St. Paul is talking about Abraham, and it says that in hope he believed against hope, that he should become the father of many nations. What does it mean that he “believed against hope”? (15′)

(7) It would seem that true union with God implies participation, which also implies grace in the second sense, that is, an effect in us. Could you contrast this briefly with the Protestant view that grace is only divine favor? (17′)

(8) What is the relation between the union we have with the Holy Spirit through sanctifying grace, and the union we have with Christ in the Mystical Body? (25′)

(9) Is there a natural favor that is God’s favor towards us because of our human nature? (27′)

(10) Do the saints in heaven grow in charity? (29′)

(11) How does the doctrine of sanctifying grace avoid fusion, that is, the swallowing up of human nature by the divine nature? (30′)

(12) When then does St. Paul mean when he says that in Christ we are “new creatures”? (35′)

(13) Some Eastern Orthodox deny the concept of created grace, claiming that there is only uncreated grace (i.e. the Holy Spirit). Why couldn’t sanctifying grace merely be the Holy Spirit indwelling, without any created grace? (36′)

(14) When you said that we participate in the filial love between Christ and the Father it sounded like you were saying that we participate primarily in the Person of the Holy Spirit. How does that relate to participation in the divine nature? (38′)

(15) How does one know that he is acting in true fraternal charity rather than simply out of natural impulse to generosity? (44′)

(16) If a man has grown older than the age of reason, but has not been baptized, and has not committed a mortal sin, what is the state of his soul with respect to God? (45′)

Lecture: Actual Grace and Our Cooperation (October 26, 2011)

The Distinction between Sanctifying Grace and Actual Grace (1′)

Sanctifying grace (also called habitual grace)
Actual grace (transient divine aid, a divine impulse/movement enabling us to accomplish an action leading to salvation or sanctification)

The distinction between these two types of grace is explained in the Catechism of the Catholic Church: (6′)

The grace of Christ is the gratuitous gift that God makes to us of his own life, infused by the Holy Spirit into our soul to heal it of sin and to sanctify it. It is the sanctifying or deifying grace received in Baptism. … Sanctifying grace is an habitual gift, a stable and supernatural disposition that perfects the soul itself to enable it to live with God, to act by his love. Habitual grace, the permanent disposition to live and act in keeping with God’s call, is distinguished from actual graces which refer to God’s interventions, whether at the beginning of conversion or in the course of the work of sanctification. (CCC 1999-2000)

The distinction between actual grace and sanctifying grace explained by the distinction between efficient causes and formal causes. (9′)
Why actual grace must come before sanctifying grace. (11′)
Why we need actual grace after receiving sanctifying grace. (13′)
How infants can receive sanctifying grace without first receiving actual grace. (14′)

St. Thomas Aquinas explains the distinction between actual grace and sanctifying grace: (17′)

[M]an is aided by God’s gratuitous will in two ways: first, inasmuch as man’s soul is moved by God to know or will or do something, and in this way the gratuitous effect in man is not a quality, but a movement of the soul; for “motion is the act of the mover in the moved.” Secondly, man is helped by God’s gratuitous will, inasmuch as a habitual gift is infused by God into the soul; and for this reason, that it is not fitting that God should provide less for those He loves, that they may acquire supernatural good, than for creatures, whom He loves that they may acquire natural good. Now He so provides for natural creatures, that not merely does He move them to their natural acts, but He bestows upon them certain forms and powers, which are the principles of acts, in order that they may of themselves be inclined to these movements, and thus the movements whereby they are moved by God become natural and easy to creatures, according to Wisdom 8:1: “she . . . ordereth all things sweetly.” Much more therefore does He infuse into such as He moves towards the acquisition of supernatural good, certain forms or supernatural qualities, whereby they may be moved by Him sweetly and promptly to acquire eternal good; and thus the gift of grace is a quality. (Summa Theologica I-II q. 110, a. 2.)

The Nature of Actual Grace

God gives actual grace to all persons, but does not give sanctifying grace to all persons. (20′)
Actual grace is for the sake of sanctifying grace; sanctifying grace is more important than actual grace. (22′)
Once we have sanctifying grace, then actual grace is for the sake of growing in sanctifying grace. (23′)

Two Kinds of Actual Grace: Operative Grace and Cooperative Grace (25′)

Operative grace (26′)
Cooperative grace (29′)

Example of St. Paul on the road to Damascus (31′)
Example of Zacchaeus (33′)

Actual grace is resistible (35′)

Example of St. Augustine’s conversion.
Operative grace cannot be blocked; it is efficacious by its very nature.
But we can refuse to cooperate with actual grace, and therefore block cooperative grace, which is not efficacious of itself alone. (37′)

St. Augustine writes: (39′)

For He who first works in us the power to will is the same who cooperates in bringing this work to perfection in those who will it. Accordingly, the Apostle says: “I am convinced of this, that he who has begun a good work in you will bring it to perfection until the day of Christ Jesus” (Phil. 1:6). God, then, works in us, without our cooperation, the power to will, but once we begin to will, and do so in a way that brings us to act, then it is that He cooperates with us. But if He does not work in us the power to will or does not cooperate in our act of willing, we are powerless to perform good works of a salutary nature. (Grace and Free Will, 17.33)

Cooperative grace requires a certain initiative on our part, a self-moving (43′)

Example of Mary freely consenting. (44′)

If we consent to actual grace, God receives the glory. If we resist actual grace, we are to blame. (45′)

St. Thomas Aquinas (49′)

Hence in that effect in which our mind is moved and does not move, but in which God is the sole mover, the operation is attributed to God, and it is with reference to this that we speak of “operating grace.” But in that effect in which our mind both moves and is moved, the operation is not only attributed to God, but also to the soul; and it is with reference to this that we speak of “cooperating grace.” Now there is a double act in us. First, there is the interior act of the will, and with regard to this act the will is a thing moved, and God is the mover; and especially when the will, which hitherto willed evil, begins to will good. And hence, inasmuch as God moves the human mind to this act, we speak of operating grace. But there is another, exterior act; and since it is commanded by the will, as was shown above (Question 17, Article 9) the operation of this act is attributed to the will. And because God assists us in this act, both by strengthening our will interiorly so as to attain to the act, and by granting outwardly the capability of operating, it is with respect to this that we speak of cooperating grace. Hence after the aforesaid words Augustine subjoins: “He operates that we may will; and when we will, He cooperates that we may perfect.” And thus if grace is taken for God’s gratuitous motion whereby He moves us to meritorious good, it is fittingly divided into operating and cooperating grace. (Summa Theologica I-II q. 111, a. 2.)

Operative grace also called prevenient (or antecedent) grace; cooperative grace also called subsequent (or consequent) grace (51′)

Revelation 3:20 “Behold, I stand at the door and knock ….” (53′)
John 6:44 “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him.” (55′)
Parable of the sower (58′)
Hardening of the heart (59′)
Psalm 95:8, Jeremiah 17:23

Denying these two kinds of actual grace leads to two heresies: (62′)

Semipelagianism errs by denying the necessity of operative grace
Lutheranism errs by denying the possibility of cooperative grace (i.e. treating all grace as operative grace).

Pelagianism (62′)

Reduced grace to supernatural instruction

St. Augustine: The necessity of actual grace moving us inwardly, not merely through external [supernatural] instruction. (67′)

Canons condemning Pelagianism (68′)

At the Council of Carthage: Denzinger 104-105
Council of Trent, Session 6, Canons 1-3

The principle of proportionality (69′)

Semipelagianism (71′)

Denzinger 373, 375

Questions and Answers

(1) What is the work of grace in infant baptism? It doesn’t look as though it can do any more than get rid of original sin, and yet original sin’s grip on a child seems small. (1′)

(2) Does the sanctifying grace received by the infant in baptism make him more disposed to receive and respond to subsequent actual graces? (2′)

(3) If one has committed a mortal sin, or is estranged from the Church, how does one come into (or ensure that he is in) a state of grace? (6′)

(4) Does God give everyone sufficient grace to make an act of perfect contrition? (12′)

(5) One can receive many positive or good inspirations in a day. How do you discern whether they are operative graces you should cooperate with or just a good idea you have in mind? (14′)

(6) In purgatory the souls are being purified by fire, for nothing unclean can enter. Are the souls there receiving God’s chisel, His operative grace? Is grace at work in purgatory, or is it beyond that? (21′)

(7) How do Jewish people see grace? (24′)

(8) It’s been said that we can only receive grace in sacraments if we are properly disposed. So is proper disposition the same as not resisting grace? (29′)

(9) Are temptations negative graces? (32′)

(10) Could a good person be held at a given level because of God’s plan, or are they stuck at a given level because they are not corresponding? (33′)

(11) Are we accountable for the graces that we did not cooperate with, given that we are in a state of grace when when we die? How does the tepid soul respond to grace? (37′)

What I say below in reply to the Protestant objections presupposes that the reader has already read the previous two posts related to original justice and original sin, and listened to the lectures embedded in each: “Nature, Grace, and Man’s Supernatural End: Feingold, Kline, and Clark” and “Lawrence Feingold on Original Justice and Original Sin.”

Outline:
Martin Luther
John Calvin
Francis Turretin
Charles Hodge
Gordon Clark
Peter Leithart

On October 5, Professor Lawrence Feingold of Ave Maria University’s Institute for Pastoral Theology and author of The Natural Desire to See God According to St. Thomas and his Interpreters and the three volume series The Mystery of Israel and the Church gave a lecture titled “Original Sin and Its Consequences” to the Association of Hebrew Catholics. The audio recordings of the lecture and of the following Q&A, along with outlines of each, are available below. In the lecture, Professor Feingold provided a critique of both Luther and Calvin’s objections to the Catholic doctrine concerning original justice and original sin. Below I will present those objections in the context of his lecture, and then present additional Reformed objections to the Catholic doctrine from Turretin, Hodge, Clark, and Leihart.

Lawrence Feingold

Lecture:

1. Summary of original justice and original sin (1′)

What Adam and Eve lost (7′)
The Biblical witness to original sin (10′)
The Council of Trent on original sin (19′)

2. Errors Concerning Grace and Original Sin (21′ 30″)

Fundamentally, there are two opposite errors regarding original sin. One is an error of deficiency, in which original sin is treated as less damaging to human nature than it actually is. That is the error of Pelagius. The other is the error of exaggeration, in which original sin is treated as more damaging to human nature than it actually is. That is the error of Luther, Calvin and the Protestants who followed them. Nevertheless, both errors are based on a failure to distinguish grace from nature. When grace and nature are conflated, then attempting to explain man’s capacity to do what man can do only by grace results in an exaggeration of the power of human nature, and thus Pelagianism. Likewise, when grace and nature are conflated, then attempting to explain the effect of the loss of grace results in an undervaluation and pessimism concerning nature, namely, the notion that nature itself has been corrupted.

The Error of Pelagius: Minimization of Original Sin (22′ 40″)
The charges against Pelagius in AD 411 were that he taught the following:

1. Even if Adam had not sinned, he would have died.
2. Adam’s sin harmed only himself, not the human race.
3. Children just born are in the same state as Adam before the fall.
4. The whole human race neither dies through Adam’s sin or death, nor rises again through the resurrection of Christ.
5. The [Mosaic] Law is as good a guide to heaven as the Gospel.
6. Even before the advent of Christ there were men who were without sin.

Pelagius’s errors were condemned in the Council of Carthage (AD 418) which was approved by Pope Zosimus:

Can. 1. All the bishops established in the sacred synod of the Carthaginian Church have decided that whoever says that Adam, the first man, was made mortal, so that, whether he sinned or whether he did not sin, he would die in body, that is he would go out of the body not because of the merit of sin but by reason of the necessity of nature, let him be anathema.

Can. 2. Likewise it has been decided that whoever says that infants fresh from their mothers’ wombs ought not to be baptized, or says that they are indeed baptized unto the remission of sins, but that they draw nothing of the original sin from Adam, which is expiated in the bath of regeneration, whence it follows that in regard to them the form of baptism “unto the remission of sins” is understood as not true, but as false, let him be anathema. Since what the Apostle says: “Through one man sin entered into the world (and through sin death), and so passed into all men, in whom all have sinned” [cf. Rom. 5:12], must not to be understood otherwise than as the Catholic Church spread everywhere has always understood it. For on account of this rule of faith even infants, who in themselves thus far have not been able to commit any sin, are therefore truly baptized unto the remission of sins, so that that which they have contracted from generation may be cleansed in them by regeneration. (Denzinger 101-102)

The Council of Trent also condemned the Pelagian heresy; see paragraphs 3 and 4 in Session Five of the Council of Trent. I have discussed Session Five in greater detail in “Aquinas and Trent: Part 7.”

3. Protestant Errors on Original Sin (34′)

Here we find the opposite error with respect to original sin, namely, an exaggeration of original sin.

Martin Luther

Luther’s two principal errors with respect to original sin are as follows:

(1) Treating original sin as the complete corruption of human nature, rather than as the loss of the preternatural and supernatural gifts.

(2) Treating concupiscence (i.e. the involuntary disorder in the lower appetites) as original sin.

In the lecture Prof. Feingold evaluates two quotations from Martin Luther regarding the Catholic doctrine of original justice and original sin. In the 39th minute of his lecture, he cites the following quotation from Luther:

The scholastic statement that “the natural powers are unimpaired” is a horrible blasphemy, though it is even more horrible when they say the same about demons. If the natural powers are unimpaired, what need is there of Christ? If by nature man has good will; if he has true understanding to which, as they say, the will can naturally conform itself; what is it, then, that was lost in Paradise through sin and that had to be restored through the Son of God alone? Yet in our day, men who seem to be masters of theology defend the statement that the natural powers are unimpaired, that is, that the will is good. Even though through malice it occasionally wills and thinks something besides what is right and good, they attribute this to the malice of men, not to the will as it is in itself. (Luther’s commentary on Psalm 51, in Luther’s Works, vol. 12, 308.)

Luther’s argument here is this:

(1) If the natural powers of man are unimpaired, then there would be no need of Christ to restore what was lost in Paradise.
(2) But of course there is need for Christ to restore what was lost in Paradise.

Therefore

(3) The natural powers of man must be impaired.

This argument is not sound, because the first premise is false. The greatest gift Adam and Eve lost through their sin was the supernatural gift of sanctifying grace, which is restored to us through Christ. The need for Christ is due to the need for the supernatural gift of sanctifying grace in order to attain the supernatural end to which God has called us; not for any healing of human nature per se.¹

A few minutes later in the lecture (43′), Prof. Feingold examines another quotation from Luther, who wrote:

The scholastics argue that original righteousness was not a part of man’s nature but, like some adornment, was added to man as a gift, as when someone places a wreath on a pretty girl. The wreath is certainly not a part of the virgin’s nature; it is something apart from her nature. It came from outside and can be removed again without any injury to her nature. Therefore they maintain about man and about demons that although they have lost their original righteousness, their natural endowments have nevertheless remained pure, just as they were created in the beginning. But this idea must be shunned like poison, for it minimizes original sin.

Let us rather maintain that righteousness was not a gift which came from without, separate from man’s nature, but that it was truly part of his nature, so that it was Adam’s nature to love God, to believe God, to know God, etc. These things were just as natural for Adam as it is natural for the eyes to receive light. But because you may correctly say that nature has been damaged if you render an eye defective by inflicting a wound, so, after man has fallen from righteousness into sin, it is correct and truthful to say that our natural endowments are not perfect but are corrupted by sin. For just as it is the nature of the eye to see, so it was the nature of reason and will in Adam to know God, to trust God, and to fear God. Since it is a fact that this has now been lost, who is so foolish as to say that our natural endowments are still perfect? And yet nothing was more common and received more general acceptance in the schools than this thesis. But how much more foolish it is to make this assertion about the demons, about whom Christ says that they did not stand in the truth (John 8:44) and whom we know to be the bitterest enemies of Christ and of the church!

Therefore the perfect natural endowments in man were the knowledge of God, faith, fear, etc. These Satan has corrupted through sin; just as leprosy poisons the flesh, so the will and reason have become depraved through sin, and man not only does not love God any longer but flees from Him, hates Him, and desires to be and live without Him. (LW 1:164-165)

The only reason Luther gives here for rejecting the Church’s teaching concerning original righteousness is that “it minimizes original sin.” But to a person who is exaggerating original sin, the truth concerning original sin appears as a minimization. Sacred theology is based on divinely revealed truths; sacred theology is not a philosophical construct to be determined by how evil we think original sin is, or how good we think the gospel must be. Sacred theology is not rightly constructed according to our own opinions about how evil or good something is, but only according to what Christ has revealed through His Apostles. What is necessary in order to determine what is an exaggeration, what is orthodox, and what is a minimization, is an objective standard. And that standard is not Luther’s interpretation of Scripture; it is the Apostolic teaching as mediated to us through the authoritative determinations of the Church’s Magisterium.

Martin Luther

Second, the loss of sanctifying grace is an infinite loss, because it is the loss of participation in the divine nature, which is infinite in intellect and will and every perfection.² By contrast, a corruption of human nature is a finite loss, because what is lost is only finite. So, even according to the philosophical criterion Luther provides, original sin according to the Catholic doctrine is far more evil than original sin according to Luther’s theology. Luther’s theory therefore minimizes original sin far more than does the Catholic doctrine concerning original sin.

Luther urges his reader to believe that it was Adam’s nature to love God, believe God, to know God, just as natural for Adam as it is natural for the eyes to receive light. Luther reasons from the fact that Adam knew and loved God prior to the fall, to the conclusion that doing so was “truly part of his nature.” The problem with this claim, as was pointed out in “Nature, Grace, and Man’s Supernatural End: Feingold, Kline, and Clark,” is that it makes man by his very nature into God, and thus denies the Creator-creature distinction. God cannot create another God, because God by His very nature is uncreated. So any created being cannot in its primary nature be God; it can at most participate in the divine nature through a condecension by God to grant the creature the gift of participating in the divine nature. But if man by his very nature saw God, knew God, and loved God, this would entail that the Beatific Vision is intrinsic to man by his very nature. But the Beatific Vision can be intrinsic only to God, because the Beatific Vision is God’s vision of Himself. Hence Luther’s theology is fatally flawed here, by positing that God can make a creature that has as its primary nature something that can be had intrinsically only by God.

Luther argues that since the demons are the bitterest enemies of Christ and His Church, that therefore their natural endowments must no longer be perfect. And therefore the nature of fallen man must likewise have been corrupted through sin. But again, Luther’s conclusion does not follow. The confirmation of the demons in opposition to God as a result of their free choice, as well as the confirmation of the righteous angels in obedience to God as a result of their free choice, is due to the irreversibility of angelic choice, because they do not reason discursively as do we. Hence the inflexibility of the demons’ will against God does not entail any loss of their natural endowments or corruption of their very nature.³ Luther mistakenly treats the loss of the supernatural and preternatural gifts, as a corruption of man’s nature.

Professor Feingold then briefly discusses Luther’s second error: identifying original sin with concupiscence. (49′ 50″) I have discussed this error in more detail in “Aquinas and Trent: Part 7.”

John Calvin (51′ 20″)

John Calvin wrote the following:

Original sin, then, may be defined as a hereditary corruption and depravity of our nature, extending to all the parts of the soul, which first makes us obnoxious to the wrath of God, and then produces in us works which in Scripture are termed works of the flesh. . . . Hence, those who have defined original sin as the want of the original righteousness which we ought to have had, though they substantially comprehend the whole case, do not sufficiently enough express its power and energy. For our nature is not only utterly devoid of goodness, but so prolific in all kinds of evil, that it can never be idle. Those who term it concupiscence use a word not very inappropriate, provided it were added . . . that everything which is in man, from the intellect to the will, from the soul even to the flesh, is defiled and pervaded with this concupiscence; or, to express it more briefly, that the whole man is in himself nothing else than concupiscence. (Institutes, II. 1.8.)

John Calvin

Calvin claims that the Catholic teaching does “not sufficiently express” the power and energy of our fallen condition. For Calvin, “the whole man is in himself nothing else than concupiscence.” Calvin reaches this conclusion in part by his experience of concupiscence within himself. Calvin’s mistake is the opposite conclusion drawn from the same false premise we saw in Pelagianism, namely, the implicit assumption that there is no distinction between what is natural and supernatural. Without sanctifying grace, everything man does is not ordered to his supernatural end. Without sanctifying grace, man does nothing for the sake of loving God as Father. In that respect, Calvin is right about fallen man (apart from sanctifying grace) continually falling short of agape, because fallen men apart from sanctifying grace have no agape. But Calvin concludes from that that human nature is entirely corrupted. That conclusion would only follow if loving God as Father were natural to man, and were not a supernatural gift given in addition to man’s nature as rational animal. In actuality fallen man can do many good thing with the natural virtues, ordered to man’s natural end. Ignoring the natural/supernatural distinction sets up the false dilemma that if man is not loving God as Father, then human nature is entirely corrupted. But recognizing the natural/supernatural distinction shows that dilemma to be a false dilemma, because in that case while man no longer loves God as Father, he nevertheless retains his natural goodness as man made in the image of God, and capable of the natural virtues described by Aristotle in his Nicomachean Ethics. The capacity for natural virtues is not merely the result of “common grace” added to a completely corrupted human nature; the capacity for natural virtues is intrinsic to human nature, which in itself remains uncorrupted after the fall.

4. Concupiscence and the Four Wounds of Sin (53′ 30″)⁴

The Patristic interpretation of the parable of the Good Samaritan (62′ 50″)
The Teaching of the Council of Trent (67′ 12″)

5. Modern Pelagianism: De-mythologizing Genesis (68′ 25″)

6. Modern Jewish thought on Original Sin (80′)

7. Why did God permit Original Sin? (83′)

Q&A:

1. Why did God give Adam and Eve such power to cause all the rest of us to lose their gifts, that we had nothing to say about it? Why didn’t everybody get a chance? (1′)

2. Luther thinks that the condition of fallen men is to hate God and to desire to be without Him. If the Catholic alternative is only the condition of concupiscence, then why don’t most people want to know God and worship God? How do we explain the universal running away from God unless God gives grace? (4′ 50″)

3. What is wrong precisely with Calvin’s claim that the whole man is in himself nothing else than concupiscence? (9′ 29″)

4. Please explain natural vs. supernatural goodness. (11′ 45″)

5. Please explain the difference between paradise and heaven. (14′ 57″)

6. In the state prior to original sin (i.e. in original justice) was there no arena for spiritual combat? (17′ 44″)

7. The Catholic Church does seem to show more glory and good coming from God’s “Plan B.” (20′ 14″)

8. The instinctive Protestant reaction to what you taught tonight is that the Catholic Church has downplayed the effects of the fall. Apart from the errors, is it likely that the Church has understated the wounds of sin in practice? (20′ 56″)

9. In psychology there is a term ‘projection’ which means you see in others what you do yourself. Could Luther’s seeing of total depravity and concupiscence in man have possibly been projection? (22′ 55″)

The mp3s can be downloaded here.

Additional Reformed Objections to the Catholic doctrine of Original Sin

Francis Turretin (1623–1687)

In the first volume of his Institutes of Elenctic Theology, the seventeenth century Reformed theologian Francis Turretin has a rather in-depth discussion on these questions. His Ninth Question reads: “Was man created in puris naturalibus, or could he have been so created? We deny against the Pelagians and the Scholastics.” In his answer he writes,

Where two things immediately opposed belong to any subject, one or other of the two must necessarily be in it. Now righteousness and sin are predicated of man as their fit subject and are directly opposed to each other. Therefore one or the other must necessarily be in him; nor can there be a man who is not either righteous or a sinner. (Fifth Topic, Q.9, para. 6.)

Turretin’s argument is that man cannot be neutral; he must be either righteous or sinful. Therefore, God could not possibly create man in a state of puris naturalibus, neither sinful nor righteousness. Turretin’s conclusion would follow only if there were no difference between the natural and the supernatural, and hence between natural righteousness and supernatural righteousness. But there is a difference between natural righteousness and supernatural righteousness. (See question #4 in the Q&A here.) Therefore it was possible for God to make Adam in a state of natural righteousness but without supernatural righteousness (i.e. without sanctifying grace and agape).

A few paragraphs later Turretin writes:

Since the very want of original righteousness is sin, man cannot be conceived as destitute of it without being conceived to be a sinner (especially since that defect would not be a mere negation, but a privation of the rectitude that ought to be i him. (Fifth Topic, Q.9, para. 10.)

His argument is very simple. The premise is: The very lack of original righteousness is sin. The conclusion is: Man cannot be conceived as destitute of original righteousness without being conceived as a sinner. This is not a sound argument, because the premise is false. Turretin makes this claim (i.e. the first premise) because he fails to distinguish between natural righteousness and supernatural righteousness. He therefore assumes that to be without original righteousness is necessarily to be a sinner. But in actuality, a person could be without supernatural righteousness, while having natural righteousness and therefore not a sinner. So Turretin’s argument presupposes that there is no distinction between natural righteousness and supernatural righteousness. And that presupposition not only conflates nature and grace, it also begs the question (i.e. assumes precisely what he is trying to show).

In Question 10, he writes:

First, this image (negatively, kat’ arsin) does not consist in a participation of the divine essence (as if the nature of man was a shadow [aposkiasmation] of the divine and a certain particle of the divine breath, as the Gentiles hold). For in this way the Son of God only is “the image of the invisible God” (Col. 1:15) — the essential and natural, and no mortal can attain to it because the finite cannot be a partaker of the infinite. And if we are said by grace to be “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Pet. 1:4), this is not to be understood of an essential, formal and intrinsic participation, but an analogical, accidental and extrinsic participation (by reason of the effects analogous to the divine perfections which are produced in us by the Spirit after the image of God). (Fifth Topic, Q.10. para. 4.)

Francis Turretin

Here Turretin denies that man can participate intrinsically in the divine nature. For Turretin, man participates in the divine nature only in the sense that the effects of sanctification in us are analogous to the divine perfections. For example, patience within the sanctified man is like the patience in God; mercy in the sanctified man is like the mercy in God. Love in the sanctified man is like the love in God. And so on. The problem with this notion is that it reduces heaven to Abraham’s bosom (Lk. 16:22-23). The happiness, patience, mercy, and love within men in Abraham’s bosom is like that of the happiness, patience, mercy, and love in God. And yet Abraham’s bosom is not heaven; Christ descended to the dead, and when He ascended He led a host of captives.⁵ For that matter, any happiness, patience, mercy, and love had presently among pagans is by analogy like that of God. So they too participate in the divine nature, in Turretin’s sense. In this way, Turretin’s interpretation of 2 Peter 1:4 evacuates the gospel of the supernatural happiness which is the Beatific Vision, and of the sanctification unique to those having sanctifying grace, agape, and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.

Turretin’s eleventh question is “Was original righteousness natural or supernatural?” His answer: “The former we affirm, the latter we deny against the Romanists.” He gives six reasons in his defense of his answer. I will examine them each in turn.

The reasons are: (1) Because goodness and rectitude are natural to man in a state of innocence, then original righteousness was also (which is made up of these). As was the relation of goodness to the remaining creatures, so also was the relation to man. Now goodness was natural to the remaining creatures (Gen. 1:31); therefore, also to man. The same is true with regard to rectitude, since it is ascribed to man from his creation as opposed to what is adventitious (Ecc. 7:29). Therefore it must have been natural. (Fifth Topic, Q.11. para. 7.)

His argument here that original righteousness was natural, and not supernatural, is as follows:

(1) Goodness was natural to the remaining creatures.
(2) Whatever was natural to the remaining creatures is natural to man.

Therefore

(3) Goodness was natural to man. [from (1) and (2)]
(4) Rectitude is described in Scripture (Eccl. 7:29) as something ascribed to man from his creation, not as something added from the outside.

Therefore,

(5) Rectitude must have been natural to man. [from (4)]
(6) Goodness and rectitude are natural to man in a state of innocence. [from (3) and (5)]
(7) Original righteousness is made up of goodness and rectitude.

Therefore,

(8) Original righteousness is natural to man in a state of innocence. [from (6) and (7)]

Regarding the first premise, the goodness natural to the other creatures is natural goodness. But the presence of natural goodness in man does not preclude the simultaneous presence of supernatural goodness. Likewise, if the rectitude referred to in Eccl. 7:29 is natural rectitude, this does not preclude the simultaneous presence of supernatural righteousness. Moreover, the verse does not require that the rectitude it refers to is not supernatural. The verse is equally compatible with the righteousness referred to being supernatural righteousness. But even if we grant that the rectitude referred to in Eccl. 7:29 is natural rectitude, the argument at most only shows the presence of natural goodness and natural rectitude in the pre-Fall condition. It does not show the absence of supernatural righteousness. Second, the argument begs the question (i.e. presupposes what it is attempting to demonstrate) in premise (7), when it defines original righteousness as the [natural] goodness and [natural] rectitude that are natural to man in the state of innocence. And every other premise of the argument is fully compatible with the truth that original righteousness is supernatural. So the argument does not show that original righteousness was natural, and not supernatural.

Turretin’s second reason for believing that original righteousness was natural and not supernatural, is:

(2) Whatever is transmitted to posterity must be natural; righteousness was to have been propagated to posterity if man had remained innocent (since indeed he would beget a like to himself. (Fifth Topic, Q.11. para. 8.)

The problem with that argument is that the first premise begs the question (i.e., presupposes precisely what it is trying to show). If original righteousness is supernatural, and would have been transmitted to posterity through procreation, then it is false that “whatever is transmitted to posterity must be natural.” In his first premise Turretin simply asserts a claim that would be true only if the Catholic doctrine were false. And that provides no reason to believe that the Catholic doctrine is false; it merely presupposes it. So this reason too does not show that original righteousness was natural and not supernatural.

His third reason is:

(3) Original sin, which is derived from parents to their children, is natural. Hence they are called “by nature children of wrath” (Eph. 2:3). Therefore the original righteousness opposed to it must also be natural. (Fifth Topic, Q.11. para. 8.)

Here Turretin claims that since Scripture says that we were “by nature children of wrath” therefore original sin is natural. And therefore original righteousness, which is opposed to original sin, must also be natural. But he has merely assumed that “by nature children of wrath” is referring to human nature as such, rather than to human nature in the state of having rejected God and His grace. He has merely assumed that original sin is natural in the sense of what the human person (after Adam’s sin) is, rather than is natural in the sense of what the human person (after Adam’s sin) ordinarily does not receive through procreation, namely, sanctifying grace. If “by nature children of wrath” refers to human nature in the state of having rejected God and His grace, then it does not follow that original sin is natural in the sense of being now intrinsic to human nature. And therefore it does not follow that original righteousness must have been natural.

Moreover, even if natural righteousness did belong to Adam and Eve in the pre-fall state, it does not follow that Adam and Eve had no supernatural righteousness. So even if the argument showed that Adam and Eve had natural righteousness, then the conclusion that original righteousness was natural and not supernatural is a non sequitur.

Turretin’s fourth reason is:

(4) The remains of the divine image are called natural because they are the work of the law (which the Gentiles do by nature, Rom. 2:14); therefore the whole image itself. (Fifth Topic, Q.11. para. 8.)

This argument goes as follows:

(1) The remains of the divine image are called natural because they are the work of the law (which the Gentiles do by nature).
(2) If the remains of something are natural to it, then the whole was natural.

Therefore

(3) The whole image itself was natural. [from (1) and (2)
(4) Original righteousness was part of the image.

Therefore,

(5) Original righteousness was natural. [from (3) and (4)]

The problem with this argument is that premise (3) begs the question (i.e., presupposes precisely what is in question). In Catholic theology, man has not lost the image of God; man lost the supernatural and preternatural gifts, but these were not natural to man. Man bears the image of God by nature. So every fallen man still bears the image of God as a rational creature by nature. So this argument too does not show that original righteousness was natural and not supernatural.

His fifth reason is a bit longer:

(5) If original righteousness were supernatural, then there would have been natural to Adam the privation of righteousness and all that must necessarily be present in a capacious subject, from which righteousness is absent (viz., ignorance, propensity to vice, concupiscence of the flesh, rebellion of the inferior against the superior part and other things of like kind — called by Bellarmine “diseases and languors of nature”). And yet this cannot be said without ascribing the same to the author of nature who consequently must be considered the author of sin. For as to Bellarmine’s reply that the concupiscence (which is now the punishment of sin) was then only a weakness and disease of nature (which was not from God, but from the condition of the material, as an ironmonger is not the author of the rust which the sword made by him contracts), it does not solve the difficulty. For (a) it is taken for granted that there was a weakness and disease in the sound nature; (b) it was assumed that this disease was not sin (which it is certain that concupiscence and headlong propensity to vice contended against the law of God, was the cause of many sins and so must be itself sin). (c) The comparison of the iron worker does not apply here because rust follows the material of iron (which the workman does not make, but finds). However God made the very matter of man and indeed (according to Bellarmine) such as this disorder and rebellion would necessarily follow. Hence, as he was the author of the material, he must be called the author of that defect which necessarily follows it. Thus there will be cast upon the most wise Creator either unskillfullness or impotency because he either did not foresee the taint of concupiscence necessarily arising from the condition of the material, and the whole disorder of the flesh against the spirit or could not remove it without injuring a most noble work. Both of these are equally impious and blasphemous. (Fifth Topic, Q.11. para. 9.)

His argument here goes like this:

(1) If original righteousness were supernatural, then ignorance, propensity to vice, concupiscence, and absence of [supernatural] righteousness, would have been natural to Adam.
(2) But ignorance, propensity to vice, concupiscence, and absence of [supernatural] righteousness could be due only either to the condition of the material, or to God Himself.
(3) Any negative or limitation due to the material would imply that God is either unskilled or impotent.
(4) But God is neither unskilled nor impotent.

Therefore,

(5) To say that ignorance, propensity to vice, concupiscence, and absence of [supernatural] righteousness were natural to Adam makes God the author of sin.

This argument is unsound because premise (3) is false. The limitations intrinsic to finite natures as such do not imply that God is unskilled or impotent; they are intrinsic to the finite natures as such, just as two cannot be greater than three. This is a limitation that follows upon the nature of two, and three, respectively. Likewise, matter is not spirit, and cannot be spirit. Matter cannot in itself be ordered to the good, as is spirit. This is a limitation that follows upon the nature of matter as such, and spirit as such, respectively. So this fifth reason does not show that original righteousness was natural and not supernatural.

Turretin’s sixth reason is this:

(6) The natural end of man ought to suppose natural means for obtaining it. Happiness was the natural end of man, therefore it ought to have natural means (which could be no other than original righteousness). (Fifth Topic, Q.11. para. 10.)

The argument runs like this:

(1) The natural end of man ought to suppose natural means for obtaining it.
(2) Happiness was the natural end of man.

Therefore,

(3) Happiness ought to have a natural means. [from (1) and (2)]
(4) But the means of happiness could be nothing other than original righteousness.

Therefore,

(5) Original righteousness must have been a natural means. [from (3) and (4)]

The problem with this argument is that it begs the question (i.e. assumes precisely what is in question, and what it is trying to show) in premise (2), by presupposing that the happiness to which man was called was only a natural happiness, rather than the supernatural happiness which is the Beatific Vision. (I have explained above why the Beatific Vision cannot be natural to man.) If the happiness to which man was called was the supernatural happiness of the Beatific Vision, then (2) would be false, and (3) would not follow from (1) and (2), and then (5) would likewise not follow. So this argument too is no reason to believe that original righteousness was natural and not supernatural. In short, each of the six of Turretin’s reasons is not only not a good reason, but is no reason to believe that original righteousness was natural and not supernatural.

Charles Hodge (1797-1878)

Presbyterian theologian Charles Hodge wrote the following concerning the Catholic doctrine of original righteousness:

The obvious objections to the Romish doctrine that original righteousness was a supernatural gift, are, (1.) That it supposes a degrading view of the original constitution of our nature. According to this doctrine the seeds of evil were implanted in the nature of man as it came from the hands of God. It was disordered or diseased, there was about it what Bellarmin calls a morbus or languor, which needed a remedy. But this is derogatory to the justice and goodness of God, and to the express declarations of Scripture, that man, humanity, human nature, was good. (2.) This doctrine is evidently founded on the Manichean principle of the inherent evil of matter. It is because man has a material body, that this conflict between the flesh and spirit, between good and evil, is said to be unavoidable. But this is opposed to the word of God and the faith of the Church. Matter is not evil. And there is no necessary tendency to evil from the union of the soul and body which requires to be supernaturally corrected. (3.) This doctrine as to original righteousness arose out of the Semi-Pelagianism of the Church of Rome, and was designed to sustain it. The two doctrines are so related that they stand or fall together. According to the theory in question, original sin is the simple loss of original righteousness. Humanity since the fall is precisely what it was before the fall, and before the addition of the supernatural gift of righteousness. Bellarmin says: “Non magis differt status homins post lapsum Adae a statu ejusdem in puris naturalibus, quam differat spoliatus a nudo, neque deterior est humana natura, si culpam originalem detrahas, neque magis ignorantia et infirmitate laborat, quam esset et laboraret in puris naturalibus condita. Proinde corruptio naturae non ex alicujus doni naturalis carentia, neque ex alicujus malae qualitatis accessu, sed cx sola doni supernaturalis ob Adae peccatum amissione profluxit.” [The state of man after the fall of Adam differs no more from the state of the same in pure nature, than the difference of having been stripped naked, nor is human nature corrupted, if the original guilt is taken away, nor does it suffer more ignorance and weakness than he [would] in the condition of pure nature. Accordingly, the corruption of nature is not from any natural gift lacking, nor from being infected by any evil quality, but only from the supernatural gift which on account of Adam’s sin was lost.] The conflict between the flesh and spirit is normal and original, and therefore not sinful. Concupiscence, the theological term for this rebellion of the lower against the higher elements of our nature, is not of the nature of sin. Andradius (the Romish theologian against whom Chemnitz directed his Examen of the Council of Trent) lays down the principle, “quod nihil habeat rationem peccati, nisi fiat a volente et sciente,” [that nothing has the nature of sin except what is done with willing and knowing] which of course excludes concupiscence, whether in the renewed or unrenewed, from the category of sin. Hence, Bellarmin says; “Reatus est omnino inseparabilis ab eo, quod natura sua est dignum aeterna damnatione, qualem esse volunt concupiscentiam adversarii.” This concupiscence remains after baptism, or regeneration, which Romanists say, removes all sin; and therefore, not being evil in its own nature, does not detract from the merit of good works, nor render perfect obedience, and even works of supererogation on the part of the faithful, impossible. This doctrine of the supernatural character of original righteousness as held by Romanists, is therefore intimately connected with their whole theological system; and is incompatible with the Scriptural doctrines not only of the original state of man, but also of sin and redemption. It will, however, appear in the sequel, that neither the standards of the Church of Rome nor the Romish theologians are consistent in their views of original sin and its relation to the loss of original righteousness. (Systematic Theology, Volume 2, chapter 5)

Charles Hodge

Hodge offers three objections to the Catholic doctrine of original sin. His first objection is that “it supposes a degrading view of the original constitution of our nature.” He claims that the Catholic doctrine is “derogatory to the justice and goodness of God,” because it implies that human nature is not good. But Hodge is mistaken here. The Catholic doctrine does not entail that human nature is not good. In fact it affirms that human nature is good. Hodge’s mistake is his implicit assumption that if man does not have by his nature the perfections had by the angels according to their natures, then human nature is not good. But that’s a false assumption. Not having a perfection had by a greater nature does not entail that one’s own nature is defective or not good. A eagle does not have a rational nature as does a human, but that does not make eagles not good, nor is denying that they have the perfection of rationality a degrading view of their nature. Otherwise, no creatures lower than humans could exist, since their not having the human perfection of rationality would make them defective and not good. Likewise, just because humans do not by nature have the gifts that belong to angels by nature, it does not follow that human nature is not good, or that denying that those gifts are intrinsic to human nature is supposing a degrading view of human nature.

A degrading view of a nature is a view that conceives that nature as something less than it is. So the Catholic doctrine of original righteousness and original sin would be degrading to human nature only if it conceived human nature as something less than human nature actually is. But Hodge has not shown that Catholic doctrine conceives human nature as something less than it actually is. His claim that the Catholic doctrine degrades human nature presupposes that the preternatural gifts are part of human nature, and that is precisely the point in question. Therefore Hodge’s first objection is question-begging, i.e. it presupposes precisely what is in question between the Protestant and Catholic conceptions of human nature. And therefore this first objection is no objection at all.

Hodge’s second objection is that the Catholic doctrine is founded on the Manichean principle of the inherent evil of matter. For Hodge, the Catholic teaching that there is naturally a conflict between flesh and spirit is based on the Manichean notion that matter is evil. But Hodge’s claim is false. The basis for the Catholic teaching is not a Manichean notion of matter, but rather the very distinction between matter and spirit. Matter is limited in a way that spirit is not. The limitation of matter in relation to spirit is the basis for the natural conflict between matter and spirit. This very limitation on the part of matter is the reason why the human soul cannot evolve from matter, but must be created ex nihilo at the moment of conception. If matter could do everything spirit could do, the human soul could evolve out of matter.⁶

Matter in itself cannot be ordered to the universal good, but only to particular goods. All non-rational animals are not directed to the overall good by their nature, but by the governance of divine providence. They are ordered to the good, but not as such. They are ordered to the good by way of imitation, and by divine providence. Plants and [non-human] animals, for example, are not capable of directing their own actions toward the good, because they lack reason. But by their nature they are directed to particular goods (i.e. surviving, growing, flourishing, reproducing) and in this way they imitate God in certain respects, because those are imitations of His perfect being and goodness. Being ordered to the good by way of imitation is not sufficient to prevent concupiscence, because every disordered appetite is still aimed at a good, and in that respect still imitates God who is Goodness.

In His providential government of the world, God gives these creatures a place in the order of things such that their actions lead toward the good (cf. Summa Theologica I Q. 103 a.2) through increasing the good of other things (e.g. a man eating an orange) and the common good. But in this respect these creatures are not intrinsically ordered to the good as such; rather, they are ordered to the good by the order of things into which they are placed and providentially governed. The preternatural gift of integrity was part of that divinely established order by which the lower appetites were ordered to the good. Without that gift, those lower appetites are not naturally ordered to the good, but must be mastered and trained so that virtues develop in them.

Of all the material creatures, only the rational animal (i.e. the human) is directed to the overall good by his nature, because his soul has a spiritual operation independent of matter. And this is why humans, but not any other animals, are subject to the moral law — not because humans are more intelligent, because we have a spiritual faculty. This teleological difference between spirit and matter entails that without an additional gift by which the material element is directed to be subordinate to spirit, there will be disagreement between the bodily passions and reason.⁷

If matter were no less limited than spirit, nothing would differentiate matter from spirit. For that reason, the claim that matter is no less limited than is spirit is a denial of matter. It reduces to the position that matter is an illusion, and that all is spirit. And that is one form of the gnostic error. The Catholic doctrine preserves not only the goodness of matter, but also its reality.

Hodge’s third objection is that the Catholic doctrine concerning original righteousness “arose out of the Semi-Pelagianism of the Church of Rome, and was designed to sustain it.” According to Hodge, the Catholic doctrine stands or falls with Semi-Pelagianism; he writes, “The two doctrines are so related that they stand or fall together.” Responding to this objection requires briefly reviewing Semi-Pelagianism. Semi-Pelagianism is the notion that we do not need prevenient grace; we make the first move toward God, and then God responds and helps us. Semi-Pelagianism was rejected both at the second Council of Orange (cf. canon 4) and at Session Six of the Council of Trent (cf. canons 1-3).

There is no contradiction or conflict between the Catholic teaching that original righteousness was a supernatural gift, and the Catholic condemnation of the notion that without grace fallen man cannot move himself toward God as his supernatural end. In fact, Hodge has it exactly backward. The Catholic doctrine that original righteousness was a supernatural gift entails that Semi-Pelagianism is false. If original righteousness was supernatural, and was therefore directing Adam and Eve to their supernatural end, then after the fall and the loss of that supernatural gift, man cannot move himself toward that supernatural end, precisely because what is ordered only toward a natural end cannot move itself toward a supernatural end. The very reason why Adam and Eve needed the supernatural gift of sanctifying grace prior to the fall (namely, so that they could attain to the supernatural end to which God had graciously called them – see “Nature, Grace, and Man’s Supernatural End: Feingold, Kline, and Clark.” ) is the very reason why after the fall and the loss of that supernatural gift, no man can move toward that supernatural end unless God first moves them by actual grace.⁸

Gordon Clark (1902–1985)

Gordon Clark was a twentieth century Calvinist philosopher and theologian. Concerning the Catholic doctrine of original righteousness he wrote the following:

In support of the distinction [between image and likeness], Thomas [Aquinas] had already (Q. 93, Art. 1) argued that where an image exists, there must be likeness; but a likeness does not necessarily mean an image. Now, the Roman church developed this, which so far is innocuous, into something that contradicts important parts of the Biblical message. Their present view is that the image itself is rationality, created because, when, and as man was created. But after man was created, God gave him an extra gift, a donum superadditum, the likeness, defined as original righteousness. Man therefore was not strictly created righteous. Adam was at first morally neutral. Perhaps he was not even neutral. Bellarmin speaks of the original Adam, composed of body and soul, as disordered and diseased, afflicted with a morbus or languor that needed a remedy. Yet Bellarmin does not quite say that this morbus is sin; it is rather something unfortunate and less than ideal. To remedy this defect God gave the additional gift of righteousness. Adam’s fall then resulted in the loss of original righteousness, but he fell only to the neutral moral level on which he was created. In this state, because of his free will, he is able-at least in some low degree-to please God.

Obviously this view has soteriological implications. Even though the neutral state was soon defaced by voluntary sins, man without saving grace could still obey God’s commands upon occasion. After regeneration, a man could do even more than God requires. This then becomes the foundation of the Roman Catholic doctrine of the treasury of the saints. If a particular man does not himself earn a sufficient number of merits, the Pope can transfer from the saints’ accounts as many more merits as are necessary for his entrance into Heaven. One horrendous implication of all this is that although Christ’s death remains necessary to salvation, it is not sufficient. Human merit is indispensable.

However logically implicated this soteriology is, the present study should not stray too far from the image itself. Above, it was said that an assertion of a distinction between image and likeness, by itself, is not fatal. But it is not Biblical either. Scripture makes no distinction between image and likeness. Not only does the New Testament make nothing of such a distinction, even in Genesis the two words are used interchangeably. Genesis 1:27 uses the word image alone, and Genesis 5:1 uses likeness alone, though in each case the whole is intended. The likeness therefore is not an extra gadget attached to man after his creation, not a donum superadditum, like a suit of clothes that he could take off. It is rather the unitary person. (“The Biblical Doctrine of Man,” (pp. 12-14) )

Gordon Clark

Clark claims that if original righteousness was a donum superadditum, then it follows that man was not strictly created righteousness, but created morally neutral. Thus after the fall man was able “at least in some low degree” to please God, and “still obey God’s commands upon occasion.” But then after regeneration, man could do even more than God requires. And this, claims Clark, sets up the Catholic notion of the treasury of the saints, and makes Christ’s death insufficient.

Clark’s reasoning is unsound, because he does not take into consideration the difference between natural righteousness and supernatural righteousness. That original righteousness was supernatural does not entail that human nature in itself was created morally neutral. Adam and Eve had both natural righteousness and supernatural righteousness.⁹ Since Clark apparently did not understand the Catholic distinction between man’s natural and man’s supernatural end, he attempts to explain the Catholic account of fallen man’s condition in terms of degree; that is why he says that according to the Catholic teaching fallen man obeys “at least in some low degree” and “upon occasion.” This is the only way Clark knows how to express something less than original righteousness but greater than corruption of human nature. He is trying to make sense of a Catholic doctrine through a Protestant paradigm that lacks the natural-supernatural distinction. And that is why Clark’s translation of the Catholic doctrine fails, because the Catholic doctrine simply cannot be translated into a paradigm that lacks the natural-supernatural distinction.

The problem with fallen man is not a matter of frequency of obedience. The problem with fallen man is that he is not a partaker of the divine nature, and so all his righteousness, no matter how frequent, falls short of the supernatural end to which God has graciously called us. Fallen man can do good works that are ordered to man’s natural good. This is why pagans can do virtuous deeds. If however, those persons are not in a state of grace, those deeds are not ordered to man’s supernatural end. Those works are still rewarded at the Judgment, but the reward is not man’s supernatural end; the hierarchy of hell is determined not only by punishments deserved but also by rewards on the order of nature, rewards infinitely inferior to the Beatific Vision.

Man by grace can do more than God requires, because agape includes but goes beyond the moral law. God does not require anyone to forego marriage for the sake of the Kingdom. But God offers us the opportunity to do so out of supernatural love for Him. God does not require anyone to sell all his possessions, and live a life of poverty for the sake of the Kingdom. But He offers us the opportunity to do so out of supernatural love for Him. The evangelical counsels are not the only way to go beyond the moral law. Every day the saints on earth, by their prayers, sacrifices and good deeds done in a state of supernatural grace, merit not merely a reward on the order of nature, but also a supernatural reward. And because of the communion of the saints in the Mystical Body of Christ, these merits contribute to the treasury of the saints, as I have explained in “Indulgences, the Treasury of Merit and the Communion of Saints.”

I should add that none of this entails that Christ’s death is insufficient to merit the grace by which we are saved. Whenever there is a question of sufficiency or insufficiency, we must ask “sufficiency with respect to what?” By His Passion, Christ merited a superabundant treasury of grace. The fact that the saints are able to contribute to this treasury in no way entails that Christ’s sacrifice was insufficient to merit the grace by which we are saved. Christ’s work was sufficient for all the grace that is given to every person. But because God graciously chose to make use of His saints as means by which this grace He merited would be given to others in His Body, Christ’s sacrifice is ‘insufficient’ in the sense that the actions of the saints are not superfluous. St. Paul teaches this when he writes that for the sake of the Church, he fills up in his own body what was lacking in Christ’s afflictions, (Col. 1:24), just as Christ’s death was ‘insufficient’ to make our cooperation in santification unnecessary. Clark does not distinguish between the two senses in which Christ’s work is ‘sufficient,’ and so he does not have theoretical room for the truth of St. Paul’s statement in Colossians 1:24. When Christ out of love granted His saints a participatory role in His redemptive work, as real means by which the grace He superabundantly merited is brought to the whole world, He purposely made His sacrifice insufficient in this secondary sense.

Peter Leithart (1959 – ) :

Contemporary Presbyterian theologian Peter Leithart, recently exonerated from charges of heresy by the PCA, has also written about the Catholic doctrine of original righteousness and original sin. Leithart writes:

[Catholic theologian] Matthias Scheeben makes explicit the troubling underpinnings of the nature/supernatural distinction. When we are refashioned by grace “on the model of the higher, divine nature,” we enter into a “new, special relationship with God, who now draws near to man in His own essence, and not only as Creator of a nature foreign to Him.”

Two things: First, isn’t man created on the “model” of a divine nature? What else does the image of God mean? Second, whyever should we think of created humanity as “foreign” to God?

You only need the apparatus of two orders of knowledge and being if you begin with Scheeben’s assumption that man as created is “foreign” to God. If he’s not, you can accomplish all that the natural/supernatural wants to accomplish without the difficulties, both of terminology and substance.

Though Scheeben roots his whole scheme in an account of Trinitarian self-communication, his assumption seems sub-Trinitarian. It might be rooted in the residual Hellenism that assumes that the Absolute is inherently unrelated. But the Triune God is Absolute and Related, and so He’s not doing anything “foreign” when He enters relation with an Other. (“Foreign nature.”)

Peter Leithart

Leithart’s first objection is that the natural/supernatural distinction leaves no place for man’s being made in the image of God. The idea is that if man is made in the image (or ‘model’) of God, then this seems to break down the natural/supernatural distinction, since the natural is a model of the supernatural. That objection is understandable, but the conclusion does not follow. To be made in the image of God is to be rational, capable of knowing and loving. But that does not entail that man by nature is ordered to the Beatific Vision, which is God’s own vision of Himself. Otherwise, God could never create any rational creature. To be rational would simply mean to be God. But God has created rational creatures, and these creatures are not Himself. They are ordered by nature to a natural end, but ordered by God’s gracious condescension and infinitely generous invitation to the supernatural end of the Beatific Vision, i.e. sharing in God’s own internal Eternal Life.¹⁰

Leithart’s second objection is that we have no reason to think that human nature is “foreign” to God. So if the natural/supernatural distinction entails that human nature is “foreign” to God, then we have no reason to accept the natural/supernatural distinction. By ‘foreign’ Scheeben only means that human nature is not the divine nature. ‘Foreign’ is not some additional step of removal from God, besides being a creature rather than the Creator. Scheeben is simply affirming the Creator-creature distinction. And we have good reason to affirm the Creator-creature distinction. So Leithart’s notion that we do not need the natural/supernatural distinction, so long as we can keep “man as created” and deny that man is “foreign” does not follow. If man is a created being, then there is a natural/supernatural distinction.¹¹

Leithart speculates that Scheeben’s “whole scheme” might be rooted in the “residual Hellenism that assumes that the Absolute is inherently unrelated.” But the Catholic doctrine Scheeben is describing is not based on Hellenism, or on some notion that God is inherently unrelated. The Son is eternally begotten, and the Spirit eternally proceeds; God is eternally internally relational. But God is not essentially externally related to anything, since He could have not created anything at all. God’s internal relations between the three Persons of the Blessed Trinity are necessary, essential, and eternal. But God’s redemptive relation to humans is a contingent, gratuitous, infinite condescension, in which God freely invites rational creatures to enter into His Trinitarian Life. Hence there is tremendous difference between God’s own internal relations, and His gracious supernatural union with His rational creatures. When God enters into this gracious union with a rational creature He is doing something that involves an infinite condescension, and that is the sense in which it is ‘foreign’ to God, in comparison to His own intrinsic internal relations.

Leithart continues:

Scheeben says that what is natural to one being may be supernatural for another. Immortality is natural to angels, “a pure spirit, whose entire essence is on a higher plane, because no opposition between matter and the principle of life has place in him.” For men, immortality is supernatural, since “one component part of his essence, the material body, is continually on the march toward dissolution.”

Which raises several questions: Is “matter” inherently “opposed” to the “principle of life”? Why? Would sinless Adam’s material body been opposed to the principle of life? What about the resurrection body? Is it material? If not, what is it? If so, is it on the march toward dissolution? And, don’t angels have to be sustained in their existence by the continual power of God just as human beings do? How is their “immortality” more inherent or natural than man’s?

Scheeben’s argument seems to justify the common Reformed complaint (Berkhof, e.g.) against the theory of the donum superadditum, namely, that it assumes an inherent conflictedness between matter and spirit. (“Matter and Spirit.” )

Leithart here does not raise an objection to the Catholic doctrine, but instead asks a number of questions. First he asks whether matter is inherently opposed to the “principle of life.” Corporeal living beings are naturally mortal because they are composite beings, and the unity that is given to them by the soul is not intrinsic to their matter. They naturally tend toward dissolution, unless they are continually directed toward unity by the soul. So in that sense matter is inherently ‘opposed’ to the principle of life. That is, matter is not by nature alive, and does not by its very nature perpetuate the unity of living corporeal creatures. That is why sinless Adam’s body was mortal.

Next Leithart asks whether, according to Catholic doctrine, the resurrection body is material. Yes it is a material body, but the resurrected bodies of the saints will be transformed in various ways, such that not only will the preternatural gifts be restored permanently and inseparably, but the resurrected bodies will also be further spiritualized, as we see in 1 Cor. 15:42-44, and John 20:19, 26. The resurrected bodies of the saints will be glorified, through their greater participation in the divine nature, which is purely spiritual. The radiance of the resurrected bodies of the saints will be like that of Christ’s body at the Transfiguration. (St. Matthew 17:2.) Jesus Himself tells us, “The just shall shine as the sun in the kingdom of their Father.” (Matthew 13:43.) And the prophet Daniel wrote, “Those who have insight will shine brightly like the brightness of the expanse of heaven, and those who lead the many to righteousness, like the stars forever and ever.” (Daniel 12:3.) The addition of these gifts as permanent in the resurrected saints excludes the possibility of physical death in heaven.

As for the angels, yes, their being has to be sustained by God. But they are not embodied beings. They are pure spirits, not souls informing matter. So there is no intrinsic tendency in them toward dissolution. The essence-existence composition is not the same as the body-soul composition. Angels (and all creatures) have the former, but do not have the latter. Humans, however, have both compositions.

The Reformed ‘complaint’ that the Catholic doctrine depends on an inherent conflictedness of matter and spirit is just that, a mere complaint. A complaint is not a reason to believe or disbelieve anything. But as I have explained above, there is a real difference between matter and spirit, and this difference has implications for the natural condition of any creature composed of matter and spirit. And that is precisely what man is, the amphibian Lewis speaks of, a creature composed both of spirit and matter.

Conclusion

My hope in examining each of these Reformed objections to the Catholic doctrines of original justice and original righteousness is that in doing so, I might clarify for my Reformed brothers and sisters both the basis for the Catholic doctrine as well as the reasons why the Reformed objections to the Catholic doctrine do not in any way refute it. In this way, I hope with the help of God to remove some remaining obstacles to the full visible reunion of Protestants and the Catholic Church.¹²

1. See “Nature, Grace and Man’s Supernatural End: Feingold, Kline, and Clark.”
2. “The Infinity of God” in The Catholic Encyclopedia article on “Infinity.”
3. See Summa Theologica I Q.64 a.2. “Whether the will of the demons is obstinate in evil.”
4. I have discussed the four wounds of sin in “Aquinas and Trent: Part 3.”
5. Eph. 4:8. See “The Harrowing of Hell.”
6. See Humani Generis, 36.
7. See minute 51′ in the lecture at “Lawrence Feingold on Original Justice and Original Sin,” as well as questions 2 – 9 in the Q&A there.
8. Another Reformed theologian who wrote in the generation following Charles Hodge was Abraham Kuyper (1837-1920). He was a Dutch Reformed theologian whose work significantly influenced American Presbyterianism, especially Westminster Theological Seminary and Cornelius Van Til. Kuyper wrote the following regarding the Catholic doctrine of original righteousness and original sin:

   However tracing the next step in the course of sin we meet a serious difference between the Church of Rome and our own. The former teaches that Adam came forth perfect from the hand of his Maker even before he was endowed with original righteousness. This implies that the human nature is finished without original righteousness, which is put on him like a robe or ornament. As our present nature is complete without dress or ornament, which are needed only to appear respectable in the world, so was the human nature, according to Rome, complete and perfect in itself without righteousness, which serves only as dress and jewel. But the Reformed churches have always opposed this view, maintaining that original righteousness is an essential part of the human nature; hence that the human nature in Adam was not complete without it; that it was not merely added to Adam’s nature but that Adam was created in the possession of it as the direct manifestation of his life

   If Adam’s nature was perfect before he possessed original righteousness, it follows that it remains perfect after the loss of it in which case we describe sin simply as carentia justitiae originalis, i.e. the want of original righteousness. This used to be expressed thus: Is original righteousness a natural or supernatural good? If natural then its loss caused the human nature to be wholly corrupt; if supernatural then its loss might take away the glory and honor of that nature, but as a human nature it retained nearly all of its original power. (The Work of the Holy Spirit, by Abraham Kuyper, pp. 88-89.)

   Kuyper contrasts the Catholic doctrine concerning original righteousness with the Reformed doctrine concerning original righteousness, and points to their different implications. But he gives no reason to believe the Reformed position over the Catholic doctrine, or to believe that the Catholic doctrine is false.

9. See Question 4 in the Q&A at “Lawrence Feingold on Original Justice and Original Sin.”
10. To understand why no creature can be ordered by its very nature to the supernatural end which is the Beatific Vision see “Nature, Grace, and Man’s Supernatural End: Feingold, Kline, and Clark.”
11. The question should not be expressed in terms of need, but in terms of truth — not, do we need the natural/supernatural distinction, but rather, is there a natural/supernatural distinction.
12. I am grateful to Tom Brown and Andrew Preslar for helpful comments and suggestions on an earlier draft of this post.

Russell MooreRobert George

Listen to the discussion here:

The mp3 can be downloaded here. A video of the discussion can be viewed here.

The combox below is open only to those who have listened to the discussion or watched the video.

Lawrence Feingold

Lecture:

Q&A:

The mp3s can be downloaded here.

This lecture helps further the ecumenical dialogue in the following way. Essential to reuniting Protestants and Catholics is finding the disagreements behind the disagreements, because these are the fundamental causes of the division’s persistence, and yet they tend to remain hidden and relatively undiscussed though implicitly presupposed. One such fundamental disagreement concerns the essence and relation of nature and grace, because this disagreement underlies the Protestant-Catholic disagreement concerning the relations of law and gospel, faith and works, and justification and sanctification. And not uncommonly the two sides talk past each other (or critique a straw man) when they use their own concepts for nature and grace when criticizing the other’s position.¹ The difference between their respective theologies of nature and grace is especially manifested in their doctrines concerning the pre-fall condition of Adam and Eve. St. Thomas, drawing from Aristotle’s On the Heavens, writes, “parvus error in principio magnus est in fine,” meaning “a small error in the beginning is a large error in the end.” And that is equally true here, where a small error concerning man’s initial state can lead to much larger errors in Christology and soteriology.

Meredith Kline

One Reformed position on this subject is that of Meredith Kline, who taught for many years at Westminster Theological Seminary, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and Westminster Seminary California, and whose theology concerning nature and grace is still the predominant position at that latter institution. For Kline, when God made man He made a “Covenant of Works” with man, and His making this covenant was necessitated by His nature, given His choice to create man. In other words, having freely chosen to make man, God was bound by His own justice to make the “Covenant of Works” with man. This is why for Kline the Covenant of Works is not rightly said to involve grace, because there was nothing gratuituous in the Covenant of Works, beyond the very decision to create man. For Kline, the reward for obedience under the Covenant of Works was heaven, the same reward we are offered through Christ under the Covenant of Grace.

Kline writes:

A principle of works – do this and live – governed the attainment of the consummation-kingdom proferred in the blessing sanction of the creational covenant. Heaven must be earned. According to the terms stipulated by the Creator it would be on the ground of man’s faithful completion of the work of probation that he would be entitled to enter the Sabbath rest. If Adam obediently performed the assignment signified by the probation tree, he would receive, as a matter of pure and simple justice, the reward symbolized by the tree of life.²

The problem with the notion that man without grace can merit heaven is that this is the heresy of Pelagianism, as Barrett Turner showed in his article “Pelagian Westminster?.” But Kline essentially locks himself into that notion by his definition of ‘grace.’ He defines grace as follows:

Properly defined, grace is not merely the bestowal of unmerited blessings but God’s blessing of man in spite of his demerits, in spite of his forfeiture of divine blessings. Clearly, we ought not apply this term grace to the pre-fall situation, for neither the bestowal of blessings on Adam in the very process of creation nor the proposal to grant him additional blessings contemplated him as in a guilty state of demerit.³

Because he defines ‘grace’ as “God’s blessing in spite of [man's] demerits,” there is by definition no room for or possibility of grace in the pre-fall condition. And in this way Kline defines himself into a Pelagian corner.

The error underlying Pelagianism is a denial of the Creator-creature distinction, because Pelagianism treats heaven (i.e. seing God face to face, as He sees Himself) as man’s natural end, proportionate to man, and thus attainable by man without grace, but simply through man’s own nature. Feingold’s lecture (above) explains why necessarily heaven is natural only to God, and therefore why for any creature heaven is a supernatural end. Therefore no creature, not even any angel, can enter heaven without grace elevating that creature to its supernatural end. (See my post titled “St. Thomas on Angels and Grace.”)

So by denying that God had given grace to Adam and Eve prior to their sin, while at the same time claiming that heaven was their reward for obedience, Kline’s position is Pelagian.

Kline has responded to the objection that “The disproportion between Adam’s work and the promised blessing forbids us to speak of simple justice.” He writes:

Another form of the attack on the Covenant of Works doctrine (and thus on the classic law-gospel contrast) asserts that even if it is allowed that Adam’s obedience would have earned something, the disproportion between the value of that act of service and the value of the proferred blessing forbids us to speak here of simple equity or justice. The contention is that Adam’s ontological status limited the value or weight of his acts. More specifically his act of obedience would not have eternal value or significance; it could not earn a reward of eternal, confirmed life. In the offer of eternal life, so we are told, we must therefore recognize an element of “grace” in the preredemptive covenant. But belying this assessment of the situation is the fact that if it were true that Adam’s act of obedience could not have eternal significance then neither could or did his actual act of disobedience have eternal significance. It did not deserve the punishment of everlasting death. Consistency would compel us to judge God guilty of imposing punishment beyond the demands of justice, pure and simple. God would have to be charged with injustice in inflicting the punishment of Hell, particularly when he exacted that punishment from his Son as the substitute for sinners. The Cross would be the ultimate act of divine injustice. That is the theologically disastrous outcome of blurring the works-grace contrast by appealing to a supposed disproportionality between work and reward.⁴

Kline’s argument goes like this. “If it were true that Adam’s act of obedience could not have eternal significance then neither could or did his actual act of disobedience have eternal significance.” But Adam’s act of disobedience did have eternal significance, in that it deserved the punishment of everlasting death. Therefore, Adam’s act of obedience could and must have eternal significance.

The problem with this argument is that it is a red herring. Its conclusion is fully compatible with the truth of the objection. Just because Adam’s act of obedience would have had eternal significance, it does not follow either that (a) heaven is proportionate to grace-less obedience or (b) pre-fall Adam was without grace. It seems that Kline is unaware of the distinction discussed in Feingold’s lecture, namely, the distinction between man’s natural and supernatural ends.

Kline continues his response to this objection:

On the approach that mistakenly contends that the presence of God’s paternal love involves grace and so negates the possibility of meritorious works and simple justice, divine justice ceases to be foundational to all divine government. A negative, punitive justice may be recognized, as in the retribution against the wicked in hell, to which paternal love does not reach. But there is no place in that view for positive justice; those who advocate it must deny that the rewarding of doers of the law with life forms the reverse side of the negative justice which punishes the breakers of the law with death. They cannot consistently confess that justice is the foundation of God’s throne (Pss 89:14(15); 97:2).⁵

Here Kline responds to those who claim that since the Covenant of Works involves grace therefore it cannot involve meritorious works. He rightly points out that such a position excludes divine justice, or arbitrarily recognizes only the negative aspect of justice while denying its positive aspect. The position he is criticizing in this paragraph is obviously not the Catholic position, according to which Adam and Eve could have merited heaven prior to the fall, precisely because God had infused into them sanctifying grace and agape.

Kline continues:

The disproportionality view’s failure with respect to the doctrine of divine justice can be traced to its approach to the definition of justice. A proper approach will hold that God is just and his justice is expressed in all his acts; in particular, it is expressed in the covenant he institutes. The terms of the covenant – the stipulated reward for the stipulated service – are a revelation of that justice. As a revelation of God’s justice the terms of the covenant define justice. According to this definition, Adam’s obedience would have merited the reward of eternal life and not a gram of grace would have been involved.⁶

Here Kline’s argument goes like this. The terms of the Covenant of Works are a revelation of God’s justice. According to the terms of the Covenant of Works Adam’s obedience would have merited the reward of eternal life. Therefore, by justice alone without a gram of grace, Adam’s obedience would have merited the reward of eternal life.

The problem with that argument is that the conclusion does not follow from the premises. The truth of the two premises is fully compatible with eternal life being the merited reward of graced-obedience.

In the last paragraph of his response to this objection Kline writes:

Refusing to accept God’s covenant word as the definer of justice, the disproportionality view exalts above God’s word a standard of justice of its own making. Assigning ontological values to Adam’s obedience and God’s reward it finds that weighed on its judicial scales they are drastically out of balance. In effect that conclusion imputes an imperfection in justice to the Lord of the covenant. The attempt to hide this affront against the majesty of the Judge of all the earth by condescending to assess the relation of Adam’s act to God’s reward as one of congruent merit is no more successful than Adam’s attempt to manufacture a covering to conceal his nakedness. It succeeds only in exposing the roots of this opposition to Reformed theology in the theology of Rome.⁷

Here Kline claims that the objection regarding disproportionality does not allow the Biblical account regarding God’s promise of reward and punishment for Adam to define the standard of justice. He means that the objection does not allow the Biblical account to define the standard of justice of what is due as reward to man for obedience carried out by human nature alone, without grace. But Kline’s rejoinder begs the question, by presupposing that the reward in the Biblical account is justly due for obedience carried out by human nature alone, and not carried out by man-infused-with-grace. If God had already given sanctifying grace to Adam when God laid before him the conditions for obedience and disobedience, then those conditions reveal the just reward and punishment for man-infused-with-grace, not for man-without-grace. So Kline’s response presupposes precisely what is in question between those holding his view of the Covenant of Works, and the Catholic Church. In short, none of Kline’s rejoinders to the disproportionality objection refute the Catholic disproportionality objection (as exemplified in the Feingold lecture).

R. Scott Clark

Westminster Professor R. Scott Clark likewise denies the possibility of pre-fall grace, writing: “Thus, the First Adam needed no grace before the fall. Grace is for sinners, not for the sinless.”⁸ And elsewhere Clark writes, “Grace, as we mostly use it, is reserved to describe God’s favor toward sinners not the sinless and not Adam ante lapsum.”⁹ Clark and Kline make this claim for two reasons in conjunction. First, they are presupposing a biblicist theological methodology according to which if we do not see in Scripture any explicit claim that Adam and Eve possessed grace prior to the fall, and no such claim follows by logical necessity from any explicit claims in Scripture, then we are right to conclude that Adam and Eve did not possess grace prior to the fall.¹⁰ Second, this method presupposes an ecclesial deism (as I’ll show below) according to which the thousand years of theology that preceded the 16th century cannot be trusted, and therefore all the theologians from St. Augustine onward who referred to Adam and Eve having grace prior to the fall can be summarily dismissed.¹¹

Clark’s position differs from Kline’s in that for Clark, but not for Kline, God could have withheld the Covenant of Works from man. Yet Clark, like Kline, maintains that there was no grace in the Covenant of Works. He holds that God entered only into a legal relation with Adam and Eve: “[I]t was a legal, and not a gracious relation. Adam was to earn his entry into glory.”¹² For this reason, Clark’s position is Pelagian in the same way as Kline’s. In response to the argument that denying pre-fall grace while affirming the possibility of meriting heaven entails Pelagianism, Clark writes:

Humanity (as Augustine taught us and as Boston repeated) has existed in four states. The prelapsarian state and the post-lapsarian states are distinct. Hence Paul called the natural state post lapsum “dead.” (Eph 2;1-4). Prior to the fall we were “alive.” Our abilities, then, suffered a mortal blow, literally, after the fall. Thus whatever we cannot do (anything meritorious) after the fall is no indicator of human ability before the fall.¹³

Clark’s argument goes like this. Prior to the fall Adam’s nature was greater than it was after the fall. In other words, human nature became corrupted through Adam’s sin. But Pelagianism is the error of claiming that corrupted human nature without grace can merit heaven. Therefore claiming that pre-fall Adam without grace could merit heaven is not Pelagianism.

But what makes Pelagianism false is not merely that Adam had lost some natural, finite power. What makes Pelagianism false is that no creature is by nature proportionate to the supernatural end which is the Beatific Vision. As the Feingold lecture above explains, the supernatural end which is God’s own inner life is natural and therefore proportionate only to God Himself. Hence no creature, not even the highest angel, could, without grace, merit God’s own inner life. So Clark’s reply that the pre-fall Adam had a greater nature (though without grace) does not obviate the Pelagian error. It treats man as naturally proportionate to God, and in this way denies the Creator-creature distinction.

We know that in order for the heavenly reward for Adam’s obedience to be just, his obedience must have been graced-obedience, i.e. obedience done out of the supernatural virtue of agape flowing from a heart infused with sanctifying grace. Only if his obedience was done through a participation in the divine nature could it be directed to that supernatural end which is heaven. So the Covenant of Works had to have included infused grace, because otherwise one faces either the Scylla of Pelagianism or the Charybdis that the reward Adam could have merited (and which the second Adam did merit) was something infinitely less than heaven.

Both Clark and Michael Horton reject the doctrine of grace as participation in the divine nature. They construe union with Christ as entirely extrinsic and stipulative. Clark writes, “Our union with Christ is both legal and vital, but never ontic. We are “in Christ” by virtue of God’s decree.”¹⁴ One problem with a merely covenantal notion of union with Christ is that it reduces heaven to the equivalent of Abraham’s bosom. (Luke 16:22) A merely covenantal union with Christ is what we have now in this present life, and what the saints in Abraham’s bosom had as well. It is not the Beatific Vision. Hence if Clark holds that in the eschatological consummation our union with Christ is only covenantal, and not ontological, then his position denies the possibility of attaining heaven, and offers to men in its place something infinitely lower. But if he admits that in the consummation our union with Christ is ontological, then he has no principled reason for claiming that grace cannot be a participation in the divine nature in addition to divine favor.¹⁵

But, again, part of the problem here is semantic. Clark claims that the Covenant of Works was a free act by God, but not gracious. He writes:

Now, that “earning” was within a covenant freely made by God by, as the WCF says, “voluntary condescension,” …. They [the authors of the WCF] turned not to grace to explain God’s free act in covenanting with Adam, instead they turned to the divine free will. Hence “voluntary condescension.” … The Creator/creature relations are such that man did not have any claim on God without God having freely willed to enter into a legal relation. That done, it was a legal, and not a gracious relation. Adam was to earn his entry into glory.¹⁶

Because of his definition of ‘grace,’ Clark cannot describe Adam’s pre-fall ability to merit heaven as made possible by infused grace. So he must attribute it to human nature, and thus run into the Pelagian problem. But if he were not hamstrung by this stipulated definition of ‘grace,’ he could simply grant that in offering to Adam the supernatural end which is heaven, and in making this supernatural end attainable in justice by the merit of Adam’s obedience, God had to infuse Adam with a participation in the divine nature (i.e. with grace) to make his actions proportionate to that supernatural end.

Another objection to the Catholic doctrine is the claim that it implies that human nature in itself (even prior to the fall) is defective or fallen. Clark attributes this notion to St. Thomas, writing, “For Thomas, nature is inherently defective and requires grace, as a result of creation, to perfect it.”¹⁷ Clark construes the Catholic position in this way. He writes, “We were not created corrupt (Augustine and Thomas) or fallen.”¹⁸ Here Clark is claiming that for St. Augustine and St. Thomas, God created man corrupt. But that is untrue and inaccurate. Listen to the second question in the Q&A of the lecture above, in which this very question is addressed; it begins at 5 minutes and 10 seconds into the audio. Human nature is good, because everything God made is good. But our lower appetites (such as our desire for food and our sexual appetite) are not intrinsically ordered to our overall good; they are not in themselves ordered to the good, but to particular types of good. They contribute to our overall good when governed by reason: sometimes prodded forward by reason and other times restrained by reason. Hence they need to be governed by reason, which by its very nature is ordered toward the good, not merely toward that which is good in a certain respect. But since lower appetites are not by their nature docile to reason, therefore without the preternatural gift of integrity, they would often be at odds with reason. So God provided Adam and Eve with the preternatural gift of integrity, which they forfeited when they sinned. The lack of this integrity is not a defect in human nature; something is “defective” only if it falls short of its nature. But human nature does not contain or require this integrity; otherwise we would not now be human, since we do not now possess this integrity. Therefore, the lack of this integrity is not a defect in human nature.¹⁹ Likewise, mortality is natural to man, not because man was created defective but because man is a material being. A body is not by its nature as body subject to the soul. This is why corporeal creatures are naturally mortal. Hence the immortality possessed by Adam and Eve was a preternatural gift, and this gift too was lost by their sin. If immortality belonged to human nature proper, then we mortal creatures would not be human; we would be another kind of creature altogether.

A bit further down Clark writes:

The notion that the fall was a fall from grace stems, as I’ve said before, from an unbiblical and pagan view of divine-human relations. We do not exist on one end of a continuum with God. We are and only shall be analogues to God. Full stop.

To say that grace was necessary before the fall is to say that, in effect, divinity is a pre-requisite for obedience, that humanity as such is incapable of obedience. That scheme almost always (and certainly did in Thomas and certainly does in contemporary evangelicalism) lead to a doctrine of theosis — divinization as salvation. See M. Karkainen’s (Fuller Sem) new book where teaches this explicitly.

This, of course, destroys not only the Creator/creature relations by turning the creature into the Creator it also makes our problem ontological rather than moral. Scripture never does this. The Protestants didn’t do this. Augustine and Thomas did. Augustine and Thomas were wrong! Luther, Calvin and our theologians and symbols were more biblical.

This approach also destroys the incarnation. We have a God-Man Savior. His humanity is not deified and his deity is not confused with his humanity. We have a Savior with two distinct natures united in one person.

Why did God the Son have to become, having willed to be our Mediator and representative, a true man? Why not just come without the incarnation? To fulfill the covenant of works broken by Adam. If the “fall” was a “fall from grace” then why all the fuss about the law? About Jesus “righteousness” and “obedience”? Why the brutal 40 day temptation in the wilderness? Why not just “poof” and make it all go away? Why sweat, as it were, great drops of blood? Why “learn obedience” by the things he suffered? Why die outside the camp? Why be circumcised for us on the cross? Because, he was the Second Adam? He had to go back into the garden and do battle with the evil one, as a true man, and he did that his whole life. That is why he said “It is finished!”

None of that makes any sense on an alternate scheme. The truth is that western theology was schizoid for most of 1000 years and God bless that fat little Saxon monk for finalizing the divorce from Plotinus and Dionysius and the rest of the theologians of glory!²⁰

The notion that the fall was a fall from grace does not come from paganism; it follows from two truths that are part of the gospel: (1) man cannot merit a supernatural end without grace, (2) the heaven offered to Adam and Eve upon obedience was the supernatural end of seeing God as He is.²¹ The Catholic doctrine that Adam and Eve possessed grace prior to their fall does not imply or entail a denial of the Creator-creature distinction. Ironically, however, Clark’s own view that Adam and Eve could attain to heaven without grace does imply a denial of the Creator-creator distinction, because as I explained above, it treats as natural to man (i.e. as intrinsic to his primary nature) what is natural only to God.²²

To say that grace was necessary before the fall does not in any way entail that “divinity is a pre-requisite for obedience, that humanity as such is incapable of obedience.” Even if man had never been given grace, he could (in principle) have obeyed and thus attained to his natural end. Clark’s objection here is based on an implicit denial of the distinction between man’s natural and supernatural ends. The necessity of grace is not “for obedience” simpliciter, but for graced-obedience, i.e. obedience coming from a heart of agape, and ordered to man’s supernatural end, rather than to a merely natural end. For obedience ordered to a supernatural end grace is necessary, and for perseverance in that grace, grace upon grace is necessary.

The Creator-creature distinction is an ontological one, and denying that distinction is what underlies the Pelagian error, as explained above. Clark claims that we need grace only because of a moral problem, and not because of an ontological problem. In making this claim, Clark commits himself both to nominalism and to voluntarism, by disconnecting morality from ontology.²³ Pope Benedict addressed this notion five years ago in his famous Regensburg Address, in which he said:

In all honesty, one must observe that in the late Middle Ages we find trends in theology which would sunder this synthesis between the Greek spirit and the Christian spirit. In contrast with the so-called intellectualism of Augustine and Thomas, there arose with Duns Scotus a voluntarism which, in its later developments, led to the claim that we can only know God’s voluntas ordinata. Beyond this is the realm of God’s freedom, in virtue of which he could have done the opposite of everything he has actually done. This gives rise to positions which clearly approach those of Ibn Hazm and might even lead to the image of a capricious God, who is not even bound to truth and goodness. God’s transcendence and otherness are so exalted that our reason, our sense of the true and good, are no longer an authentic mirror of God, whose deepest possibilities remain eternally unattainable and hidden behind his actual decisions. As opposed to this, the faith of the Church has always insisted that between God and us, between his eternal Creator Spirit and our created reason there exists a real analogy, in which – as the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 stated – unlikeness remains infinitely greater than likeness, yet not to the point of abolishing analogy and its language. God does not become more divine when we push him away from us in a sheer, impenetrable voluntarism; rather, the truly divine God is the God who has revealed himself as logos and, as logos, has acted and continues to act lovingly on our behalf. Certainly, love, as Saint Paul says, “transcends” knowledge and is thereby capable of perceiving more than thought alone (cf. Eph 3:19); nonetheless it continues to be love of the God who is Logos. Consequently, Christian worship is, again to quote Paul – “λογικη λατρεία”, worship in harmony with the eternal Word and with our reason (cf. Rom 12:1).

Pope Benedict explains that the voluntaristic theology of certain late medieval thinkers gave rise to positions that “clearly approach” that form of Islamic theology according to which God is not Logos, but will, and thus brute capricious power. Among other consequences, this conception of God makes violence in the name of God justifiable, and leads to the fideism which underlies certain fundamentalist forms of religion.

Catholic theology does not make our problem “ontological rather than moral,” as Clark claims. Catholic theology recognizes that morality and ontology are related, and that we need not only forgiveness of our sins and the grace to obey God’s laws, but a participation in the divine nature (2 Pet. 1:4) in order to attain to our supernatural end. Theosis just is that participation about which St. Peter writes. To reject theosis is to reject our supernatural end of seeing God as He is. And to reject our supernatural end is to reject the gospel.

According to Clark, the theology of St. Augustine and St. Thomas concerning theosis “destroys the incarnation.” Clark seems to think that the doctrine of theosis must result in an ontological confusion of Christ’s two natures. He describes theosis as “overcoming our humanity.”²⁴ For Clark, the Catholic doctrine of participation in the divine nature “vitiates” the Creator-creature distinction.²⁵

But the doctrine of theosis has no such implication, and to construe it that way is to critique a straw man. Theosis is not a confusion of natures, but a participation in the divine nature, as St. Peter says. Participation by its very nature is in something other, because a thing does not participate in itself. Hence creatures’ participation in the divine nature entails a distinction between the Creator and the creature. Therefore the sort of union entailed by participation is not a fusion that confuses the natures or makes one nature out of two; that would eliminate participation. And for this reason grace as participation in the divine nature does not deny the Creator/creature distinction. Grace does not destroy nature but perfects and elevates it. Construing grace as elevating nature such that nature is obliterated is contrary to that dictum. Union with God does not eliminate human nature; human nature remains, but is elevated by its participation in the divine nature. This is revealed in Christ’s glorification, in which His human nature is divinized and glorified, but not destroyed; He remains human, and yet He can go through walls, and His face radiates light like the Sun.

In addition, Clark claims that for St. Thomas and the Catholic Church, grace is a substance. He writes:

The medieval notion was that grace is a substance which can be imparted or dispensed through human agency to sinners. The Protestant view is that grace is a divine disposition toward sinners.²⁶

St. Thomas, however, explicitly denies that grace is a substance.²⁷ What is given to us through the sacraments Christ established in the New Covenant is a participation in the divine nature. Sanctifying grace is the participation of the soul in the life of God. If we did not have sanctifying grace, the presence of the Holy Spirit in us would be mere presence (like omnipresence), not union. That’s why there cannot be theosis without sanctifying grace as something distinct from the Holy Spirit. And without union with God in which we participate in the divine nature, we could not enter into the inner life of the Blessed Trinity; we would be cut off from the Beatific Vision, and heaven would be reduced to something equivalent to Abraham’s bosom, with Christ visible to us only in His human nature.

But the second reason Clark thinks that the notion of pre-fall grace destroys the incarnation is that he thinks that pre-fall grace would make the incarnation unnecessary. For Clark grace is conceived as something intrinsically incompatible with law. Therefore, if Adam and Eve fell from grace (as opposed to falling while under law), there would be no reason for Jesus to come and fulfill the law. For Clark, if man had been always under grace, then God could just go ‘poof’ and make all our sin vanish by fiat; there would be no need for atonement or merit or satisfaction. Grace is pure favor, and so for those always under pure favor, there is never any need for law-keeping, not even by someone on their behalf. There’s just no law in grace proper.

Underlying Clark’s entire argument here is his Reformed (Lutheran) presupposition that grace and law cannot go together.²⁸ But if God had already given Adam and Eve sanctifying grace before He commanded them not to eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, then Clark’s presupposition is false. When Clark says “None of that makes sense on an alternative scheme” he’s right that none of that makes sense when one presupposes that law and grace are incompatible. But to use that presupposition is to beg the question. If law and grace can go together (as St. Augustine explains that they do — see “St. Augustine on Law and Grace“) then all these thing make perfect sense. So Clark’s whole argument here is an exercise in question-begging, i.e. using a Reformed presupposition to argue against Catholic doctrine.

But there is an irony here in Clark’s claim that the Catholic teaching that Adam and Eve possessed grace prior to their fall “destroys the incarnation.” The irony is that it is Clark’s own position that makes the incarnation unnecessary. The Church’s tradition handed down to us from the early Church Fathers maintains that Christ took on human nature so that we might become partakers of His divine nature through union with Him. As St. Athanasius said:

For He was made man that we might be made God.” (On the Incarnation, 54.3)

And again:

I am from earth, being by nature mortal, but afterwards I have become the Word’s flesh, and He carried my affections, though He is without them; and so I became free from them, being no more abandoned to their service because of the Lord who has made me free from them. For if you object to my being rid of that corruption which is by nature, see that you object not to God’s Word having taken my form of servitude; for as the Lord, putting on the body, became man, so we men are deified by the Word as being taken to Him through His flesh, and henceforward inherit life everlasting. (Discourse III Against the Arians, 34)

If mere covenantal (and not ontological) union were our eschatological end, such that we are not made partakers of the divine nature, then Christ did not need to take on human flesh. If we were not called to partake of the divine nature, Christ would not have needed to partake of our human nature. Given the Reformed notion of imputation, all that is needed for salvation is a double imputation. For example, instead of sending Christ, God could have created another group of humans equal in number to the elect, made no promise of reward to them (since for Clark God didn’t have to make such a covenant of works with men) monergistically ensured their just obedience to God, and then imputed their obedience to the elect, and imputed the sins of the elect to them. From the divine point of view, it would just be another form of supralapsarianism, except without the incarnation. Of course the notion is far-fetched, but the point is that if man is not ordered to a supernatural end, then Christ did not need to become incarnate.²⁹

For Clark, “western theology was schizoid for most of 1000 years.” That’s the ecclesial deism I mentioned earlier. The alternative is that the Church developed the Apostolic faith organically and faithfully, and that early Protestants influenced by later medieval nominalism and voluntarism had to posit a one thousand year breakdown in orthodoxy in order to justify their theological novelties and their rejection of the Tradition as passed down from the Church Fathers through this thousand year period.

To bring about reconciliation between Protestants I contend that what needs to be examined are not points of disagreement that depend on more substantive assumptions, but those substantive assumptions themselves. Here, it seems to me, the meaning of nature and grace, and their relation, are theologically fundamental, because they play a role in arguments used to reject the other’s position. Prof. Feingold’s lecture above lays out a critical distinction between our natural and supernatural ends, and this distinction significantly illuminates the Catholic understanding of the distinction and relation of nature and grace.

1. See, for example, “Michael Horton on Terrence Malick’s “Tree of Life”.”
2. Kingdom Prologue, as quoted in “Answering Objections to the Covenant of Works.” (my emphasis)
3. “Covenant Theology Under Attack.”
4. “Answering Objections to the Covenant of Works.”
5. “Answering Objections to the Covenant of Works.”
6. “Answering Objections to the Covenant of Works.”
7. “Answering Objections to the Covenant of Works.”
8. “Concupiscence: Sin and the Mother of Sin.”
9. “Natural Man Before the fall: Ability and Grace.”
10. I have briefly discussed what is wrong with this presupposition both in the “Scripture and Tradition” section of my discussion with Michael Horton, and in “The Tradition and the Lexicon.”
11. On St. Augustine’s teaching that Adam and Eve had grace prior to the fall, see the first five footnotes in “Pelagian Westminster?”
12. “Natural Man Before the Fall: Ability and Grace.”
13. Natural Man Before the Fall: Ability and Grace.”
14. “Natural Man before the Fall: Ability and Grace: P. 2.” For Horton’s view of union with Christ see chapter 18 of his recent book The Christian Faith, in which he defines union with Christ as covenantal, and rejects an ontological union (which he describes as ‘fusion’).
15. Cf. Summa Theologica I-II Q.110 a.1.
16. “Natural Man Before the Fall: Ability and Grace.”
17. In Clark’s “A Brief Glossary of the Medieval and Reformation Church,” under “Aquinas, Thomas.”
18. “Natural Man Before the Fall: Ability and Grace.”
19. I addressed this same question in about the fourth paragraph of “Michael Horton on Terrence Malick’s “Tree of Life”.”
20. “Natural Man Before the Fall: Ability and Grace.”
21. Clark maintains that the same end offered to pre-fall Adam on condition of merit is the same end attained by the elect through Christ’s merit. He writes, “The Reformed expressed this affirmation of the goodness of Adam (before the fall) as created (contra Thomas and Augustine) by teaching the covenant of works in which Adam was said to have been, before the fall, able to keep the law and to earn (yes, I said “earn”) a state of consummate blessedness. … This is the background for our view of Jesus’ sinlessness (impeccability) and active obedience for us and imputed to us. Our standards and theologians all have it that Jesus “earned” or “obtained” our justification and eventual consummate blessedness.”
22. If two things have the same primary nature, they are the same in kind. Hence, if man and God have the same primary nature, then man is God.
23. See “William of Ockham.”
24. He writes, “We don’t confess apotheosis. We’re categorically opposed to it. We don’t have to be divinized to be glorified. Consummation does not mean overcoming our humanity. In Pauline terms, in 1 Cor 15, it is conformity to the will and presence of the Holy Spirit …”
25. “One of the great, if often unspoken, breakthroughs of the Reformation was the restoration of the Creator/creature distinction. Thomas’ doctrine (and he’s not alone in this at all) of participation in the divine nature vitiates this.” On Clark’s now defunct Heidelblog.
26. Clark’s “A Brief Glossary of the Medieval and Reformation Church,” under the entry “Grace.”
27. See Summa Theologica I-II Q.110 a.2 ad 2.
28. See my “A Response to Darrin Patrick on the Indicates and the Imperatives.”
29. For a brief comparison of the Catholic and Reformed conceptions of the atonement, see “Catholic and Reformed Conceptions of the Atonement.”

The Assumption
Fra Angelico (c. 1430)

This doctrine was not formally defined as a dogma until 1950, when Pope Pius XII did so in an Apostolic Constitution titled Munificentissimus Deus. Although the Orthodox have not formally defined the doctrine as a dogma, this doctrine is not a point of dispute between Catholics and Orthodox, because the Feast of the Assumption has been celebrated in the universal Church (both East and West) on this same date (August 15) since the sixth and seventh centuries. However, this doctrine is not accepted by most Protestants, and is therefore an occasion of difficulty with respect to the reconciliation of Protestants and the Catholic Church.

Recently Peter Leithart responded to Christian Smith’s claim that sola Scriptura is the belief that Christians have “the Bible alone and no other human tradition as authority.” Leithart protested against this definition, claiming that the Reformed do acknowledge the authority of tradition, but hold Scripture to have final authority. My response to Leithart can be found here, where I argue (briefly) that to subject tradition to the test of one’s own interpretation of Scripture is to deny the authority of tradition, and thus to vindicate Smith’s claim. The problems with biblicism, which Keith Mathison refers to as “solo scriptura,” are well-addressed both by Mathison (see “Solo Scriptura, Sola Scriptura and the Question of Interpretive Authority“) and Smith in The Bible Made Impossible: Why Biblicism Is Not a Truly Evangelical Reading of Scripture.

How does that relate to the doctrine of the Assumption? The two most common Protestant objections to the doctrine of the Assumption are (1) that it is not in Scripture, and (2) that because it is not in Scripture, the Church has no right to declare it a dogma. Both objections presuppose that Scripture is not only the final authority, but is the only authority, such that if a doctrine cannot be found explicitly in Scripture then either it was not taught by the Apostles, or we have no way of knowing whether it was taught by the Apostles. However, if the doctrine of the Assumption comes to us through the Tradition, and if Tradition is authoritative, then both objections fall flat.

The primary Protestant objection is that the doctrine of the Assumption is not part of Tradition, but is an accretion, or, even if true, is uncertain. And the basis for this claim is that the doctrine is not apparent in the first three centuries of the Church, given the manuscripts we have containing writings from that time. St. Epiphanius hints at it in the fourth century, and we have evidence that there was an empty tomb of Mary in Jerusalem in the fourth century. But there is no solid historical evidence prior to this that Mary was known to have been assumed into heaven.

There are two different paradigms at work here. From the Protestant point of view, whatever is not in Scripture is suspect, and that is even more so when we have no independent evidence that the doctrine in question was known by the Church in her first three centuries. So from the Protestant point of view, the spread of the celebration of the Feast of the Assumption in the fifth, sixth and seventh centuries is presumably the spread of a novelty, myth or legend.

From the Catholic point of view, by contrast, the universal acceptance of the Feast by the sixth and seventh centuries, indicates that this doctrine was present all along, at least in seed form, otherwise it would not have been accepted by the whole Church. So underlying these two paradigms is the question of ecclesial deism, whether or not the Holy Spirit is guiding the Church into all truth. For the Protestant who does not believe that the Spirit is guiding the Church into all truth, the universal acceptance of the doctrine of the Assumption is no more evidence of its truth or Apostolicity than not. If one does not believe that the Church is being guided by the Spirit, then there is nothing more imaginable than that the whole Church be drawn away into gross error. And this is especially so insofar as Protestantism’s justification for its existence depends on it being true that the whole Church fell into hundreds of years of heresy. For the Catholic, however, it is inconceievable that the whole Church would be drawn away into doctrinal error. The Church is the pillar and ground of truth (1 Tim. 3:15), and so if the whole Church embraces a doctrine, we can know that this doctrine is both true and apostolic.¹

And that is how Catholics understand the development of the doctrine of the Assumption. This doctrine of the Assumption comes to us through Tradition, and this Tradition can be found in the early Patristic homilies, especially those given on this feast. But as Pope Pius XII pointed out when defining this dogma, the feast was not the source of the faith in this doctrine; rather the faith in this doctrine was the source of the feast. He writes:

However, since the liturgy of the Church does not engender the Catholic faith, but rather springs from it, in such a way that the practices of the sacred worship proceed from the faith as the fruit comes from the tree, it follows that the holy Fathers and the great Doctors, in the homilies and sermons they gave the people on this feast day, did not draw their teaching from the feast itself as from a primary source, but rather they spoke of this doctrine as something already known and accepted by Christ’s faithful. They presented it more clearly. They offered more profound explanations of its meaning and nature, bringing out into sharper light the fact that this feast shows, not only that the dead body of the Blessed Virgin Mary remained incorrupt, but that she gained a triumph out of death, her heavenly glorification after the example of her only begotten Son, Jesus Christ-truths that the liturgical books had frequently touched upon concisely and briefly. (Munificentissimus Deus, 20)

To read the early homilies given on this feast, see On the Dormition of Mary: Early Patristic Homilies, edited by Brian J. Daley, and The Ancient Traditions of the Virgin Mary’s Dormition and Assumption (Oxford University Press), written by Stephen J. Shoemaker. Shoemaker has some of these homilies available on a webpage titled “Early Traditions of the Virgin Mary’s Dormition.” And Luigi Gambero’s Mary and the Fathers of the Church: The Blessed Virgin Mary in Patristic Thought is also a helpful resource.

The Dormition of the Theotokos²

The Apostles knew of Mary’s dormition, since Christ had entrusted her to St. John’s care, and Mary was obviously a central figure in the community of the early Church. So how she completed her days was part of the Apostolic Tradition. But that Mary had been assumed body and soul into heaven was not universally known in the first few centuries of the Church. It is not that the Fathers of that time denied it; they simply didn’t talk about it, or talk about any first-class relics of Mary. The doctrine of the Assumption gradually came to be universally known within the Church, from the latter part of the fifth century, and by the sixth and seventh centuries, it was a universal feast. The Church Fathers viewed Mary not only as the New Eve, but also as the Ark of the New Covenant. (See here and here.) Hence they came to understand Psalm 132:8 (“Arise, O LORD, and go to your resting place, you and the ark of your might.”) as referring to Mary’s Assumption. The more clearly they understand that Mary had been preserved immaculate, the more clearly they understood that she too had been preserved from corruption. Similarly, the more clearly they grasped her dignity as the Mother of God (Theotokos), the more they recognized the fittingness of her Son keeping her body from corruption. Likewise, the more clearly they understood Mary’s role as the New Eve, and thus as Christ’s associate in the work of the redemption, the more clearly they understand that she too, in her own flesh, must have participated in His victory over death.

Here are a few selections.

Theodosius, Jacobite Patriarch of Alexandria (d. 567 or 568)

O my beautiful mother, when Adam transgressed my commandment, I passed upon him a sentence, saying: ‘Adam, you are earth, and you shall return unto the earth again. For I too, the Life of all men, tasted death in the flesh which I took from you, in the flesh of Adam, your forefather. But because my Godhead was united to me, for that reason I raised it from the dead. I would prefer not to have you taste death, but to translate you up to the heavens like Enoch and Elias. But these also, even they must at last taste death. But if this happened to you, wicked men would think concerning you that you are a power which came down from heaven, and that this dispensation took place in appearance alone. ( On the Falling Asleep of Mary)

St. Gregory of Tours (d. 594)

Finally, when blessed Mary, having completed the course of her earthly life, was about to be called from this world, all the apostles, coming from their different regions, gathered together in her house. When they heard that she was about to be taken up out of the world, they kept watch together with her.

And behold, the Lord Jesus came with his angels and, taking her soul, handed it over to the archangel Michael and withdrew. At dawn, the apostles lifted up her body on a pallet, laid it in a tomb, and kept watch over it, awaiting the coming of the Lord. and behold, again the Lord presented himself to them and ordered that her holy body be taken and carried up to heaven. There she is now, joined once more to her soul; she exults with the elect, rejoicing in the eternal blessings that will have no end. (Libri Miraculorum 1, De gloria beatorum maryrum 4)

John of Thessalonica

John of Thessalonica was Metropolitan of that city between 610 and 649. In his homily on the Dormition of Mary, he indicates that the Church at Thessalonica was one of the few Eastern Churches where the Feast of the Assumption had not become part of the liturgical year. In his homily, he explains that the reason for this delay by his episcopal predecessors in the Church at Thessalonica was not due to impiety or laziness, but to make sure that the Dormition narrative was an authentic part of the Apostolic Tradition. And he writes his homily after having investigated to determine that the Assumption is an authentic part of the Apostolic Tradition.

Germanus, Patriarch of Constantinople (d. 733)

[Her body], being human, was adapted and conformed to the supreme life of immortality; however, it remained whole and glorious, gifted with perfect vitality and not subject to the sleep [of death], precisely because it was not possible that the vessel that had contained God, the living Temple of the most holy Divinity of the Only-begotten, should be held by a tomb made for the dead. … You are, as it is written, “all-beautiful” (Song of Songs 2:13), and your virginal body is all-holy, all-chaste, all the dwelling place of God, so that dissolving into dust is foreign to it. (Homily 1 on the Dormition)

Your departure did not lack witnesses, nor was your Dormition false. Heaven tells the glory of those who ran to meet you then; earth presents the truth about it; the clouds cry out the honor they paid you, and the angels tell of the offering of gifts that was made to you then, when the apostles were at your side [as you passed away] above Jerusalem. (Homily 2 on the Dormition)

And when we, the disciples of the Lord, gathered with the throng in your presence, O Gethsemane, for the funeral of the Ever-Virgin Mary, we all saw that she was laid in the tomb and then transferred elsewhere. She passed beyond our sight, beyond any dispute, before the tomb was sealed with the stone. . . While she was being praised with hymns, and was about to be lowered into the tomb, she left the tomb empty. (Homily 3 on the Dormition)

St. John Damascene (d. 750)

Even though your most holy and blessed soul was separated from your most happy and immaculate body, according to the usual course of nature, and even though it was carried to a proper burial place, nevertheless it did not remain under the dominion of death, nor was it destroyed by corruption.

Indeed, just as her virginity remained intact when she gave birth, so her body, even after death, was preserved from decay and transferred to a better and more divine dwelling place. There it is no longer subject to death but abides for all ages. …

Your holy and all-virginal body was consigned to a holy tomb, while the angels went before it, accompanied it, and followed it; for what would they not do to serve the Mother of their Lord?

Meanwhile, the apostles and the whole assembly of the Church sang divine hymns and struck the lyre of the Spirit: “We shall be filled with the blessing of your house; your temple is holy; wondrous in justice” (Ps. 65:4). And again: “The Most High has sanctified his dwelling” (Ps. 46:5); “God’s mountain, rich mountain, the mountain in which God has been pleased to dwell” (Ps. 68:16-17).

The assembly of apostles carried you, the Lord God’s true Ark, as once the priests carried the symbolic ark, on their shoulders. They laid you in the tomb, through which, as if through the Jordan, they will conduct you to the promised land, that is to say, the Jerusalem above, mother of all the faithful, whose architect and builder is God. Your soul did not descend to Hades, neither did your flesh see corruption. Your virginal and uncontaminated body was not abandoned in the earth, but you are transferred into the royal dwelling of heaven, you, the Queen, the sovereign, the Lady, God’s Mother, the true God-bearer. …

A precious ointment, when it is poured out upon the garments or in any place and then taken away, leaves traces of its fragrance even after evaporating. In the same way your body, holy and perfect, impregnated with divine perfume and abundant spring of grace, this body which had been laid in the tomb, when it was taken out and transferred to a better and more elevated place, did not leave the tomb bereft of honor but left behind a divine fragrance and grace, making it a wellspring of healing and a source of every blessing for those who approach it with faith. (Homily 1 on the Dormition, 10, 12-13)

It was necessary that the body of the one who preserved her virginity intact in giving birth should also be kept incorrupt after death. It was necessary that she, who carried the creator in her womb when he was a baby, should dwell among the tabernacles of heaven. (Homily 2 on the Dormition)

Dr. Feingold lecture on the Assumption

In November of last year, Dr. Lawrence Feingold of Ave Maria University, gave a lecture on the subject of the Dogma of the Assumption, to the Association of Hebrew Catholics. The audio both for the lecture and the following Q&A are available below. I have included summary headings for the different parts of the lecture, according to the minute they occur in the lecture. The mp3s for both the lecture and the Q&A can be downloaded here.

Lecture:

Question and Answer

The Dormition of the Virgin (ca. 950-1000)

(1′) Introduction. The Assumption as the final mystery of the life of Mary. Scripture doesn’t narrate it, so how do we know it?
(4′) What is the significance of Mary’s Assumption?
(5′) What is the relation between the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, and the dogma of the Assumption?
(10′) Mary as New Eve. She shares in all the mysteries with Christ, and hence also shares with His victory over death.
(16′) The teaching of St. Francis de Sales and St. Alphonsus Ligouri on the Assumption.

This mystery is a mystery of our participation with God. It is a mystery of theosis. Mary is the icon of the Church, and so her assumption reveals to us something about the Church. Her participation in Christ’s victory over death prefigures our future participation in this victory.

(21′) Enoch and Elijah as types
(23′) The woman in Revelation 12.
(26′) The Song of Songs — reading in the liturgy
(27′) Ps. 132:8 – Mary as ark
(29′) History of the development of the Feast of the Assumption, celebrated in the seventh century in the universal Church (both East and West).
(35′) How Pope Pius XII went about defining this dogma.
(38′) How is this dogma opportune for our times? How does it address materialism, atheism, naturalism, and the loss of Christian hope?
(41′) The definition of the dogma, in MD.
(43′) Did Mary die, or not?
(46′) Mary’s Dormition
(48′) Church Fathers on the Assumption
(57′) What do we celebrate in this Feast?

Video of the declaration of the dogma

The day the dogma was declared: November 1, 1950.

H/T: Terry

1. Pope Pius XII writes:

   Since the universal Church, within which dwells the Spirit of Truth who infallibly directs it toward an ever more perfect knowledge of the revealed truths, has expressed its own belief many times over the course of the centuries, and since the bishops of the entire world are almost unanimously petitioning that the truth of the bodily Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary into heaven should be defined as a dogma of divine and Catholic faith–this truth which is based on the Sacred Writings, which is thoroughly rooted in the minds of the faithful, which has been approved in ecclesiastical worship from the most remote times, which is completely in harmony with the other revealed truths, and which has been expounded and explained magnificently in the work, the science, and the wisdom of the theologians – we believe that the moment appointed in the plan of divine providence for the solemn proclamation of this outstanding privilege of the Virgin Mary has already arrived. (Munificentissimum Deus, 41)

2. H/T: John