Summary of Debate on Salvific Will Started by Augustine

7/30/2019 Summary of Debate on Salvific Will Started by Augustine

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Summary of Debate on SalvificWill Started by Augustine

Hell for unbaptized infants:It is truly sad to see persons fighting with all their might to insist thatit is at least likely that God, who is Infinite Goodness, sends unbaptizedbabies into eternal fire, to suffer forever, when they are completelyinnocent of any personal fault.They say: "There is no middle place between heaven and hell". But

the Church has taught, in the words of Pius IX, Quanto conficiamurmoerore (DS 2866, in Encyclical of August 10, 1863): "God. . . in Hissupreme goodness and clemency, by no means allows anyone to bepunished with eternal punishments who does not have the guilt ofvoluntary fault."

Yet these persons dismiss the teaching of the Encyclical of Pius IX asmere "opinion". They do not know some basic theology: Pius XII, inHumani generis, of 1950 explained: "Nor must it be thought that thethings contained in Encyclical Letters do not of themselves requireassent [internal belief] on the pleas that in them the Pontiffs do notexercise the supreme power of their Magisterium. For these things aretaught with the ordinary Magisterium, about which it is also true tosay: 'He who hears you, hears me.'" That is a promise of Christ, fromLuke 10.16. It cannot fail. So these things are infallible, cannot bepushed aside as "opinions." Pius XII continued: "If the Supreme Pontiffsin theirActa expressly pass judgment on a matter debated until then,

it is obvious to all that the matter, according to the mind and will of thesame Pontiffs cannot be considered any longer a question open todiscussion among theologians."

Vatican II spoke similarly, in Lumen gentium 25: "Religioussubmission of mind and of will must be shown in a special way to theauthentic Magisterium of the Roman Pontiff even when he is notdefining, in such away, namely, that the judgments made by him aresincerely adhered to according to his manifested mind and will. . . ."

As to rejecting of any state other than heaven and hell, the Synod ofPistoia in Italy in September 1786 tried to say that the teaching of St.Thomas that unbaptized infants can have a sort of limbo was a

"Pelagian fable". That teaching of Pistoia was rightly condemned byPius VI in DS 2626.

St. Thomas himself, in his De malo q. 5. a. 3. ad 4: "The infants areseparated from God perpetually in regard to the loss of glory, whichthey do not know, but not in regard to participation in natural goods,which they do know. . . . That which they have through nature. . theypossess without pain." So there is no hell for unbaptized infants.


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Really the doctrine of hell is a most difficult one, to think a good Godwould send anyone at all into eternal fire. How then can some insistthat He probably does send innocent babies into such fire! What a sluron the goodness of God!

Can there be errors even in Doctors of the Church? Definitely yes. St.

Thomas Aquinas himself in Summa III. 27. 2 ad 2 denied theImmaculate Conception -- most of the great theologians of the MiddleAges did that too, starting with St. Bernard of Clairvaux, otherwisefamed for his Marian devotion (PL 182. 335). St. Thomas wrote: ". . ifthe soul of the Blessed Virgin had never been defiled with thecontagion of original sin, this would take away from the dignity ofChrist, according to which He is the universal Savior of all."

Pius IX in defining the Immaculate Conception answered that, sayingshe was redeemed by her Son, but with a preventive redemption:grace was granted to her from the start in anticipation of His merits.

Denial of God's Salvific Will:

To deny the words of St. Paul in 1 Timothy 2. 4. is horrendous: "Godwills all men to be saved." Why? When The Father says in 1 Tim 2.4that He wills all men to be saved, it really means that He loves them,for He wills them good, even divine good. He wills that we be able toget in on the infinite streams of infinite knowledge and of infinite lovethat flow within the Holy Trinity.

Really, since to love is to will good to another for the other's sake - cf.St. Thomas, Summa I-II. 6. 4 - when God says He wills us to be saved, itmeans He loves us. So to deny that He wills all to be saved is to denyHis love! What a horrid error!

Does He want our salvation strongly? Romans 5. 8 says God "Proved

His love for us". He did this in two ways.First, when we love, there are three steps. First, we see something

fine in another. That leads us, as the second step, to will or wish thatso fine a person may be well off. Then, thirdly, if that will is strong, wewill not be content to merely say I wish, but will act to bring it about.

But if someone starts out to bring well-being and happiness to theone loved, and a small obstacle can stop him - that love is small. If ittakes a great obstacle to stop him - that love is great. If even ameasureless obstacle, literally immense, cannot stop him - then thatlove is measureless.

What obstacle did the Father surmount to bring us this divine

happiness? Nothing less than the terrible death of His Only Son. This isa staggering thought. Plato (Symposium 203) had said that "No godassociates with man." Aristotle (Ethics 1. 5) said that no friendship ispossible between a god and a man, since the distance is too great.What would these great minds have thought had they heard that Godnot only became man, but even was willing to suffer so horribly for us.No wonder St. Paul told the Corinthians (1. 24) that Christ crucified is"a stumbling block to the Jews (who had heard in Dt 21. 23 "God's


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curse in upon every one who hangs on the tree"), and nonsense to theGreeks." So in this way we can begin to see that His love ismeasureless for us. So the will to save us is measureless. Hence inRomans 8. 32: "He who did not spare His own Son, but handed Himover for all of us: How will He not give us all things along with Him?"

There is still another way to as it were measure the measureless loveof God for us. In Isaiah 55. 8-9 He had said: "As high as the heavensare above the earth, so high are my thoughts above your thoughts,and my ways above your ways" --in view of that He knew we could notunderstand Him or feel at home with Him unless He in some way toldus what He is like. So He did that in His Son, and by way of the NewCovenant that Son brought to us. In a covenant, the two sides eachgive something and receive something. What they give is of course ofthe same greatness as that which they receive. The Father acceptedthe infinite price of redemption, the death of His Only Son. So inaccepting that infinity, He pledged, obligated Himself to offer

forgiveness and grace infinitely, with no limit other than that which wemight place in rejecting His advances.

If we used legal language, we would say that He created an infiniteobjective claim or title to forgiveness and grace without limit formankind. But is it just for mankind in a block, as it were? It is that, butfar more. St. Paul in Gal 2. 20 wrote that, "He loved me, and gaveHimself for me." Was that only for St. Paul, a very special person? No,Vatican II, Church in Modern World #22 assures us: "Each one of uscan say with the Apostle: The Son of God loved me, and gave Himselffor me."

So for each one of us, individually, there is an infinite claim or title to

all forgiveness and grace. That does not imply a man could set out ona spree of sin, and intend to pull up just in time. No, when he did pullup, there would be no change of heart, it would be all preplanned . Andso no real change of heart, no contrition. Further, much sinning bringshardness or blindness. Then God would indeed be glad to offer grace,but the man would be closed off, incapable of taking it in.

In Psalm 118 the refrain is: "For His love is everlasting." Yes, that istrue, but we should add that it is also without measure.

We have tried to find a way to gauge the immeasurable, we havefound it absolutely beyond our poor measures.Tragically, St. Augustine did, more than once, deny that God wills all

to be saved.(1) In his Enchiridion 103: "When we hear and read. . . that He wills

all men to be saved. . . we must. . . so understand it. . . as if it weresaid that no man is saved except whom He wants [to be saved]." Butthis is a vicious circle.

In the same passage, he continues: "Or certainly it was said. . . notthat there is no man WHOM HE IS UNWILLING TO HAVE SAVED, He whowas unwilling to perform the wonders of miracles among those whom


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He says would have done penance [Tyre and Sidon] if He had donethem: but in such a way that we understand 'all men' to mean thewhole human race distributed into various categories: kings, privatecitizens, nobles, ordinary men, lofty, lowly, learned, unlearned. . . ." Soit means not that He wills all to be saved, but only some from each

category of persons!(2) In his work De correptione et gratia 14. 44 he quotes 1 Timothy 2.4 and continues: [it] can be understood in many ways, of which wehave mentioned some in other works, but I shall give one here. It issaid in such a way. . . that all the predestined are meant, for the wholehuman race is in them." But this is not honest. All really means onlythose whom He predestines.

(3) ibid. 15. 47: "[it] can be understood also in this way: that Hecauses us to wish [that all be saved]." But He Himself does not wish it!

(4) Epistle 217. 6. 19: "And so that which is said, God wills all men tobe saved, ALTHOUGH HE IS UNWILLING THAT SO MANY BE SAVED, IS

SAID FOR THIS REASON: THAT ALL WHO ARE SAVED ARE NOT SAVEDEXCEPT BY HIS WILL." So He really is unwilling that many be saved.

Massa damnata: This idea, that all humans by original sin became a"damned and damnable" gob, which God could throw into hell withoutwaiting for anyone to sin personally, naturally follows from the above.He taught this many times. Here are some:

(1) To Simplicianus 1. 2. 16: "Therefore all men are . . . onecondemned mass [massa damnata] of sin, that owes a debt ofpunishment to the divine and supreme justice. Whether it [the debt] beexacted or whether it be condoned, there is no injustice."

(2) Epistle 190. 3. 12: He said that the reprobates are so much more

numerous than the saved that "by an incomparable number they aremore numerous than those whom He deigned to predestine as sons ofthe promise. . . so that by the very number of those rejected, it mightbe shown that the number, howsoever large, of the justly damned, ISOF NO IMPORTANCE WITH A JUST GOD. . ."

(3) On the predestination of the saints 17: "Let us, then, understandthe call by which the elect are made [elect]. [they are] not [persons]who are chosen because they have believed, but [they are chosen] sothat they may believe. For even the Lord Himself made this sufficientlyclear when He said: 'You have not chosen me, but I have chosen you.[Jesus was talking about His choice of men to be apostles, not of

heaven and hell]. . . . this is the unshakable truth of predestination andgrace. For what else does that mean, that the Apostle says, 'As Hechose us in Him before the foundation of the world' [Ephesians 1,speaking of full membership in the Church, not of heaven and hell]. Forsurely if it was said because God foresaw that they would believe [and]not because He himself was going to make them believers -- the Sonspeaks against that sort of foreknowledge saying, 'You have notchosen me, but I have chosen you' [same error as above]. So they


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were chosen before the foundation of the world by that predestinationby which God foreknew His own future acts: they are chosen out of theworld by that call by which God fulfilled that which He had predestined.. Therefore God chose the faithful, not because they were already[faithful] but that they might he [faithful]."

(4) Enchiridion 99: "For grace alone distinguishes the redeemed fromthe lost, whom a common cause from [their] beginning had joined intoone mass of perdition. . . ." If it is grace alone, then no humanbehavior, good or bad, makes any difference.

(5) City of God 21. 12:"Hence there is a condemned mass of thewhole human race. . . so that no one would be freed from this just anddue punishment except by mercy and undue grace; and so the humanrace is divided [into two parts] so that in some it may be shown whatmerciful grace can do, in others, what just vengeance can do. . . . In it[punishment] there are many more than in [mercy] so that in this waythere may be shown what is due to all."

Approval of the Church?:Never has the Church endorsed these points, the massa damnata, or

the denial of 1 Timothy 2.4. On the contrary, in 1597, Pope ClementVIII, seeing that these ideas were disturbing souls in debates in Spain,ordered both Dominicans and Jesuits to send a delegation to Rome, todebate before cardinals. (The Dominican theory is not from St.Thomas, but from Domingo Baez (cf. "Predestination: Reasons forCenturies-Old Impasse") who explicitly denied the salvific will.)The debates ran for ten years and got nowhere. Chief reason was the

both sides were abusing Scripture - as we just saw St. Augustine doingit - without considering the context in which something was said. Then

the next Pope, Paul V, consulted St. Francis de Sales, Saint, and greattheologian. He had had six weeks of blackness himself, as he tells inone of his letters, from the Dominican theory -- in which God reallyloves no one, for God blindly picks a small number to save, not for theirsake, but to use them, to make a point. St. Francis advised the Pope toapprove neither side. That is what he did, and ordered them not writeon it again without special permission. That order of course fell intodisuse, and early this century they were at it again, until the ferment ofVatican II brought an end to such solid and difficult matters, on whichneither side had found the right answer.

Summary of Debate on Salvific Will Started by Augustine

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