Bellarmine · De Controversiis · On Grace and Free Choice · Book VI: Grace and Free Choice in Works of Piety
Chapter 9: The opinion of the heretics on the liberty of choice in those things which pertain to salvation is proposed
Our translation, from the Latin of the Opera Omnia (Paris: Vivès, 1870–74), vol. VI, De Gratia et Libero Arbitrio, Book VI. The Latin source text is public domain; this English rendering is released with the site. Scripture quotations follow Bellarmine's Vulgate citations, rendered in Douay-Rheims wording where he quotes exactly. Click “Show the Latin” for the original (raw OCR of the scan; scanning errors remain — the scan itself is the authority).
There follows the last question: whether man, after the fall of the first man, is truly of free choice in those things which pertain to salvation — so that, though he can do nothing without the help of grace, yet, aroused by prevenient grace and helped by God, he can so work that he can also not work.
Here first presents itself the gross error of Luther, of which even the Lutherans afterwards were ashamed. For these are his words, from a certain digression of the book entitled Operations on the Psalms: “It is an error that free choice has any activity in a good work, when we speak of the internal work. For that willing — which we have already called believing, hoping, loving — is a motion, a snatching, a leading of the word of God, and a certain continual purging and renewal of the mind and sense, from day to day, into the knowledge of God; and though that passion is not always equally intense, yet it is always a passion. Behold (says Jeremias, chapter 18), as clay in the hand of the potter, so also is the house of Israel in my hand. What activity, I pray, has the clay, when the potter fashions a form upon it? Is not mere passion there to be seen?” This sentence is certainly most absurd. For to will is an immanent and vital act, like to understand and to see; accordingly the active principle of that act must be the will itself. Nor is there need of other refutation: both because we have refuted a like sentence copiously enough in book 3 On Grace and Free Choice, chapter 10; and because the Lutherans themselves also have preferred to twist Luther’s words into another sense rather than defend them. Certainly Chemnitz, in the Examination of the Council of Trent, near the end of the censure on the sixth session, says that pardon must be given to Luther, that in the first beginnings of his conversion he still retained the phrases of the Scholastics, to which he had long been accustomed — though in the substance he erred nothing; since by what he wrote — that the will concurs only passively toward actions of this kind — he meant to signify nothing else than that it does not concur freely. But I wonder at the imprudence, or impudence, of Chemnitz. For if Luther retained the phrase of the Scholastics in that digression, without doubt by those words, “to concur passively,” he understood not “not to concur freely,” but that the will is not an active but only a receptive cause of that action; for there are none who study more the propriety and (as they themselves speak) the formality of words than the Scholastics. Then, Luther by two examples so explains his own sentence himself, that no place is left for doubt. For he brings forward, first, the similitude of the clay, in which (as he himself notes) there is no activity; then he adduces the similitude of the sword, which, while it is wielded by someone’s hand, concurs toward its own motion only passively, though toward the cutting of wood, or whatever else, it concur actively. By which similitude he wished to signify that the human will concurs only passively toward its own motion — that is, toward willing — though it concur actively toward the external works which are done from the command of the will, such as to walk, to speak, to eat, to drink, and others of that kind. Finally, Chemnitz himself (that you may wonder at his folly) explains in the same place what it is to concur passively, according to the phrases of the Scholastics, and says it is when the subject does nothing in the motion or form which it receives, but only suffers. But if that is to concur passively according to the phrase of the Scholastics, and Luther retained the phrase of the Scholastics when he wrote that the will concurs only passively in good actions, then Luther was of that opinion, that he judged the will does nothing in good actions, but only suffers. Why then does Chemnitz endeavor to excuse him?
This sentence, then, being left aside, Calvin and Chemnitz teach two things. First, that our will can effect nothing at all of spiritual and salutary good without the help of the grace of God. And in this matter they think rightly; but they do not rightly attribute the contrary opinion to Catholics. For Calvin writes, book 2 of the Institutes, chapter 2, § 27, and Chemnitz in the Examination of the sixth session of the Council of Trent, that it is the common opinion of the Scholastics that before grace there precede in man certain good desires, though feeble. But this was the opinion not of the Scholastics, but of Cassian and Faustus — which St. Thomas and St. Bonaventure, Gregory of Rimini, John Capreolus, and the other Scholastic Doctors repudiate and refute. And yet Calvin and Chemnitz labor much in proving to us that thing which we ourselves prove copiously, not only from the Scriptures, but also from the rescripts of the Pontiffs and the decrees of the Councils. Second, they teach that our will, in the good works of piety, is so driven by God that it cannot not act; and that although it too concurs actively — since it is itself that which produces the action — yet it concurs as a mere natural instrument of God, not as a free cause, and mistress of its own act. From which they gather that our will is not properly said to cooperate with God, or to be helped by God — even as the pen is not rightly said to cooperate with the hand, or to help the hand in writing, but only to be driven and moved by the hand, though in very truth it is the pen that paints the letters. But let us hear the very words of Calvin, book 2 of the Institutes, chapter 3, § 7. He speaks thus: “But there will be some who will concede that the will, of its own disposition averse from good, is converted by the power of the Lord alone; yet so that, having been prepared, it thereafter has its own parts in the acting.” And below: “But this is wrongly attributed to man: that with a will following as a handmaid he obeys prevenient grace.” And § 10 [al. 11]: “And he moves the will — not in the manner which for many ages has been taught and believed, so that it should afterwards be of our election either to obey the motion or to withstand it — but by effecting it efficaciously.” Like things he writes in books 3 and 6 against Pighius, and in the Antidote of the Council, session 6 — to which Chemnitz subscribes in the Examination of the same Council, reprehending the same sixth session.
Show the Latin (Vives edition, OCR)
CAPUT IX. Proponitur sententia hsereticorum de libertate arbitrii in iis, quse pertinent ad salutem. Sequitur quaestio postrema, sitne homo post lapsum primi hominis vere liberi arbi¬ trii in iis rebus, quae pertinent ad salutem, ut quamvis nihil possit sine auxilio gratiae, tamen per gratiam praevenientem excitatus, et a Deo adjutus, ita valeat operari, ut pos¬ sit etiam non operari. (I) 1 Joan. IV, 7. - (2) I Joan. IV, 20. \ 12 i LIBER VI. Hic primum se offert crassus Lutheri er¬ ror, quem etiam Lutherani postea erubue¬ runt. Haec enim sunt ejus verba, ex digres¬ sione quadam libri, qui inscribitur, Opera¬ tiones in Psalmos : « Error est, quod liberum arbitrium habeat aliquam activitatem in bono opere, quando de interno opere loqui¬ mur. Velle enim illud, quod credere, spera¬ re, diligere jam diximus, motus, raptus, ductus verbi Dei , ct quaedam continua pur¬ gatio, et renovatio mentis et sensus, de die in diem, in agnitionem Dei, licet non semper aeque intensa sit illa passio, tamen semper est passio. Ecce (inquit Hierem. cap. 18.) sicut lutum in manu figuli, ita et domus Israel in manu mea. Quid, obsecro, activi¬ tatis habet lutum, quando figulus formam ei affingit? nonne mera passio ibi cernitur ? » Haec certe sententia absurdissima est. Nam velle est actus immanens et vitalis, sicut intelligere et videre. Proinde princi¬ pium activum ejus actus, debet esse ipsa vo¬ luntas. Neque est opus alia refutatione, tum, quod similem sententiam satis copiose refu¬ taverimus in lib. m. de gratia et libero arbi¬ trio cap. 10. tum, quod ipsi etiam Lutherani, Lutheri verba potius in alium sensum de¬ torquere, quam defendere maluerint. Certe Kemnitius in Examine Concilii Tridentini, prope finem censura!, in sextam sessionem, dicit, dandam esse Luthero veniam, quod in primordiis conversionis sua!, adhuc retineret phrases Scholasticorum, quibus longo tem¬ pore assueverat, quamvis in re nihil errave¬ rit : cum per id, quod scripsit, voluntatem solum passive concurrere ad ejusmodi ac¬ tiones, nihil aliud significare voluerit, nisi non libere concurrere. Sed miror imprudentiam, sive impuden¬ tiam Kemnitii. Nam si Lutherus Scholasti¬ corum phrasim, in ea digressione retinuit, sine dubio per illa verba, « passive concur¬ rere », non intellexit, non libere concurrere, sed non esse causam activam, sed solum re¬ ceptivam illius actionis. Nulli enim sunt, qui magis studeant proprietati, et (ut ipsi loquuntur) formalitati verborum, quam Scholastici. Deinde Lutherus duobus exemplis ita suam ipse sententiam explicat, ut nullus du¬ bitationi relinquatur locus. Adfert enim primo similitudinem luti, in quo (ut ipse' notat) nulla est activitas. Deinde adducit similitudinem gladii, qui dum manu alicujus agitur, ad motum suum non concurrit, nisi passive, quamvis ad sciendcndum ligna, vel qiuecumque alia, active concurrat. Qua si¬ militudine significare voluit humanam vo¬ luntatem non concurrere, nisi passive, ad motum suum, id est, ad volendum, tametsi active concurrat ad opera externa, quse ex imperio voluntatis fiunt, qualia sunt, am¬ bulare, loqui, manducare, bibere, aliaquc id genus. Denique ipse Kemnitius (ut ejus stultitiam admireris) explicat in eodem loco, quid sit passive concurrere, juxta phrases Scholasti¬ corum, ac dicit, esse, cum subjectum nihil agit in motu, vel forma, quam recipit, sed tantum patitur. At si istud est passive con¬ currere, secundum phrasim Scholasticorum, et Lutherus phrasim Scholasticorum reti¬ nuit, cum scripsit, voluntatem tantum pas¬ sive concurrere in actionibus bonis : igitur in ea sententia Lutherus fuit, ut existimaret, voluntatem nihil agere in actionibus bonis, sed tantum pati, cur 'igitur eum Kemnitius excusare conatur? Hac igitur sententia omissa, Calvinus et Kemnitius duo docent, primo, voluntatem nostram nihil omnino boni spiritualis, ct salutaris, efficere posse, sine auxilio gratia! Dei. Atque in hac re recte sentiunt, sed non recte contrariam sententiam Catholicis at¬ tribuunt. Scribit enim Calvinus lib. ii. In- stit. c.2. §. 27. et Kemnitius in Exain. 6. sess. Concilii Trident. communem Scholastico¬ rum sententiam esse, ante gratiam praicc- dere in homine quaidam bona desideria, quamvis debilia. Sed haic non Scholastico¬ rum, sed Cassiani et Fausti sententia fuit, quam S. Thomas et S. Bonaventura, Grego- rius Ariminensis, Joannos Capreolus, et alii Doctores Scholastici repudiant ac refellunt. Et tamen Calvinus et Kemnitius multum laborant in ea re nobis probanda, quam nos ipsi non solum ex Scripturis, sed etiam ex Pontificum rescriptis, ct Conciliorum decretis copiose probamus. Secundo docent, voluntatem nostram in bonis pietatis operibus sic agi a Deo, ut non possit non agere, et quamvis ipsa quoque concurrat active, quoniam ipsa est, qua! actionem producit, tamen concurrere ut merum instrumentum Dei naturale, non ut causam liberam, et dominam sui actus. Ex quo colligunt, non proprie dici, voluntatem nostram cooperari Deo, vel adjuvari a Deo : quemadmodum non recte dicitur calamus cooperari manui, vel juvare manum ad CAPUT X. 125 scribendum, sed solum agi, ac moveri a manu, quamvis revera ipse litteras pingat. Sed verba ipsa Calvini audiamus lib. ii. fnst. cap. iii. §. vii. sic ait : « Sed erunt, qui concedent voluntatem a bono, suopte ingenio adversam, sola Domini virtute con¬ verti, sic tamen, ut praeparata suas deinde in agendo partes habeat ». Et infra : « Sed hoc perperam homini tribuitur, quod gratiae praevenienti pedissequa voluntate obsequa¬ tur». Et § 11. « Ac voluntatem, inquit, mo¬ vet, non qualiter multis saeculis traditum est et creditum, ut nostrae postea sit electionis motioni aut obtemperare, aut refragari, sed illam efficaciter efficiendo » . Similia scribit in lib. iii et vi adversus Pighium, et in Antidoto Concilii sess. vi cui subscribit Kemnitius in Examine ejusdem Concilii, eamdem sextam sessionem reprehendens.