516 FREEDOM AND GRACE.

BERNARD ON GRACE AND FREEWILL.

Augustinian scheme. Thus: "If efficacious grace (gratia efficax) is but imparted to man, it draws, though without violence, the free will with such force, that it follows without resistance, as if impelled by an inner necessity." "Although," says he, "grace reclaims the wandering, yet it draws them with their own freewill. It does not constrain them contrary to their will. It is so mighty that it transforms even the will of the most obdurate without any difficulty and any violence to each stage of conversion, whenever it pleases." The same held good also of the other systematic theologians of the twelfth century. But we must make special mention of the mystical writers of this century. Their mild practical bent led them to give special prominence to the doctrine of the free will and to represent it as standing in harmony with grace. But yet it may be questioned if they really supposed a free will conditioning grace. Here Bernard's tract, De gratia et libero arbitrio, takes an important place. The occasion of his writing it was furnished him by a promise he had given to draw up a confession of faith. He recognized, in all the good that was in him, the work of prevenient grace. He hoped by that to make still further progress in holiness and to be carried onward to perfection.' This appeared to one who heard it, an extravagant eulogium of grace at the expense of human merit and human activity. Bernard felt himself called upon, therefore, to give an account of the manner in which he conceived grace and freewill to be related to each other. He acknowledged that there is in man an inalienable somewhat, a freedom subjected to no necessity and to no constraint, the faculty of self-determination, the freedom of nature as contradistinguished from the freedom of grace. Freedom, in this latter sense, is the freedom from sin as a state, material freedom; in the other sense, it is formal freedom. That formal freedom it is, whereby man is distinguished from natural beings. Unless this faculty of freedom always remained with him, there could be no place for moral imputation, no question about either merit or guilt. As the salvation of man proceeds from the operation of grace, so the latter can produce its operation only in the free will. No one obtains salvation against his will. The whole work of the free will, its entire merit, rests upon this, that it consents to the grace that awakens it. Which, however, is not to be so understood as if this consent originated in itself; since, according to the declaration of St. Paul, we are not able of ourselves to think anything as we ought, which is still less than consent. Grace prevents us, by inspiring us with good thoughts, which it does without any aid from us. In transforming our perverse wills, it unites itself with them, so that they consent with it. From God comes the beginning of our salvation, neither through us nor with us. However many

our gracious Father, who wills that all men should be saved, seems to

'Quod scilicet ab ipsa me in bono et praeventum agnoscerem et provehi sentirem et sperarem perficiendum.

2 Tolle liberum arbitrium et non erit, quod salvetur, tolle gratiam, non erit unde salvetur.

Quod consentit.

A Deo sine dubio nostrae fit salutis exordium, nec per nos utique nec nobiscum.

FREEDOM AND GRACE.

RICHARD OF ST. VICTOR.

517

draw to his salvation, still, he will hold none worthy of salvation, save such as approve themselves to him as willing. The constraining influences of God on man1 aim at this very thing, that he should be stimulated to voluntary consent, so that when God changes his will from evil to good, God does not deprive that will of freedom, but transforms it." Now, if we compare all this with what Bernard says concerning the relation of free will to grace, we can make his determinations with respect to the former harmonize with his declarations concerning the latter, only by supposing that, like Augustin, he leaned upon the assertion that the free will is subjected to no constraint, and no natural necessity; that the form of rational self-determination was ever present, but as one always determined by the almighty influence of grace. On the ground of such a formal, abstract notion of freedom he might say, that this freedom continued to exist in connection with all moral un-freedom, is the same in evil actions and good. And, consequently, we must weigh moreover the fact, that he ever supposed the participation of all in original sin grounded in a hidden chain of evolution, so that therefore that supervening sinfulness from which man could be freed only by a grace bestowed on him without any help of his own, was still not able to prevent imputation, nor to remove the guilt of the free will. In like manner, Richard a S. Victore could unite Augustin's doctrine of prevenient grace, drawing the will, with the strongest expressions with regard to free will.3 How," says he, "is the will of man not truly free, who can be deprived of his freedom by no constraint; for no creature has power to do it, and it does not become the Creator to do it. But how should the Creator himself be able to do this; he who can do nothing except that which is worthy of him?"4 He in fact will not admit that this will can be denominated a captive will; because it involves a contradiction to call him free, and at the same time a captive; unless by that term is meant simply his weakness, the being deprived of the original capability.5 But concerning grace he says also, that it often presented itself to the negligent and careless of its own accord, and was often suddenly and unexpectedly snatched away from our many and earnest efforts. Yet he ascribes to the free will an ability to consent to the evil or the good, to consent to divine grace or not. It can win grace again, but only through grace. As it cannot regain by itself those who are once lost, so it cannot without other help secure those who have been gratuitously

66

Quomodo arbitrium hominis vere liberum non est, quod sua libertate nulla vi, nulla potestate privari potest, nam hoc nec creatura valet, nec creatorem decet. Sed quomodo vel creator hoc potest, qui nihil quod non decet facere potest?

Nihil aliud quam infirmum et nativae possibilitatis virtute privatum.

6 Potest consentire vel non consentire aspirationi divinae. De statu interioris hominis, p. i, tract. i, c. xiii.

7 Gratiam, sed gratis, recuperare potest.

518

FREEDOM AND GRACE. THOMAS AQUINAS.

(therefore by the operation of grace) regained. Grace may with justice be at any time withdrawn from it, because it is never to be found without fault.1

But, in the thirteenth century, we mark two tendencies in the mode of apprehending this doctrine divaricating from each other. One in the order of Franciscan monks, of which Alexander of Hales appears first as the representative, really departs so far from the rigid Augus tinian system, as to suppose a grace conditioned in its operations on the free recipiency of the man; the other, led by the logical consistency of its principles even beyond Augustin himself, as we have seen in the principles already lying at bottom in Albert the Great, and still further developed and more clearly expressed by Thomas Aquinas. Alexander of Hales says: "All men are found to be alike corrupt. No one can make himself fit for heaven. God wills according to his highest love to save men, to communicate to them himself; but it is presupposed that there is a recipiency, so far as this is grounded in the moral powers still remaining to man. The light shines everywhere; but its rays do not find everywhere a material susceptible of illumination. No one can render himself sufficiently susceptible for the reception of grace, unless God himself makes him fit for it by his own inward operation. But if he only does what it depends on himself to do, the divine grace ensues by which he is prepared for the reception of grace." He makes use of the following comparison: As when a rich man distributes alms, and two persons are present equally poor; but one stretches out his arm to receive the alms and afterwards receives it, but the other neglects to do so and receives nothing. Thomas Aquinas also starts from the maxim of the Aristotelian philosophy which prevailed in all the schools, that every action, in order to its being accomplished, presupposed a susceptible material prepared for it beforehand.3 According to his doctrine, therefore, a certain susceptibility was required on the part of man in order to the operation of grace. But it appears evident, from the chain of the doctrine of Thomas Aquinas already unfolded, that he could not allow so very much to depend on creaturely self-determination. Although he presupposes such a necessary susceptibility for the operations of grace, yet he traces even this preparation again to God, to the assistance of God moving the mind to goodness.4 Whatsoever in man renders him a fit subject for salvation, is all comprehended under the effect of predestination;5-every necessary instrumentality for carrying out the decree of predestination.

The above-mentioned preparation for a divine communication to the rational creature by means of a recipiency on his part, by means of

CONNECTION OF FAITH AND MORALS.

519

that which he might be able to do at his own position with the moral power still left to him, was called a meritum de congruo.1 It was the condition ordained of God under which he had decreed to bestow his gifts, in distinction from a merit in the proper sense; concerning which distinction, in its reference to man's original state, we have already spoken. Yet it is easy to gather from what has been said, the difference that prevailed in the mode of applying this idea, when Alexander of Hales actually placed such a condition in the free will. Thomas Aquinas referred all to the divine causality operating in a certain order of sequence by virtue of the form of development in time.

When the distinguished theologians of this period embraced together under the name of theology doctrines of faith and morals, in their works treating of the whole province of theology united both these objects together, this was not a mere outward combination, but really an inward one, founded in the intrinsic connection in their own minds of the doctrinal with the ethical element, as we may gather, in fact, from their anthropology as it has already been explained by us, namely, their doctrine concerning grace and justification and faith in its complete form (fides formata), the actuating principle of the Christian life. As the principal work here, we must consider the Summa of Thomas Aquinas, which, in this theological discipline, furnished vastly greater stores than were furnished either by those who preceded or came after him. A particular Summa on morals,3 composed by Nicholas Peraldus (Pérault), archbishop of Lyons, in the thirteenth century, is not to be compared with this in respect of originality and profoundness. The ethical writings of William of Paris, whom we have had occasion to mention so often, e. g. his book De virtutibus, is of more importance; and the works of Raymund Lull are rich in ethical matter, particularly his work on the Contemplation of God.

But also in the ethical parts of these systems, two elements occur together; that which proceeded from their unbiased Christian consciousness and their free thoughts as actuated by that consciousness, and that which they must adopt from the church tradition, in which they themselves with their intellects were involved. From this circumstance contradictions might arise, of which they themselves were not conscious. Again, the influence of Aristotle, esteemed by them the philosopher par eminence, would necessarily show itself, on this particular side, as of the highest importance with them, as his masterly ability in evolving conceptions and in sound observation shines pre

'According to Thomas Aquinas, videtur congruum, ut homini operanti secundum suam virtutem Deus recompenset secundum excellentiam suae virtutis. This is so arranged in the divine economy, just as in nature each thing, working after its own peculiar manner, attains to the end for which God has designed it. In the case of the rational creature, however, this takes place by means of self-determination by the free will, and hence is called a merit. Here there is always congruitas propter

quandam aequalitatem proportionis. The adequate relation, meritum condignum, quod aequatur mercedi, is quite another thing. Such a relation can never exist between creaturely acts and supernatural communication, but only between the supernatural itself, that which proceeds from the grace of the Holy Spirit, in so far as the latter is the principle, and the communication of eternal life.

"Page 466.

3 Summa de virtutibus et vitiis..

520

INFLUENCE OF ARISTOTLE ON ETHICS.

eminently forth in him as a moralist; and so many things were to be met with in his ethical works, which might be appropriated even by such as stood on Christian grounds, at least with certain modifications demanded by the Christian principle; for every sound position of an earlier development, ought certainly to be adopted, and first brought to its full import and significance by Christianity. But the Aristotelian system of morals had its root entirely, it must be owned, in the distinctive ground occupied by the antique world, though soaring in occasional flashes of thought above that inferior position, and containing vaticinations of a loftier one destined at some future time to be the inheritance of mankind. Many of his principal ethical ideas are necessarily connected throughout with that which in the mode of life and thought in antiquity constituted an antagonism to Christianity. In order, therefore, to a right application of Aristotle's ethical ideas in the Christian system of morals, an exact and sharply defined line of demarkation was required between the fundamental positions occupied by the ancient world and by pure Christianity, a sifting apart of that which was related and that which was opposed in the two different positions; of that which could only be adduced as antagonistic to the properly Christian view, for the purpose of rendering the latter more distinct and clear, and of that which after being modified by the Christian principle might be appropriated. But in order to this was required a species of criticism proceeding from the intelligent examination of the facts of history, which was by no means given to the profound and acute perceptions of these men. They were liable to be easily misled by their admiration and reverence of the great master, to allow undue importance to his conceptual distinctions, whether it was that they distorted these notions themselves by laying into them something more or other than they meant, or that, in applying them to the Christian province, they injured and troubled that province itself. The latter would be more likely to happen in those cases where an occasion for it was already furnished in a troubling of the Christian consciousness that had arisen at some earlier period, where already, in the church tradition, the antagonisms of the ancient world overcome by primitive Christianity had been again introduced by the false Catholic element. And what we have said with regard to the influence of the Aristotelian principles, will have to be applied also to the influence of the Neoplatonic, inasmuch as the grand position of the antique world expresses itself in both in certain aspects.

Most assuredly we meet in these theologians with an important line of demarkation, which might seem to denote the same thing with a distinct separation of the different positions held by the ancient world and Christianity, the distinction, namely, between the moral virtues recognized already in the ante-Christian period, that is, the cardinal virtues, and the theological virtues. The former stand connected with the fitness of the moral nature in itself, the purely human as such; the latter, with the higher fitness superinduced upon man's nature by a supernatural divine principle, the ennobling of the purely human by a divine life. By the general conception virtue, Thomas