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Augustine and Jansen on Grace and Freewill It is plain that the
Jansenists were right about the Church’s true doctrine on grace and free
will. The Church approved and
defined Augustine’s doctrine of grace and free will as its own, during the patristic period, as will be
discussed further below. Pope St. Hormisdas:
“What the Roman, that is the Catholic, Church follows and preserves
concerning free will and the grace of God can be abundantly recognised in the
various books of the blessed Augustine, and especially in those to Hilary and
Prosper, but the prominent chapters are contained in the ecclesiastical
archives and if these are lacking there, we establish them.” (Sicut Rationi,
AD. 520) The books of St.
Augustine written to Hilary and Prosper, to which Hormisdas made especial
reference as the teaching of the Church regarding grace and free will, are
his last two books, which are collectively known as the Predestination of the Saints. Augustine understood freedom from external compulsion to suffice for freedom and merit in the fallen state. Hence his doctrine is essentially the same as that of Jansen. According to Professor
John Kilcullen of Macquarie University in Australia, for Augustine freedom from
external constraint suffices for freedom and merit in the state of fallen
nature; for Cornelius Jansen and Antoine Arnauld, there must also be at least
an insufficient power to overcome the inclination to act that way and a
metaphysical power to resist grace. See his Arnauld
on Freewill and Necessity. Hence Rome attempted to
condemn its own infallible doctrine when it censored the doctrine of Jansen
in Cum Occasione (1653). “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. -- Declared and
condemned as heretical.” Professor Jan Miel of Wesleyan University explained. “The answer lies in an understanding of the nature of the human will. Our will is free to choose, but it is also determined in two ways: it acts according to motives, choosing always a greater good over a lesser; and it does not choose - but must choose among - the objects presented to it. Man has no control over either the external objects presented to his choice, nor the internal images or motives that will govern that choice: these are sent by God. [...] Professor Wolfson has shown (Philosophical Implications, pp. 559-61) that this theory of St. Augustine depends on a distinction made by Aristotle between what is necessary by the internal nature of a thing, and what is compelled by an external force. When we say, ‘God is immutable’, it does not mean that anything compels God to remain always the same, but rather it is his nature to be so: he is immutable by definition. So, the human will is concupiscent by definition and although it sins freely and without being compelled, yet it could not do otherwise and still be the same human will. When, however, it is transformed by grace, its very nature is changed and it turns necessarily - again without any compulsion - toward the good. This distinction can be seen as roughly equivalent to that between logical necessity and physical causation, and it is clear that this is exactly what St. Augustine has in mind when he says, for example, that he would accept the concept of Fate (fatum) in his system provided it were taken in its etymological meaning of that which is spoken, rather than seeming to depend on the movement of the stars. (De Civitate Dei V, 9) This then is St. Augustine’s way of reconciling the peculiar infallibility of grace and the freedom of the will.” (Pascal and Theology, pp. 27-8) The corrosive influence of Modernism (development of doctrine) goes back to the Scholastic period, particularly the introduction of the concept of the liberty of opposites, introduced by Scotus and the concept of the ordinate will of God introduced by Ockham; both novelties were later championed by the Jesuit Molinists and usually pass for Catholic orthodoxy today although the doctrine is historically heterodox. We keep to the genuine doctrine, passed on from the apostles, through the orthodox fathers, particularly Augustine and once defined by the Church, ever without any change of meaning. We shall expand upon the points. Augustine’s Doctrine of Grace and the Church’s Approval of It Augustine’s doctrine of grace
Augustine taught that since the Fall, man always acts according to
whatever attracts (or “delights”) him the most. The grace of Christ gives him
to love God and infallibly to do the good for delight in him. Otherwise man
is infallibly drawn into sin by the delight of concupiscence, worldly love.
God saves the predestined by upholding them in grace, allowing others to
finally fall away. Augustine developed
his doctrine of grace and predestination in opposition to Pelagianism and
Semi-Pelagianism. God made Adam strong and gave him sufficient grace to
persevere in the good; this grace gave Adam the ability to persevere but did
not give him the act of will itself; the will of Adam was strong enough for him
to choose to co-operate with grace. Adam sinned and all humans are conceived
guilty of his sin and condemned to damnation; they are thus inexcusable
before God and there is no need that he should offer them grace before their
damnation is justified; but God has gratuitously chosen an elect to
infallibly save, leaving the rest in the “mass of damnation”; he does not
choose men because of their foreseen merits but himself now gives them to
co-operate with his grace; he could save anyone and everyone but has opted to
save only an elect, of small number compared to the reprobate, of his own
free selection, owing fallen man not grace but punishment. Fallen man’s free
will is weakened and debased in its operations; the grace of Adam would no
longer suffice for man to do good; fallen man always and infallibly inclines
to whatever gives him the greater delight; the love of God is the only
virtuous motive for our acts but fallen man is infallibly persuaded by
concupiscence, a strong worldly delight and so sins in every act. The elect
are infallibly persuaded to the salvific act by a victorious delight
given by God, the delight of the earthly love being overcome by the stronger
heavenly delight in God, who is taken as one’s motive; thus the will itself
to persevere is given to the elect, while God allows the reprobate to fall
away. God now gives every salvific act, from the initial act of Faith,
through resisting temptation, to the act of final perseverance; there is
nothing that man can do of himself to dispose himself to religion or to
persevere in it; God raises up with charity whom he will and preserves whom
he will in the same charity. The apparent virtues of the heathen are false,
being motivated by worldly love; man must be given to love anew. Texts
exhibiting Augustine’s doctrine of grace
There follows a few
helpful quotes to illustrate some of the doctrine of Augustine on grace and
free will, which the Jansenists would later revive. The first two quotes
illustrate his doctrine that man turns from sin to the good only through the
grace of victorious delectation, man being infallibly drawn to whatever
delights him most; the third indicates that the delight in good is brought
about through the grace of a love of God; the fourth indicates that man is
thereby given not merely the possibility of willing aright, but also the
right act of will itself, which would be termed in later theology
“intrinsically efficacious grace”; the fifth and sixth indicate that
accordingly God could save any and all, but he wants to save only an elect
whom he predestines; the last two explain the scripture that God “wills all
men to be saved.” “Grace grants that the
delight of sin may be conquered by the delight of what is right.” (Unfinished
Work Against Julian 2:217) “But if Virgil could say,
‘His own pleasure draws each one’ – not necessity, but pleasure, not
obligation, but delight – how much more strongly should we say that a man is
drawn to Christ, who is delighted with truth, delighted with beatitude,
delighted with justice, delighted with eternal life – all of which Christ
is?” (Tracts on Gospel of John 26:4) “‘The Lord will give
kindness and sweet grace, and our land shall yield her fruit.’ A good work,
moreover, affords greater delight, in proportion as God is more and more
loved as the highest unchangeable Good, and as the Author of all good things
of every kind whatever. And that God may be loved, ‘His love is shed abroad
in our hearts,’ not by ourselves, but ‘by the Holy Ghost that is given unto
us.’” (Confessions 2:27) “This first is the
grace which was given to the first Adam; but more powerful than this is that
in the second Adam. For the first is that whereby it is effected that a man
may have righteousness if he will; the second, therefore, can do more than
this, since by it is even effected that he will, and will so much, and love
with such ardour, that by the will of the Spirit he overcomes the will of the
flesh, that lusteth in opposition to it. Nor was that, indeed, a small grace
by which was demonstrated even the power of free will, because man was so
assisted that without this assistance he could not continue in good, but
could forsake this assistance if he would. But this latter grace is by so
much the greater, that it is too little for a man by its means to regain his
lost freedom; it is too little, finally, not to be able without it either to
apprehend the good or to continue in good if he will – unless he is also made
to will.” (Rebuke and Grace 31) “Tyre and Sidon would
not have been condemned, although more slightly than those cities in which,
although they did not believe, wonderful works were done by Christ the Lord;
because if they had been done in them, they would have repented in dust and
ashes, as the utterances of the Truth declare [Matt. 11:21 ff.], in which
words of His the Lord Jesus shows to us the loftier mystery of
predestination.” (The Gift of Perseverance 22) “God teaches all such
to come to Christ, for He wills all such to be saved, and to come to the
knowledge of the truth. And if He had willed to teach even those to whom the
word of the cross is foolishness to come to Christ beyond all doubt these
also would have come. For He neither deceives nor is deceived when He says,
‘Every one that hath heard of the Father, and hath learned, cometh to me.’”
(The Predestination of the Saints 15) “Accordingly, when we
hear and read in Scripture that He ‘will have all men to be saved,’ although
we know well that all men are not saved, we are not on that account to
restrict the omnipotence of God, but are rather to understand the Scripture, ‘Who
will have all men to be saved,’ as meaning that no man is saved unless God
wills his salvation: not that there is no man whose salvation He does not
will, but that no man is saved apart from His will.” (Enchiridion 103) “And so that which is
said ‘God wills all men to be saved’ though He is unwilling that so many be
saved, is said for this reason: that all who are saved, are not saved except
by His will.” (Epistle 217) Augustine’s teaching on
grace and predestination approved by the Church as her own and infallibly
defined by early popes The Church approved the
teaching of St. Augustine on grace and free will as her own and held him up
as the master to be followed. Pope St. Hormisdas:
“What the Roman, that is the Catholic, Church follows and preserves
concerning free will and the grace of God can be abundantly recognised in the
various books of the blessed Augustine, and especially in those to Hilary and
Prosper, but the prominent chapters are contained in the ecclesiastical
archives and if these are lacking there, we establish them.” (Sicut Rationi,
AD. 520) Pope John II:
“According to the enactments of my predecessors, the Roman Church follows and
maintains the teaching of Augustine.” (Epistle) Augustine’s teaching
was codified in canons infallibly approved by Rome as a rule of the doctrine
of the faith. For instance, the II Council of Orange, approved by Pope
Boniface II and recognised by all Catholic theologians as infallible, defined
in AD. 529, using sentences taken from Augustine, the doctrine of the two
loves, caritas (love of God) and cupiditas (worldly love). “Worldly desire creates
the fortitude of the Gentiles, but the charity of God, which is diffused in
our hearts, not by free will, which is from us, but by the Holy Spirit, which
is given to us produces the fortitude of the Christians.” Pope Pius XI: “It is a
further tribute to the glory of the Bishop of Hippo, that more than once the
Fathers in lawful Councils assembled, made use of his very words in defining
Catholic truth. In illustration it is enough to cite the Second Council of
Orange”. (Ad Salutem) Orange II and the Indiculus
de Gratia Dei, which is also recognised by all Catholic theologians as an
infallible rule of the doctrine of the faith (though few would honestly own
the doctrine on grace of these early texts), also defined Augustine’s
doctrine of efficacious grace, without which we cannot do anything virtuous,
persevere in good or refrain from sin. Hence, perseverance unto salvation is
only ever given gratuitously, while God allows the rest to fall away from
justice unto reprobation. These definitions were either made using sentences taken
from the writings of Augustine, or express his doctrine using his
terminology, and thus must be understood in the original Augustinian “sense
once defined” as Vatican I put it. Accordingly, the later popes who attempted
to condemn the Augustinian doctrine of efficacious grace in later Augustinian
(“Jansenist”) writers were heretics, contradicting the doctrine of the faith
that had already been defined in the patristic Church. “Without God, man can do
no good. God does many good things in man, which man does not do; indeed, man
does no good that God does not perform that man may do.” (Orange II) “No one even after
having been restored by the grace of baptism is capable of overcoming the
snares of the devil and subduing the concupiscences of the flesh, unless he
has received through the daily help of God the perseverance of the good way
of life.” (Indiculus de Gratia Dei) The canon of the Indiculus
quoted defines Augustine’s doctrine of efficacious grace using his
terminology of the “adjutorium quo” (literally, “the help by which”), which
is the help by which the good act is effected in man, as distinguished from
the “adjutorium sine quo non” (“the help without which it cannot be”), which
for Adam did not itself effect the good act but only made it possible. Since
the fall, efficacious grace is needed before we can do good and thus it is
now both “adjutorium quo” and “adjutorium sine quo non”. The phrase in the Indiculus
“received through the daily help of God” is the “adjutorium quo” concept
translated into English. The canon teaches that man can persevere in good
acts only through this efficacious help. Accordingly, the justified cannot
keep the commandments if this grace is wanting. Magisterial
texts approving and defining Augustinian soteriology
This list is not
comprehensive. ·
Council Carthage XVI
(418) ·
The Catalogue or the Authoritative
Statements of the Past Bishops of the Holy See Concerning the Grace of God
(Indiculus de Gratia Dei) ·
Sicut Rationi (520) ·
Council of Orange II
(529) ·
Epistle of Pope John II ·
Ad Salutem
(1930) Aquinas on
Predestination and Supralapsarianism Aquinas taught that
only a tiny proportion of humanity are predestined. They are infallibly saved
through efficacious grace, while God allows others to finally fall away. The
elect are chosen not because their co-operation is forseen and with no
contributing reason in the creature. Rather God gives us to co-operate with
grace. Aquinas discussed the
doctrine of God’s providence and predestination with reference to the
Aristotelian categories of causality. The final cause, the purpose of
the universe is to manifest God’s goodness to the utmost, which is best
accomplished through the creation of the greatest variety, which includes
creatures that obtain their ends, their goods, and others that fail in the
accomplishment of their ends and so suffer. And so it is with people, some of
whom God predestines and some whom he reprobates so that the goodness of his
mercy and his justice might both be manifest. Predestination and reprobation
are each a part of providence. He wills good to every creature but not every
good to every creature, each species and individual varying. God is the formal
cause of the universe and of every creature, each participating in him to
some degree of perfection. He is also the (first) efficient cause of
every creature and none can put forth any act unless physically pre-moved
by him to do so. Hence, God physically pre-moved humans to determine
themselves to the salvific act, even prior to the Fall. Physical pre-motion
is termed intrinsically efficacious grace in the supernatural order
and without it, no salvific act can be made and no one can persevere. Hence,
every good had by any creature is an effect of God and predestination and
reprobation have no reason in the creature. This all makes supralapsarianism
unavoidable, which is the doctrine that God willed evil to his creatures and
to elect certain people to salvation and to reprobate certain others unto
damnation, without any reason foreseen in the creatures, even prior to the
fall of humanity in Adam; that is, Adam fell and his posterity is damned
because God willed to permit it as a means to the manifestation of the
goodness of his justice; others he saves to manifest his mercy. The
infralapsarian position - which maintains that God willed evil to his
creatures only after the fall - seems incoherent for the following reasons. Any religion has to
respond to the question of why there is evil, even suffering in the world,
especially if God – who designed and created the world – is said to be ‘good’
and that is understood to imply that he wills only good and not evil to his
creatures. For it is clear that people are subject to all sorts of natural
disasters, such as earthquakes, tornadoes, floods, droughts, fires &c.
But God is said to be all-knowing, all-powerful and eminently prudent,
that is, he is perfectly wise. The wise man always first decides what he
wants to achieve and then acts so as to accomplish his objective. So, why is
there all this suffering? The
historical and orthodox Christian answer is that it is because all are
conceived guilty of the sin of Adam and merit to have as punishments the
sufferings that people are prone to in this life. It is good because it is
just that people should suffer and so the goodness of God is maintained.
However, original sin provides only a partial answer, because it may be asked
why – if all are subject to suffering because they deserve it due to Adam’s
sin, which they have inherited – why did God not create a different man who
was as free in soul as Adam was, whom he foresaw would not sin? Then there
would have been no original sin, none would have been created guilty and all
this suffering would not have been justified. Presumably such a man was
possible, given the infinite number of possible men whom he could have
created. Indeed, Catholics believe that the Virgin Mary lived her whole life
without sin: so if God is good and wills only good to his creatures, why did
he not create a sinless first couple, shall we say, Mary and Martin
rather than the sinful Adam and Eve? Why did God not create an entire race of
Marys and Martins, just as free as sinners are, but preserved through
grace like Mary? Why did he choose rather to create a first couple that
he foresaw would sin and then hold their progeny guilty of that sin? Did he
not create the world with people the way that he wanted them to be? as
fundamentalists are wont to protest against homosexuals when they say that
God made not Adam and Steve. Indeed, God could have created all
rational creatures in heaven, confirmed in grace like Catholics
believe the holy angels and saints to be now, including baptised infants who
personally never chose God in any way but were chosen for glory – they are
free but it is impossible that they should ever fall. And then all should
have been happy and blessed forever, giving praise unto God; and there would
not have been the sufferings of this world and the next. Text
exhibiting Aquinas’ doctrine of predestination
The following quote
well exhibits the following aspects of the doctrine of Aquinas on
predestination: that God does not give grace and elect us because he foresees
that we will co-operate with his grace and merit salvation; rather our
co-operation and merits are effects of predestination and there is no
distinction between what flows from free will and from predestination; there
is no reason in us of election, which depends on the simple will of God; predestination
and reprobation are all for his glory. “Whether the
Foreknowledge of Merits is the Cause of Predestination or Reprobation or
Election? “[...] And so others
said that merits following the effect of predestination are the reason of
predestination; giving us to understand that God gives grace to a person, and
pre-ordains that He will give it, because He knows beforehand that He will
make good use of that grace, as if a king were to give a horse to a soldier
because he knows he will make good use of it. But these seem to have drawn a
distinction between that which flows from grace, and that which flows from
free will, as if the same thing cannot come from both. It is, however,
manifest that what is of grace is the effect of predestination; and this
cannot be considered as the reason of predestination, since it is contained
in the notion of predestination. Therefore, if anything else in us be the
reason of predestination, it will outside the effect of predestination. Now
there is no distinction between what flows from free will, and what is of
predestination; as there is not distinction between what flows from a
secondary cause and from a first cause. For the providence of God produces
effects through the operation of secondary causes, as was above shown.
Wherefore, that which flows from free-will is also of predestination. We must
say, therefore, that the effect of predestination may be considered in a
twofold light – in one way, in particular; and thus there is no reason why
one effect of predestination should not be the reason or cause of another; a
subsequent effect being the reason of a previous effect, as its final cause;
and the previous effect being the reason of the subsequent as its meritorious
cause, which is reduced to the disposition of the matter. Thus we might say
that God pre-ordained to give glory on account of merit, and that He
pre-ordained to give grace to merit glory. In another way, the effect of
predestination may be considered in general. Thus, it is impossible that the
whole of the effect of predestination in general should have any cause as
coming from us; because whatsoever is in man disposing him towards salvation,
is all included under the effect of predestination; even the preparation for
grace. For neither does this happen otherwise than by divine help, according
to the prophet Jeremias (Lam. 5:21): ‘convert us, O Lord, to Thee, and we
shall be converted.’ Yet predestination has in this way, in regard to its
effect, the goodness of God for its reason; towards which the whole effect of
predestination is directed as to an end; and from which it proceeds, as from
its first moving principle. […] “The reason for the
predestination of some, and reprobation of others, must be sought for in the
goodness of God. Thus He is said to have made all things through His
goodness, so that the divine goodness might be represented in things. Now it
is necessary that God’s goodness, which in itself is one and undivided,
should be manifested in many ways in His creation; because creatures in themselves
cannot attain to the simplicity of God. Thus it is that for the completion of
the universe there are required different grades of being; some of which hold
a high and some a low place in the universe. That this multiformity of grades
may be preserved in things, God allows some evils, lest many good things
should never happen, as was said above. Let us then consider the whole of the
human race, as we consider the whole universe. God wills to manifest His
goodness in men; in respect to those whom He predestines, by means of His
mercy, as sparing them; and in respect of others, whom he reprobates, by
means of His justice, in punishing them. This is the reason why God elects
some and rejects others. To this the Apostle refers, saying (Rom. 9:22-23): ‘What
if God, willing to show His wrath [that is, the vengeance of His justice],
and to make His power known, endured [that is, permitted] with much patience
vessels of wrath, fitted for destruction; that He might show the riches of
His glory on the vessels of mercy, which He hath prepared unto glory’ and (2
Tim. 2:20): ‘But in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and
silver; but also of wood and of earth; and some, indeed, unto honor, but some
unto dishonor.’ Yet why He chooses some for glory, and reprobates others, has
no reason, except the divine will. Whence Augustine says (Tract. xxvi. in
Joan.): ‘Why He draws one, and another He draws not, seek not to judge, if
thou dost not wish to err.’ Thus too, in the things of nature, a reason can
be assigned, since primary matter is altogether uniform, why one part of it
was fashioned by God from the beginning under the form of fire, another under
the form of earth, that there might be a diversity of species in things of
nature. Yet why this particular part of matter is under this particular form,
and that under another, depends upon the simple will of God; as from the
simple will of the artificer it depends that this stone is in part of the
wall, and that in another; although the plan requires that some stones should
be in this place, and some in that place. Neither on this account can there
be said to be injustice in God, if He prepares unequal lots for not unequal
things. This would be altogether contrary to the notion of justice, if the
effect of predestination were granted as a debt, and not gratuitously. In
things which are given gratuitously, a person can give more or less, just as
he pleases (provided he deprives nobody of his due), without any infringement
of justice. This is what the master of the house said: ‘Take what is thine,
and go thy way. Is it not lawful for me to do what I will?’ (Matt.
20:14,15).” (Summa Theologica 1, 23, 5) The Scholastic
beginnings of the Neo-Pelagian betrayal and the Augustinian reaction Rationalistic
Scholastic philosophers made changes to Augustine’s doctrine that Michel
Bajus and Cornelius Jansenius, both professors at the Augustinian Louvain
University, would seek to remove in order to restore the patristic doctrine
to its integrity. Thomas Aquinas subjected the doctrine to the Aristotelian
categories of causality, which facilitated the Thomist doctrine that God
physically pre-moved humans to determine themselves to the salvific act, even
prior to the Fall. This obscures the Augustinian doctrine of the difference
between the sufficient grace had by Adam and the efficacious grace given
after the Fall. Aquinas also introduced the Aristotelian concept of a state
of pure human nature apart from grace, sufficient in itself for the
fulfilment of its natural ends; this can be abstracted from Augustine’s
writings as a hypothetical state in which man never existed but with
rationalistic Scholastics the focus on Renaissance Aristotelianism encouraged
a quasi-Pelagian optimism in the abilities of fallen man. Virtually all theologians,
from the early Fathers to Aquinas, inclusive, understood the freedom of the
human will to be freedom from external constraint; we are free to incline to
our natural goods, real or apparent, by their appeal; God need only control
the appeal presented by the intellect to lead the elect. But Duns Scotus
rationalised that the human will always has the power “of opposites”
to incline or not incline to an act or else to another act, regardless of the
appeal of the object. William of Ockham accepted Scotus’ voluntarism and
introduced the neo-Pelagian idea of God’s ordinate will, through which
God covenants to give grace to those “who do what in them lies”. Theologians
were now saying of the way that grace now works, what Augustine said had been
the case before the fall. Bajus considered these
Scholastic changes to be alien to the faith of the Apostles, transmitted
through the orthodox Fathers and particularly St. Augustine, who the Church
had always held up as the master of the orthodox teaching on grace and
predestination. He sought to restore Augustine’s doctrine but reworked the
Aristotelian concept of “human nature” to suppose in Adam before the fall
some claim to supernatural help, as the proper object of man is union with
God and God would equip the creature to attain its end by serving Him through
the supernatural love of God. This led to accusations from Jesuits that he
had made Pelagian statements about man’s natural ability to please God but it
is clear that he was speaking of a continuous supernatural help. Pius V
ambiguously condemned some propositions attributed to him in Ex Omnibus
Afflictionibus in 1567 but with the proviso that some of the condemned
propositions could be understood in an orthodox Augustinian sense. Jansenius
later continued the practice of the Louvain of defending Bajus by composing
his Augustinus to exhibit the doctrine of St. Augustine from the
saint’s own writings. The late XVI and early XVII centuries saw the Jesuit
Molinists and the Thomist Dominicans at loggerheads over the aforementioned
Scholastic novelties. Rome prepared a bull condemning 50 propositions of
Molina after the Congregatio de Auxiliis but the Jesuits schemed to thwart
its publication, invoking sympaphy for their expulsion from Venice and saying
that the bull would crush them, promising to renounce Molina and not to teach
those maxims further, which promise they kept not; an enforced silence
prevailed over any controversy regarding grace and Jansenius’ Augustinus
was originally condemned for violating the silence. The Jansenists
The Jansenists tried to
revive the doctrine of grace and predestination of St. Augustine that the
patristic and medieval Church had approved. The Abbe
Saint-Cyran was the most important figure in founding the Jansenist tendency.
A friend of Jansenius, he was the confessor of the Cistercian nuns of the
monastery of Port-Royal with his spirituality that was based on Augustine’s
theology. He taught that the grace necessary for salvific acts is always
given gratuitously – if it is given at all. No one can genuinely turn to God
unless he converts them with a sweet and powerful love of him (caritas)
that delights them more than the love of the world (cupiditas) and its
vanities and makes them serve him for his own sake; otherwise man is left to
pursue his course through the motivation of worldly love. And one cannot
persevere in the love of him without a continuation in grace that cannot be
merited; if it is not given, then one falls back into worldly love and its
punishments. God has elected only a small elect, who are brought to humbly
depend on him in sweet love for their salvation. The Jansenists
sought to restore the rigorous sacramental and penitential discipline of the
patristic Church; one was expected to love God; the absolution of a priest
was not considered to be valid unless the penitent had a sorrow for his sins
and a firm resolution to avoid sin in the future, that were motivated by the
love of God rather than merely by the fear of hell. After he had confessed,
the penitent had to perform a lengthy penance and satisfy the confessor that
he had genuinely converted and begun a new life, serving God in love, before
he could be absolved. Frequent communion was reserved for those with a pure
love of God and detachment from the world. Antoine
Arnauld’s De La Fréquente Communion introduced Saint-Cyran’s
Augustinian penitential doctrine to the French public and the Jansenists’
influence was felt abroad; until Vatican II it was common in parishes in
Britain, Europe, America and Canada for only a small proportion of a
congregation to approach communion, as many priests and faithful who were
there have personally told me: frequent and universal communion is a Novus
Ordo practice, though a less than totally clear text from the Holy
Office, issued under Pius X in the early twentieth century, had been used to
try to encourage it, with little success. The Jesuits
The Jesuits were the
principal opposition to Jansenism. They sought to maintain influence over the
powerful and influential in society by adopting a theology and morality that
would suit them. They sought to appease the naturalistic Humanism of the age,
with its exaltation of man’s supposed natural goodness and abilities by
adopting the Molinist quasi-Pelagian synthesis. They became bishops and the
confessors of the kings and aristocracies of Europe and their order somewhat
displaced the local clergy as confessors of the faithful. They adopted lax,
worldly moral attitudes and relaxed sacramental discipline; in the
confessional they encouraged
Catholics to adopt even the worst sins of the world – such as murder, rape,
theft and perjury – and to live a completely secularised life without any genuine
repentance or conversion. They insisted that everyone, Christian and heathen,
always has sufficient grace from God and that it is up to each man to choose
for himself to co-operate; God “predestines” those whom he foresees to do so.
Yet no one is obliged to love God and it suffices that people be afraid of
hell for them to be absolved: or even that they postpone their repentance for
purgatory. They fanatically and ruthlessly subjected the Church to this
strategy, inciting the persecution of any who dissented. They represented the
Jansenists to Rome as heretics and used the French monarchy to pressurise
Rome to persecute them, representing themselves as the Church’s storm
troopers of orthodoxy. Five propositions, invented by Nicolas Cornet, a
student of the Jesuits, and attributed by them to Jansenius’ Augustinus,
were sent to Rome and condemned. Arnauld wrote various polemical works to
defend Jansen’s Augustinus as orthodox and as falsely represented,
although he would eventually suggest modifications to Jansenius’ doctrine.
Blaise Pascal wrote his Provincial Letters to exhibit to the French
public the Jesuits’ penitential teachings, which Rome condemned during this
period along with their denial that only those who die as Catholics can be
saved, due to Jansenist agitation, the petition to Rome being drawn up by
Pierre Nicole. But the Jesuits persevered with their strategies and were
quite victorious in transforming the Roman Catholic Church; their theology
became dominant and they have massively advanced their agenda of secularising
Catholicism since Vatican II; the faithful are now indistinguishable from
other worldly people and orthodox doctrine is largely unheard of: it is
almost as if genuine, historical Catholicism has ceased to exist. Eighteenth century developments
The Jansenist Moral
Reflections on the New Testament by the Oratorian priest Pasquier Quesnel
were very popular with the French public. They were in French, unlike the Augustinus
which was in Latin, and his style was more accessible to ordinary Catholics
than the theological treatises of Arnauld. In his writings, Quesnel
incorporated theological distinctions associated with the Thomists; others in
his wake would go further, such as Laurent- François Boursier, towards the
Thomist doctrine expounded so masterfully by Garrigou-Lagrange O.P. in the
twentieth century. Rome condemned the Moral Reflections in the papal
bull Unigenitus after appeals and agitation on the part of the Jesuits
and the French monarchy who assured him that effectual force would be used to
stamp out dissent without much trouble, but there was much resistance,
especially in Paris and appeals were organised to a future pope or council.
The book had been widely issued over forty years and often commended by
episcopal authority. The pope was informed that the opponents in France of
the bull included “All the fathers of the Oratory, the Benedictines, nearly
all the monks of Citeaux and of St. Bernard, canons regular, the Dominicans,
and a great number of other monks and religious of other orders, together
with almost all the secular priests.” By 1718, 7000 clerics were prepared to
support the manoeuvres of the Jansenist bishops. The ensuing political
disruption helped prepare France for the Revolution of 1789. The Jansenist deacon
and virtual saint François de Pâris died an appellant in 1727 and the
miracles and convulsions that were initially centred on his tomb at the
Cemetery of Saint-Médard were an important organisational and apologetic
focus for some Jansenists, though others were opposed. Benedict XIV issued Ex
Omnibus in 1756, in which he spoke of Unigenitus as if it were a
matter of religious submission rather than of Faith and allowed communion to
those who were opposed to it but not publicly and notoriously opposed. Innocent X had approved
a decree of the Holy Office in 1645 ruling against the Jesuits’ use of pagan
ceremonies amongst converts in China. Clement XI upheld a sentence of the
Holy Office in 1704 regarding this and again decreed against the practices in
1715 in the bull Ex Illa Die. Innocent XIII was minded to suppress the
Jesuits when he learned that its missionaries were not complying with
Clement’s ban but instead he forbade them to receive novices unless within 3
years he had satisfactory proof of their obedience. Clement XII renewed the
ban in 1735. Benedict XIV described the Jesuits as “disobedient,
contumacious, crafty, and reprobate men” in a bull of 1741 and repeated the
ban in the bull Ex Quo Singulari in 1742, writing of the Jesuits that
“we condemn and detest their practice as superstitious”: Pius XII eventually
reversed the decision in 1939 and the related practice of inculturation
has become controversial to modern Traditionalists since Vatican II. Pope
Clement XIV forever suppressed the Jesuits in 1773 in the bull Dominus Ac
Redemptor, though Pius VII re-established them in 1814. “The name of the Society shall be, and is,
forever extinguished and suppressed.” (Dominus Ac Redemptor) Jansenism in Holland and Italy
Rome refused to any
longer recognize the Catholicity of the Archdiocese of Utrecht in the
Netherlands because the clergy refused to accept Rome’s condemnations of
Jansenism. They had Jansenist doctrines and penitential practices and later
allied with the Old Catholic movement after Council Vatican I. Scipio de
Ricci organised the Jansenist Synod of Pistoia in Italy. The liturgical
reforms of Pistoia were eventually adopted around Council Vatican II. Augustinian soteriology after Jansenism
Although Rome has
remained firm that “Jansenism” has been condemned, other variants of
Augustinian doctrine have been cleared of any censure and even encouraged.
St. Francis de Sales is the only Doctor of the Church to have maintained
predestination post praevisa merita wherefore the weight of tradition
must be said to rest with the doctrine of gratuitous predestination ante
merita. Sts. Robert Bellarmine and Alphonsus Liguori maintained a
gratuitous predestination that is infallible through infallibly congruous
grace. The “Augustinian” theologians of the Order of Hermits of St. Augustine
were attacked by the Jesuits as “Jansenists”, particularly Lawrence Berti and
Henry Cardinal Noris, but after official investigations the Jesuits were
frustrated. The Dominican Thomists also continued to maintain an Augustinian
doctrine of predestination with the approval of Rome. Benedict XIII issued Demissas
Preces in 1724 stating that the condemnations of Jansenism did not apply
to Thomism; he urged the Dominicans to maintain their Thomist heritage and
commented approvingly on their doctrine of grace and free will. Fr.
Garrigou-Lagrange is considered to have been the most important Thomist
theologian and philosopher of the XX century. He taught at the Angelicum in
Rome from 1909 to 1960, and served for many years as a consulter to the Holy
Office and other Roman Congregations. The author of over 500 books and
articles, his works are considered to be of great authority. The Jesuits were
officially bound by decrees of their Society in 1613, 1616 and 1651 to maintain
Congruism, a gratuitous predestination that is infallible through infallibly
congruous grace, God foreseeing which graces each of the elect will
co-operate with. Suarez and St. Robert Bellarmine developed it, St. Alphonsus
Liguori maintained the Syncretist variation of it. Pius XI issued Ad
Salutem in 1930, lauding St. Augustine’s doctrine of free will and grace
and of predestination. The Augustinian spirituality of St. Louis de Montfort
has become popular with the encouragement of popes and bears much resemblance
to the Jansenist spirituality of Saint-Cyran. The consensus of
philosophers ancient and modern in favour of the Jansenist doctrine of free
will Bryan Magee tells us
that most of the great philosophers taught that the human will is moved by
the greater motive force, which is in agreement with the doctrine of
Augustine who taught that freedom from external constraint suffices for merit
and demerit in the state of fallen nature, when we are moved by the
victorious “delight”. This is the doctrine that Rome attributed to Jansenius
in the third of the famous Five Propositions. Magee tells us the doctrine of
the greater motivation is “orthodoxy” among philosophers today. He
described the doctrine of Schopenhauer as follows. “But however complex, numerous
and conflicting the motives may be in any given situation, whatever emerges
on balance as the strongest holds sway. And Schopenhauer’s point is that we
cannot freely decide for ourselves what that shall be. [...] In short, we
will what we are most strongly motivated to will by factors which we do not
determine, and we then choose accordingly. [...] We each have the
character and temperament and personality we have, with all their intricacies
and foibles, and each of us, given what he is, can react in any given set of
circumstances to any given set of motives in only one way. In the remarkable
fourth chapter of his Essay on the Freedom of the Will, headed
‘Predecessors’, Schopenhauer demonstrates by means of extensive quotation
that this view of the matter, or something obviously very similar to it, has
been held by most of the great philosophers who went before him. It has
certainly been held by many philosophers since. Today it is something of an
orthodoxy in the philosophy of the English-speaking world. Some philosophers
who accept the argument are inclined to say: ‘What is meant in ordinary usage
by “acting freely” is acting in accordance with our personal motivations
without being subject to external constraints, so in the ordinary sense of
the term, we do indeed have, or can have, free will.’” (The Philosophy of
Schopenhauer, 2002) So we see that the
Molinists are contrary to the consensus of philosophers, ancient and modern,
when they say that the human will is free only when it can act or not act, or
elicit a different act, given the circumstances, so as to claim that we merit
or demerit only if this liberty prevails. The Jansenists on the other hand
are in agreement that the will acts according to the greater motive.
Universalism and
Ecumenism The Church has largely gone to the opposite
pole to Jansenism today. In that sense, the Jesuits have been victorious over
Jansenism. Soteriological universalism and penitential Laxism are the norm.
Augustinianism and Thomism may theoretically be tolerated but in practice all
efforts are aimed at a Jesuitical reconciliation with the world. John Paul II promoted Universalism
Many consider that Pope John Paul II
openly and frequently taught the doctrine of universal salvation, which was propagated
in the third century, particularly by Origen of Alexandria and held as a
minority opinion by various Fathers of the Church, though it has usually been
considered through the centuries to be heterodox. The doctrine was associated
with the Jesuit Hans Urs von Balthasar, more than with any other modern
Catholic theologian. He is considered to have been John Paul’s favourite
theologian and he died the day before he was due to be made a cardinal. He
founded a theological journal with Ratzinger, now Pope. The Jesuits Karl
Rahner, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and Henri de Lubac were also very
influential in popularising the ecumenical revolution within the Church. Catholic Church has contradicted
itself
It might seem from a contemporary
perspective that the Church, for most of its history, had a nightmarish
vision that was paranoid, frightening and profoundly disturbing and that has
now been replaced with a more empathetic tenderness. However the question
remains of whether universalistic theology can really be adopted within a
Roman Catholic context when Catholic theology was previously obsessed with
notions of a wroth God and of a humanity condemned to sin, guilt, judgement
and damnation. Has it not discredited the claims of the Roman Catholic Church
to guide humanity in spiritual matters when it has replaced an elitist
theology that was held until 1650 with Molinism and now with Universalism?
The recent change appears to have been influenced by recent liberal and
universalistic trends in European society and Cardinal Ratzinger wrote that
the Church reconciled with the Revolution of 1789 at Vatican II. Indeed, the
Church went from enthusiastically supporting Fascism and openly collaborating
with Nazism before World War II to enthusiastically adopting the liberalism,
pluralism and egalitarianism that has increasingly become the norm in the
West since that conflagration. One might wonder how enduring the present
disposition will be if circumstances change, and about the naivity of the
Church’s adherence to One World political globalism. Strengthening
atheism
One might also question how coherent the
theologies of Universalism and Molinism are, given the critique of
infralapsarianism that we sketched elsewhere and whether supralapsarianism
and atheism do not have an advantage in this respect. If God is all
benevolent and does not will evil to his creatures, then why is there
suffering in this world (if not in the next), given the qualities assigned to
God and the options that he had with regard to the creation? Has the Church
not gone a long way towards supporting atheism, with its Molinism and the
soteriological Universalism that has followed it, opening itself up to
telling critique? Has it not, in effect, conceded the debate? Philosophers
often appear in the media, implying as much and theologians and ecclesiastics
are featured who admit the problem inherent in the concept of the purely
benevolent God. These latter have been featured openly, if tacitly,
abandoning the old explanation, for the suffering of the world, of original
sin as no longer tenable and instead suggest explanations influenced by
Eastern religions. The philosopher Jonathan Ree wrote as follows regarding
the situation in which we find ourselves today. “We are all atheists now – or at least that’s the
way it seems. Of course there are still a handful [?] of extremists prepared
to kill themselves and others in the name of religion. Evangelicals have not
stopped working themselves into lathers about the sins of the modern world,
politicians find it hard to resist ostentatious professions of faith, and
journalists seeking a quote about ethically contentious matters still turn to
see sectaries of one religious tradition or another. All the same, it would
take more courage for most of us to admit that we spend our sabbaths on
bended knee or studying Holy Scripture than to boast that we lounge around
fornicating, getting drunk, or uttering blasphemies. Atheism has somehow
established itself, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, as the ordinary
punter’s default position. No less a personage than the archbishop of
Canterbury, Dr. George Carey, recently remarked that we have become a society
in which ‘tacit atheism prevails.’” Traditionalism condemned
The Vatican condemned the response of modern
Traditionalism to Vatican II in the Apostolic Letter Ecclesia Dei Afflicta
issued motu proprio by Pope John Paul II in 1988. As with the earlier
condemnations of Jansenism and Feeneyism, the Catholic Church has once again
contradicted its own earlier teaching. The heretical course has continued and
salvation now includes everyone universally in beatitude and the Church is
equally expansive with all of the various religions being imperfect parts of
the Church and as such sufficient means of salvation. The Church now wants to
convert no one and to settle down as just another friendly religion among
many others, co-operating with them in a shared ministry of prayer and
dialogue. Accordingly, some Traditionalists are consistently criticising
non-infallible papal documents from before Vatican II, including the
condemnations of Feeneyism in the nineteen forties and fifties and the
condemnations of Jansenism in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Most
Traditionalists are ignorant of the Jesuitical schemes of the Vatican before
the Second Vatican Council and there are few and slight reasons to suppose
that a more knowledgeable and consistent critique of the aggiornamento
will emerge that will reclaim as its own the patristic doctrines once
infallibly taught by the Church but now stigmatised under the pejorative
labels of Jansenism and Feeneyism. The drift to atheism looks set to continue
unless Western civilization is shaken up radically, perhaps by Islam or
ecological degradation. Cheshire Catholicism
Most Catholics appear to approve of the
new ways except that most Catholics in the West have left the Church. According
to official Church statistics mass attendance in England and Wales rose
steadily to peak at 2,114,219 in 1966 at the close of Vatican II and then
fell steadily to 1,071,975 in 2002, falling again by 200,000 in two years to
876,613 in 2004; at the present rate of decline it would be gone within a
decade though it is anticipated that some “small faith communities” will be
formed. Over 90% of children attending Catholic schools in Britain abandon
the religion by the time they leave them. In 1965, there were 58,000 priests
in the United States but the number has fallen to 45,000; by 2020, there will
be only 31,000 priests left, and more than half will be over 70; in 1965,
1,575 new priests were ordained in the United States but in 2002 there were
450; between 1965 and 2002, the number of seminarians dropped from 49,000 to
4,700; two-thirds of the 600 seminaries that were operating in 1965 have now
closed. |
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