[PleaseReadBeforeJudging] Why Only Catholicism Can Make Protestantism Work: Bouyer on Reformation

Why Only Catholicism Can Make Protestantism Work: Louis Bouyer on the Reformation MARK BRUMLEY

Many Protestants see the Catholic/Protestant split as a tragic necessity, although the staunchly anti-Catholic kind of Protestant often sees nothing tragic about it. Or if he does, the tragedy is that there ever was such a thing as the Roman Catholic Church that the Reformers had to separate from. His motto is "Come out from among them" and five centuries of Christian disunity has done nothing to cool his anti-Roman fervor.

Yet for most Protestants, even for most conservative Protestants, this is not so. They believe God "raised up" Luther and the other Reformers to restore the Gospel in its purity. They regret that this required a break with Roman Catholics (hence the tragedy) but fidelity to Christ, on their view, demanded it (hence the necessity).

Catholics agree with their more agreeable Protestant brethren that the sixteenth century division among Christians was tragic. But most Catholics who think about it also see it as unnecessary. At least unnecessary in the sense that what Catholics might regard as genuine issues raised by the Reformers could, on the Catholic view, have been addressed without the tragedy of dividing Christendom.

Yet we can go further than decrying the Reformation as unnecessary. In his ground-breaking work, The Spirit and Forms of Protestantism, Louis Bouyer argued that the Catholic Church herself is necessary for the full flowering of the Reformation principles. In other words, you need Catholicism to make Protestantism work - for Protestantism's principles fully to develop. Thus, the Reformation was not only unnecessary; it was impossible. What the Reformers sought, argues Bouyer, could not be achieved without the Catholic Church.

From Bouyer's conclusion we can infer at least two things. First, Protestantism can't be all wrong, otherwise how could the Catholic Church bring about the "full flowering of the principles of the Reformation"? Second, left to itself, Protestantism will go astray and be untrue to some of its central principles. It's these two points, as Bouyer articulates them, I would like to consider here. One thing should be said up-front: although a convert from French Protestantism, Bouyer is no anti-Protestant polemicist. His Spirit and Forms of Protestantism was written a half-century ago, a decade before Vatican II's decree on ecumenism, Unitatis Redintegratio, yet it avoids the bitter anti-Protestantism that sometimes afflicted pre-conciliar Catholic works on Protestantism. That's one reason the book remains useful, even after decades of post-conciliar ecumenism.

Bouyer, then, addresses both Protestants and Catholics. To the Protestants, he says, in effect, "It is fidelity to our Protestant principles, properly understood, that has led me into the Catholic Church." To the Catholics, he says, "Protestantism isn't as antithetical to the Catholic Faith as you suppose. It has positive principles, as well as negative ones. Its positive principles, properly understood, belong to the Catholic Tradition, which we Catholics can see if we approach Protestantism with a bit of understanding and openness."

The Reformation was Right

Bouyer's argument is that the Reformation's main principle was essentially Catholic: "Luther's basic intuition, on which Protestantism continuously draws for its abiding vitality, so far from being hard to reconcile with Catholic tradition, or inconsistent with the teaching of the Apostles, was a return to the clearest elements of their teaching, and in the most direct line of that tradition."

1. Sola Gratia. What was the Reformation's main principle? Not, as many Catholics and even some Protestants think, "private judgment" in religion. According to Bouyer, "the true fundamental principle of Protestantism is the gratuitousness of salvation" - sola gratia. He writes, "In the view of Luther, as well as of all those faithful to his essential teaching, man without grace can, strictly speaking, do nothing of the slightest value for salvation. He can neither dispose himself for it, nor work for it in any independent fashion. Even his acceptance of grace is the work of grace. To Luther and his authentic followers, justifying faith . . . is quite certainly, the first and most fundamental grace."

Bouyer then shows how, contrary to what many Protestants and some Catholics think, salvation sola gratia is also Catholic teaching. He underscores the point to any Catholics who might think otherwise:

"If, then, any Catholic - and there would seem to be many such these days - whose first impulse is to reject the idea that man, without grace, can do nothing towards his salvation, that he cannot even accept the grace offered except by a previous grace, that the very faith which acknowledges the need of grace is a purely gratuitous gift, he would do well to attend closely to the texts we are about to quote."

Bouyer quotes, at length, from the Second Council of Orange (529), the teaching of which was confirmed by Pope Boniface II as de fide or part of the Church's faith. The Council asserted that salvation is the work of God's grace and that even the beginning of faith or the consent to saving grace is itself the result of grace. By our natural powers, we can neither think as we ought nor choose any good pertaining to salvation. We can only do so by the illumination and impulse of the Holy Spirit.

Nor is it merely that man is limited in doing good. The Council affirmed that, as a result of the Fall, man is inclined to will evil. His freedom is gravely impaired and can only be repaired by God's grace. Following a number of biblical quotations, the Council states, "[W]e are obliged, in the mercy of God, to preach and believe that, through sin of the first man, the free will is so weakened and warped, that no one thereafter can either love God as he ought, or believe in God, or do good for the sake of God, unless moved, previously, by the grace of the divine mercy . . . . Our salvation requires that we assert and believe that, in every good work we do, it is not we who have the initiative, aided, subsequently, by the mercy of God, but that he begins by inspiring faith and love towards him, without any prior merit of ours."

The Council of Trent, writes Bouyer, repeated that teaching, ruling out "a parallel action on the part of God and man, a sort of 'synergism', where man contributes, in the work of salvation, something, however slight, independent of grace." Even where Trent insists that man is not saved passively, notes Bouyer, it doesn't assert some independent, human contribution to salvation. Man freely cooperates in salvation, but his free cooperation is itself the result of grace. Precisely how this is so is mysterious, and the Church has not settled on a particular theological explanation. But that it is so, insist Bouyer, is Catholic teaching. Thus, concludes Bouyer, "the Catholic not only may, but must in virtue of his own faith, give a full and unreserved adherence to the sola gratia, understood in the positive sense we have seen upheld by Protestants."

2. Sola Fide. So much for sola gratia. But what about the other half of the Reformation principle regarding salvation, the claim that justification by grace comes through faith alone (sola fide) ?

According to Bouyer, the main thrust of the doctrine of sola fide was to affirm that justification was wholly the work of God and to deny any positive human contribution apart from grace. Faith was understood as man's grace-enabled, grace-inspired, grace-completed response to God's saving initiative in Jesus Christ. What the Reformation initially sought to affirm, says Bouyer, was that such a response is purely God's gift to man, with man contributing nothing of his own to receive salvation.

In other words, it isn't as if God does his part and man cooperates by doing his part, even if that part is minuscule. The Reformation insisted that God does his part, which includes enabling and moving man to receive salvation in Christ. Man's "part" is to believe, properly understood, but faith too is the work of God, so man contributes nothing positively of his own. As Bouyer points out, this central concern of the Reformation also happened to be defined Catholic teaching, reaffirmed by the Council of Trent.

In a sense, the Reformation debate was over the nature of saving faith, not over whether faith saves. St. Thomas Aquinas, following St. Augustine and the patristic understanding of faith and salvation, said that saving faith was faith "formed by charity." In other words, saving faith involves at least the beginnings of the love of God. In this way, Catholics could speak of "justification by grace alone, through faith alone," if the "alone" was meant to distinguish the gift of God (faith) from any purely human contribution apart from grace; but not if "alone" was meant to offset faith from grace-enabled, grace-inspired, grace-accomplished love of God or charity.

For Catholic theologians of the time, the term "faith" was generally used in the highly refined sense of the gracious work of God in us by which we assent to God's Word on the authority of God who reveals. In this sense, faith is distinct from entrusting oneself to God in hope and love, though obviously faith is, in a way, naturally ordered to doing so: God gives man faith so that man can entrust himself to God in hope and love. But faith, understood as mere assent (albeit graced assent), is only the beginning of salvation. It needs to be "informed" or completed by charity, also the work of grace.

Luther and his followers, though, rejected the Catholic view that "saving faith" was "faith formed by charity" and therefore not "faith alone", where "faith" is understood as mere assent to God's Word, apart from trust and love. In large part, this was due to a misunderstanding by Luther. "We must not be misled on this point," writes Bouyer, "by Luther's later assertions opposed to the fides caritate formata [faith informed by charity]. His object in disowning this formula was to reject the idea that faith justified man only if there were added to it a love proceeding from a natural disposition, not coming as a gift of God, the whole being the gift of God." Yet Luther's view of faith, contents Bouyer, seems to imply an element of love, at least in the sense of a total self-commitment to God. And, of course, this love must be both the response to God's loving initiative and the effect of that initiative by which man is enabled and moved to respond. But once again, this is Catholic doctrine, for the charity that "informs" faith so that it becomes saving faith is not a natural disposition, but is as much the work of God as the assent of faith.

Thus, Bouyer's point is that the doctrine of justification by faith alone (sola fide) was initially seen by the Reformers as a way of upholding justification by grace alone (sola gratia), which is also a fundamental Catholic truth. Only later, as a result of controversy, did the Reformers insist on identifying justification by faith alone with a negative principle that denied any form of cooperation, even grace-enabled cooperation.

3. Sola Scriptura. Melanchthon, the colleague of Luther, called justification sola gratia, sola fide the "Material Principle" of the Reformation. But there was also the Formal Principle, the doctrine of sola Scriptura or what Bouyer calls the sovereign authority of Scripture. What of that?

Here, too, says Bouyer, the Reformation's core positive principle is correct. The Word of God, rather than a human word, must govern the life of the Christian and of the Church. And the Word of God is found in a unique and supreme form in the Bible, the inspired Word of God. The inspiration of the Bible means that God is the primary author of Scripture. Since we can say that about no other writing or formal expression of the Church's Faith, not even conciliar or papal definitions of faith, the Bible alone is the Word of God in this sense and therefore it possesses a unique authority.

Yet the supremacy of the Bible does not imply an opposition between it and the authority of the Church or Tradition, as certain negative principles adopted by the Reformers implied. Furthermore, the biblical spirituality of Protestantism, properly understood, is in keeping with the best traditions of Catholic spirituality, especially those of the Fathers and the great medieval theologians. Through Scripture, God speaks to us today, offering a living Word to guide our lives in Christ.

Thus, writes Bouyer, "the supreme authority of Scripture, taken in its positive sense, as gradually drawn out and systematized by Protestants themselves, far from setting the Church and Protestantism in opposition, should be the best possible warrant for their return to understanding and unity."

The Reformation was Wrong

Where does this leave us? If the Reformation was right about sola gratia and sola Scriptura, its two key principles, how was it wrong? Bouyer holds that only the positive elements of these Reformation principles are correct.

Unfortunately, these principles were unnecessarily linked by the Reformers to certain negative elements, which the Catholic Church had to reject. Here we consider two of those elements: 1) the doctrine of extrinsic justification and the nature of justifying faith and 2) the authority of the Bible.

1. Extrinsic Justification. Regarding justification by grace alone, it was the doctrine of extrinsic justification and the rejection of the Catholic view of faith formed by charity as "saving faith." Bouyer writes, "The further Luther advanced in his conflict with other theologians, then with Rome, then with the whole of contemporary Catholicism and finally with the Catholicism of every age, the more closely we see him identifying affirmation about sola gratia with a particular theory, known as extrinsic justification."

Extrinsic justification is the idea that justification occurs outside of man, rather than within him. Catholicism, as we have seen, holds that justification is by grace alone. In that sense, it originates outside of man, with God's grace. But, according to Catholic teaching, God justifies man by effecting a change within him, by making him just or righteous, not merely by saying he is just or righteous or treating him as if he were. Justification imparts the righteousness of Christ to man, transforming him by grace into a child of God.

The Reformation view was different. The Reformers, like the Catholic Church, insisted that justification is by grace and therefore originates outside of man, with God. But they also insisted that when God justifies man, man is not changed but merely declared just or righteous. God treats man as if he were just or righteous, imputing to man the righteousness of Christ, rather than imparting it to him.

The Reformers held this view for two reasons. First, because they came to think it necessary in order to uphold the gratuitousness of justification. Second, because they thought the Bible taught it. On both points, argues Bouyer, the Reformers were mistaken. There is neither a logical nor a biblical reason why God cannot effect a change in man without undercutting justification by grace alone. Whatever righteousness comes to be in man as a result of justification is a gift, as much any other gift God bestows on man. Nor does the Bible's treatment of "imputed" righteousness imply that justification is not imparted. On these points, the Reformers were simply wrong:

"Without the least doubt, grace, for St. Paul, however freely given, involves what he calls 'the new creation', the appearance in us of a 'new man', created in justice and holiness. So far from suppressing the efforts of man, or making them a matter of indifference, or at least irrelevant to salvation, he himself tells us to 'work out your salvation with fear and trembling', at the very moment when he affirms that '. . . knowing that it is God who works in you both to will and to accomplish.' These two expressions say better than any other that all is grace in our salvation, but at the same time grace is not opposed to human acts and endeavor in order to attain salvation, but arouses them and exacts their performance."

Calvin, notes Bouyer, tried to circumvent the biblical problems of the extrinsic justification theory by positing a systematic distinction between justification, which puts us in right relation to God but which, on the Protestant view, doesn't involve a change in man; and sanctification, which transforms us. Yet, argues Bouyer, this systematic distinction isn't biblical. In the Bible, justification and sanctification - as many modern Protestant exegetes admit - are two different terms for the same process. Both occur by grace through faith and both involve a faith "informed by charity" or completed by love. As Bouyer contends, faith in the Pauline sense, "supposes the total abandonment of man to the gift of God" - which amounts to love of God. He argues that it is absurd to think that the man justified by faith, who calls God "Abba, Father," doesn't love God or doesn't have to love him in order to be justified.

2. Sola Scriptura vs. Church and Tradition. Bouyer also sees a negative principle that the Reformation unnecessarily associated with sola Scriptura or the sovereignty of the Bible. Yes, the Bible alone is the Word of God in the sense that only the Bible is divinely inspired. And yes the Bible's authority is supreme in the sense that neither the Church nor the Church's Tradition "trumps" Scripture. But that doesn't mean that the Word of God in an authoritative form is found only in the Bible, for the Word of God can be communicated in a non-inspired, yet authoritative form as well. Nor does it mean that there can be no authoritative interpreter of the Bible (the Magisterium) or authoritative interpretation of biblical doctrine (Tradition). Repudiation of the Church's authority and Tradition simply doesn't follow from the premise of Scripture's supremacy as the inspired Word of God. Furthermore, the Tradition and authority of the Church are required to determine the canon of the Bible.

Luther and Calvin did not follow the Radical Reformation in rejecting any role for Church authority or Tradition altogether. But they radically truncated such a role. Furthermore, they provided no means by which the Church, as a community of believers, could determine when the Bible was being authentically interpreted or who within the community had the right to make such a determination for the community. In this way, they ultimately undercut the supremacy of the Bible, for they provided no means by which the supreme authority of the Bible could, in fact, be exercised in the Church as a whole. The Bible's authority extended only so far as the individual believer's interpretation of it allowed.

The Catholic Church and Reformation Principles

As we have seen, Bouyer argues for the Reformation's "positive principles" and against its "negative principles." But how did what was right from one point of view in the Reformation go so wrong from another point of view? Bouyer argues that the under the influence of decadent scholasticism, mainly Nominalism, the Reformers unnecessarily inserted the negative elements into their ideas along with the positive principles. "Brought up on these lines of thought, identified with them so closely they could not see beyond them," he writes, "the Reformers could only systematize their very valuable insights in a vitiated framework."

The irony is profound. The Reformation sought to recover "genuine Christianity" by hacking through what it regarded as the vast overgrowth of medieval theology. Yet to do so, the Reformers wielded swords forged in the fires of the worst of medieval theology - the decadent scholasticism of Nominalism.

The negative principles of the Reformation necessarily led the Catholic Church to reject the movement - though not, in fact, its fundamental positive principles, which were essentially Catholic. Eventually, argues Bouyer, through a complex historical process, these negative elements ate away at the positive principles as well. The result was liberal Protestantism, which wound up affirming the very things Protestantism set out to deny (man's ability to save himself) and denying things Protestantism began by affirming (sola gratia).

Bouyer contends that the only way to safeguard the positive principles of the Reformation is through the Catholic Church. For only in the Catholic Church are the positive principles the Reformation affirmed found without the negative elements the Reformers mistakenly affixed to them. But how to bring this about?

Bouyer says that both Protestants and Catholics have responsibilities here. Protestants must investigate their roots and consider whether the negative elements of the Reformation, such as extrinsic justification and the rejection of a definitive Church teaching authority and Tradition, are necessary to uphold the positive principles of sola gratia and the supremacy of Scripture. If not, then how is continued separation from the Catholic Church justified? Furthermore, if, as Bouyer contends, the negative elements of the Reformation were drawn from a decadent theology and philosophy of the Middle Ages and not Christian antiquity, then it is the Catholic Church that has upheld the true faith and has maintained a balance regarding the positive principles of the Reformation that Protestantism lacks. In this way, the Catholic Church is needed for Protestantism to live up to its own positive principles.

Catholics have responsibilities as well. One major responsibility is to be sure they have fully embraced their own Church's teaching on the gratuitousness of salvation and the supremacy of the Bible. As Bouyer writes, "Catholics are in fact too prone to forget that, if the Church bears within herself, and cannot ever lose, the fullness of Gospel truth, its members, at any given time and place, are always in need of a renewed effort to apprehend this truth really and not just, as Newman would say, 'notionally'." "To Catholics, lukewarm and unaware of their responsibilities," he adds, the Reformation, properly understood, "recalls the existence of many of their own treasures which they overlook."

Only if Catholics are fully Catholic - which includes fully embracing the positive principles of the Reformation that Bouyer insists are essentially Catholic - can they "legitimately aspire to show and prepare their separated brethren the way to a return which would be for them not a denial but a fulfillment."

Today, as in the sixteenth century, the burden rests with us Catholics. We must live, by God's abundant grace, up to our high calling in Christ Jesus. And in this way, show our Protestant brethren that their own positive principles are properly expressed only in the Catholic Church.

Mark Brumley. "Why Only Catholicism Can Make Protestantism Work: Louis Bouyer on the Reformation." Catholic Dossier 7 no. 5 (September-October 2001): 30-35.

This article is reprinted with permission from Catholic Dossier. To subscribe to Catholic Dossier call 1-800-651-1531.

Mark Brumley is managing editor of Catholic Dossier. A convert from Evangelical Protestantism, he was greatly influenced by Bouyer's book The Spirit and Forms of Protestantism, when he first read it over twenty years ago. Recently, Scepter Books has republished The Spirit and Forms of Protestantism, which can be obtained online at www.scepterpub.org or by calling 1-800-322-8773.

Actually, the teaching of the Catholic Church, as repeated in Pope Pius XII's encyclical Mystici Corporis Christi, is that any non-Catholic (that includes both you and White Mountain) can be saved if (1) he remains non-Catholic through no personal fault or vincible ignorance; (2) he follows the dictates of the religion to which he adheres: and (3) he at all times conforms to the dictates of the Natural Law.

It is this type of heresy that allows Muslims,Mormons and Protestants to be lumped together...to serve Romes purpose. It is that belief that allows a pope to kiss the Koran and ignore the Bible,and for Mother Teresa to allow men to go to hell without ever hearing the gospel of Jesus Christ. (and then be called a "saint")

I'm going to have to take myself off this thread---I'll be on assignment so won't have the time. Anyway, it's been interesting.

Hey, Doc, you believe salvation comes from Jesus, so why not take Him at His word rather than taking refuge in one or two quotations from Paul and the "rhetoric[s]" (your term) of James?

"I was hungry, etc." has a direct bearing on this discussion, but since it's as plain as the nose on your face you choose to call it "irrelevant." So does "Well done, good and faithful servant."

More along this line: You shall love the Love your God...You shall love your neighbor as yourself." (What Protestants don't take into account with their "faith alone" is that faith demands a RESPONSE.) Put into secular terms: Every privilege has a corresponding responsibility.

" The Son of Man will come with His Father's glory accompanied by his angels. When He does, He will repay each man according to His CONDUCT." (Matt16: 27). Matt 6:4: "Keep your deeds of mercy secret, and your Father who sees in secret will repay you."

Obviously, Our Lord meant "works" as just that. We have a free will and we are meant to use it to believe and trust and love Him and others in His Name. ("Whatsover you do to the least of my brethern, that you do unto Me.")

They weren't just to put forth good example to others as you indicated earlier. Faith, of course, is assumed--but as St. Paul said "the greatest of these is love." You also indicated that Judaism was the One True Faith before Jesus started His Church because He was rejected by His people. Doesn't it follow then, that the Church He founded, would have the same mark of Truth? "I am the vine, and you are the branches."

Protestants have been misled from the beginning. They took abuses in the Church (because it is both divine AND human)and fundamentally changed Jesus' words to better suit their humanistic impulses. Just like in John 6 they turned away refusing to acknowledge Jesus' Presence in Holy Eucharist and the saving power of the sacraments.

And what is "truth" anyway? Certainly it cannot be found in Protestantism. The only thing agreed upon by all denominations is that they are protesting against Catholicism. If that is anti-Protestant bias, so be it. I have truly considered the Bible quotations you have proffered in the lightyou have bathed them in.

But it won't wash. Twice now, you have written over 4,600 words in which you contradict, convolute and confound. If you wish to believe it is because of your intellectual superiority as you have said, think again.

Seems like a craven yellow bellied way of getting out of the responsibility of carrying the True Gospel everywhere.

In some ways similar to your refusal to discuss doctrine substantively, and contenting yourself with hiding behind the antique linguistic bloviations of another age. But no, as usual, you are completely wrong. The Church's teaching on salvation does not exempt all of us from spreading the Gospel to the four corners of the globe. It is merely an expression of basic principles of human (and divine) justice. If, through no fault of his own, a man does not and cannot know Christ (or the complete Christ), God does not condemn him. Period. That is a completely separate issue from the obligation of the rest of us to take Christ to others.

Unless you change the silly, self-righteous tone of your posts, I will not again respond to them. So, if, in the future, it seems like I'm ignoring you, it's probably because I am.

Love spoke a LOT differently to the legalists than he did to the humble (teachable) people. OP is addressing legalists.

Dear Sir (or Madam):

You are wrong on several levels. First of all, I'm no legalist. But even if I were, you may wish to consider why Our Lord spoke so strongly against the Temple establishment of his time. It was not because they were "legalists." He specifically told the Apostles to follow the teachings of the Scribes and Pharisees -- they "sit in Moses's seat." (Matthew 23).

Our Lord spoke to the Scribes, Pharisees, and Sadducees in such strong language because He (and He only) could read their hearts. He knew that they had no interest whatsoever in either following both the spirit and letter of the law or in helping others to do so. His knowledge of their inner malice against God precipitated His manner of speech and action.

You, sir/ma'am (and others) do not -- as far as I know -- bear this divine gift of reading the hearts of men. And you should act accordingly.

"Our Lord spoke to the Scribes, Pharisees, and Sadducees in such strong language because He (and He only) could read their hearts. ... His knowledge of their inner malice against God precipitated His manner of speech and action."

Oh? In your dreams.

Paul, for instance, followed the example of Jesus when he was talking to those the legalists had been trying to get to add works to faith. He said, if you listen to the legalists and do *the works* they tell you *you must do*, "Christ will be of no value to you at all. ... You were running a good race. Who cut in on you and kept you from obeying the truth? ... As for those agitators (legalists), I wish they would go the whole way [with their works] and emasculate themselves." Gal.5:1-12

It's not hard to recognize legalistic agitators (like Jesus, Paul, and the other apostles had to deal with ---and without kid gloves, I might add --- ) who insist that Christians must add works to faith in order to be pleasing to God.

Jude 12-13 talks about what is reserved for such "false teachers" who teach darkness for light, if they refuse to be corrected: "the blackest darkness forever".

You are once again completely in error about St. Augustine on the issue of predestination. Augustine, like Thomas after him, endorses the notion of a positive predestination -- that God predestines certain people to glory and gives them the grace necessary to secure that His decision will come to pass.

Indeed this is Augustine's position, insofar as you have stated it.

Will any man date to say that God did not foreknow those to whom He would give to believe, or whom He would give to His Son, that of them He should lose none? And certainly, if He foreknew these things, He as certainly foreknew His own kindnesses, wherewith He condescends to deliver us. This is the predestination of the saints,--nothing else; to wit, the foreknowledge and the preparation of God's kindnesses, whereby they are most certainly delivered, whoever they are that are delivered. But where are the rest left by the righteous divine judgment except in the mass of ruin, where the Tyrians and the Sidonians were left? who, moreover, might have believed if they had seen Christ's wonderful miracles. (Predestination, 35)

But you overstep yourself when you go on to claim:

But he does not endorse the idea of predestination to damnation precisely because this twisted idea contradicts the Justice and Holiness of God, the freedom of man, and the universality of the Divine Desire for salvation.

Frankly, that's utter balderdash. You wish that this were Augustine's position; but your desire to that effect, simply does not make it so.

Augustine makes no such exceptions as those you claim for him. In the very next sentence following his analysis of Predestination unto Salvation, Augustine affirms that the Reprobation of the Damned necessarily entails the action of a positive and efficacious decree:

But since it was not given to them to believe, the means of believing also were denied them.

To put it bluntly, Augustine PRE-EMPTIVELY DISALLOWS the unscriptural and inconsistent idea of "single predestination" claimed by Rome against the Reformers. Augustine affirms that a negative decision is of necessity a positive decision of Negation.

Essentially, Augustine's argument is that, if presented the choice to wear black shoes or brown, you elect to wear black shoes, you are of necessity actioning a positive decision NOT to wear the brown shoes. And if a mere Man understands that when he Elects the black shoes and not the brown, he is positively de-selecting the brown, we cannot claim that it "would not occur" to the perfect Knowledge of God that in positively selecting the One, He is positively de-selecting the Other. Augustine tells us, in short, that "single predestination" is a doctrine of thoughtlessness, and we cannot claim that Almighty God is somehow "less thoughtful" than a mere Man. Any negative decisioning is, of necessity, a decisioning of negation.

But since it was not given to them to believe, the means of believing also were denied them.

To: OrthodoxPresbyterian All depends on which Augustine you quote. Did he not in his later days go beyond where the rest of the Church was willing to go, at least in his day. St. Thomas, I think, certainly leaned more toward the Greek position than his. 1094 posted on 1/21/02 10:30 PM Pacific by RobbyS

Well, this would, at least, be a more honest admission of the fact of the later Augustine's teaching on Absolute (i.e., "double") Predestination than we normally hear from FR Roman Catholics. I'll certainly grant that the later Augustine went well beyond the RC position of today, or even of Martin Luther's tome (which is, of course, what Luther was pointin out).

As to St. Thomas -- Thomas is closer to the Greek position than was Augustine, sure; but in general, Thomists are more predestinarian than other RC's. The Jesuit Molinists are closer to Eastern Orthodox soteriology; the Thomists are closer to Augustine. (They still fall well short of Augustine, though)

Essentially, Augustine's argument is that, if presented the choice to wear black shoes or brown, you elect to wear black shoes, you are of necessity actioning a positive decision NOT to wear the brown shoes. And if a mere Man understands that when he Elects the black shoes and not the brown, he is positively de-selecting the brown, we cannot claim that it "would not occur" to the perfect Knowledge of God that in positively selecting the One, He is positively de-selecting the Other. Augustine tells us, in short, that "single predestination" is a doctrine of thoughtlessness, and we cannot claim that Almighty God is somehow "less thoughtful" than a mere Man. Any negative decisioning is, of necessity, a decisioning of negation.

Of course, we should keep in mind that God's will is not the will of a mere fickle man. God may have a singleness of purpose in these matters. So, it hardly is authoritative to say that if He does not both Elect His own and by exclusion damn the Reprobate that He is necessarily more thoughtless than a man who picks one pair of shoes while rejecting another. I don't think this is Augustine at his best.

Of course, I've engaged in such speculation myself. And I have to keep reminding myself that the Bible reveals that God is nothing like a man. It's a little disconcerting. Somehow, I keep thinking that we're going to find out someday just how far beyond our pettiness and frailty He really is. I don't think we can imagine it. I don't think the Bible can fully convey His nature. It's more like an indicator than a full description.

In your #1091, you quote Augustine (emphasis mine):

Will any man date to say that God did not foreknow those to whom He would give to believe, or whom He would give to His Son, that of them He should lose none? And certainly, if He foreknew these things, He as certainly foreknew His own kindnesses, wherewith He condescends to deliver us. This is the predestination of the saints,--nothing else; to wit, the foreknowledge and the preparation of God's kindnesses, whereby they are most certainly delivered, whoever they are that are delivered. But where are the rest left by the righteous divine judgment except in the mass of ruin, where the Tyrians and the Sidonians were left? who, moreover, might have believed if they had seen Christ's wonderful miracles. (Predestination, 35)
But since it was not given to them to believe, the means of believing also were denied them. (the very next sentence)

Here is my take: Augustine has overreached the Bible just a little bit.

First, God gives to all the grace to repent and turn to Him for salvation, otherwise, He could not, according to His justice, send anyone to hell.

2 Peter 3:9
9 The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.

Those who are in hell have refused the free offer and refused to do His will, and know that they have.

Second, God has not given all His judgments unto man. We are given what we need to know and do, here and now, for ourselves and our neighbor, but it is not given to us to know the final state of anyone, as Augustine presumes to know.

Luke 12:47-48
47 And that servant, which knew his lord’s will, and prepared not himself, neither did according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes.
48 But he that knew not, and did commit things worthy of stripes, shall be beaten with few stripes. For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required: and to whom men have committed much, of him they will ask the more.

I think I finally figured it out. You have to prove the Catholic Church is wrong because you have a little voice inside of you that you are trying to drown.

tiki it seems to me you are the one that doesn't want to look at the truth..what I posted was from YOUR church..they think Jesus is optional..

Do not kill the messanger because the message makes you squirm!

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