[gbcdoj]

Harley,

Although I've searched for this passage and can't find it.

English: NewAdvent: look right above "CHAP. II [VI.]--THAT SOME MEN ARE ELECTED IS OF GOD'S MERCY."

Latin: www.augustinus.it: "quisquis audet dicere: Habeo ex me ipso fidem, non ergo accepi, profecto contradicit huic apertissimae veritati: non quia credere vel non credere non est in arbitrio voluntatis humanae, sed in electis praeparatur voluntas a Domino."

Now, you've quoted extensively from Augustine, but I'm not sure where you find there that it's untrue that "man somehow makes a choice to choose God or reject God," the statement that you said he was against.

The Pelagian, according to the paragraph you place in red, believes that God elected by foreknowledge those "who would be holy and immaculate by the choice of free will," i.e., predestination works like this: God predestines those who would have made themselves just without his predestination. Now Augustine's whole point in the Treatise on Predestination is that this isn't how predestination works: as I quoted in #4769, he says "the ordering of His future works in His foreknowledge, which cannot be deceived and changed, is absolute, and is nothing but, predestination," and argues so about the gifts of God: "if they are both given, and He foreknew that He would give them, certainly He predestinated them." What he's saying is that God predestines by determining to give to a certain man a certain gift, for instance, faith. This infallible determination to give a gift and foreknowledge of his giving is predestination. Therefore, the Pelagians are wrong when they gloss election and predestination simply as God knowing that certain persons will merit eternal life by their own virtue, and the Semi-Pelagians are wrong when they affirm the same simply about faith and not about the other gifts of grace. Even faith itself is a gift from God, who prepares the will of the elect to accept it freely: the man who claims that his faith is solely from himself and not received from God is wrong, "not because it is not in the choice of man's will to believe or not to believe, but because in the elect the will is prepared by the Lord."

The Pelagians are wrong (Augustine is arguing) not because they affirm that belief or disbelief is a free decision within the power of the will of man, but because they deny that faith is always an unmerited gift from God that, moreover, is accepted only by the elect in whom "the will is prepared by the Lord": thus he corrects his unfinished commentary on Romans in this manner: "And what I next subjoined ... I certainly could not have said, had I already known that faith itself also is found among those gifts of God which are given by the same Spirit. Both, therefore, are ours on account of the choice of the will, and yet both are given by the spirit of faith and love ... what I said a little after, 'For it is ours to believe and to will, but it is His to give to those who believe and will, the power of doing good works through the Holy Spirit, by whom love is shed abroad in our hearts,'-- is true indeed; but by the same rule both are also God's, because God prepares the will; and both are ours too, because they are only brought about with our good wills" (On the Predestination of the Saints, I:7:III).

Glossing the Treatise on Predestination as an argument that men don't make a free choice in their conversion is to totally miss the point of the work. He's looking "to show that the faith by which we are Christians is the gift of God" and to refute the opinion "that the divine testimonies which I have adduced concerning this matter are of avail for this purpose, to assure us that we have faith itself of ourselves, but that its increase is of God; as if faith were not given to us by Him, but were only increased in us by Him, on the ground of the merit of its having begun from us" (On the Predestination of the Saints, I:3:II). Such an argument in no way affirms what Augustine denies, that "men themselves in this matter [of believing] do nothing by free will" (On Grace and Free Will 31:XV). Thus in the treatise on grace and free will the opinion he argues against is that faith belongs "tantummodo," only, simply, or solely, to free choice "nec datur a Deo," and is not given by God (29:XIV).

That is to say, Augustine nowhere denies that "man somehow makes a choice to choose God or reject God." What he's saying is that God's choice is logically prior to man's choice: we are made holy because God predestined us to be so, that is, infallibly ordered or ordained in his foreknowledge the giving of the gifts of grace to us and our free acceptance.

[HarleyD]

look right above "CHAP. II [VI.]--

Thanks, gbcdoj. You used a different title than the one I'm use to and I thought it was a different writing of Augustine. Here I was quoting from it all along.

I would agree with Augustine on man's free will. Calvin and the Westminster Confessions would agree. But you fail to read the entire document on "Grace and Free Will" or the "Treatise on the Predestination of the Saints.

Even faith itself is a gift from God, who prepares the will of the elect to accept it freely: the man who claims that his faith is solely from himself and not received from God is wrong, "not because it is not in the choice of man's will to believe or not to believe, but because in the elect the will is prepared by the Lord."

YES!

"And what I next subjoined ... I certainly could not have said, had I already known that faith itself also is found among those gifts of God which are given by the same Spirit. Both, therefore, are ours on account of the choice of the will, and yet both are given by the spirit of faith and love..."

YES!!!

"That is to say, Augustine nowhere denies that "man somehow makes a choice to choose God or reject God." What he's saying is that God's choice is logically prior to man's choice: we are made holy because God predestined us to be so..."

Man does make a choice. This is what free will is about. The issue is when God gives man faith, what choice will man make? Man in his unregenerated state will always choose to reject God. Man when instilled with God given faith will always choose to accept God.

What Augustine (and scripture) also states is that God doesn't give His faith to everyone.

Faith, then, as well in its beginning as in its completion, is God's gift; and let no one have any doubt whatever, unless he desires to resist the plainest sacred writings, that this gift is given to some, while to some it is not given. - Augustine, A Treatise on the Predestination of the Saints

If man does not have God-given faith he will 1) never please God, and 2) never come to God on his own. Catholic doctrine would like to pretend that God gives a tiny bit of faith to everyone. This simply isn't the case and is at odds with what Augustine states.