[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.

In the immortal words of breathless Klintonite Ann Lewis, "I think we all need to step back and take a deep breath." Please re-read this paragraph on Augustine. Augustine is saying that he agrees with the notion that God did not give the Tyrians and Sidonites the Faith in order to avoid their greater guilt upon later losing it.

He says nothing of the kind.

Augustine does not in any way endorse the "theological escape hatch" -- (that God performed not the salvific miracles amongst Tyre and Sidon due to some foreknown falling away on their parts) -- which you need in order to evade Augustine's clear treatment of Matthew 11; he merely stipulates that, even if this opinion were true, it would only serve to further prove the prior point which he has established, "that no dead person is judged for those sins" which they "would have" done if permitted to live, but only for sins actually committed:

IT MAY BE OBJECTED THAT THE PEOPLE OF TYRE AND SIDON MIGHT, IF THEY HAD HEARD, HAVE BELIEVED, AND HAVE SUBSEQUENTLY LAPSED FROM THEIR FAITH. ~~ A certain catholic disputant of no mean reputation so expounded this passage of the gospel as to say, that the Lord foreknew that the Tyrians and Sidonians would have afterwards departed from the faith, although they had believed the miracles done among them; and that in mercy He did not work those miracles there, because they would have been liable to severer punishment if they had forsaken the faith which they had once held, than if they had at no time held it. In which opinion of a learned and exceedingly acute man, why am I now concerned to say what is still reasonably to be asked, when even this opinion serves me for the purpose at which I aim? For if the Lord in His mercy did not do mighty works among them, since by these works they might possibly become believers, so that they might not be more severely punished when they should subsequently become unbelievers, as He foreknew that they would, -- it is sufficiently and plainly shown that no dead person is judged for those sins which He foreknew that he would have done, if in some manner he were not helped not to do them; just as Christ is said to have come to the aid of the Tyrians and Sidonians, if that opinion be true, who He would rather should not come to the faith at all, than that by a much greater wickedness they should depart from the faith, as, if they had come to it, He foresaw they would have done.

"If that opinion be true" is not an endorsement of the argument you seek.

Augustine merely entertains the opinion for the sake of discussion, and showing how, even if true, it only proves that Man is only judged for actual sins, not for potential sins.

But having enter entertained that opinion as it related to the Judgment of Sins (and shown it to be immaterial to that point even if true), Augustine goes on to indict that argument as it relates to Absolute Predestination (the subject of his foregoing Work):

Although if it be said, "Why was it not provided that they should rather believe, and this gift should be bestowed on them, that before they forsook the faith they should depart from this life"? I am ignorant what reply can be made.

Indeed, you admit that Augustine believes that there is no answer which can be made to this question -- a question for which you must have an answer if you intend to use this argument as a "theological escape hatch" to evade that Absolute Predestination which Augustine declared in his foregoing work to be the clear teaching Matthew 11: 20-27.

To the quasi-objection, "why didn't God just give them the Faith and take them from this world before they lost it," he essentially answers, "good question."

Indeed, it is a good question... far from being a "quasi-objection" to your attempted "theological escape hatch", it wholly refutes it.

Augustine: "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. But since it was not given to them to believe, the means of believing also were denied them."
Orthodox Presbyterian: "Augustine teaches Absolute Predestination".
Squire: "Um... no, can't be!!" (Squire here adopts an argument of Prosper's which Augustine quotes in his On Perseverance, although Squire - oops - botches his reading, and attributes it to Augustine himself) "It may be objected that the people of Tyre and Sidon might, if they had heard, have believed, and have subsequently lapsed from their Faith."
Augustine: (responding to this attempted "theological escape hatch") "Why was it not provided that they should rather believe, and this gift should be bestowed on them, that before they forsook the faith they should depart from this life?"
Squire: (Silence).... no answer.
Orthodox Presbyterian: "Yeah, that's what I thought."

He is not writing in a hectoring or ironic tone -- as you seem to believe. Augustine honestly does not know how to answer that question. Here again, one can almost hear him tuning up to chant that Pauline hymn to the unfathomable depths of the Divine Mystery.

Uh huh. Gee, if I visualize hard enough, I can almost hear Augustine whistling dixie, too.

P'shaw, Squire. Not only does he present to you and Prosper this question of your "theological escape hatch" for which he sees no answer -- and for which, in fact, you have no answer -- Augustine further stipulates that before you may freely use this argument as a "theological escape hatch" to evade Absolute Predestination in Matthew 11, you must answer this damning counter-argument, as the counter-argument, if left unanswered, completely invalidates your proposed "theological escape hatch".

Therefore it is an advantage also to him who is taken away, lest wickedness should alter his understanding. But why this advantage should not have been given to the Tyrians and Sidonians, that they might believe and be taken away, lest wickedness should alter their understanding, he perhaps might answer who was pleased in such a way to solve the above question.

The fact that neither Prosper, nor you, has ever sucessfully answered the question, only illustrates the fact that you have no answer.

And so, in the judgment of Augustine, your "theological escape hatch" that "It may be objected that the people of Tyre and Sidon might, if they had heard, have believed, and have subsequently lapsed from their Faith", is groundless and without defense.

And so to review:

You botched your reading of Augustine's On Predestination. Augustine clearly teaches that Matthew 11:20-27 inescapably affirms Absolute Predestination.
You botched again in your attempt to evade Absolute Predestination, by attributing (falsely) to Augustine the "theological escape hatch" that "It may be objected that the people of Tyre and Sidon might, if they had heard, have believed, and have subsequently lapsed from their Faith". In fact, so far from endorsing this argument, Augustine raises an objection to it for which he expects no answer is possible.
And so, you botch yet again your reading of Augustine, by admitting that you incorrectly attributed to Augustine an argument which is not his, but then failing entirely to answer Augustine's objection to that argument -- an objection which you must answer if you wish to make use of this theological escape-hatch.

This "theological escape hatch" is, has been, and remains the cornerstone of your attempted evasion of Absolute Predestination in Matthew 11: 20-27: I like St. Augustine's (and St. Jerome's) position that God foreknew that Tyre and Sidon would have believed had they seen the miracles, but that they would then have fallen away -- and therefore would have been worse off than if they had never believed.

But Augustine denies you this "escape hatch": "Therefore it is an advantage also to him who is taken away, lest wickedness should alter his understanding. But why this advantage should not have been given to the Tyrians and Sidonians, that they might believe and be taken away, lest wickedness should alter their understanding, he perhaps might answer who was pleased in such a way to solve the above question."

And so, with this "escape hatch" denied you, the fundamental question remains:

Matthew 11: 20 - 27 -- Then Jesus began to denounce the cities in which most of his miracles had been performed, because they did not repent. "Woe to you, Korazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! If the miracles that were performed in you had been performed in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. But I tell you, it will be more bearable for Tyre and Sidon on the day of judgment than for you. And you, Capernaum, will you be lifted up to the skies? No, you will go down to the depths. If the miracles that were performed in you had been performed in Sodom, it would have remained to this day. But I tell you that it will be more bearable for Sodom on the day of judgment than for you." At that time Jesus said, "I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for this was your good pleasure." All things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.

God foreknew Tyre and Sidon's free choice NOT TO REPENT in the case of His non-performance of such Miracles; AND
God foreknew Tyre and Sidon's free choice TO REPENT in the case of His performance of such Miracles; AND
God CHOSE not to perform these Miracles in Tyre and Sidon, a choice which had as its perfectly foreknown result the NON-Repentance of Tyre and Sidon, just as He foreknew.
True, or False?

Once you answer that question, you will be intellectually equipped to read Augustine.

Not until then.

Remember: The Protestant critique of Rome's "authority" centers on the fact that Augustine got this critical doctrine of God's Absolute Sovereignty right --

And this the Lord, reproaching them, declares when He says, "Woe unto thee, Chorazin and Bethsaida, because if the mighty works had been done in Tyre and Sidon which have been done in you, they would long ago have repented in dust and ashes." But can we say that even the Tyrians and Sidonians would have refused to believe such mighty works done among them, or would not have believed them if they had been done, when the Lord Himself bears witness to them that they would have repented with great humility if those signs of divine power had been done among them? (On Perseverance)

And that Rome has, in progressively greater degree for over one thousand years, gotten this critical Doctrine ever more wrong:

My readers hence perceive that the doctrine which I deliver is not new, but the doctrine which of old Augustine delivered with the consent of all the godly, and which was afterwards shut up in the cloisters of monks for almost a thousand years.

The Institutes of the Christian Religion

As for the MENSA crack, probably well-deserved, and, admittedly, pretty funny. But to tell the truth, I have enough self-affirmation from knowing that I am a son of God, a son of Mary, and a son of the Church of Jesus Christ -- Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman.

A "salvation" of self-deception will damn millions who believe that they are saved.

The Calvinist teaching then, is that certain men are created specifically for the purpose that they be damned. OP, think about it -- such a teaching represents reprobation without demerit par excellence. Calvin did not necessarily use the words "reprobation without demerit" -- he may even have denied that he was teaching that heresy -- but for all practical purposes, the created-to-be-damned model is reprobation-without-demerit on a scale of which the early heretics could not have conceived. By claiming that Augustine endorses the notion of so-called double predestination, Calvinists attempt to make Augustine complicit with Calvin in this error.

The Calvinist teaching is that certain men are created specifically for the purpose that they be damned according to their foreknown iniquity. This is not "reprobation without demerit", but quite specifically "reprobation in reference to demerit". There have been so-called "supralapsarian Calvinists" or "SupraCalvinists" who teach that God permitted the Fall for the express purpose of bringing about this decreed Reprobation, but the Orthodox ("infralapsarian") Calvinist position has ever been that God decreed Reprobation as punishment for the foreknown Fall (as was Calvin's own position, reading all his work on the subject holistically). Boettner reliably estimates the incidence of Calvinists versus SupraCalvinists as being on the order of 100-to-1.

Ergo, you can attempt to tar us with the SupraCalvinist view, but this is no more intellectually honest than if I were to treat SSPX-Traditionalism as being the sole legitimate expression of Romanism (despite the fact that Conservatives outnumber Traditionalists by 100-to-1).

But, though I am happy to debate Calvin with you in the proper season. our wager was not upon your ability to read Calvin, but upon your ability to read Augustine.

And on that subject, you have a question to answer :

God foreknew Tyre and Sidon's free choice NOT TO REPENT in the case of His non-performance of such Miracles; AND
God foreknew Tyre and Sidon's free choice TO REPENT in the case of His performance of such Miracles; AND
God CHOSE not to perform these Miracles in Tyre and Sidon, a choice which had as its perfectly foreknown result the NON-Repentance of Tyre and Sidon, just as He foreknew.
True, or False?

We already know Augustine's answer. Let's see if you can answer, without thunderously botching your Augustine yet again.

In Christian charity, I leave a final thought for you. I hope that Our Lord will not take offense at what I am about to say. I'm going to say it because I don't think He will take offense. Here it is: when we leave this world, everything passes away, and there is nothing left but each of us as an individual -- an individual standing face-to-face with Jesus Christ and Him alone. I think at that ultimate moment in each of our individual existences, He is going to have a certain look or expression on His Holy Face congruent with the particular "issues" He has had with the way in which we've each lived our lives. With the Calvinists, I think it will be a pained expression. And along with this expression will be two important questions: (1) How could you convict Me of the evil of creating men for the purpose of damning them? (2)Believing Me capable of this evil, how could you, by either divine or even human logic, still worship Me as God?

As I have already noted above, your willful mis-reading and mis-representation of Calvin is a subject to be treated on its own. For the purpose of our wager (which concerns your ability to read Augustine), it serves the discussion to (temporarily) ignore Calvin's writings entirely. You may choose to congratulate yourself by supposing that I am afraid of discussing Calvin, but that ain't the case, kemosabe. I am attempting to keep our discussion to the subject agreed upon -- the Patristic Writings of Augustine.

I submit that Augustine alone -- without any reference to Calvin whatsoever -- annihilates any possible objection to Absolute Predestination.

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. But since it was not given to them to believe, the means of believing also were denied them.... Therefore the eyes of the Tyrians and Sidonians were not so blinded nor was their heart so hardened, since they would have believed if they had seen such mighty works, as the Jews saw. But it did not profit them that they were able to believe, because they were not predestinated by Him whose judgments are inscrutable and His ways past finding out. ~~ (On Predestination)

But can we say that even the Tyrians and Sidonians would have refused to believe such mighty works done among them, or would not have believed them if they had been done, when the Lord Himself bears witness to them that they would have repented with great humility if those signs of divine power had been done among them? And yet in the day of judgment they will be punished; although with a less punishment than those cities which would not believe the mighty works done in them. For the Lord goes on to say, "Nevertheless, I say unto you, it shall be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon in the day of judgment than for you.".... Therefore the former shall be punished with greater severity, the latter with less; but yet they shall be punished. Again, if the dead are judged even in respect of deeds which they would have done if they had lived, assuredly since these would have been believers if the gospel had been preached to them with so great miracles, they certainly ought not to be punished; but they will be punished.... Because no dead man is judged by the good or evil things which he would have done if he had not died, otherwise the Tyrians and Sidonians would not have suffered the penalties according to what they did; but rather according to those things that they would have done, if those evangelical mighty works had been done in them, they would have obtained salvation by great repentance, and by the faith of Christ. ~~ (On Perseverance)

We know what your escape hatch has been -- "It may be objected that the people of Tyre and Sidon might, if they had heard, have believed, and have subsequently lapsed from their Faith".

And we know that Augustine has denied you this "escape hatch" -- "Therefore it is an advantage also to him who is taken away, lest wickedness should alter his understanding. But why this advantage should not have been given to the Tyrians and Sidonians, that they might believe and be taken away, lest wickedness should alter their understanding, he perhaps might answer who was pleased in such a way to solve the above question."

Your preferred "escape hatch" thus denied you, you have a question to answer:

God foreknew Tyre and Sidon's free choice NOT TO REPENT in the case of His non-performance of such Miracles; AND
God foreknew Tyre and Sidon's free choice TO REPENT in the case of His performance of such Miracles; AND
God CHOSE not to perform these Miracles in Tyre and Sidon, a choice which had as its perfectly foreknown result the NON-Repentance of Tyre and Sidon, just as He foreknew.
True, or False?

No attempt to divert the discussion to your mis-readings of Calvin will be accepted; we are not discussing your capacity for reading Calvin, but your capacity for reading Augustine.

And so you still have a question to answer.

St.Chuck: You stated that you regarded Squire's #1429 as his piece de resistance.

I countered that, in his 1429, Squire had, in fact, made an admission which proved the indefensibility of his entire position:

To the quasi-objection, "why didn't God just give them the Faith and take them from this world before they lost it," he essentially answers, "good question."

As I said, Indeed, it is a good question... far from being a "quasi-objection" to your attempted "theological escape hatch", it wholly refutes it.

And so, with this "escape hatch" denied you, the fundamental question remains:

God foreknew Tyre and Sidon's free choice NOT TO REPENT in the case of His non-performance of such Miracles; AND
God foreknew Tyre and Sidon's free choice TO REPENT in the case of His performance of such Miracles; AND
God CHOSE not to perform these Miracles in Tyre and Sidon, a choice which had as its perfectly foreknown result the NON-Repentance of Tyre and Sidon, just as He foreknew.
True, or False?

You are welcome to address the matter yourself, if you wish to make the attempt.

Because Augustine says that there is no honest treatment of Matthew 11:20-27 which can be made... save to admit the reality of Absolute, Sovereign, "Double" Predestination -- which is the very position which Rome denies.

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