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Ch 1. God wishes all men to be saved and
therefore Christ died to save all men (cont)
2. The celebrated text of St Paul
On the other hand, both the Scriptures and all the Fathers assure
us that God sincerely and really wishes the salvation of all men
and the conversion of all sinners, as long as they are in this
world.
For this we have, first of all, the express text of St. Paul: "Who
will have all men to be saved, and to come to the knowledge of
the truth." The sentence of the Apostle is absolute and
indicative-----"God wills all men to be saved". [1 Tim. 2: 4]
These words in their natural sense declare that God truly wills
all men to be saved; and it is a certain rule, received in
common by all, that the words in Scripture are not to be
distorted to an unnatural sense, except in the sole case when
the literal meaning is repugnant to faith or morals. St.
Bonaventure writes precisely to our purpose when he says, "We
must hold that when the Apostle says, God wills all men to be
saved, it is necessary to grant that He does will it."
It is true that St. Augustine and St. Thomas mention different
interpretations which have been given to this text; but both
these Doctors understand it to mean a real will of God to save
all, without exception.
And concerning St. Augustine, we shall see just now that this
was his true opinion; so that St. Prosper protests against
attributing to him the supposition that God did not sincerely
wish the salvation of all men, and of each individual, as an
aspersion on the holy Doctor. Hence the same St. Prosper, who
was a most faithful disciple of his, says, "It is most sincerely
to be believed and confessed that God wills all men to be saved;
since the Apostle [whose very words these are] is particular in
commanding that prayers should be made to God for all."
The argument of the Saint is clear, founded on St. Paul's words
in the above-cited passage-----"I beseech therefore, first of
all that prayers should be made for all men"; and then he adds,
"For, this is good and acceptable before God our Saviour, Who
wills all men to be saved." So the Apostle wishes us to pray for
all, exactly in the same sense that God wishes the salvation of
all. St. Chrysostom uses the same argument: "If He wills all to
be saved, surely we ought to pray for all. If He desires all to
be saved, do you also be of one mind with Him."
And if in some passages in his controversy with the
Semi-Pelagians, St. Augustine seems to have held a different
interpretation of this text, saying that God does not will the
salvation of each individual, but only of some, Petavius well
observes that here the holy Father speaks only incidentally, not
with direct intention; or, at any rate, that he speaks of the
grace of that absolute and victorious will [voluntas absoluta et
victrix] with which God absolutely wills the salvation of some
persons, and of which the Saint elsewhere says, 'The will of the
Almighty is always invincible." [Enchir. c. 102]
Let us hear how St. Thomas uses another method of reconciling
the opinion of St. Augustine with that of St. John Damascene,
who holds that antecedently God wills all and each individual to
be saved: "God's first intention is to will all men to be saved,
that as good He may make us partakers of His goodness; but after
we have sinned, He wills to punish us as just." On the other
hand, St. Augustine [as we have seen] seems in a few passages to
think differently. But St. Thomas reconciles these opinions, and
says that St. Damascene spoke of the antecedent will of God, by
which He really wills all men to be saved, while St. Augustine
spoke of the consequent will. He then goes on to explain the
meaning of antecedent and consequent will: "Antecedent will is
that by which God wills all to be saved; but when all the
circumstances of this or that individual are considered, it is
found to be good that all men should be saved; for it is good
that he who prepares himself, and consents to it, should be
saved; but not he who is unwilling and resists, etc. And this is
called the consequent will, because it presupposes a
foreknowledge of a man's deeds, not as a cause of the act of
will, but as a reason for the thing willed and determined."
So that St. Thomas was also of opinion that God truly wills all
men and each individual to be saved. This opinion he reasserts
in several other places. On the text-----"Him that cometh to Me
I will not cast out," [John 6: 37] he quotes St. Chrysostom, who
makes our Lord say, "If then I was incarnate for the salvation
of men, how can I cast them out?" And this is what He means when
He says, "Therefore I cast them not out, because I came down
from Heaven to do My Father's will, Who wills all men to be
saved." And again, "God, by His most liberal will, gives [grace]
to every one that prepares himself,"-----Who wills all men to be
saved; "and therefore the grace of God is wanting to no man, but
as far as He is concerned He communicates it to every one."
Again, he declares the same thing more expressly in his
explanation of the text of St. Paul-----"God wills all men to be
saved." "In God," he says, "the salvation of all men, considered
in itself, belongs to that class of things which He wishes, and
this is His antecedent will; but when the good of justice is
taken into consideration, and the rightness of punishing sin, in
this sense He does not Will the salvation of all, and this is
His consequent will." Here we may see how consistent St. Thomas
was in his explanation of antecedent and consequent will; for he
here repeats what he had said in the passage quoted a little
before. In this place he only adds the comparison of a merchant,
who antecedently wills to save all his merchandise; but if a
tempest comes on, he willingly throws it overboard, in order to
preserve his own life.
In like manner, he says, God, considering the iniquity of some
persons, wills them to be punished in satisfaction of His
justice, and consequently does not will them to be saved; but
antecedently, and considered in itself, He wills with a true
desire the salvation of all men. So that, as he says in the
former passage, God's will to save all men is on His part
absolute; it is only conditional on the part of the object
willed, that is, if man will correspond to what the right order
demands, in order to be saved. "Nor yet," he says, "is there
imperfection on the part of God's will, but on the part of the
thing willed; because it is not accepted with all the
circumstances which are required, in order to be saved in the
proper manner." [In I Sent. d. 46, q. 1, a. 1] And he again and
more distinctly declares what he means by antecedent and
consequent will: "A judge antecedently wishes every man to live,
but he consequently wishes a murderer to be hanged; so God
antecedently wills every man to be saved, but He consequently
wills some to be damned; in consequence, that is, of the
exigencies of His justice."
. . . it is certain that God creates all men for eternal life. .
. . We ought to submit ourselves to the will of God, Who has
chosen to leave this mystery in obscurity to his Church, that we
all might humble ourselves under the deep judgments of His
Divine Providence. And the more, because Divine grace, by which
alone men can gain eternal life, is dispensed more or less
abundantly by God entirely gratuitously, and without any regard
to our merits. So that to save ourselves it will always be
necessary for us to throw ourselves into the arms of the Divine
mercy, in order that He may assist us with His grace to obtain
salvation, trusting always in His infallible promises to hear
and save the man who prays to Him.
3. Other texts of
Scripture
But let us return to our point, that God sincerely wills all men
to be saved. There are other texts which prove the same thing,
as when God says: "As I live, saith the Lord, I desire not the
death of the wicked, but that the wicked man turn from his way
and live." [Ezek. 33: 11] He not only says that He wills not the
death, but that He wills the life of a sinner; and He swears, as
Tertullian observes, in order that He may be more readily
believed in this: "When moreover
He swears, saying, as I live, He desires to be believed."
Further, David says: "For wrath is in His indignation, and life
in His will." [Ps. 29: 6] If He chastises us, He does it because
our sins provoke Him to indignation; but as to His will, He
wills not our death, but our life: "Life is His will." St. Basil
says about this text, that God wills all to be made partakers of
life. David says elsewhere: "Our God is the God of salvation;
and of the Lord of the Lord are the issues from death." [Ps. 67:
21] On this Bellarmine says: 'This is proper to Him, this is His
nature, our God is a saving God, and His are the issues from
death-----that is, liberation from it;" so that it is God's
proper nature to save all, and to deliver all from eternal
death.
Again, our Lord says: "Come to Me, all ye that labour and are
burdened, and I will refresh you." [Matt. 11: 28] If He calls
all to salvation, then He truly wills all to be saved. Again,
St. Peter says: "He willeth not that any should perish, but that
all should return to penance." [2 Peter 3: 9] He does not will
the damnation of anyone, but He wills that all should do
penance, and so should be saved.
Again, our Lord says: "I stand at the gate and knock; if anyone
will open, I will enter." [Apoc. 3: 20] "Why will you die, O
house of Israel? Return and live." [Ezek. 18: 31] "What is there
that I ought to do more to My vineyard, that I have not done to
it?" [Is. 5: 4] "How often would I have gathered together thy
children, as the hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and
thou wouldst not!" [Matt. 23: 37] How could our Lord have said
that He stands knocking at the heart of us sinners? How exhort
us so strongly to return to His arms? How reproach us by asking
what more He could have done for our salvation? How say that He
has willed to receive us as children, if He had not a true will
to save all men?
Again, St. Luke relates that our Lord, looking over Jerusalem from
a distance, and contemplating the destruction of its people
because of their sin: "Seeing the city, He wept over it." [19:
41] Why did He weep then, says Theophylact [after St.
Chrysostom], seeing the ruin of the Jews, unless it was because
He really desired their salvation? Now then, after so many
attestations of our Lord, in which He makes known to us that He
wills to see all men saved, how can it ever be said that God
does not will the salvation of all?
"But if these texts of Scripture," says Petavius, "in which God
has testified His will in such clear and often-repeated
expressions, nay even with tears and with an oath, may be abused
and distorted to the very opposite sense,-----namely, that God
determined to send all mankind [except a few] to perdition, and
never had a will to save them, what dogma of faith is so clear
as to be safe from similar injury and cavil?" This great writer
says, that to deny that God really wills the salvation of all
men, is an insult and cavil against the plainest doctrines of
the faith. And Cardinal Sfondratl adds: "Those who think
otherwise, seem to me to make God a mere stage-god; like those
people who pretend to be kings in a play, when indeed they are
anything but kings."
4. General consent of
the Fathers
Moreover, this truth, that God wills all men to be saved, is
confirmed by the general consent of the Fathers. There can be no
doubt that all the Greek Fathers have been uniform in saying
that God wills all and each individual to be saved. So St.
Justin, St., Basil, St. Gregory, St. Cyril, St. Methodius, and
St. Chrysostom, all adduced by Petavius. But let us see what the
Latin Fathers say:
St. Jerome: [God] "wills to save all; but since no man is saved
without his own will, He wills us to will what is good, that
when we have willed, He may also will to fulfill His designs in
us;" and in another place, "God therefore willed to save those
who desire [to be saved]; and He invited them to salvation, that
their will might have its reward; but they would not believe in
Him."
St. Hilary: "God would that all men were saved, and not those
alone who are to belong to the number of the elect, but all
absolutely, so as to make no exception."
St. Paulinus: "Christ says to all, 'Come to Me,' etc.; for He,
the Creator of all men, so far as He is concerned, wills every
man to be saved."
St. Ambrose: "Even with respect to the wicked He had to manifest
His will [to save them], and therefore He could not pass over
His betrayer, that all might see that in the election even of
the traitor He exhibits [His desire] of saving all . . . and, so
far as God is concerned, He shows to all that He was willing to
deliver all."
The author of the work known as the Commentaries of St. Ambrose
[supposed by Petavius to be Hilary the Second] in speaking of
the text of St. Paul "Who wills all men," etc., asks this
question: "But since God wills that all should be saved, as He
is Almighty, why are there so many who are not saved?" And he
answers: "He wills them to be saved, if they also are willing;
for He who gave the law excluded no one from salvation . . .
this medicine is of no use to the unwilling." He says that God
has excluded no one from glory, and that He gives grace to all
to be saved, but on condition that they are willing to
correspond to it; because His grace is of no use to the man who
rejects it. St. Chrysostom in like manner asks, "Why then are
not all men saved, if God wills all to be saved?" and he
answers, "Because every man's will does not coincide with His
will, and He forces no man." St. Augustine: "God wills all men
to be saved, but not so as to destroy their free will." He says
the same thing in several other places, which we shall shortly
have to produce.
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