REFUTATION OF THE OBJECTIONS COMMONLY PUT FORWARD IN DEFENSE OF FREE WILL
18. ECCLESIASTICUS 15:14-17
who wills or upon him who runs” [<450916>Romans 9:16 p.]. Yet not even they would grant me the right to reason along the same lines: that we do some good works, because Paul denies that we attain to God’s goodness by virtue of the works that we have done. But if they detect a flaw in this argument, let them open their eyes and they will perceive that their own suffers from a like fallacy, it is a firm reason that Augustine relies on: “If therefore it were said that, ‘It depends not upon him who wills or upon him who runs’ [<450916>
Romans 9:16] because willing or running alone is not sufficient, then one can turn the argument around: that it does not depend upon God’s mercy, because it would not act alone.” Since this second argument is absurd, Augustine rightly concludes: therefore this is said because man has no good will unless it be prepared by the Lord. Not that we ought not to will and to run; but because God accomplishes both in us. f200
Certain persons just as ignorantly twist that saying of Paul’s: “We are God’s co-workers” [<460309>
1 Corinthians 3:9]. f201 This is without a doubt restricted to ministers alone. Moreover they are called “co-workers” not because they bring anything of themselves, but because God uses their work after he has rendered them capable of it and has furnished them with the necessary gifts.
attributed to the original creation does not necessarily apply forthwith to his corrupt and degenerate nature. Therefore I am answering not only my opponents but also Ecclesiasticus himself, whoever he may be: If you wish to teach man to seek in himself the capacity to acquire salvation, we do not esteem your authority so highly that it may in the slightest degree raise any prejudice against the undoubted Word of God. But suppose you strive simply to repress the evil inclination of the flesh, which tries vainly to defend itself by transferring its vices to God, and for this reason you answer that uprightness was implanted in man that thereby it might be clear that he is the cause of his own ruin. I willingly assent to this,
provided you and I agree that man has now been deprived through his own fault of those adornments with which the Lord in the beginning arrayed him. Thus let us alike confess that man now needs a physician, not an advocate.
19. <421030>LUKE 10:30
They have nothing more constantly on their lips than Christ’s parable of the traveler, whom thieves cast down half alive on the road [<422030>Luke 20:30]. I know that almost all writers commonly teach that the calamity of the human race is represented in the person of the traveler. From this our opponents take the argument that man is not so disfigured by the robbery of sin and the devil as not to retain some vestiges of his former good, inasmuch as he is said to have been left “half alive.” For unless some portion of right reason and will remained, how could there be a “half life”?
f203
First, suppose I do not want to accept their allegory. What, pray, will they do? For no doubt the fathers devised this interpretation without regard to the true meaning of the Lord’s words. Allegories f204 ought not to go beyond the limits set by the rule of Scripture, let alone suffice as the foundation for any doctrines. And I do not lack reasons, if I so please, to uproot this falsehood. The Word of God does not leave a “half life” to man, but it teaches that he has utterly died as far as the blessed life is concerned. Paul does not call the saints “half alive” when he speaks of our redemption, “Even when we were dead ... he made us alive”
[<490205>
Ephesians 2:5]. He does not call upon the half alive to receive the illumination of Christ, but those who are asleep and buried
[<490514>Ephesians 5:14]. In the same way the Lord himself says, “The hour has come when the dead rise again at his voice” [<430525>
John 5:25 p.].
How shameless of them to oppose a slight allusion to so many clear statements!
Yet, suppose this allegory of theirs serves as a sure testimony, what can they nevertheless wrest from us? Man is half alive, they say; therefore he has something safe. Of course he has a mind capable of understanding, even if it may not penetrate to heavenly and spiritual wisdom. He has some judgment of honesty. He has some awareness of divinity, even though he may not attain a true knowledge of God. But what do these qualities amount to? Surely they cannot make out that we are to abandon Augustine’s view, approved by the common consent of the schools: the free goods upon which salvation depends were taken away from man after the Fall, while the natural endowments were corrupted and defiled. f205 Therefore let us hold this as an undoubted truth which no siege engines can shake: the mind of man has been so completely estranged from God’s righteousness that it conceives, desires, and undertakes, only that which is impious, perverted, foul, impure, and infamous. The heart is so steeped in the poison of sin, that it can breathe out nothing but a loathsome stench.
But if some men occasionally make a show of good, their minds
nevertheless ever remain enveloped in hypocrisy and deceitful craft, and their hearts bound by inner perversity.