The Properties of Actual Grace — Section 3: The Universality of Grace, Article 4: Reprobation

ARTICLE 4: THE REPROBATION OF THE DAMNED

The reprobation of the damned is sometimes called praedestinatio ad gehennam, though, as we have remarked, the term “predestination” should properly be restricted to the blessed.

There can be no absolute and positive predestination to eternal punishment, and the pains of hell can be threatened only in view of mortal sin. Hence reprobation may be defined, in the words of Peter Lombard, as “God’s foreknowledge of the wickedness of some creatures and the preparation of their damnation.”¹

A distinction must, however, be made (at least in theory), between positive and negative reprobation. To teach positive reprobation would be heretical. Negative reprobation, on the other hand, is defended by all those Catholic theologians who advocate the theory of absolute predestination ante praevisa merita.²

1. Heretical Predestinarianism or the Theory of the Positive Reprobation of the Damned

Heretical Predestinarianism was taught by Lucidus, Gottschalk, Wiclif, Hus, the younger Jansenius, and especially by Calvin. The latter asserted that the salvation of the elect and the damnation of the reprobate are the effects of an unconditional divine decree.³

According to this abominable heresy, the sin of Adam and the spiritual ruin which it entailed upon his descendants are attributable solely to the will of God. God produces in the reprobate a “semblance of faith,” only to make them all the more deserving of damnation. In the beginning of the seventeenth century Arminius and a few other theologians of the Dutch Reformed Church, repelled by Calvin’s decretum horribile, ascribed the positive reprobation of the damned to original sin (lapsus). These writers, called Infralapsarians or Postlapsarians, were opposed by the strict school of Calvinist divines under the leadership of Gomarus. The great Calvinist Synod of Dordrecht (1618-1619) condemned the principles of Arminius, and subsequently his adherents were driven from Holland.

The Catholic Church condemned Predestinarianism as early as 529 at the Second Council of Orange, which among other things declared: “We not only refuse to believe that some men are by divine power predestined to evil, but if there be any who hold such a wicked thing, we condemn them with utter detestation.”⁴

The Tridentine Council defined against Calvin: “If any one saith that the grace of justification is attained to only by those who are predestined unto life, but that all others who are called, are called indeed, but receive not grace, as being by divine power predestined unto evil; let him be anathema.”⁵

Calvinism, both supra- and infra-lapsarian, is easily refuted from Revelation and Tradition.

a) It runs counter to all those texts of the Bible which assert the universality of God’s saving will,⁶ the bestowal of sufficient grace on all sinners,⁷ and the divine attribute of holiness.⁸

Calvin endeavored to prove his blasphemous doctrine chiefly from the ninth chapter of St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans.⁹ His disciple Beza relied mainly on 1 Pet. II, 7 sq.: “But to them that believe not, the stone which the builders rejected, the same is made the head of the corner: and a stone of stumbling, and a rock of scandal, to them who stumble at the word, neither do believe, whereunto also they are set,”¹⁰ i. e., according to Beza, predestined not to believe.¹¹ But this interpretation is obviously wrong. For we know from Is. VIII, 14¹² and Matth. XXI, 44,¹³ that those who fall on this stone are ground to powder as a punishment for the sin of unbelief.¹⁴

b) The Fathers, especially those of the East, are unanimous in upholding the orthodox teaching of the Church. The only one whom adherents of Predestinarianism have dared to claim is St. Augustine.

Yet the “Doctor of Grace” expressly teaches: “God is good, God is just. He can deliver some without merits because He is good; but He cannot damn any one without demerits, because He is just.”¹⁵ St. Prosper re-echoes this teaching when he says of the reprobates: “Of their own will they went out; of their own will they fell; and because their fall was foreknown, they were not predestined. They would, however, be predestined if they were to return and persevere in holiness; hence God’s predestination is for many the cause of perseverance, for none the cause of falling away.”¹⁶ St. Fulgentius expresses himself in similar language.¹⁷

2. The Theory of “Negative Reprobation”

Negative reprobation is defined by its defenders as an eternal decree by which God excludes from Heaven those not absolutely predestined, in other words, determines not to save them.

a) Gonet explains the difference between negative and positive reprobation in Scholastic terminology as follows: ”… quod haec [i. e. positiva] habet non solum terminum a quo, nempe exclusionem a gloria, sed etiam terminum ad quem, scil. poenam sive damni sive sensus; illa vero [i. e. negativa] solum habet terminum a quo, nempe exclusionem a gloria ut beneficio indebito, non vero terminum ad quem, quia ex vi exclusionis ut sic praecise et ut habet rationem purae negationis, non intelligitur reprobus esse damnandus aut ulli poenae sive damni sive sensus deputandus.”¹⁸

The general principle laid down in this quotation is variously developed by Thomist theologians.

The rigorists (Alvarez, John a S. Thoma, Estius, Sylvius) assign as the motive of reprobation the sovereign will of God. God, they say, without taking into account possible sins and demerits, determined a priori to exclude from Heaven those who are not predestined. De Lemos, Gotti, Gonet, Gazzaniga, and others condemn this view as incompatible with the teaching of St. Thomas, and, appealing to St. Augustine’s doctrine of the massa damnata, find the ultimate reason for the exclusion of the reprobates from heaven in original sin, in which God, without being unjust, could leave as many as He saw fit. Goudin, Graveson, Billuart, and others assume that the reprobates are not directly excluded from eternal glory but merely from “effective election” thereunto, God simply having decreed ante praevisa merita to leave them to their weakness.¹⁹

While the Thomists found no difficulty in harmonizing this view with their theory of physical premotion, the few Molinists who espoused it were hard put in trying to square it with the scientia media.²⁰ On the whole these Molinists endorse the third and mildest of the above-quoted opinions, which differs only theoretically from the rigoristic view described in the first place. Practically it makes no difference whether God directly excludes a man from heaven or refuses to give him the graces necessary to attain it.

Surveying all three of the theories under consideration we cannot but regard the first and third as heartless and cruel, because they attribute eternal reprobation to a positive decree that takes effect independently of sin; the second, (which ascribes reprobation to original sin), is open to the serious dogmatic objection that it contradicts the teaching of St. Paul and the Tridentine declaration that “there is no condemnation (nihil damnationis) in those who are truly buried together with Christ by baptism into death.”²¹

b) Negative reprobation is rightly regarded as the logical counterpart of absolute predestination.²² If Almighty God, by an absolute decree, without regard to any possible merits, merely to reveal His divine attributes and to “embellish the universe,” had determined that only those could enter the “Heavenly Jerusalem” who were antecedently predestined thereto, it would inevitably follow that the unfortunate remainder of humanity by the very same decree were “passed over,” “omitted,” “overlooked,” “not elected,” or, as Gonet honestly admits, “excluded from Heaven,” which is the same thing as being negatively condemned to hell.

The logical distinction between positive and negative reprobation, therefore, consists mainly in this, that the former signifies absolute damnation to hell, the latter (equally absolute) non-election to Heaven. To protect the Catholic champions of negative reprobation against unjust aspersions, however, it is necessary to point out certain fundamental differences between their theory and the heresy of Calvin.

Calvin and the Jansenists openly deny the universality both of God’s saving will and of the atonement; they refuse to admit the actual bestowal of sufficient grace upon those fore-ordained to eternal damnation; and claim that the human will loses its freedom under the predominance of efficacious grace or concupiscence. The Catholic defenders of negative reprobation indignantly reject the charge that their position logically leads to any such heretical implications.

c) The theory of negative reprobation can be sufficiently refuted by showing that it is incompatible with the universality of God’s will to save all men. For if God willed absolutely and antecedently to “exclude some men from Heaven,” as Gonet asserts, or “not to elect them to eternal glory,” as Suarez contends, then it would be His absolute will that they perish.

α) For one thus negatively reprobated it is metaphysically impossible to attain eternal salvation. To hold otherwise would be tantamount to assuming that an essentially absolute decree of God can be frustrated. This consideration led certain Thomists²³ to describe the divine voluntas salvifica as rather an ineffectual velleitas.²⁴ But this conflicts with the obvious teaching of Revelation.²⁵ Suarez labors in vain to reconcile the sincerity of God’s salvific will with the theory of negative reprobation. The two are absolutely irreconcilable. How could God sincerely will the salvation of all men if it were true, as Suarez says, that “it is not in man’s power to work out his eternal salvation in case he falls under non-election, non-predestination, or, which amounts to the same thing, negative reprobation”?²⁶

β) The cruel absurdity of the theory of negative reprobation becomes fully apparent when we consider the attitude it ascribes to God. Gonet writes: “Foreseeing that the whole human race would be depraved by original sin, God, in view of the merits of Christ who was to come, elected some men to glory and, in punishment of original sin and to show His justice towards them and His greater mercy towards the elect, permitted others to miss the attainment of beatitude, in other words, He positively willed that they should not attain it… . In virtue of this efficacious intention He devised appropriate means for the attainment of His purpose, and seeing that some would miss beatitude by simply being left in the state of original sin, and others by being permitted to fall into actual sins and to persevere therein, He formally decreed this permission, and finally … by a command of His intellect ordained these means towards the attainment of the aforesaid end.”²⁷ Translated into plain every-day language this can only mean that God tries with all His might to prevent the reprobate from attaining eternal salvation and sees to it that they die in the state of sin. Suarez is perfectly right in characterizing Gonet’s teaching as “incompatible with sound doctrine.”²⁸ But his own teaching is equally unsound and cruel. For he, too, is compelled to assert: “Predestination to glory is the motive for which efficacious or infallible means towards attaining that end are bestowed. Hence to refuse to predestine a man for glory is to deny him the means which are recognized as fit and certain to attain that end.”²⁹

Holy Scripture fortunately speaks a different language. It describes God as a loving Father, who “wills not that any should perish, but that all should return to penance.”³⁰

γ) Practically it makes no difference whether a man is positively condemned to eternal damnation, as Calvin and the Jansenists assert, or negatively excluded from Heaven, as held by the orthodox theologians whom we have just quoted. The alleged distinction between positive and negative reprobation is “a distinction without a difference.” For an adult to be excluded from Heaven simply means that he is damned. There is no such thing as a middle state or a purely natural beatitude. Lessius justly says that to one reprobated by God it would be all the same whether his reprobation was positive or negative, because in either case he would be inevitably lost.³¹

Readings

*Ruiz, De Praedestinatione et Reprobatione, Lyons 1628. — Ramirez, De Praedestinatione et Reprobatione, 2 vols., Alcalá 1702. — *Lessius, De Perfectionibus Moribusque Divinis, XIV, 2. — *Idem, De Praedestinatione et Reprobatione (Opusc., Vol. II, Paris 1878). — Tournely, De Deo, qu. 22 sqq. — Schrader, Commentarii, I-II, De Praedestinatione, Vienna 1865. — J. P. Baltzer, Des hl. Augustinus Lehre über Prädestination und Reprobation, Vienna 1871. — Mannens, De Voluntate Dei Salvifica et Praedestinatione, Louvain 1883. — O. Rottmanner, O. S. B., Der Augustinismus, München 1892. — O. Pfülf, S. J., “Zur Prädestinationslehre des hl. Augustinus,” in the Innsbruck Zeitschrift für kath. Theologie, 1893, pp. 483 sqq.