Freedom And Grace

Caput VI Objectio: Quod liberum arbitrium in homine nihil sit: sed sive ad bonum, sive ad malum, praedestination Dei in hominibus operetur. Responsio: Liberum arbitrium nihil esse, vel non esse, perperam dicitur: sed ante illuminationem fidei in tenebris illud et in umbra mortis agere, non recte negatur. Quoniam priusquam a dominatione diaboli per Dei gratiam liberetur, in illo profundo jacet, in quod se sua libertate demersit. Amat ergo languores suos, et pro sanitate habet, quod aegrotare se nescit, donec prima haec medela conferatur aegroto, ut incipiat nosse quod langueat, et possit opem medici desiderare qua surgat. Iustificatus itaque homo, id est, ex impio pius factus, nullo praecedente bono merito accipit donum, quo dono acquirat et meritum: ut quod in illo inchoatum est per gratiam Christi, etiam per industriam liberi augeatur arbitrii; nunquam remoto adiutorio Dei, sine quo nec proficere, nec permanere in bono quisquam potest. Praedestinationem autem Dei sive ad bonum, sive ad malum, in hominibus operari, ineptissime dicitur, ut ad utrumque homines quaedam necessitas videatur impellere: cum in bonis voluntas sit intelligenda de gratia, in malis autem voluntas intelligenda sine gratia. Sanctus Prosperus Aquitanus, Pro Augustino Responsiones ad Capitula Calumiatum Gallorum, Caput VI Source: Migne PL 51.160c-161b

Chapter 6 Objection: There is no freedom of will in a man, either to good or evil, the predestination of God working in men. That the freedom of the will is nothing, or is not, is said wrongly; but rather it is not right to deny that before the enlightenment of faith it acts in the darkness and shadow of death. Because before it is liberated from the domination of the devil by the will of God, it lies in the depths, in which it has drowned itself with its own liberty. Therefore it loves its feebleness, and for its health it has the ignorance of its sickness, until first this remedy is brought to the sick one, by which it begins to know that it is infirm, and it is able to desire the work of the physician that it might rise. Thus a man is justified, that is, when he is made pious from impiety, when with no merit of preceding good he receives the gift, by which gift he may acquire merit, so that what is in him immature, by the grace of Christ and also by the freedom of his will grows, though never apart from the help of God, without which it is neither possible to advance or remain in goodness. It is said, then,most poorly that the predestination of God in man works either to good or to evil, for in either case it seems to impose a certain necessity on man, when his choice of good should be understood to be from grace and his choice of evils without grace. Saint Prosper of Aquitaine, Answers For Augustine Against the Chapters of the Fault Finding Gauls, Chapter 6