Annotatio CI

”When therefore the men rose up from thence.” — Genesis 18:16

Chrysostom, homily 42 on Genesis, commending Abraham because he possessed all virtues most absolutely, has certain words near the beginning of the sermon on account of which — and many others like these, expressed in various places — John Oecolampadius, professor of the Lutheran heresy, turns it to his fault that he is excessive in the assertion of Free Will (drawn from the schools of worldly philosophy), and quite violent in exacting the powers of human nature, which are nothing, together with the preparation of our will.¹ These are Chrysostom’s words: “What excuse, therefore, is left to us after these things, when one man possesses all virtues in himself, but we are so devoid of them that we do not strive to perfect even one? For that we are estranged from all good things not because we cannot, but because we will not, this very thing plainly indicates: that the Patriarch — who was before the time of grace and before the Law — by himself, and by the knowledge which is implanted by nature, reached so high a summit of virtue that it suffices to confute all our excuses. But perhaps some will say that that man obtained much grace from God, and that the Lord of all had a singular care of him. I too confess that it is so: but unless he had first himself done what was his own, he would not have obtained so much from the Lord. Attend, therefore, how he first exhibited in all things the token of his virtue, and so merited divine protection — he who neither received the seed of faith from his forefathers, and yet of himself offered a most religious and pious mind.” And a little after he adds: “You have seen how from the beginning he brought forward the things that were from himself, and therefore daily received divine [gifts] abundantly?” This same opinion he inculcates in very many places, especially in homily 17 on the second chapter of John, where he speaks thus: “Hence we can be admonished that [God] does not anticipate our wills by his benefits toward us, but that the beginning must be from us; and when he has seen us with a prompt and ready mind to receive grace, then he offers us many occasions of salvation.” By which words indeed Chrysostom seems to hint that the beginning of our salvation is so placed in us that, without the help of prevenient grace, by the proper powers of nature we can merit the divine gift of justifying grace — which is the error of the Pelagians.

But it appears that Chrysostom did not wish, by these words, to derogate from prevenient grace (which he so often extols), but to reprove the laziness of his hearers, and to render our sloth inexcusable² — which the very opening of the aforesaid oration openly manifests, when he says: “What excuse, therefore, is left to us after these things?” etc. For this is Chrysostom’s fixed and everywhere immovable opinion: namely, that we, whatever good we have, we have from the kindness of prevenient, calling, and ever-beginning grace, and that there is no merit of ours which is not a gift of God — whose goodness is so great that he wills those to be our merits which are his own gifts. And lest anyone, moved by the unjust calumny of Oecolampadius, suspect that Chrysostom did not think as we say, let it suffice to adduce two or three passages out of so many of his, in which he himself speaks thus for the defense of divine grace. Homily 12 on the fourth chapter of First Corinthians: “‘What you have, this you have received’ — and not only this, but also that, ‘But whatever you have’ — for these are not your merits, but the grace of God. Though you bring forward faith, you received it from [your] calling; though you bring forward pardon of sins, though thanksgivings, though virtues, all came to you thence. What, therefore, do you have that you have not received? Have you yourself, by yourself, done rightly? Not indeed, but you received [it]; for that gift is not yours, but the giver’s. For if you have received, you received from him; if from him, you received what is not yours; if not yours, why do you grow insolent, as though you had what is your own?*” And homily 38 to the people of Antioch, which is entitled On Humility and Quiet: “Let us not be exalted, but let us call ourselves useless, that we may be made useful. For if you call yourself worthy, though you be worthy, being made [presumptuous] you are rendered useless. On that account it is necessary to forget one’s merits; for the safe treasury of merits is the forgetting of merits.” And a little after he adds: “Do not, therefore, reckon yourself worthy of reward, that you may receive reward; confess that you are saved by grace, that he himself may confess himself your debtor. For we too, having servants, hold them most acceptable then, when — after they have ministered everything benevolently — they judge themselves to have done nothing great. And so, if you too greatly wish to render your merits [great], provided you do not think them great, then they will indeed be great.” Thus Chrysostom: who, if he sometimes seems to say something different, is to be interpreted thus — that we refer his aforesaid words, and others like them, not to that motion of prevenient and exciting grace, which always so anticipates us that it cannot be anticipated by us, but to that gift of subsequent grace which in the schools of the theologians is called habitual grace. For this no one — as Chrysostom piously and holily judges — obtains, unless he has offered a mind rightly prepared for the reception of so great a gift.³ Or it must be said — as Anianus too noted in the preface of the commentaries of Chrysostom on Matthew — that Chrysostom sometimes extolled the powers of our nature more than is fair, out of the heat of disputing with the Manichees and the Gentiles, who asserted that man is compelled to sin either by nature [being] evil or by the violence of fate. See Annotations 184, 194, and 257 of book 6.