Annotation LXIII
”To you it is given to know the mystery of the kingdom of heaven.” — Matthew 13:11
[The error that] faith is given to us from preceding merits.
**The author of the Opus imperfectum, homily 31, indicates that the knowledge of the mysteries of faith and of the kingdom of heaven is given to those who use the natural light well, as a reward for good will — which opinion Augustine, having followed [it] before [his] episcopate, afterward, once made bishop, retracted. The author’s words run thus: “The Lord gives general grace, that is, the understanding of good and evil, to all, by the necessity of nature; because we do not even seem to be men created to the image of God, unless we have divine understanding. But to the more worthy he gives special grace — such as, of knowing the mysteries — not by the necessity of nature, but for the reward of good will, or of good works. See, therefore, how he says, ‘To you it is given to know the mystery of the kingdom of heaven.’ He did not say, ‘It is given to you, [or] to anyone, who has the knowledge of good and evil.’ If, then, there is someone who does not have the grace of the knowledge of good and evil, it is not the fault of the man not having [it], but of God not giving [it]. But if all men understand good and evil, yet not all have the grace of knowing the mystery of the kingdom: it is not the fault of God not giving, but of the man not seeking, nor hastening, nor laboring, to merit to receive [it]. For if you had gone through that general knowledge of good and evil — that is, if you had used [it] well — you would justly have merited this special knowledge of knowing the mystery.”
John Driedo, in the book On the Concord of Free Will and Divine Predestination, chapter 3, receiving this passage under the name and authority of Chrysostom, elucidates it with these words: “Chrysostom, when he says that that general knowledge of the commandments — which each one received when he was created — is a grace by which, if he used [it] well, he would merit the special knowledge by which he might know the mystery of the heavenly kingdom (concerning which the Savior [says], ‘To you it is given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God,’ etc.) — says [it] indeed most truly; but he does not mean that general knowledge of the commandments to be a grace of God as [our] Redeemer, but of God as [our] Founder. If anyone uses the gifts of nature well, he without doubt merits [thereby]; but no one avails to use these well without the grace of a merciful God, and without certain beginnings of faith. The example is plain in Cornelius the Centurion, and in the Apostles; whom, for their good wills, God — by a certain grace of prevenience and of humbling — deigned to set forth and to reveal the mysteries of Christ the Redeemer.”