Yet, VI., this universal and active redemption in no way prevents it from being judged particular in a certain and most true sense. For just as Prosper judged it useful1 to divide the salvific will of God in such a way that he called the will of saving and of imparting the faculty necessary for obtaining salvation universal, but the purpose of fulfilling it and of actually conferring salvation particular; so he judged it consonant with the truth if he handed down that the redemption acquired by the blood of Christ is universal in price, power, and oblation, but particular, on the contrary, if account be taken of the property and of its perfect and absolute fruit.
He mentions this division2, saying:
Although it is most rightly said that the Savior was crucified for the redemption of the whole world, on account of the true assumption of human nature and on account of the common perdition of all in the first man, it can nevertheless be said that he was crucified only for those whom his death benefited.
And he mentions it again3, adding:
Since, on account of the one nature of all and the one cause of all truly assumed by our Lord, all are rightly said to have been redeemed, and nevertheless not all have been rescued from captivity, the property of redemption undoubtedly belongs to those concerning whom the prince of the world has been cast out, and who are now no longer vessels of the devil but members of Christ.
And there was certainly a reason why he employed such a distribution and inculcated it by repetition. For let the nature of the matter be considered, and then let it be asked: to what does the redemption of Christ ultimately tend, and from what do its character and property especially shine forth? It cannot seem doubtful that the supreme end proposed for redemption is the glory of God, which is procured by the adoption of men and the attainment of the everlasting inheritance; and that its character and property are demonstrated by nothing better than by the heavenly beatitude itself of those same men. For redemption consists principally in these things, is borne of its own accord toward them, is completed in them, and attains its summit in them. Therefore, the very nature of the matter demanded that the property, character, and ἐξοχή, or preeminence, of redemption be distinguished from its price, power, and oblation; and that they be so distinguished that the latter should be called universal and the former particular: the latter common to all, since reformation and the power of obtaining beatitude bestowed are common; the former proper to many,
since it is proper only to many to drink the cup of immortality and by that draught to obtain medicine and salvation.
What of the fact that the Scriptures themselves and the divine oracles also seemed to display this division and distribution in explicit words? Surely nothing from them is more manifest than that redemption must be called and believed universal as regards the price, the power, the oblation, and the reconciliation offered4 to all. For this amplitude, constrained by no limits, is handed down in the Scriptures:
a) In universal words which exclude all limits. “Judging5 this, ὅτι εἰ εἷς ὑπὲρ πάντων ἀπέθανεν, because if one died for all, ἄρα οἱ πάντες ἀπέθανον, therefore all are dead; καὶ ὑπὲρ πάντων Χριστὸς ἀπέθανεν, and Christ died for all”6. “There is one7 God, and one mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus, ὁ δοὺς ἑαυτὸν ἀντίλυτρον ὑπὲρ πάντων, who gave himself as a redemption for all.” “We see8 Jesus, on account of the suffering of death crowned with glory and honor, ὅπως χάριτι9
θεοῦ ὑπὲρ παντὸς γεύσηται θανάτου, that by the grace of God he might taste death for all.”
It is handed down, b), by that collective formula which comprehends the whole race of men. “Behold10 the Lamb of God, ἴδε11 ὁ αἴρων τὴν ἁμαρτίαν τοῦ κόσμου, behold him who takes away the sin of the world.” “God so12 loved τὸν κόσμον, the world, that he gave his Only-begotten Son, that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. For God did not send his Son εἰς τὸν κόσμον, into the world, ἵνα κρίνῃ τὸν κόσμον, ἀλλ᾽ ἵνα13 σωθῇ ὁ κόσμος δι᾽ αὐτοῦ, that he might judge the world, but that the world might be saved through him.” “We ourselves14 have heard and know ὅτι οὗτός ἐστιν ἀληθῶς ὁ σωτὴρ τοῦ κόσμου, that this is truly the Savior of the world.”
It is handed down, c), by a comparative form of speech of such a kind, by which we are taught that the remedy obtained by the death of Christ extends no less widely than the wound inflicted by the fault of Adam. “Just as15 through the offense of one, εἰς πάντας ἀνθρώπους, unto all men unto condemnation, so also through the justice of one, εἰς πάντας ἀνθρώπους εἰς δικαίωσιν ζωῆς, unto all men unto justification of life.”
It is handed down, d), by a discourse so distributed that plainly no mortal is excluded from the benefits of redemption. “We have an advocate
with the Father16, Jesus Christ the just: καὶ αὐτὸς ἱλασμός ἐστι περὶ τῶν ἁμαρτιῶν ἡμῶν· οὐ περὶ τῶν ἡμετέρων δὲ μόνον, ἀλλὰ καὶ περὶ ὅλου τοῦ κόσμου, and he is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for those of the whole world.”
And finally it is handed down, e), when the benefits of redemption are said to extend even to those who will perish eternally. “Destroy not17 with thy food him ὑπὲρ οὗ Χριστὸς ἀπέθανεν, for whom Christ died.” “And through thy knowledge the weak brother shall perish18, δι᾽ ὃν Χριστὸς ἀπέθανεν, for whom Christ died.” “There shall be among you19 lying teachers, who shall introduce sects of perdition, καὶ τὸν ἀγοράσαντα αὐτοὺς δεσπότην ἀρνούμενοι, ἐπάγοντες ἑαυτοῖς ταχινὴν ἀπώλειαν, and denying the Lord who bought them, bringing upon themselves swift perdition.”
Footnotes
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Sentence upon Chapter VIII of the Gauls, pp. 126–127. ↩
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Response to objection IX of the Gauls, p. 123. ↩
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Response to objection I of the Vincentians, p. 132. Faure excellently refutes, in the notes to chaps. XLI ff. of the Enchiridion, the preposterous artifices of the Jansenists, by which they explain the universal sufficiency of redemption asserted by Prosper as an absolute universal sufficiency considered in itself and ὄντως, but by no means as the sufficiency of a price offered for all and offered with that will by which Christ sincerely willed the salvation of all. He moreover both establishes and demonstrates by arguments:
I. That the theological distinction concerning the death of Christ for all as regards the sufficiency of the price offered with a serious intention, but for the elect as regards efficacy, is handed down in other equivalent words by Augustine in chapter XLI of the Enchiridion and in other passages consonant with it.
II. That the same theological distinction is contained in book VI Against Julian, chap. XV, and that there also the doctrine of theologians concerning the death of Christ sufficient for all, efficacious for many, is not obscurely expressed.
III. That the same theological distinction concerning the death of Christ is handed down by Augustine in Epistle CLXIX, otherwise CII, to Evodius. ↩
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II Cor. V. 19: “For God indeed was in Christ, κόσμον καταλλάσσων ἑαυτῷ, μὴ λογιζόμενος αὐτοῖς τὰ παραπτώματα αὐτῶν, reconciling the world to himself, not imputing their offenses to them.” ↩
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II Cor. V. 14. ↩
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We have inserted Χριστόν on the authority of the Vulgate and of one or another Greek codex. ↩
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I Tim. II. 5–6. ↩
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Heb. II. 9. ↩
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At the words χάριτι θεοῦ, Mill observes that there is another reading, and a very celebrated one, χωρὶς θεοῦ. Bengel, Wetstein, Griesbach, Matthaei, and Heinrich likewise note this. In order to show that it ought not to be ascribed to the Nestorians, but had crept into some Greek codices several centuries before the name of Nestorius was heard, they all allege as witnesses the Syriac interpreter, Origen, Jerome, Ambrose, and others. “Moreover,” Mill adds, “a threefold meaning is attached to this reading. One, more harsh, is that of Origen, Theodoret, and the Anonymous writer in Oecumenius: namely, that Christ χωρὶς θεοῦ, with God alone excepted, died for all, even for angels. A second is heretical: that he who is man, not indeed he who is God or θεοτόκος, tasted death; this belonged to the Nestorians, who divided the persons in Christ. Consequently Theophylact and Oecumenius—who did not know that this reading had been found in the writings of the Fathers and in ancient copies long before the rise of Nestorius—thought it had been devised by them. The third is sound: that Christ underwent death as regards his human nature, but by no means as regards the divine;
in which sense among the Latins Ambrose, Vigilius, and Fulgentius take it, rightly and suitably to the mind of the author. For this indeed seems plain: that some learned man, lest the Passion be thought to have been of the Godhead—to use the words of Vigilius—noted in the margin of the book, for the sake of orthodoxy, χωρὶς θεοῦ, by which he signified that this suffering regarded only the assumed human nature and not the divine nature of Christ. But it is scarcely strange that scribes, especially somewhat learned ones to whom χάριτι θεοῦ did not seem good Greek, should have seized this scholion into the text. Yet I do not think that very many Greek codices were interpolated by this interpretation, and very few Latin ones. Certainly, whatever manuscripts, Greek and Latin, are anywhere extant today agrees with the printed editions.” ↩
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John I. 29. ↩
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We have repeated the particle ἴδε, following the Vulgate. ↩
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John III. 16–17. ↩
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Otherwise, ἵνα σώσῃ τὸν κόσμον. ↩
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John IV. 42. ↩
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Rom. V. 18. ↩
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I John II. 2. ↩
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Rom. XIV. 15. ↩
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I Cor. VIII. 11. ↩
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II Pet. II. 1. ↩