Section CXXII

Therefore the rationale of divine providence is so arranged that first the immense benignity of God reveals itself and performs its parts: by it he draws the unworthy, elects the patriarchs¹, visits the Israelite people, and summons the nations. Justice then succeeds, by which God, as the most just rewarder, punishes the proud and ungrateful. In this order²,

men are reasonably taught to love God: God indeed furnishing magnanimity in the apostasy of man, but man—

—being instructed through it, as the prophet also says³: “Thy secession shall correct thee”; God predetermining all things unto the perfection of man and unto the efficacy and manifestation of the dispositions, that both goodness may be shown and justice perfected.

But just as goodness is shown by this⁴, that God gives good counsel to all, so justice appears in this⁵,

that he placed the power of election in man, just as also in the angels, so that those who obeyed might justly possess the good—given indeed by God, but preserved by themselves. But those who did not obey shall justly not be found with the good, and shall receive merited punishment, because God indeed benignly gave the good, but they did not diligently guard it nor account it precious, but contemned the supereminence of goodness. Therefore all who cast aside the good and, as it were, spurn it, shall deservedly fall under the just judgment of God, as the Apostle Paul testified in the Epistle to the Romans⁶… Therefore God gave the good, as the Apostle also testifies in the same epistle; and those who work it shall receive glory and honor, because they worked the good when they were able not to work it; but those who do not work it shall receive the just judgment of God, because they did not work the good when they were able to work it.

Therefore a) there is no one who perishes for the reason that he lacked the faculty divinely received for attaining salvation; but b) as many as perish, perish for this reason and fall into so great a destruction: that they spurned and cast aside the good received. For c) the supereminence of divine goodness solicitously anticipates and aids all; nor d) does it make way for punitive justice before it has fulfilled its own parts. But e) it fulfills these in such a way that, with the liberty of man intact, provision is made for both orders, the moral and the eudaimonic. Provision is made f) first for the moral order, whose proper and native rationale God expressed—

—when, saying⁷, “How often would I have gathered thy children, and thou wouldst not,” he manifestly⁸

manifested the ancient law of human liberty. For God made him free from the beginning, possessing his own power, just as also his own soul, to use the opinion of God voluntarily and not as one compelled by God. Βία θεῷ οὐ πρόσεστιν· ἀγαθὴ δὲ γνώμη πάντοτε συμπάρεστιν αὐτῷ.⁹ For force is not wrought by God, but a good opinion is always present to him. And on this account he gives good counsel to all, but placed the power of election in man.

Then g) provision is made for the eudaimonic order, which Irenaeus explains remarkably¹⁰ when, meeting those who said that God ought neither to have made angels such that they could transgress nor men who would immediately be ungrateful toward him, he denies that this was in any way fitting,

because they were made rational, examining, and judicial, and not inflexible and without judgment—as irrational or inanimate things are, which can do nothing by their own will but are drawn to good by necessity and force, in which there is one sense and one custom, and which can be nothing other than what they were made. But thus the good would not be sweet to them, nor the communion of God precious, nor the good greatly to be desired, if it had come without their own proper movement and care and zeal, but were implanted spontaneously and idly, so that they would be good of no moment, because they existed as such by nature rather than will and possessed a spontaneous good, but not according to election; and on this account they would not even understand this very thing, that the good is beautiful, nor enjoy it. For what enjoyment of the good is there among those who are ignorant? What glory to those who did not strive for it? What crown to those who did not obtain it as victors in a contest?

Lest, therefore, men be deprived of so many advantages and so great a glory¹¹—

—for this reason the Lord called the kingdom of heaven violent¹², “and those who do violence,” he says, “seize it”; that is, those who vigilantly and insistently seize it with force and contest… Therefore the good contestant¹³ exhorts us to the contest of incorruption, that we may be crowned and may account the crown precious, namely, that which is acquired by us through contest and did not grow together with us spontaneously. And the more it comes to us through contest, the more precious it is; but the more precious it is, the more may we always love it.

If any, therefore, inquire whence it must at last be derived that many among men obtain neither prize nor crown, with Irenaeus leading the way we shall answer partly by denying and partly by affirming: I. this can in no way be derived either from the fact that a) God is not borne toward all men by a benevolent will, or that b) all men were not reformed in Christ, or that c) the merciful benignity of God does not now instruct all with necessary and suitable aids or did not always instruct them before. But II. it must be derived from the fact that a) God joined the attainment of the end proposed to the eudaimonic order with the observance of the moral order; that b) he established beforehand that felicity should present the force and nature both of a gift and of a crown and prize; that c) in distributing rewards he imposed upon himself the person of judge and most just rewarder; and that d) he therefore assumed this person so that it might appear that provision and counsel had been made no less for the liberty of human nature than for the perfection of the eudaimonic order.