Is the Cooperation of the Will With Grace Semipelagian?

I read recently an article from the Reformed website of Dr. R. Scott Clark, the Heidelblog, on failed attempts in the past to reconcile Catholic and Reformed views of justification.  The article can be found here  In the course of the article, we find this comment:

The dominant medieval doctrine of salvation was not Pelagian, strictly speaking (i.e., denying that “in Adam’s fall sinned we all”), but semi-Pelagian. It affirmed original sin, but like many movements afterward, denied the consequences of original sin, i.e., total inability to cooperate with grace.

I wanted to address this comment briefly, because it is so characteristic of Calvinist views of Catholicism.  Catholics talk about how the free will of man "cooperates" with grace in salvation.  Calvinists almost always seem to interpret this to imply that grace alone is not the cause of the moral goodness of believers, that the free will must provide an independent contribution to the process of salvation that must be added to God's grace.  They think we Catholics are picturing God and ourselves working together in our salvation, each contributing something of our own, like people bringing various dishes to a potluck supper.

But this is a serious misreading of what Catholics are saying.  We do affirm that the will must cooperate with God's grace in our salvation.  The Catechism of the Catholic Church, #1993, puts it this way:

Justification establishes cooperation between God's grace and man's freedom. On man's part it is expressed by the assent of faith to the Word of God, which invites him to conversion, and in the cooperation of charity with the prompting of the Holy Spirit . . .

In #2002, the Catechism says,

God's free initiative demands man's free response, for God has created man in his image by conferring on him, along with freedom, the power to know him and love him. The soul only enters freely into the communion of love.

But where does the cooperation of the will with grace come from?  Notice the ellipsis at the end of that first quotation from the Catechism.  I did that on purpose, because the rest of the sentence answers the question as to the source of our cooperation:

Justification establishes cooperation between God's grace and man's freedom. On man's part it is expressed by the assent of faith to the Word of God, which invites him to conversion, and in the cooperation of charity with the prompting of the Holy Spirit who precedes and preserves his assent:

The Catechism discusses this further down in #2001 (footnote removed):

The preparation of man for the reception of grace is already a work of grace. This latter is needed to arouse and sustain our collaboration in justification through faith, and in sanctification through charity. God brings to completion in us what he has begun, "since he who completes his work by cooperating with our will began by working so that we might will it:"  (The last part here is a quotation from St. Augustine.)

So where does the cooperation of our will come from?  It is a gift of God's grace.  God's grace gives us a good will, and then grace works with the good will it has produced.  We make no independent contribution to the process at all.  We do indeed cooperate.  We choose to come to Christ, to have faith, to repent, to obey the commandments of God.  But our good choices and actions are part of the gift of our salvation rather than something we contribute from ourselves in order to be granted salvation or to make God's grace effectual.

This has always been the teaching of the Catholic Church.  We've seen that the Catechism quotes St. Augustine.  We might add also the testimony of St. Thomas Aquinas, that great medieval Catholic doctor:

Now . . . grace is fittingly divided into operating and cooperating. For the operation of an effect is not attributed to the thing moved but to the mover. Hence in that effect in which our mind is moved and does not move, but in which God is the sole mover, the operation is attributed to God, and it is with reference to this that we speak of "operating grace." But in that effect in which our mind both moves and is moved, the operation is not only attributed to God, but also to the soul; and it is with reference to this that we speak of "cooperating grace." Now there is a double act in us. First, there is the interior act of the will, and with regard to this act the will is a thing moved, and God is the mover; and especially when the will, which hitherto willed evil, begins to will good. And hence, inasmuch as God moves the human mind to this act, we speak of operating grace. But there is another, exterior act; and since it is commanded by the will, as was shown above (I-II:17:9) the operation of this act is attributed to the will. And because God assists us in this act, both by strengthening our will interiorly so as to attain to the act, and by granting outwardly the capability of operating, it is with respect to this that we speak of cooperating grace. Hence after the aforesaid words Augustine subjoins: "He operates that we may will; and when we will, He cooperates that we may perfect." (Summa Theologica, First Part of the Second Part, Question 111, Article 2--from the New Advent website, embedded links removed)

In other words, God creates in us a good will by his grace alone, and then that good will cooperates with God's grace by making good choices.

Dr. Clark says that "[t]he dominant medieval doctrine of salvation was . . . semi-Pelagian. It affirmed original sin, but like many movements afterward, denied the consequences of original sin, i.e., total inability to cooperate with grace."  But how can a doctrine of salvation be semi-Pelagian when it affirms that the totality of all our goodness, from the beginning of the good will up to the completion of good works, is a gift of God's grace?  Does the Catholic view deny that original sin resulted in an inability to cooperate with grace?  Did medieval Catholicism deny that?  No, Catholic theology has always affirmed, as we've seen, that cooperation with grace is a gift of God's grace.  If it's a gift of God's grace, then it is not something we can do without God's grace, so it is not a natural ability of fallen man.  Fallen man still has a will.  He has a faculty which, theoretically, could cooperate with God's grace.  But in the state of sin that will is infallibly bent to evil.  In order for it to choose good and to cooperate with grace, it must be turned by grace.  The Council of Trent put it this way:

If any one saith, that without the prevenient inspiration of the Holy Ghost, and without his help, man can believe, hope, love, or be penitent as he ought, so as that the grace of Justification may be bestowed upon him; let him be anathema. (Sixth Session, Canon 3)

Calvinism (of the soundest sort) says exactly the same thing.  The Fall has brought about the bondage of the will to evil.  No one can do any good without the grace of God.  And yet, once grace has created a good will, that good will cooperates with grace; and without that cooperation, there is no salvation.

Man, by his fall into a state of sin, hath wholly lost all ability of will to any spiritual good accompanying salvation: so as, a natural man, being altogether averse from that good, and dead in sin, is not able, by his own strength, to convert himself, or to prepare himself thereunto. (Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter 9, Section 3--footnotes removed in this and subsequent quotations) 

All those whom God hath predestinated unto life, and those only, He is pleased in His appointed and accepted time effectually to call, by His Word and Spirit, out of that state of sin and death, in which they are by nature, to grace and salvation by Jesus Christ; enlightening their minds spiritually and savingly to understand the things of God; taking away their heart of stone, and giving unto them a heart of flesh; renewing their wills, and by His almighty power determining them to that which is good, and effectually drawing them to Jesus Christ: yet so, as they come most freely, being made willing by His grace. (WCF 10:1) 

This effectual call is of God’s free and special grace alone, not from anything at all foreseen in man, who is altogether passive therein, until being quickened and renewed by the Holy Spirit, he is thereby enabled to answer this call, and to embrace the grace offered and conveyed in it. (WCF 10:2) 

They who are effectually called and regenerated, having a new heart and a new spirit created in them, are further sanctified, really and personally, through the virtue of Christ’s death and resurrection, by His Word and Spirit dwelling in them: the dominion of the whole body of sin is destroyed, and the several lusts thereof are more and more weakened and mortified; and they more and more quickened and strengthened in all saving graces, to the practice of true holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord. (WCF 13:1) 

Their ability to do good works is not at all of themselves, but wholly from the Spirit of Christ. And that they may be enabled thereunto, besides the graces they have already received, there is required an actual influence of the same Holy Spirit, to work in them to will and to do of His good pleasure: yet are they not hereupon to grow negligent, as if they were not bound to perform any duty, unless upon a special motion of the Spirit; but they ought to be diligent in stirring up the grace of God that is in them. (WCF 16:3)

Is Calvinism semi-Pelagian because it affirms that we must come freely, that we must answer the call of grace and embrace it, that we must stir up the grace of God within us, and that we must practice true holiness or not see the Lord (sounds like the will is doing an awful lot of cooperating to me)?  No, because it affirms that all that is required of the will is given to the will as a gift of God's grace and is not in the power of nature without grace.  Catholicism says exactly the same thing, and so neither is it semi-Pelagian.

I think that, at least partly, what we have here is a failure to communicate.  When Catholics talk about the will "cooperating" with grace, Calvinists automatically read into this a semi-Pelagian idea that grace is insufficient and our good will is something we contribute apart from grace, even though this is furthest from the Catholic intention.  Catholics do the same in reverse.  When they hear Calvinists vehemently reject the idea of the "cooperation" of the will with grace, they automatically read into this the idea that Calvinists are rejecting that the will has any role in salvation at all.  They imagine that Calvinists are saying that we are dragged into salvation by grace apart from or even against our will, when this is furthest from the Calvinist intention.  If both sides would engage better in listening and trying harder to understand what the other side is actually trying to say, we might have much more productive conversations.

For more, see here and here.

Published on the feast of St. Cecilia (I feel like I should be singing this or something.  I can see it now: Calvinism: The Musical)

195 AD: No Sola Scriptura in Sight

A few months ago, I read an article by Dr. R. Scott Clark who runs the Heidelblog, a well-known Reformed theology blog.  The article is promoting the Reformed "Regulative Principle of Worship" (which I talk about and respond to from a Catholic point of view in this article).  In the article, Dr. Clark talks about the famous debate in the early Church over the timing of the celebration of Easter.  You can read the short account of this controversy from the early Church historian Eusebius here (chapter 23-25).  Basically, there was a dispute that took place in the 190s AD (about one hundred years after the end of the age of the apostles) over two different dating systems for the celebration of Easter.  The whole affair came close to causing a schism in the Church, but the intervention of peacemakers (particularly St. Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyons) helped it reach a peaceful end.  In the course of discussing this controversy in his article, Dr. Clark says this:

The date for Easter was controversial was because both sides were arguing over which date was more biblical. No one was arguing in the early 2nd century that the church has authority to impose practices and observances that are not imposed in Scripture.

I found this comment striking because it is precisely dead wrong, and its dead-wrong-ness helps to illustrate precisely the opposite point from the one Dr. Clark was attempting to make.  In actuality, no one in the Easter controversy was arguing that their date was more biblical.  They knew better than to try that, since it is obvious that the feast of Easter isn't even mentioned in the Bible.  Rather, each side was arguing their position from an alleged unwritten tradition coming from the apostles.  One side cited the practice of the Apostle John, and the other side cited a different tradition (perhaps one stemming from Peter and Paul in Rome).  Dr. Clark thinks that no one in the early 2nd century (actually, this controversy took place in the late 2nd century) believed that the Church had the authority to "impose practices and observances that are not imposed in Scripture."  But, actually, everyone believed that, and this controversy illustrates it.  No one in this controversy, so far as we have any record of, advocated a Sola Scriptura approach to the issue, or (as Dr. Clark and other Reformed theologians would have done had they been there) objected to the whole controversy as wrongheaded because of its lack of a biblical foundation.  This shows well just how absent the idea of Sola Scriptura was from the consciousness of the entire Church just one hundred years or so after the days of the apostles.  The early Church was Catholic in its view of Scripture, Tradition, and Church authority, not Protestant.

I'll close with a couple of quotations from two early Fathers--St. Basil of Caesaria and St. Vincent of Lerins--which articulate the Catholic view of the early Church, a view which continues to be articulated by the Catholic Church today.

Of the beliefs and practices whether generally accepted or publicly enjoined which are preserved in the Church some we possess derived from written teaching; others we have received delivered to us "in a mystery" by the tradition of the apostles; and both of these in relation to true religion have the same force. And these no one will gainsay—no one, at all events, who is even moderately versed in the institutions of the Church. For were we to attempt to reject such customs as have no written authority, on the ground that the importance they possess is small, we should unintentionally injure the Gospel in its very vitals; or, rather, should make our public definition a mere phrase and nothing more. For instance, to take the first and most general example, who is thence who has taught us in writing to sign with the sign of the cross those who have trusted in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ? What writing has taught us to turn to the East at the prayer? Which of the saints has left us in writing the words of the invocation at the displaying of the bread of the Eucharist and the cup of blessing? For we are not, as is well known, content with what the apostle or the Gospel has recorded, but both in preface and conclusion we add other words as being of great importance to the validity of the ministry, and these we derive from unwritten teaching. Moreover we bless the water of baptism and the oil of the chrism, and besides this the catechumen who is being baptized. On what written authority do we do this? Is not our authority silent and mystical tradition? Nay, by what written word is the anointing of oil itself taught? And whence comes the custom of baptizing thrice? And as to the other customs of baptism from what Scripture do we derive the renunciation of Satan and his angels? Does not this come from that unpublished and secret teaching which our fathers guarded in a silence out of the reach of curious meddling and inquisitive investigation?  (St. Basil of Caesaria, On the Holy Spirit, Chapter 27--from the New Advent website, embedded links removed) 

But here some one perhaps will ask, Since the canon of Scripture is complete, and sufficient of itself for everything, and more than sufficient, what need is there to join with it the authority of the Church's interpretation? For this reason—because, owing to the depth of Holy Scripture, all do not accept it in one and the same sense, but one understands its words in one way, another in another; so that it seems to be capable of as many interpretations as there are interpreters. For Novatian expounds it one way, Sabellius another, Donatus another, Arius, Eunomius, Macedonius, another, Photinus, Apollinaris, Priscillian, another, Iovinian, Pelagius, Celestius, another, lastly, Nestorius another. Therefore, it is very necessary, on account of so great intricacies of such various error, that the rule for the right understanding of the prophets and apostles should be framed in accordance with the standard of Ecclesiastical and Catholic interpretation.  (St. Vincent of Lerins, Commonitory, Chapter 2--from the New Advent website, embedded links removed)

For more, see here and here.

Published on the feast of St. Benedict.