反亞流神學文集 第 6 章 第 22/24 段

— that we may put it on (Eph. 4:24), no one can have a good will of his own accord, unless the mind itself, that is, our inward man, is renewed and reformed by God. Therefore blessed Paul commands us (Rom. 12:2) not to be conformed to this world, but to be reformed in the newness of our mind. And lest we should in any way attribute the beginning of this reformation to our own faculty, the Lord through the prophet shows Himself to be the fashioner of light, saying: 'I am the Lord that form the light and create darkness' (Isa. 45:7). Which also the blessed Apostle confirms by his preaching, saying: 'God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts' (2 Cor. 4:6).

And to that same light which God had already fashioned, He said in another place: 'For you were heretofore darkness, but now light in the Lord' (Eph. 5:8). But to certain ones who had relapsed from that praiseworthy fashioning of light into the blameworthy formlessness of darkness, showing the affection of a pious mind, he thus speaks: 'My little children, of whom I am in labor again, until Christ be formed in you' (Gal. 4:19). But how can Christ be formed in His own, save in the manner in which He begins to dwell in them, that is, through faith? Which blessed Paul thus confirms, saying: 'that Christ may dwell by faith in the inward man, in your (al. our) hearts' (Eph. 3:16-17). While therefore we are reformed, we are renewed; and in that whereby we are renewed, we are made alive. CHAPTER 20.

The holy life takes its beginning from faith. By grace free will is not taken away. — 40. Now our life takes its beginning from faith, because 'the just man liveth by faith' (Rom. 1:17). That this faith is not born of our own will, but given to each one through the Holy Spirit, blessed Paul shows, saying: 'To one indeed is given by the Spirit the word of wisdom, to another the word of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith in the same Spirit' (1 Cor. 12:8-9). We therefore received the Holy Spirit, not because we believed, but that we might believe. For the pattern went before in the flesh of Christ, which we spiritually acknowledge in our own faith. For Christ the Son of God, according to the flesh, was conceived and born of the Holy Spirit.

But that flesh the Virgin could never have conceived nor borne, unless the Holy Spirit of that same flesh had wrought its coming forth. So therefore in the heart of man, faith can neither be conceived nor increased, unless the Holy Spirit pour it in and nourish it. For of the same Spirit we have been reborn, of whom Christ was born. By the same Spirit, therefore, Christ is formed according to faith in the heart of each believer, by which Spirit He was formed according to the flesh in the womb of the Virgin. Therefore the prophet, in the person of the faithful, cries to the Lord: 'Because of Thy fear, O Lord, we have conceived in the womb and have brought forth the Spirit of Thy salvation; we have not wrought justice upon the earth' (Isa. 26:18).

But just as not only before the Virgin Mary conceived Christ, but even before she knew that she would conceive, she was named 'full of grace' by the angel's voice, when no knowledge or will of conceiving the Son of God had preceded in her — so that it might be acknowledged to be of the grace of God both that obedient will of the Virgin and the conception of the Lord Saviour — so man, before he begins to will to believe, has the grace of the Giver poured into his heart, that Christ may begin to be formed in the man through faith. And when Christ is formed in each one, He forms Himself; because He Himself initiates faith in the heart of every believer.

Therefore in the Epistle which is written to the Hebrews we are admonished to 'look on Jesus, the author and finisher of faith' (Heb. 12:2): who without doubt is the author of our faith in this, that He gives faith to those who have it not, just as He is the finisher of that same faith, when He multiplies it by increase in those who have it, and by holy operation brings it to completion. For the blessed apostle James says that 'the faith of Abraham our father was made perfect by works' (James 2:21-22). 41. Jesus is therefore the author and finisher of our faith, because He Himself worketh in us both to will and to accomplish, according to good will.

But if He is the author of our faith only in this, that He waits for our will, so that faith may begin to be from us, it follows that He is called the finisher of our faith likewise for this reason, that He waits until, by our own effort alone, the faith which arose from us may attain to completion; and thus the whole is taken away from God, if both the beginning and the completion of our faith be ascribed to the powers of human will. Because this is exceedingly impious, if we do not resist the saving eloquences of the holy Scriptures, let us believe without any hesitation that God both begins and perfects in us all that pertains to the beginning or advancement of a good will.

'For it is He who worketh in us both to will and to accomplish, according to good will' (Phil. 2:13). Let us therefore cry out, in humility of heart and truth of faith, with the prophet: 'I know, O Lord, that the way of man is not his own; neither is it in a man to walk and to direct his steps' (Jer. 10:23). Not in man, therefore, is his way which he has from God, nor is it in a man to correct his way which he has from himself. His way, therefore, he has not in himself, nor does he correct his way, except when he has received with uprightness of heart the gift of spiritual grace. Therefore Solomon says: 'But the Lord directs hearts' (Prov. 21:2, LXX). The blessed apostle James also testifies that 'every best gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights' (James 1:17):

— namely, of those lights to which He promises through Ezekiel the grace of a new heart, saying: 'I will give you a new heart, and put a new spirit within you, and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and will give you a heart of flesh, and I will put My Spirit in the midst of you, and I will cause you to walk in My justifications, and to keep My judgments, and do them' (Ezek. 36:26-27). The blessed Paul also, restraining the boldness of human presumption, says: 'For who distinguisheth thee? Or what hast thou that thou hast not received? And if thou hast received, why dost thou glory as if thou hadst not received?' (1 Cor. 4:7).

With whom it behooves us humbly and wholesomely to acknowledge and likewise to confess that by the grace of God we are what we are, if indeed we are anything. By which grace human free will is not taken away, but healed; not removed, but corrected; not done away, but illuminated; not emptied out, but helped and preserved: so that where a man had infirmity, there he may begin to have soundness; where he was straying, by the same he may return into the way; where he was blind, there he may receive light; and where he was iniquitous, serving uncleanness and iniquity unto iniquity, there, forestalled and helped by grace, he may serve justice unto sanctification. CHAPTER 21. God, in making believers of whom He wills, is no respecter of persons.

No one has of himself the will to believe. — 42. But we marvel that some say: If God makes the unwilling to will to believe, and there is no one who can naturally believe in the Son of God, or will anything good that pertains to life eternal, why then does He not make all to will, since God is no respecter of persons? From which words, which are inserted in your letter, it appears that they consider too little what they say. For there would then be a respecting of persons with God, if (as these men would have it) He found in any of men some beginning of a good will.

But since He finds a good will in no one, but freely grants it to whom He wills, it is acknowledged that there is no respecting of persons, when the giver's bestowal in each one is gratuitous. But as to what they say — why does He not make all to will? Does He then indeed do this in no one, because He does not do it in all? Or 'has not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honor, and another unto contumely' (Rom. 9:21)? Or can justice be blamed in the vessels of wrath, which He justly fitted for destruction according to their merits; or mercy in the vessels of mercy, which without any merits, by the sole gift of grace, He prepared unto glory? For whom we have taught, with Scripture as witness, that the very will also is prepared by the Lord.

And if this will is not given by God, but found in man, then it is false that Scripture says it is prepared by the Lord. But all Scripture is divinely inspired, and speaks truly in all it says, because all that it says is from the truth: 'For the words of the Lord are pure words' (Psalm 12:6). God, therefore, who prepares the will, Himself gives it. And if God does not give it to man by His grace, man can never will to believe in God, because grace does not find the will itself, but works it in man. CHAPTER 22. The faculty of believing can be inherent in human nature, because God can heal it.

Adam by sinning lost faith. — 43. But when we say that no one can believe in God, unless the heart is enlightened by God's grace that it may believe, we do not say that the possibility of believing is by no means inherent in human nature, but we show that in order to have that very 'being able,' whence one ought to hope and to ask. For surely, naturally, when man begins to believe in the Son of God, if the ability to believe had not been given in the condition of the first man, he would never contract sin from unbelief; nor is the faculty of believing implanted in any nature which God has not made rational. 'For doth God take care of oxen?' (1 Cor. 9:9). In which neither is impiety punished, nor piety crowned.

But that God cares for all men we are taught by the heavenly oracles. 44. To human nature, therefore, faith belongs, of which the Creator deigns to have such great care that the Truth even says the hairs of our head are numbered (Luke 12:7): so that, namely, while human nature knows that it is so loved by God, it may love the God who loves it, and cleave to Him through the faith of a pure heart — to whom faith is the way unto blessedness, to whom infidelity is a great misery: and therefore it is worthily punished when it does not believe in the Son of God, because unbelief is its vice, just as faith is its virtue — not such as is found in demons, but such as God gives to His saints, whom He justifies from impiety.

This is the faith which worketh by charity. For the demons also believe and tremble (James 2:19); but they do not love Him from whom through pride they departed. Into which pride, because the first man was cast down by diabolical persuasion, in which he lost humility, he lost faith: and losing faith, he lost the divine protection. For it is written: 'He that believeth not God is not protected by God' (Ecclus. 2:15). Thereafter earth and ashes began to be proud, because in his life he cast away his inmost parts (Ecclus. 10:9-10). That men may return to those inmost parts, the divine word does not cease to cry out, saying: 'Return, ye transgressors, to the heart' (Isa. 46:8).

But since they are 'flesh, a wind that goeth and returneth not' (Psalm 78:39); nor can the straying sheep ever be willing to return, unless it be forestalled by the good Shepherd's search and carried back upon His shoulders: therefore the good Shepherd came to seek and to save the lost sheep, which cannot seek its Shepherd before it is sought by Him, but is forestalled by the Seeker, that it may seek. And the Shepherd would seek it in vain, if it, being sought, could not seek the Shepherd. But this the goodness of the seeking Shepherd grants it, that it too may have the will to seek the Shepherd. And it is sought that it may seek, when it is enlightened that it may believe.

This therefore is wrought divinely in man, into whom God pours faith, that by the gift of grace nature may receive back the power of believing which it lost, and that what it could not do, being corrupted through fault, it may begin to ask for, being fashioned through grace; and so, by the working of that Physician who is needful not to the healthy but to those who are ill, infirmity may be expelled and nature healed. This healing was besought by him who said: 'I said: O Lord, be merciful to me; heal my soul, for I have sinned against Thee' (Psalm 40:5). But none of the saints would ask for healing, if human nature were healthy; and each one would ask in vain for healing, if human nature could not be healed. Human nature, therefore, can be healed;

but it receives the gift of that healing from Him from whom it took the beginning of its creation. For if man could by no means be healed naturally, the heavenly Physician would not have come to heal him. Again, if he could heal himself, he would not have needed the heavenly Physician. For he is healed through faith, which, if anyone could have of himself, God would not give it to man. But He does give it, since 'to another is given faith in the same Spirit' (1 Cor. 12:9), as the Apostle says: 'God therefore hath dealt to every one the measure of faith' (Rom. 12:3). CHAPTER 23. Man can believe naturally, although it is divinely given that he believe. — 45. Not for this reason, therefore, can man not believe naturally, because it is divinely given him that he believe;

nay rather, in this especially is man acknowledged to have been created for having faith, because through faith human nature is renewed from its oldness. For every man is so corrupted by the voluntary sin of the first man, that God by His good will can heal the will of man if He wills. For He created, as it is written, that all things might be, and He made the nations of the world curable (Wis. 1:14). Yet, lest the beginning of healing should be thought to be from man himself, the divine word straightway added: 'And there is no medicine of destruction in them' (ibid.).

Although, therefore, the devil took faith away from the first man, yet he did not take away from God the power of restoring what He had given, nor could the devil corrupt human nature to such a degree that it could not thereafter, God again bestowing, receive back what it had lost. For the Almighty, who was able to form human nature, is also able, by healing through grace, to reform and to guard the infirm nature. From whom that same nature, just as in the first man it had received faith unto salvation, so now in individuals receives it by the gift of the divine goodness — those whom the same God creates of their parents, predestined and to be saved through faith. 46. Therefore, God bestowing, man can believe naturally in God.

For it is contrary to the nature of man that he does not believe in God; because he has unbelief not from the creation of God, but from the voluntary transgression of the commandment; through which, deprived of soundness and wounded, this by himself he can do, that by his own free will he can increase his blindness and infirmity, but cannot remove them. Yet his enlightenment and healing is so far possible to the almighty Creator, that, unto the glory of His name, He giving, not only can the unbeliever believe, but can even attain, through the grace of faith, to the immortal and incorruptible state of life: where, receiving grace for grace, he can no longer sin at all, and can happily behold what he has believed.

Hence that voice of faith resounds in the Psalms: 'I believe to see the good things of the Lord in the land of the living' (Psalm 26:13). God, therefore, although He did not make human nature for this, that it should be corrupted by fault, yet He Himself, by His almighty goodness, can heal through grace the nature that has been corrupted. God therefore heals and enlightens the free will of man, that man may believe naturally in God. Thus it comes about that man can have faith, but cannot have it except by the gift of God. CHAPTER 24. Not all things which we can have, can we have of ourselves. — For it does not follow that all things which we can have, we can also have of ourselves.

For our flesh too was so made by God that it can live naturally, yet it can possess this very life not from itself but from the soul. That life, then, in order that it may naturally begin to dwell in the flesh, is plainly supplied to it by the soul; and thus indeed our flesh can live, but only if the soul, which is its life, is in it. 47. Nevertheless, in our soul and flesh there is shown to us no small example of the grace of God. For just as the flesh does not have life from itself but receives it from the soul, so man cannot have faith unless he has received it by the gift of God who bestows it. And just as, for the flesh to live, is the work of the soul alone, so also, for man to believe, is the work of grace alone;

and just as the flesh can do nothing if the soul ceases to give it life, so man can will nothing good if the help of grace departs from him. Therefore, that the flesh may both live and act, it is upheld by the life-giving power of the present soul; and man too, that he may will or do good, is continually assisted by the aid of life-giving grace. But there is this difference: that our flesh, so long as it is quickened by the soul, receives the capacity of acting not only well but also ill. Yet when grace quickens us, it furnishes us help only for willing what is good and only for doing what is good.

Let man therefore acknowledge that he is able by nature to believe in this respect, that he has a nature capable of believing and of faith (which was not divinely given to the irrational animals); yet let him not think himself so fit for having faith as to judge that the beginning of faith rests upon his own will. For man has faith by willing; but God, who bestows faith, himself changes and directs man's will. For the Lord will give sweetness, and our land shall yield its fruit (Ps 84:13). CHAPTER XXV. The Gentiles who naturally do the things of the law are to be understood as none other than faithful Christians. — 48.

Concerning those, therefore, in whom nature is healed by the divine gift so that they naturally believe in God, and who, being freely justified through faith, also receive the help of subsequent grace for doing good, the Apostle says: For when the Gentiles, who have not the law, naturally do the things of the law, these, not having the law, are a law unto themselves, who show the work of the law written in their hearts (Rom 2:14).

This passage of the Apostle those who contradict grace strive to assign to the unbelieving Gentiles, namely on the ground that even those who do not receive the grace of faith so observe, by a certain natural law, the things that pertain to uprightness of morals and to the bond of human society, that they even restrain, by the fairness and severity of judgments, those who strive to violate them. Here they fail to notice that their opinion is utterly weakened by the apostolic word which he set down above, saying: For not the hearers of the law are just before God, but the doers of the law shall be justified (ibid. 13); and that no one can be justified without faith the same blessed Apostle shows, saying:

Knowing that man shall not be justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ; and we believe in Christ Jesus, that we may be justified by the faith of Christ, and not by the works of the law. For by the works of the law no flesh shall be justified (Gal 2:16). And a little later, commending the grace of faith, by which true righteousness is conferred upon each one, he says thus: I do not cast away the grace of God; for if righteousness be by the law, then Christ died in vain (ibid. 21). Likewise, when he asserted that our father Abraham was justified not by the works of the law but by faith, saying: Even as Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him unto righteousness (Gal 3:6);

so that he might also show that the Gentiles, whom the divine word promised to the seed of Abraham, are justified by faith, he went on to add: Know therefore that they who are of faith, these are the children of Abraham. And the Scripture, foreseeing that God justifies the Gentiles by faith, foretold to Abraham, saying: In thee shall all nations be blessed (Gen 12:3). Therefore they who are of faith shall be blessed with faithful Abraham (Gal 3:7,8,9). And confirming that this our father Abraham was justified not by works but by faith, he speaks thus in another place: For if Abraham was justified by works, he has glory, but not before God. For what does the Scripture say? Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him unto righteousness (Gen

15:6): but to him that works, the reward is not reckoned according to grace, but according to debt; whereas to him that works not, but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is reckoned unto righteousness (Rom 4:2,3,4,5). 49. Since therefore the Apostle, speaking of these Gentiles who, naturally doing the things of the law, show the work of the law written in their hearts (Rom

2:14), testifies that he is speaking of those who are justified, while recalling that Abraham our father was justified not by works but by faith—who would dare to understand as those Gentiles in this passage the ones who are known not to have been justified by faith, since the Apostle himself testifies that whatsoever is not of faith is sin (Rom 14:23), and that without faith it is impossible to please God (Heb 11:6)? But if it is established that Abraham was justified by faith, to whose seed the Apostle recalls that the Gentiles were promised, then whoever asserts that the Gentiles can be justified not by faith but by works—what remains but that he should deny that they belong to the seed of Abraham, to whom the Gentiles were promised?

since Abraham (as the Apostle says) is the father of all who believe through uncircumcision, that it may be reckoned unto them also for righteousness (Rom 4:11). Since therefore there is one God, who justifies the circumcision by faith and the uncircumcision through faith (Rom 3:30), and the Apostle has shown that he is speaking of those who are justified, when he was discussing the Gentiles who naturally do the things of the law and have the work of the law in their heart: that meaning is agreeable to the truth, whereby

the Gentiles in that same passage are understood to be those whom God justifies by the gift of faith; and in that he grants them the grace of faith, he inscribes the work of his law in their hearts by the justification given, so that, without the letter of the Old Testament, through the grace of the New Testament, their nature renewed, they may have the work of the law written for this purpose: that they may begin to belong to the people of God, not by the merit of preceding works, but by the gratuitous gift of justification. This the heavenly teaching deigned to make known to us by the mouth of the prophet, holy Jeremiah saying: Behold, the days shall come, says the Lord, and I will accomplish over the house of Israel and over the house of Judah a new covenant (Jer 31:31). And a little later:

For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel: after those days, says the Lord, I will put my laws into their hearts, and in their minds I will write them, and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people; and each shall not teach his neighbor, and each his brother, saying: Know God; for all shall know me, from the greatest to the least of them, because I will be merciful to their iniquities, and their sins I will remember no more (ibid. 33,34). CHAPTER XXVI. The knowledge of God without love profits nothing. Faith without charity can exist, but not profit. — 50.

But this knowledge, in which God is so acknowledged that the remission of sins is bestowed by the gift of divine propitiation, is far different from that knowledge of those who, knowing God, did not glorify him as God, nor gave thanks, but became vain in their thoughts; who, saying that they were wise, became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into the likeness of the image of corruptible man (Rom 1:21,22,23). For these, because they knew God without the grace of faith which works through charity, were made inexcusable by their very knowledge; but those who know God by the perception of faith become unaccusable. For who shall accuse the elect of God (Rom 8:33)? Assuredly no one:

For to those who love God all things work together unto good (ibid. 28). And therefore no one accuses them, because God, according to his purpose, justifies and glorifies them whom he foreknew and predestined and called; so that, the boasting of the works of the law by which proud man exalts himself being excluded, through the law of faith which works through charity, he who glories may glory in the Lord (1 Cor 1:31). 51. But if for certain persons who know God, and yet do not glorify him as God, that knowledge profited nothing unto salvation, how shall these be able to be just before God, who so keep something of goodness in their morals and works that they do not refer it to the end of Christian faith and charity?

in whom indeed certain goods, which pertain to the equity of human society, can be present; but because they are not done with the faith and charity of God, they cannot profit. For it can happen that someone believes that God exists, who does not love God; but that someone should love God who does not believe in God can in no way happen: because each one can believe that something exists which he does not love, but no one can love what he does not believe to exist. And the Apostle says that without charity, faith and all other good works cannot profit anyone; for he says: If I have all faith, so as to remove mountains;

and if I distribute all my goods to feed the poor, and deliver my body to be burned, but have not charity, it profits me nothing (1 Cor 13:2,3). If, then, works with faith but without charity cannot profit, how shall works profit which are not done in faith? Whence not without reason the blessed Apostle prays for the Thessalonians that God may fulfill in them all the good pleasure of goodness and the work of faith in power (2 Thess 1:11). For also in that same place where he was speaking of the Gentiles who naturally do the law, he had first premised, saying: But glory and honor and peace to everyone that works good, to the Jew first, and also to the Greek (Rom 2:10).