' It is a dogma of faith that Christ died on the Cross for all men and women (Saint John 11.52; 2 Corinthians 5.14-15; Titus 2.11; 1 John 2.2).'
-Francis Cardinal Arinze, 20 November 2006
My dear N.:
You are absolutely right in your understanding of the relationship between grace and free-will. The Calvinist error claims (whether it acknowledges it or not) that God is the ultimate author of evil because in His inscrutable sovereignty He decides before we are born who will and will not be saved, basing His decision on His eternal decree without any consideration of the free synergy or cooperation of man with grace. The Catholic Faith teaches that man is free, and although his free-will was injured and damaged in the Fall, it still exists as an essential component of the Imago Dei, the Image of God in man. Christ by grace heals, restores and perfects our freedom and makes it possible by His grace and power for men truly to correspond with the divine grace and find justification and sanctification. This is precisely why extreme protestants, especially Calvinists, do not believe men can become inherently, innately holy, can truly become Saints, deified and divinised by grace: it is because they deny that man can cooperate with grace and thus become intrinsically holy and God-like. Total depravity, if it is understood to deprive man of the Image and Likeness of God, renders him an unsalvageable monster in his being or essence. Justification, and thus even sanctification, are seen as merely a legal fiction in protestantism, a legal decree of God in which God declares us not guilty but does not change or transform us ontologically.
Justification by faith alone is tantamount to an extrinsic or forensic view of salvation only, and so man in this view becomes what Luther described him to be, a dung heap covered in snow; he is covered and his sins are ignored, but he is not purified, sanctified or changed into a new creation by grace. The Saints are those human beings who have become what God made man to be, the Likeness of God. The Saints are those who have become fully human, who have achieved the human vocation. The Saints are the images of Christ, the icons of the Holy Spirit, man finally and fully human, man finally and fully alive. As Saint Athanasius says, 'God became man so that man might become God.' This means that man's destiny is ultimately to become a 'partaker of the divine nature' (II Peter 1.4), to become by grace what God is by nature, to share the Life of the Holy Trinity. The free gift of such salvation and glorification of man in Christ is offered to all men equally, but only those who willingly receive the gift have such grace applied to their souls and bodies. Only the correspondent apply and appropriate such grace unto justification and salvation. The Church and Sacraments exist for this purpose, to give man the grace he needs to have eternal life. The redemptive work of Christ, His Incarnation, Passion, Resurrection and Glorification, is prolonged and extended in the Church and therefore given and appropriated to men in it for their union with God. Extra ecclesiam non salus est. The Body of Christ in the Church and Sacraments, especially in the Holy Eucharist, is given to men's bodies so that they may be incorporated into the Body of Christ and dwell in Him and He in them. If extreme protestantism soteriology is right, the Church and Sacraments as objective means of grace are in the end meaningless and useless, for faith alone, the sole needful and relative proof of predestination, is all that is necessary. Christ died for all men and offers salvation to all men, but not all men cooperate with grace and are thus saved. This teaching is Orthodox dogma, the revealed soteriological doctrine of the New Testament.
Please keep in touch and keep up your superb thinking and reading. God bless you!
My dear N.:
You are absolutely right in your understanding of the relationship between grace and free-will. The Calvinist error claims (whether it acknowledges it or not) that God is the ultimate author of evil because in His inscrutable sovereignty He decides before we are born who will and will not be saved, basing His decision on His eternal decree without any consideration of the free synergy or cooperation of man with grace. The Catholic Faith teaches that man is free, and although his free-will was injured and damaged in the Fall, it still exists as an essential component of the Imago Dei, the Image of God in man. Christ by grace heals, restores and perfects our freedom and makes it possible by His grace and power for men truly to correspond with the divine grace and find justification and sanctification. This is precisely why extreme protestants, especially Calvinists, do not believe men can become inherently, innately holy, can truly become Saints, deified and divinised by grace: it is because they deny that man can cooperate with grace and thus become intrinsically holy and God-like. Total depravity, if it is understood to deprive man of the Image and Likeness of God, renders him an unsalvageable monster in his being or essence. Justification, and thus even sanctification, are seen as merely a legal fiction in protestantism, a legal decree of God in which God declares us not guilty but does not change or transform us ontologically.
Justification by faith alone is tantamount to an extrinsic or forensic view of salvation only, and so man in this view becomes what Luther described him to be, a dung heap covered in snow; he is covered and his sins are ignored, but he is not purified, sanctified or changed into a new creation by grace. The Saints are those human beings who have become what God made man to be, the Likeness of God. The Saints are those who have become fully human, who have achieved the human vocation. The Saints are the images of Christ, the icons of the Holy Spirit, man finally and fully human, man finally and fully alive. As Saint Athanasius says, 'God became man so that man might become God.' This means that man's destiny is ultimately to become a 'partaker of the divine nature' (II Peter 1.4), to become by grace what God is by nature, to share the Life of the Holy Trinity. The free gift of such salvation and glorification of man in Christ is offered to all men equally, but only those who willingly receive the gift have such grace applied to their souls and bodies. Only the correspondent apply and appropriate such grace unto justification and salvation. The Church and Sacraments exist for this purpose, to give man the grace he needs to have eternal life. The redemptive work of Christ, His Incarnation, Passion, Resurrection and Glorification, is prolonged and extended in the Church and therefore given and appropriated to men in it for their union with God. Extra ecclesiam non salus est. The Body of Christ in the Church and Sacraments, especially in the Holy Eucharist, is given to men's bodies so that they may be incorporated into the Body of Christ and dwell in Him and He in them. If extreme protestantism soteriology is right, the Church and Sacraments as objective means of grace are in the end meaningless and useless, for faith alone, the sole needful and relative proof of predestination, is all that is necessary. Christ died for all men and offers salvation to all men, but not all men cooperate with grace and are thus saved. This teaching is Orthodox dogma, the revealed soteriological doctrine of the New Testament.
Please keep in touch and keep up your superb thinking and reading. God bless you!
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