The Cross of Christ and the Salvation of Mankind

by Peter A. Kwasniewski

A lthough it has long been fashionable in certain circles to attempt the overthrow of traditional beliefs about the matter, it appears to be quite certain from the explicit teaching of Christ and the consensus of the Church that not all human beings will attain eternal salvation. Consider, for example, the following Gospel text: "Enter by the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is Reflecting on these unambiguous words, one might draw the conclusion that Christ's redemptive sacrifice is not universally inclusive, since it does not yield the fruit of exceptionless salvation. But if the redemption effected through the Cross were only to ransom part of the human race from the devil, then it would seem either that our Lord did not perfectly accomplish His intended mission of saving the world (see Jn. 3:16-17 and elsewhere), or that He did not die for all men and does not want all men to be saved. Neither of these positions is valid, because the former would render the power of the Cross finite and vain, and the latter would make Christ arbitrary in sharing His merits. Confronted by this perplexing dilemma, how do we go about explaining both the universal scope of Christ's salvific sacrifice and the woeful fact that some men will not be saved?

Redemption Is Universal in Scope, Salvation Is Selective

We should notice first of all that the form of the objection itself contains part of the problem. The kernel of the answer is this: our Lord saves no man against that man's will. Christ makes it possible for man to please God, but He does not force man to please God. As a result, Catholic theology, following the teaching of St. Paul, distinguishes redemption (which pays the debt of justice to the Father for all of mankind, past, present, and future) from salvation, which involves voluntary cooperation with divine grace. The human race has no choice in its objective redemption; Jesus makes salvation possible for all out of the bosom of His unsearchable love. St. Paul declares that "God our savior. . . desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth" (1 Tim. 2:3-4).

Individuals, however, must respond to Christ's generosity with their own generosity Ñ "love for love," as is just and fair. This loving response, prompted and sustained by divine grace, is called "subjective redemption," i.e., a person's actual appropriation of the merits of Christ through a life of holiness and good works. St. John records these words of Christ: "For God sent the Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through Him" (Jn. 3:17). Observe how Jesus uses the mood "might be saved." He has brought about the condition, indeed the most necessary condition, for the salvation of all people; He has offered Himself on the Cross, thereby redeeming mankind and obtaining, through His obedience to the Father, salvific grace for whoever will partake of it. That Christ has redeemed all human beings is the unanimous testimony of the Scriptures and the Fathers of the Church. As Thomas Aquinas explains:
Man was held captive on account of sin in two ways: first of all, by the bondage of sin, because "whosoever committeth sin is the slave of sin" (Jn. 8:34) and "by whom a man is overcome, of the same also he is the slave" (2 Pet. 2:19). Since, then, the devil had overcome man by inducing him to sin, man was subject to the devil's bondage. Secondly, as to the debt of punishment, to the payment of which man was held fast by God's justice: and this, too, is a kind of bondage, since it savors of bondage for a man to suffer what he does not wish, just as it is the free man's condition to apply himself to what he wills. Since, then, Christ's Passion was a sufficient and a superabundant atonement for the sin and the debt of the human race, it was the price at the cost of which we were freed from both obligations. For the atonement by which one satisfies for oneself or another is called the price by which he ransoms himself or someone else from sin and its penalty: "Redeem thou thy sins with alms" (Dan. 4:24). Now Christ made satisfaction, not by giving money or anything of the sort, but by bestowing what was of greatest price, Himself, for us. And therefore Christ's Passion is our redemption.2

The Mystery of Predestination and Freewill

In response to the errors of certain Protestants who denied the universal redemptive efficacy of the sacrifice of the Cross, the Council of Trent solemnly defined it as a de fide doctrine.3 But likewise central to this teaching is the truth that each human being, having been redeemed by the precious blood Christ poured out in His supreme expiatory and atoning sacrifice to the Eternal Father, must personally respond to the demands of revelation and make Christ's work of redemption his own; and being free, man possesses a dreadful liberty to reject these gifts in part or entirely. Holy Scripture intimates, and the Church firmly teaches, that God in His mercy bestows upon every man a portion of grace appropriate to his circumstances and sufficient to bring about (but not necessitate) his final salvation.4 The Lord distributes His gifts far and wide; there is no one who can justly accuse God of not having provided grace enough to repent of sin and lead a life of virtue. Almighty God judges men on the basis of what they can do and ought to know, not on the basis of what they never knew or could not have done.

Without grace, therefore, we cannot be saved. But even with an abundance of grace, we must desire and work to be saved. The Old and New Testaments, especially the Gospels and Epistles, leave no room for questioning the Christian's active role: "work out your salvation in fear and trembling" (Phil. 2:12), "by works a man is justified, not merely by faith" (Ja. 2:17). "For God will render to every man according to his works: to those who by patience in well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life; but for those who are factious and do not obey the truth, there will be wrath and fury" (Rom. 2:6-8).5 Although divine grace is necessary for justification, a man's choice to commit himself to God is no less indispensable. By the orientation of our nature, we desire to know the truth; the more ardently we desire and the more earnestly we follow whither our conscience leads, the more we have prepared ourselves to receive God's grace. The need to respond to God's invitation makes sense even in human terms. For if genuine human love seems undeserved or unmerited, all the more should Divine love: we cannot begin to fathom its meaning until we realize it is a sheer gift that confers, along with itself, the worthiness to receive and use it well. Still, the beloved is always free to reject what the lover freely gives. Everything God does towards His creatures Ñ creation, redemption, and sanctification Ñ is gratuitous, is a gift. But to say that God gives freely and according as He wills is not to say that His works are arbitrary. There is wisdom unsearchable and boundless love in the works of the Lord.

To many Christians in good faith, there has appeared to be an insoluble conflict between the doctrine of predestination, which states that there are some whom God foreordains to final perseverance and others not so privileged who will consequently be lost, and Christ's supreme sacrifice on the Cross, which extends the hope of salvation to all men. But these two truths are not incompatible; they are two sides of the same coin. The offering made by Jesus to His heavenly Father is unquestionably for all men without distinction; but because this sacrifice must be internalized or rendered particular, i.e., must become efficacious in one's life, the salvation wrought upon Calvary is only fruitful for those who embrace and assimilate it. Foreknowing who will respond to His love and who will reject it in the end, God accordingly extends His grace further for those who will make a better use of it, and curtails it for those who do not use well the sufficient grace given to all.6 God is not to blame for salvation's lack of universality. Although the sacrifice of Christ "once for all" (Heb. 10:10) effects the redemption of each human being in the whole history of the world, it is a far cry from this to say that men need do nothing at all to be saved, or that God "picks and chooses" whimsically. In His goodness, God respects the relative autonomy of those creatures whom He chose to endow with freedom.

The center of the predestination problem has to do with God's foreknowledge and foreordination on the one hand, and man's free will or opportunity for salvation on the other. The ancient philosopher Cicero, thinking foreknowledge and freedom incompatible, simply denied the omniscience and providence of God. Historically, many Protestants adopted a contrary error: affirming God's absolute power and foreknowledge, they felt obliged to deny the possibility of working out one's salvation, and, in the worst instance, denied freedom of will itself. As we saw earlier, St. Paul expressly states that God desires all men to be saved; he is also the Church's greatest theologian of predestination. In the mind of the Apostle as in the mind of the Church, there is no contradiction, but a mystery profounder than the human mind is capable of fathoming.7 Whatever else may be the case, one thing is certain: in God there is no contrariety of virtues Ñ mercy warring against justice, love against retribution, generosity against foresight. In God, justice and mercy, indeed all spiritual perfections, are one and the same divine substance. We know that the attributes predicated of God are inadequate names referring to aspects of His transcendent actuality (the God who is wisdom, power, love), but we will never reach the height or sound the depth of such a truth.

God Gives Grace to All and Judges Us by Our Response

If the existence of God can be reasoned to from the things around us in the world, so too can His goodness, His providence, His justice, and any other attribute or pure perfection that belongs to the divine nature. Thinkers often get into difficulties with some of these predicates (e.g., provident, merciful, all-good) because quite understandably they fix their attention on the innumerable ways in which the good things God has created for a good use are nevertheless abused and perverted by the free will of man. It is of the greatest importance to separate wheat from chaff in one's consideration of the nature of God. All that is in any way good comes from Him. All that is evil, on the contrary, is the result of sin, which has its root not in God but in the perverse will of an intellectual creature (man or angel) who orders its freedom to itself in such a manner as to dismiss or defy God. From the first moment of our existence, whatever God has done in us and for us is altogether good, deserving of our utmost thanksgiving and worship. Those who rebel against God thus call down much-deserved punishment upon themselves. For in spite of what God has given to them or made known to them, still they refuse to submit to the natural law inscribed in their hearts and the divine law proclaimed by the Church, the embodiment of God's authority on earth.

God does not and cannot punish any one unjustly; His acts are not capricious. A human being who has lived according to the most accurate knowledge of the truth he could acquire, following the voice of his conscience, seeking the will of God without losing himself in sin or settling for a compromised truth, will in fact be given sufficient grace to find and cling to the true God, at least before his soul reaches its final judgment.8 When St. Paul states the discoverability of God's existence by contemplating the works He has made, he also mentions (not by accident) those who, through the stubbornness or sensuality of their hearts, choose to worship the creature above the creator and abandon the usages of nature in their misguided ambition to "be like God, knowing good and evil."9 (Today it is rarely pointed out why the Book of Genesis uses this phrase. The reason is simple: while things are the cause of our knowledge, God's knowledge is the cause of things.

Therefore, to know good and evil in the way God knows them is to cause things to be good or evil Ñ a power no creature has. The intelligent creature is a "measured measure," i.e., he is free to act as he wishes but the moral value of his actions is judged in light of a higher law or measure, the divine will. The sinner thinks he can justify his action by willing it to be good, as though man were the measure of good and evil; whereas in truth, moral acts are good or evil in themselves depending on whether they are directed towards or against God.) Lest we confuse ourselves with vain speculation, it is wise to remember what St. Paul so clearly asserts: that God wishes all men to be saved and to attain to knowledge of the truth; and that, as Christ teaches in many places, the grace will not be wanting to those who desire it.

But how can a man desire God's grace without first having been given grace in order to desire rightly? And does not this first gift, the grace that precedes any human response, seem rather arbitrary on God's part, bestowed (as it seems) upon some and not upon others? The solution to this difficulty is implicitly contained in the foregoing discussion. Apparent discords in the New Testament doctrine of salvation may be harmonized by assuming that God in His unstinting love for creation distributes "prevenient" or predisposing actual graces to all men Ñ hints, tugs, pulls at their hearts, so to speak, sufficient at least to impel them to begin to seek Him. The very experience of not being happy, of not being fulfilled in one's life, is a kind of desperate grace, a last sign urgently proclaiming that man was not made only for this world and thus cannot taste pure joy until he rests in God, his first beginning and last end. If human beings have freedom of will, then they are free to squander the advances of God. God's grace is irresistible only in the sense that no one can refuse to receive it (grace, like a thief in the night, comes directly into the stronghold of the soul and penetrates all its defenses); but, on account of free will, a man is able, alas, to cast off or neglect God's assistance once he has received it. God plays no part in this casting off; He neither causes it to happen nor prevents it from happening.

A metaphor may help. Imagine that a man much enamored of a certain woman keeps bringing her flowers. Imagine also that something about his presence is so compelling that she cannot refuse to take his flowers when he hands them to her. Nevertheless, nothing prevents her from tossing them into the trash later on, or even dropping them two moments after she takes them. All metaphors limp, it is said; but the parallel should be evident. God is the lover of mankind, the Bridegroom of our souls. He is always courting us with flowers, sweetmeats, caresses, letters Ñ the whole beauty of the natural world, the consolations of friendship, the grandeur of intellectual truth, the blessings of revelation. Man's highest dignity consists in clinging for dear life to these gifts of God and begging for more, conscious of his own unworthiness. The Almighty did not have to create man or anything else; whatever comes from the hand of God exists because of Divine love. It is to man's infinite discredit that he may criminally scorn the gifts of God and trample them underfoot. God does not have to permit him to do this; verily, it is by God's power that man is conserved in being and is sustained in the act of willing. Why, then, does He allow grave sin, that is, the dregs of ingratitude and madness, to occur in His own children, who depend for everything upon Him? We can answer in turn with a question. Would genuine or reciprocal love between creature and creator be possible if God had not left man free to respond or not to respond? What would a friendship be, where one friend always had to love the other, and had no real choice; where one did not consciously and wholeheartedly choose the other to be his friend? Man's freedom is at the core of his dignity and his woe; freedom is a blessing for those who seek what is good and true, a curse to those who flee from truth and goodness. God desires man to use freedom well, and with grace He makes it possible for it to be well used.

God's Help Does Not Interfere with Man's Freedom

Some seem to think that God's actively aiding a person to love Him, and a person's choosing to love God, are incompatible. If your love is being pushed and pulled along by another, they say, then how are you freely loving? But this kind of objection is not very cogent. Yes, the support of God precedes, remains with, and crowns every good action a man does; but is it not true that a man is responsible for the good he does, insofar as he does it Ñ the things he wills, according as he has command over them? God's grace, before, during, and after, would accomplish little or nothing if there were no freely willed human activity in or through which divine grace could operate efficaciously. Scripture frequently calls God our helper; and to be a helper means that you are assisting someone who is already engaged in a certain positive work but cannot complete it, and often cannot begin it, alone. Nevertheless, when we do something that requires the help of another, is that other's contribution the mainspring, the adequate cause, of our own action? When a little girl decides to do her homework, is it someone else's choice or hers? Let the teacher or parent help her ever so much, still it is her mind, her will, that takes up and sustains the activity. She is free to run around outside barefoot instead of doing math, although her mother would not like it; she is free to break pencils or make sketches; she is free to pick up the telephone and make a call instead of drudging away at long division. But if she's a dutiful child, she will choose to do her duty, even when she might prefer to do something else. When a young lad is learning how to write, and wishes to write, and chooses to write, will he succeed for all that without the help of an adult who already possesses the knowledge he seeks? It is just as impossible to attain beatitude without the help of the author of beatitude as it is to learn grammar without a grammarian.

This, then, is how the matter stands between God and the soul. I can desire to be saved and strive to accomplish this end by serving and loving God as He asks to be loved and served; all the while I shall be acting with my own will, yet there is no time when I shall not have been assisted by divine grace. I say a morning offering, or make a spiritual communion: God gave me the grace to desire to do the act and the grace to do it properly, but the choice to act and the manner of the action was mine nonetheless and the prayer is a joint effort. If I am successful in beginning to serve God, the glory goes to God, and, in a manner of speaking, the merit goes to me, for the work is really both His and mine. Some philosophers have given the name of "conjunctive causality" to such a cooperation, where two independent causes work simultaneously to bring about a single effect. If one of these causes is all-powerful and free, and the other is extremely limited and free, then it is clear that the former cause does not need the help of the latter, but the latter certainly has need of the former if it wishes to attain something beyond its own limited condition or abilities. Yet when the all-powerful agent acts, the activity of the lesser agent is not thereby destroyed, reduced to a mere cipher or token. It is just as real as it always was; but a better and unfailing activity is added to it, motivating it, upholding it, guiding it. That is the nature of any act of a theological virtue, and ultimately the nature of salvation itself. The lesser agent still has to desire to cooperate and work with its own powers. No coercion is possible here; "help" does not mean "substitution." God loves man so intently, so much as a friend, that He respects his freedom and does not interfere with it, lest the creature no longer enjoy the genuine dignity of responding, of embracing the Creator who initiates the courtship. The gift of grace, far from being compulsory, is liberating. It strengthens freedom by making a person more free to choose what is good and less encumbered by contrary passions or prejudices; in no sense does it make him unfree.

True Love Is Revealed Through and Sustained
by the Cross

In his unfinished masterpiece PensŽes, Blaise Pascal portrays man at war with himself, divided in the marrow of his being. It is not primarily a war between passion and reason, nor body and soul, but rather between the transcendent and the selfish in man, what would bear him aloft to God and what would tie him to base things. This war breaks out ever and again in each man's life, and Christ alone can win it for us; we are too weak to seize the victory. By our own efforts we may be able to go a long way, conquering the passions and ruling them by reason, unifying our body and soul in a common enterprise of virtue Ñ but we can never suppress the strange and disconcerting motion towards degradation and disloyalty that repeatedly rises up in revolt against our better self. Even the most virtuous man must come to grips with his own pride and vanity, with his inability to pass beyond mortality and the confines of this world of sorrow and darkness. The noble soul has a deepest and purest passion, a highest and most beautiful prayer: "may I go beyond this disintegrating world, this wounded flesh, this realm of limitation and chaos, may I find the way to transcend myself and everything created, until, assimilated to deity by grace, I behold the very face of God and live!" But how can man "become divine," how can what is best and truest in his life, his thoughts, his love, become resplendent with never-fading light? How can he strive for such a goal, when he discovers at the very moment he begins that he has no wings to do it, he is grounded and trapped, despite the aspirations of his heart and the longing of his soul?

At the core of being there is a profound sense of alienation, a feeling more poignant to the extent that a man grows aware of his own condition of helplessness towards the divine life, as he stands alone before the infinite holiness of God. The man who truly knows himself is struck with the distance not only between himself and his maker but between what he is and what he would be. "I am not what I ought to be, I am not fully myself, I am not absolutely and totally united to reality Ñ to my beloved, to my home, to my God, to the truth. In my soul there is emptiness thirsting to be filled, darkness wanting light, incomprehension seeking for faith. My life is woven of two threads, the world-embracing horizontal, the going out to others and being immersed in their fates, and the heaven-aiming vertical, a painful longing for union with the God who is all in all. And now I see what the Cross is, the horizontal shot through by the vertical, pointing upwards to God as it opens the way to Him, channeling His grace to those who throw themselves upon it with their King. Is there any way to express the reality here before me, the thick, full, inexhaustible, self-giving Love I see hanging upon the Cross, reconciling man to God?" And the word of Christ does not culminate in death, but in life Ñ His resurrected life streaming through the members of His Mystical Body, the life of grace and glory made possible by His sacrifice. The Resurrection proclaims the never-ending vitality of the covenant between heaven and earth, it heralds the ultimate fruit for which we long, the vision of God. The Cross was not meant merely to overthrow the devil's inglorious kingdom, but to initiate with blood and water an undying sacred love between God and man.

If one does not see the pervasive presence of fallen or sin-stricken nature, if one does not see that the totality of mankind is (has always been, will always be) in urgent need of ransom from the slavery of sin, neither the life of our Lord nor His death will make any sense. Because it is inherited from the origin of the human race, Adam, whose rebellion disrupted both the friendship of man with God and the internal harmony between man's reason and his passions, the human nature we receive from our parents is wounded and weakened from the start. Every single child conceived in this vale of tears (Christ and His Mother alone excepted) enters the world marred with the stain of rebellion against God, and whether the child be baptized or not, inclinations to sin will remain throughout his life and must be conquered if salvation is to be won. No matter how secure a Christian environment is provided for a child, he will display intensely selfish tendencies up to a mature age when they can be checked Ñ and by that time other temptations will already be astir. Clearly, the Church in teaching the doctrine of original sin is not proposing something foreign to our experience. But what does it mean to say that there is a radical flaw or defect in mankind as a whole?

The Cross makes symbolic sense up to a point: many people have found strength and consolation meditating on the absolute love consummated in the sacrifice of Christ on the Cross, and many have sought to take up their crosses in imitation of Him. But the life and death of Jesus Christ does not make sense in the end unless there is some whole or universal that needs to be redeemed and gathered unto Himself Ñ the mission He announces in all four Gospels. This whole or universal is mankind, every single human being, whether he chooses to take up his individual cross or not; and the only explanation could be that every single man, before he does anything at all, is in a bad way when it comes to reaching God and needs divine help to do it. It's one thing to talk about the grievous state an individual puts himself in by sinning; it's another to talk about the inescapable condition of man in this life of trial. As far as the latter is concerned, saint and sinner are alike; both have emergency need of the fruits of redemption, even though the one might be exhausting himself in acts of charity and the other committing heinous crimes. Again, the question is why, what is it about man's condition that renders him dull and insensitive to God, who is the most real reality of all, causing everything to be, present innermost everywhere, speaking in every conscience? To attribute the problem to individual sins or to some intricate tangle in the wiring of nature is totally unacceptable; such an approach makes a mockery of itself by never really explaining the ground of the problem, nor, in the end, the irreducible experience of the human heart. Here is where Pascal can stake his bold claim: you cannot explain the ultimate meaning of anything without Christ. It is by God's help that we are forgiven and perfected; it is by His help that goodness triumphs on the battlefield of our soul. It could only be with God's help that the desire for the transcendent, the desire to make life holy and eternal, could be realized. And this is precisely what our Lord Jesus Christ accomplishes in His sacrifice on Calvary, making possible our sanctification and bestowing life everlasting upon us.

Peter A. Kwasniewski is studying for a Doctorate in Philosophy at The Catholic Universiy of America, concentrating on medieval philosophy.

Endnotes

1. See also: "Strive to enter by the narrow door; for many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able" (Lk. 13:24). "Then the king said to the attendants, ÔBind him hand and foot, and cast him into the outer darkness; there men will weep and gnash their teeth.' For many are called, but few are chosen" (Mt. 22:13-14). "Not every one who says to me, ÔLord, Lord,' shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, ÔLord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?' And then will I declare to them, ÔI never knew you; depart from me, you evildoers'" (Mt. 7:21-23; see Lk. 13:27). "Then he will say to those at his left hand, ÔDepart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels'" (Mt. 25:41). "Go into all the world and preach the gospel to the whole creation. He who believes and is baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe will be condemned" (Mk. 16:15-16). "He who believes in the Son has eternal life; he who does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God rests upon him" (Jn. 3:36).
2. Summa Theologi¾ III, qu. 48, art. 4, corp. For a detailed treatment, see "The Divine Atonement" by Fr. Cuthbert, O.F.M.Cap., in God and the Supernatural, pp. 123-153.
3. See DS 938, 790, 1096, 1294; also Ludwig Ott, Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, trans. Patrick Lynch (Rockford, Il.: TAN Books and Publishers, 1974), pp. 185, 188.
4. See Ott, pp. 238-242, 247.
5. Holy Scripture demands several dispositions of him who would receive grace: fear of God (Ecclus. 1:27ff.; Prov. 14:27), hope in God (Ecclus. 2:9), love of God (Lk. 7:27; 1 Jn. 3:14), sorrow and penance (Ez. 18:30 and 33:11; Mt. 4:17; Acts 2:38 and 3:19). On the apparent contradiction between Rom. 3:28 (or Gal. 2:16) and Ja. 2:17, see Ott, p. 254. See also my article "The Virtue of Faith: I. Moral Certitude and Moral Integrity," in The Catholic Faith, vol. 3, no. 1, January-February 1997, p. 33 and the references given there.
6. The position stated here is not to be confused with the error of Semi-Pelagianism, according to which man is responsible for initiating his own salvation, but requires divine grace to persevere in virtue and attain the final end he seeks. Although St. Augustine refuted this error once and for all, most modern Christians are Pelagians without even realizing it. The thesis outlined in this article differs in one all-important respect from Semi-Pelagianism: at no point is the need for God's grace denied or made subordinate to human action. The Church teaches de fide that God's grace is absolutely necessary for the performance of any salutary supernatural work (e.g., acts of faith, hope, and charity), but she also teaches de fide that efficacious grace is not irresistible. What we must see is that man has the freedom either to use or to "waste" grace. Just because God gives enough grace to turn to Him does not mean that each person will in fact choose to turn to Him; and God knows from all eternity how a given individual will respond or fail to respond to grace. See Ott, pp. 229-233; 246-247.
7. Remember the words of Christ to St. Paul: "My grace is sufficient for thee, for my power is made perfect in weakness" (2 Cor. 12:9). Predestination cannot be understood when wrenched from its proper place within the larger framework of the Catholic faith, the revelation of God's love through Jesus Christ. For more detailed theological studies of the doctrine of predestination, see: Fr. William G. Most, Grace, Predestination, and the Salvific Will of God: New Answers to Old Questions (Front Royal, Va.: Christendom Press, 1996); Dom M. John Farrelly, O.S.B., Predestination, Grace, and Free Will (Westminster, Md.: The Newman Press, 1964); Fr. Ronald A. Knox, "The Mystery of the Kingdom" in The Pastoral Sermons of Ronald A. Knox, ed. Philip Caraman, S.J. (New York: Sheed & Ward, 1960), pp. 73-145; The German Bishops' Conference, The Church's Confession of Faith, trans. Stephen W. Arndt, ed. Mark Jordan (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1987), pp. 188-204.
8. See Ott, pp. 239-242; see also my article "The Necessity of the Church for Salvation," in The Catholic Faith, vol. 3, no. 5, September-October 1997. St. Augustine is famous for declaring that God could justly send the whole human race to hell. Taking this and other similar statements out of context, it would be too easy to accuse him of holding a wretchedly pessimistic view of salvation; yet we must recall that he is only defending the proposition that all men deserve eternal punishment prior to the communication of God's grace Ñ true enough, considering that no man (excepting Christ and His Mother) is utterly free from voluntary sin, and more to the point, that no man is born into the world without the inherited or original sin of Adam, which bars the entrance to heaven. From the point of view of man's sinfulness, the grace to live virtuously, and even more, the grace to put faith in Christ as the Son of God, is indeed a gratuitous gift, that is, a gift no man can deserve of his own merits.
9. See Rom. 1:18-32.

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