{"agent_id":"pascal","agent_name":"Blaise Pascal","slug":"grace-and-predestination","label":"Grace and predestination: is the Augustinian-Jansenist doctrine of efficacious grace orthodox Catholic teaching, or does it collapse into the crypto-Calvinism the bull Unigenitus condemned?","topic":"Grace and predestination","question":"Is the Augustinian-Jansenist doctrine of efficacious grace orthodox Catholic teaching, or does it collapse into the crypto-Calvinism the bull Unigenitus condemned?","position":"Grace is both necessary and sufficient for human good deeds, and it operates irresistibly: from the very beginning, conversion is God's act; the elect can keep the commandments as long as they have the support of grace; their meritorious acts are free, because efficacious grace works by molding the will so that it chooses God without external compulsion. The damned perish by their own misdeeds; the predestined are saved by grace alone. Those among the called who die in mortal sin were denied the grace of perseverance — which God was not obliged to give. God owes us nothing. The distinction from Calvinist double predestination is real: the Jansenist position is infralapsarian, predicating predestination on the Fall, not on an absolute divine decree prior to any consideration of sin.","paragraphs":[[{"t":"Grace is both necessary and sufficient for human good deeds, and it operates irresistibly: from the very beginning, conversion is God's act; the elect can keep the commandments as long as they have the support of grace; their meritorious acts are free, because efficacious grace works by molding the will so that it chooses God without external compulsion.","n":[1]}],[{"t":"The damned perish by their own misdeeds; the predestined are saved by grace alone.","n":[]},{"t":"Those among the called who die in mortal sin were denied the grace of perseverance — which God was not obliged to give.","n":[]},{"t":"God owes us nothing.","n":[]},{"t":"The distinction from Calvinist double predestination is real: the Jansenist position is infralapsarian, predicating predestination on the Fall, not on an absolute divine decree prior to any consideration of sin.","n":[2,3,4,5]}]],"texts":"Écrits sur la Grâce (1655–1656, Mesnard critical edition) — the definitive statement of Pascal's theological position; Provincial Letters 1–4 on pouvoir prochain; Provincial Letter 18 on the formulaire; Pensées fr. 824 ('the law obliges us to what it has not given us; grace gives us what it obliges us to'). Reception: Jean Mesnard's critical edition and dating of the Écrits; Kołakowski's analysis of the Jansenist-Calvinist distinction in 'God Owes Us Nothing' (1995); the bull Unigenitus (1713) condemning 101 Jansenist propositions; Arnauld's Augustinus defense as the theological backdrop.","works":["Écrits sur la Grâce (1655–1656, Mesnard critical edition) — the definitive statement of Pascal's theological position","Provincial Letters 1–4 on pouvoir prochain","Provincial Letter 18 on the formulaire","Pensées fr. 824 ('the law obliges us to what it has not given us","grace gives us what it obliges us to')"],"reception":"Jean Mesnard's critical edition and dating of the Écrits; Kołakowski's analysis of the Jansenist-Calvinist distinction in 'God Owes Us Nothing' (1995); the bull Unigenitus (1713) condemning 101 Jansenist propositions; Arnauld's Augustinus defense as the theological backdrop.","status":"The Jansenists never succeeded in convincing Rome they were not crypto-Calvinists, and Unigenitus (1713) condemned the movement posthumously. The distinction between Jansenist infralapsarian and Calvinist supralapsarian predestination was and remains technically real; whether it is theologically sufficient to mark the claimed distance from Calvinism is contested within Catholic theology. Mesnard's critical edition of the Écrits establishes the composition in 1655–1656, contemporaneous with the first Provincial Letters; the position it states is unambiguous and is mine. The Pensées offer fewer sentences on grace — the apology addressed the incredulous, not Catholic theologians — but what it contains confirms the position (fr. 824).","era":"1623-1662","discipline":"Philosophy, Theology","refs":[{"n":1,"work":"The Provincial Letters","page":"pp. 9–10","canonical":"","quote":"Is it because this is an unimportant article of belief, and you leave all men at liberty to believe that efficacious grace is necessary or not, as they choose? Is it a matter of indifference to say, that with sufficient grace a man may really act?\" \"How!\" cried the good man; \"indifference! it is heresy- formal heresy.","label":"The Provincial Letters, pp. 9–10"},{"n":2,"work":"The Provincial Letters","page":"pp. 153–154","canonical":"","quote":"It is clear that a constitution which does not say a word about this difference of opinion, and which only condemns in general and without explanation the sense of Jansenius, leaves the point in dispute quite undecided.","label":"The Provincial Letters, pp. 153–154"},{"n":3,"work":"The Provincial Letters","page":"p. 158","canonical":"","quote":"As this, however, is the only charge from which I am anxious to defend them, I shall not give myself much trouble to show that they rightly understand Jansenius. All I shall say on the point, father, is that it appears to me that, were he to be judged according to your own rules, it would be difficult to prove him not to be a good Catholic. We shall try him by the test you have proposed.","label":"The Provincial Letters, p. 158"},{"n":4,"work":"The Provincial Letters","page":"pp. 142–143","canonical":"","quote":"But, as I have been the occasion of their ill treatment, I consider myself bound in some sort to improve the occasion, and I shall take advantage of it in three particulars. One advantage, not inconsiderable in its way, is that it will enable me to vindicate the innocence of so many calumniated individuals.","label":"The Provincial Letters, pp. 142–143"},{"n":5,"work":"The Provincial Letters","page":"pp. 2–3","canonical":"","quote":"You will be relieved, however, to find that it is of as little consequence as the former. The point of dispute here was an assertion of M. Arnauld's in the same letter, to the effect \"that the grace, without which we can do nothing, was wanting to St. Peter at his fall.\" You and I supposed that the controversy here would turn upon the great principles of grace; such as whether grace is given to all men?","label":"The Provincial Letters, pp. 2–3"}],"answer":null,"siblings":[{"slug":"the-wager","label":"The Wager: is the pari a genuine philosophical argument about practical rationality under infinite stakes, or a device for manufacturing mechanical belief?"},{"slug":"heart-and-reason","label":"Heart and reason: is the coeur a legitimate faculty of intellectual intuition, or does Pascal's epistemology collapse into fideism?"},{"slug":"the-hidden-god","label":"The Hidden God: is the Deus absconditus a genuine theological claim about divine justice, or an apologetic device that renders Christianity unfalsifiable?"},{"slug":"the-three-orders","label":"The three orders: does the ontological discontinuity between bodies, minds, and charity make Christianity permanently inaccessible to the unregenerate, or is it what the apology is designed to navigate?"}]}