Cap. 5 Mem. 2 Elect Obj. 3 Solut close: Eternal love yields certain means, not eternal justification
Objection 3. Why do the means work in some people and not in others? Not, they say, from any difference of free choice, but because God is already reconciled to all the elect in Christ before the world's foundations were laid, and is not reconciled to the rest. So we must not deny that every elect person is actually reconciled to God before conversion and faith—since the very dispensing of means powerful enough to produce faith and repentance in them sprang from that eternal, prior reconciliation.
Solution. We gladly admit that the infallible efficacy of means ordained to salvation does not hang on the human will. It hangs on a certain eternal and special love of God for his elect. But so far as that love regards people who are still unbelieving and unconverted, it is nothing but a free purpose to supply them with what will later convert them, justify them, reconcile them to God, and lead them without fail to eternal life. Inferring from that eternal love an eternal justification, an eternal reconciliation of the elect, and an eternal glorification of them is therefore just as bad a leap. What follows is only their certain and infallible justification, reconciliation, and glorification. That certainty—the infallible efficacy of means that tend toward salvation—is born from the love of God just named, not from free choice's power. If someone wants to label this eternal love (the ground of the certainty that conversion and reconciliation will be produced in time) "actual reconciliation," because God himself "calls the things that are not as though they were" (Romans 4:17), I will not stop him—provided he also admits he is using the name of a finished deed for the purpose of a deed still to be done. For God's predestination had already fixed what would come in its own time, as Augustine puts it (City of God, book 12, chapter 16).
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Obj. 3. Efficacia mediorum in quibusdam hominibus potius quam in aliis non ex discrimine liberi arbitrii oritur, sed exinde quod Deus est reconciliatus electis omnibus in Christo ante jacta mundi fundamenta, aliis haud reconciliatus: Non igitur negare debemus electos omnes esse Deo actualiter reconciliatos ante conversionem suam ac fidem; quandoquidem ipsa dispensatio tam efficacium mediorum ad producendam in illis fidem & paenitentiam, ex aeterna illa & antecedanea eorundem reconciliatione traxit suam originem. Solut. Efficacitatem infallibilem mediorum ad salutem ordinatorum non ab humana voluntate pendere, sed ex aeterno & speciali quodam Dei erga electos suos amore, lubenter confitemur. At hunc amorem nil aliud esse dicimus, quatenus respicit homines adhuc infideles & inconversos, quam gratuitum propositum providendi iisdem quo in futurum convertantur, justificentur, Deo reconcilientur, & ad aeternam vitam infallibiliter perducantur. Aeque male igitur ab hoc amore aeterno infertur aeterna justificatio, & aeterna reconciliatio electorum, atque aeterna glorificatio eorundem, cum colligere inde solummodo oporteat certam et infallibilem eorundem justificationem, reconciliationem et glorificationem: quae certitudo sive infallibilis efficacia mediorum ad salutem tendentium ex praedicto amore Dei, non ex virtute liberi arbitrii nascitur. Hunc amorem aeternum, unde pendet certitudo conversionis et reconciliationis in tempore producendae, si lubet alicui vocare actualem reconciliationem, eo quod ipse Deus vocet ea quae non sunt tanquam sint, Rom. iv. 17. nihil impedio, modo simul fateatur se rei faciendae propositum rei factae nomine indigitare: Quia in Dei praedestinatione fixum erat quod suo tempore futurum erat, ut loquitur Augustinus, De Civit. Dei, lib. 12. cap. 16.