Cap. 5 Thesis 3: Universal death placates for any believer — not actual grace before faith

Chapter 5. The third thesis is proposed, illustrated, and confirmed.

We have already finished our prior theses, in which it was explained in what sense the death of Christ is to be acknowledged as a universal cause of human salvation; and it was also shown that those do not rightly understand the most received saying of the theologians, Christ died for all sufficiently, for the elect efficaciously, who admit a bare sufficiency of the thing considered in itself, and meanwhile exclude an ordered sufficiency of the same, belonging from the will of God to all and each human beings according to the tenor of the Evangelical pact, under a possible condition of faith. Now indeed, because on the other side some have been found who stretch this universal force and ordination of the death of Christ considered, by this alone that Christ offered himself on the altar of the cross for all, beyond what is equal, a third thesis will have to be added by us, which may set the limits to which this universal force of the death of Christ extends itself, and beyond which it by no means diffuses itself — this force which embraces the human race and arises from the passion of Christ itself, considered without any other medium. It will be of this sort.

The death or passion of Christ, as a universal cause of human salvation, has by the very fact of the oblation rendered God the Father so far placated and reconciled to the human race that he may truly now be said ready to receive any human being into grace as soon as he has believed in Christ; yet the aforesaid death of Christ places no one, at least of adults, into the state of grace, of actual reconciliation, or of salvation, before he believes.

There are two members of this thesis, which we will treat separately and confirm with arguments, when a few things have first been premised about the word reconciliation for a clearer understanding of the whole matter. It must therefore be known that God, offended by the sin of man, not only stripped him of his paternal favor and adjudged him to eternal death, but further firmly decreed never to be reconciled to us under any condition by anything we would ever do or suffer. Just as the offense of God was contained in these two quasi-grades, so our reconciliation is carried through in two other grades answering these as it were from the opposite side. The prior grade of reconciliation is understood as procured as soon as — although not by us, yet in our name — that was done whereby the Divine will is inclined so that it already wills to return into grace with us under some certain condition to be performed, and to impart remission of sins and eternal life. This grade of reconciliation we affirm procured for all human beings by the very force and the very merit of the Lord’s passion, without any other medium. And hence it is (as we annotated above) that the death of Christ is set forth as the redemption or reconciliation of the whole world: God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself (2 Cor. 5:19). Into which sense Prosper, Against the chapters of the Gauls, objection 9: The Redeemer of the world gave his blood for the world, etc. See Augustine, Epistles 159, 171, 173. This reconciliation of the world, therefore, is as it were the first grade toward the actual reconciliation of singular human beings; to none of whom would access to this Divine grace under the condition of faith have lain open, unless it were that God by the death of Christ had somehow stood reconciled to the human race. The posterior grade of reconciliation is situated in this, and is then judged acquired for this or that singular person, when, the condition of faith in Christ having been performed, he is received into the paternal grace of God, is justified, and is gifted with a hereditary right to eternal life. No one arrives at this posterior grade by the sole work of Christ himself offering himself on the cross to God the Father, but there must accede, before he obtains this actual reconciliation, an act or work of the human being himself believing in Christ the Redeemer and by faith applying the merit of his death to himself singularly. To this that of John 8:24 can be referred: Unless you believe that I am he, you will die in your sins. The death of Christ therefore does not snatch from death, nor actually reconcile to God, this or that singular person, except as believing.