Ignorance is No Excuse

Home sweet home. Arrived back yesterday from our “Pre-Fall Colors” Cruise up the east coast and Canada (cut short by hurricane Earl). The deciduous trees leaves had not started turning their beautiful Fall colors due to the time of year and the unusually warm summer in the eastern states of America and Canada, but that’s why we got such a good price. It was a great vacation. Check out that Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada sunrise!

1 Samuel 16:7b “For the LORD does not see as man sees; for man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.”

Finishing The book on Blaise Pascal’s Pensees did not finish the book, as The Provincial Letters of Pascal written in 1656 were included on the end. Having discussed with a gentleman on 7/30/2010 at this year’s Anaheim Harvest Crusade the question: “How could a good God sent anyone to Hell, who was ignorant?”, reading the 2/25/1656 letter four debate concerning actual grace and the sins of ignorance was truly an enlightening blessing to me. Many do not understand the will of man. So I give you now a summary of the highlights of this amazing discussion.

Pascal and his faithful friend (from an opposing viewpoint) visit a Jesuit faith leader and ask if he could explain to them the significance of the term “actual grace”. "With all my heart," the Jesuit replied; "for I dearly love inquisitive people. Actual grace, according to our definition, 'is an inspiration of God, whereby He makes us to know His will and excites within us a desire to perform it.'" "We hold that God bestows actual grace on all men in every case of temptation; for we maintain that unless a person have, whenever tempted, actual grace to keep him from sinning, his sin, whatever it may be, can never be imputed to him. We maintain it, then, as an undeniable principle, that an action cannot be imputed as a sin, unless God bestow on us, before committing it, the knowledge of the evil that is in the action, and an inspiration inciting us to avoid it. Do you understand me now?" The Summary of Sins, by Father Bauny: "In order to sin and become culpable in the sight of God, it is necessary to know that the thing we wish to do is not good, or at least to doubt that it is- to fear or to judge that God takes no pleasure in the action which we contemplate, but forbids it; and in spite of this, to commit the deed, leap the fence, and transgress."

Written in the book of Father Annat: "He that has no thought of God, nor of his sins, nor any apprehension (that is, as he explained it, any knowledge) of his obligation to exercise the acts of love to God or contrition, has no actual grace for exercising those acts; but it is equally true that he is guilty of no sin in omitting them, and that, if he is damned, it will not be as a punishment for that omission." And a few lines below, he adds: "The same thing may be said of a culpable commission." "You see," said the monk, "how he speaks of sins of omission and of commission. Nothing escapes him.” From the writings of M. le Moine, He shows that, in order to make out action to be a sin, all these things must have passed through the mind. "1. On the one hand, God sheds abroad on the soul some measure of love, which gives it a bias toward the thing commanded; and on the other, a rebellious concupiscence solicits it in the opposite direction. 2. God inspires the soul with a knowledge of its own weakness. 3. God reveals the knowledge of the physician who can heal it. 4. God inspires it with a desire to be healed. 5. God inspires a desire to pray and solicit his assistance." "And unless all these things occur and pass through the soul," added the monk, "the action is not properly a sin, and cannot be imputed.

I was astonished at such a declaration, according to which, no sins of surprise, nor any of those committed in entire forgetfulness of God, could be imputed. Why, I see more people, beyond all comparison, justified by this ignorance and forgetfulness of God, than by grace and the sacraments! But, my dear father, are you not inspiring me with a delusive joy? Are you quite in earnest?" For, in the first place, I know people who never think of God at all; their vices have got the better of their reason; they have never known either their weakness or the physician who can cure it; they have never thought of 'desiring the health of their soul,' and still less of 'praying to God to bestow it'; so that, according to M. le Moine, they are still in the state of baptismal innocence. They have never had a thought of loving God or of being contrite for their sins. Their life is spent in a perpetual round of all sorts of pleasures, in the course of which they have not been interrupted by the slightest remorse. These excesses had led me to imagine that their perdition was inevitable; but you, father, inform me that these same excesses secure their salvation. Blessings on you, my good father, for this way of justifying people! Others prescribe painful austerities for healing the soul; but you show that souls which may be thought desperately distempered are in quite good health. What an excellent device for being happy both in this world and in the next! Ephesians 4:17-19 “So I tell you this, and insist on it in the Lord, that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking. They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts. Having lost all sensitivity, they have given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity, with a continual lust for more.”

I had always supposed that the less a man thought of God, the more he sinned; but, from what I see now, if one could only succeed in bringing himself not to think upon God at all, everything would be pure with him in all time coming. Away with your half-and-half sinners, who retain some sneaking affection for virtue! They will be damned every one of them, these semi-sinners. But commend me to your arrant sinners- hardened, unalloyed, out-and-out, thorough-bred sinners. Hell is no place for them; they have cheated the devil, purely by virtue of their devotion to his service!" I can easily believe that a man may be damned for not having good thoughts; but it never would have entered my head to imagine that any man could be subjected to that doom for not believing that all mankind must have good thoughts! But, father, I hold myself bound in conscience to disabuse you and to inform you that there are thousands of people who have no such desires- who sin without regret- who sin with delight- who make a boast of sinning. But mark, father, the dangerous consequences of your maxim. Do you not perceive what effect it may have on those libertines who like nothing better than to find out matter of doubt in religion? Psalm 119:11 “I have hidden your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you. I praise you, O LORD; teach me your decrees.”

Here my friend the Jansenist, following up my remarks, said to him: “For, how could you, without forfeiting all credit in the estimation of men, openly declare that nobody sins
without having previously the knowledge of his weakness, and of a physician, or the desire of a cure, and of asking it of God? Will it be believed, on your word, that those who are immersed in avarice, impurity, blasphemy, duelling, revenge, robbery and sacrilege, have really a desire to embrace chastity, humility, and the other Christian virtues? Can it be conceived that those philosophers who boasted so loudly of the powers of nature, knew its infirmity and its physician? Will you maintain that those who held it as a settled maxim that is not God that bestows virtue, and that no one ever asked it from him,' would think of asking it for themselves? Who can believe that the Epicureans, who denied a divine providence, ever felt any inclination to pray to God? men who said that 'it would be an insult to invoke the Deity in our necessities, as if he were capable of wasting a thought on beings like us?' In a word, how can it be imagined that idolaters and atheists, every time they are tempted to the commission of sin, in other words, infinitely often during their lives, have a desire to pray to the true God, of whom they are ignorant, that he would bestow on them virtues of which they have no conception?" 1 Peter 1:13-16 “Therefore, prepare your minds for action; be self-controlled; set your hope fully on the grace to be given you when Jesus Christ is revealed. As obedient children, do not conform to the evil desires you had when you lived in ignorance. But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; for it is written: "Be holy, because I am holy."

By Aristotle’s book Ethics it is true that he teaches, that 'in order to make an action voluntary, we must know the particulars of that action'- singula in quibus est actio. But what else does he means by that, than the circumstances of the action? "Thus you see what is the kind of ignorance that renders actions involuntary; namely, that of the particular circumstances, which is termed by divines, as you must know, ignorance of the fact. But with respect to ignorance of right- ignorance of the good or evil in an action- which is the only point in question. Aristotle writes: “All wicked men are ignorant of what they ought to do, and what they ought to avoid; and it is this very ignorance which makes them wicked and vicious. Accordingly, a man cannot be said to act involuntarily merely because he is ignorant of what it is proper for him to do in order to fulfill his duty. This ignorance in the choice of good and evil does not make the action involuntary; it only makes it vicious. The same thing may be affirmed of the man who is ignorant generally of the rules of his duty; such ignorance is worthy of blame, not of excuse. And consequently, the ignorance which renders actions involuntary and excusable is simply that which relates to the fact and its particular circumstances. In this case the person is excused and forgiven, being considered as having acted contrary to his will.” Additionally, Augustine, the prince of theologians, who has thus decided the point in the first book of his Retractations, chapter xv writes: “Those who sin through ignorance, though they sin without meaning to sin, commit the deed only because they will to commit it. And, therefore, even this sin of ignorance cannot be committed except by the will of him who commits it, though by a will which incites him to the action merely, and not to the sin; and yet the action itself is nevertheless sinful, for it is enough to constitute it such that he has done what he was bound not to do.” James 1:14-17 “Each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own will’s desires and enticed. Then, when desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, brings forth death. Do not be deceived, my beloved brethren. Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning.

So, taking a hasty leave of us, he (the Jesuit leader) said: "I shall speak about it to our fathers. They will find an answer to it.” We understood him perfectly well; and, on our being left alone, I expressed to my friend my astonishment at the subversion which this doctrine threatened to the whole system of morals. And it still does 350+ years later. Follow the Lord, your God, not man.

In Christ, Brian