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Grace and Free Will According to Pascal

Posted by Nathanael Szobody on

To save his elect, God sent Jesus Christ to satisfy his justice, and to merit the redemptive grace of his mercy, the medicinal grace, the grace of Jesus Christ, which is nothing other than a richness and a delight in the law of God, poured out in the heart by the Holy Spirit, which, not only equaling, but even surpassing the desires of the flesh, fills the will with a greater delight in righteousness than in what the desire of the flesh offers in evil, and that in this manner the free will, charmed by the sweetness and pleasures that the Holy Spirit inspires within it more than the attractions of sin, unfailingly chooses by itself the law of God for no other reason than that it is there alone that it finds more satisfaction and there experiences its blessedness and joy.

In such a way those to whom it pleased God to extend this grace, are themselves moved unfailingly by their own free will to prefer God over created things. And this is why we say invariably that the free will is moved to do so on its own by means of this grace, for it does in fact move to do so, or that grace carries the free will to do so, for whenever grace is given the free will is unfailingly moved to do so.

— Blaise Pascal (my translation)

Seduced by grace? It’s like Piper on steroids!