Without Me, you can do nothing - St Augustine

Without Me, you can do nothing

The Pelagians think they have good grounds for accusing us of false teaching when we say, ‘God inspires an unwilling and resisting person with the desire,’ not for any very great good, but ‘even for imperfect good.’ Possibly, then, they themselves are keeping open a place for grace (at least in some sense) by thinking as follows: a person can have the desire for good without grace, but only for imperfect good; he could not easily have the desire for perfect good even with grace, but without grace he could not desire perfect good at all.

But actually, even this view sees God’s grace as being given according to our virtues (which Pelagius, in the church synod in the East, condemned, merely from the fear of being condemned). For if the desire for good begins from ourselves without God’s grace, virtue itself will have begun — and to this virtue, the assistance of grace then comes, as if it were owed. Thus God’s grace is not bestowed freely, but is given according to our virtue. However, in order that he might provide a reply to the future Pelagius, the Lord does not say, ‘Without Me, it is with difficulty that you can do anything,’ but He says, ‘Without Me, you can do nothing’ (Jn.15:5). And, that He might also provide an answer to these future heretics, in that very same Gospel saying He does not say, ‘Without me you can bring nothing to perfection,’ but ‘do’ nothing. For if He had said ‘bring nothing to perfection’, they might say that God’s help is necessary, not for beginning good, which rests with ourselves, but for perfecting it. But let them hear the apostle too. For when the Lord says, ‘Without me you can do nothing,’ in this one word He comprehends both the beginning and the ending. The apostle, indeed, as if he were an expounder of the Lord’s saying, distinguishes both [beginning and ending] very clearly when he says, ‘Because He who has begun a good work in you will perfect it even to the day of Christ Jesus’ (Phil.1:6).

Against Two Letters of the Pelagians, 2:18