is true that St. Augustine stated, "All can be saved if they wish," and in his Retractations, he emphatically confirmed this assertion: "It is true, entirely true, that all men can, if they wish" 2. He also said in his sermons, "It depends on you to be elect" and "Who are the elect? You, if you wish it" 2. These statements highlight the role of human will and cooperation with grace.
Augustine's teaching on grace involves two moments: operative grace (gratia operans), through which God gives the good will itself to perform good acts, and cooperative grace (gratia cooperans), through which God cooperates with the human free will in the actual performance of good 4. This means that while God's grace initiates and enables the good will, human cooperation is still essential 6.
I am to give up and let go of my need to understand predestination. God knew all before the creation our responses. He gives all of Grace sufficient to choose him. I must want it.
But, you will say, according to Augustine, the lists of the elect and reprobate are closed. Now if the nonelect can gain heaven, if all the elect can be lost, why should not some pass from one list to the other? You forget the celebrated explanation of Augustine: When God made His plan, He knew infallibly, before His choice, what would be the response of the wills of men to His graces. If, then, the lists are definitive, if no one will pass from one series to the other, it is not because anyone cannot (on the contrary, all can), it is because God knew with infallible knowledge that no one would wish to.
Thus I cannot effect that God should destine me to another series of graces than that which He has fixed, but, with this grace, if I do not save myself it will not be because I am not able, but because I do not wish to.
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