1. Sacred Scripture and the Fathers, St. Augustine included, admit the possibility of performing naturally good, though unmeritorious, works (_opera steriliter bona_) in the state of unbelief; and their teaching is in perfect conformity with right reason.
a) Our Divine Lord Himself says:(139) “If you love them that love you, what reward(140) shall you have? Do not even the publicans this? And if you salute(141) your brethren only, what do you more? Do not also the heathens(142) this?” The meaning plainly is: To salute one’s neighbor is an act of charity, a naturally good deed, common even among the heathens, and one which, not being done from a supernatural motive, deserves no supernatural reward. But this does not by any means imply that to salute one’s neighbor is sinful.
St. Paul(143) says: “For when the gentiles,(144) who have not the law,(145) do by nature(146) those things that are of the law; these having not the law are a law to themselves: who shew the work of the law written in their hearts.” By “gentiles” the Apostle evidently means genuine heathens, not converts from paganism to Christianity, and hence the meaning of the passage is that the heathens who know the natural law embodied in the Decalogue only as a postulate of reason, are by nature(147) able to “do those things that are of the law,”(148) _i.e._ observe at least some of its precepts. That St. Paul did not think the gentiles capable of observing the whole law without the aid of grace appears from his denunciation of their folly, a little further up in the same Epistle: “Because that, when they knew God, they have not glorified him as God, or given thanks; but became vain in their thoughts, and their foolish heart was darkened, etc.,”(149) and also from the hypothetic form of Rom. II, 14 in the original Greek text: “Ὅταν γὰρ ἔθνη ... τὰ τοῦ νόμου ποιῶσιν—_Si quando gentes, ... quae legis sunt, faciunt._”(150)
In Rom. XIV, 23: “For all that is not faith is sin,”(151) a text often quoted against our thesis, “faith” does not mean the theological habit of faith, but “conscience,”(152) as the context clearly shows.(153)
b) The teaching of the Fathers is in substantial harmony with Sacred Scripture.
α) Thus St. Jerome, speaking of the reward which Yahweh gave to Nabuchodonosor for his services against Tyre,(154) says: “The fact that Nabuchodonosor was rewarded for a good work shows that even the gentiles in the judgment of God are not passed over without a reward when they have performed a good deed.”(155) In his commentary on St. Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians the same holy Doctor observes: “Many who are without the faith and have not the Gospel of Christ, yet perform prudent and holy actions, _e.g._ by obeying their parents, succoring the needy, not oppressing their neighbors, not taking away the possessions of others.”(156)