I. AUGUSTINE#
Augustine is a towering figure in church history. He serves as the climax of patristic thought in Latin and was the dominant influence on the Latin Middle Ages—so much so as to be called the “Architect of the Middle Ages.” Augustine has continued to be a major influence in theology for:
Catholics, especially in his views on the church and the sacraments
Protestants, especially in regard to grace and salvation
A. Life (354–430)#
There is Augustine’s own Retractions, which shows his intellectual development, for he enumerates nearly 95 works, gives the purpose and circumstances under which each was written, and adds corrections and explanations. Of greatest importance and influence is Augustine’s Confessions, the first spiritual autobiography in Christianity.
“Confession” can mean three things, and probably means all three here:
a confession of sin
a profession of faith
a praise of God (this work is written as a long sustained prayer to God)
Confessions became a religious classic because of its penetrating analysis of sin and human nature, but it is also great source material for the psychology of religion.
Books 1–9 are autobiographical, praising God for his graces earlier in Augustine’s life despite his own sins
Book 10 is epistemological (on knowledge, time, memory, and the church)
Books 11–13 are an allegorical exegesis of Genesis 1, praising God with regard to Augustine’s present state
Augustine’s life may be divided into six periods.
1. Childhood, 354–70#
Augustine was born in Tagaste, a minor commercial city in North Africa. His mother was a Christian and later a saint, pious but superstitious and ambitious for her son. His father, Patricius, was a member of the local ruling class, a pagan but baptized just before his death. Augustine received an elementary Christian education, but was not baptized as a youth.
2. Classical period, 370–75#
During his student days Augustine was converted to philosophy in Hortensius general, but not to any particular philosophy. Cicero’s now lost was his first intellectual turning point. Enamored with classical Latin, Augustine was repelled by the grammar and style of the old Latin versions of the Bible. Early in this period he acquired a concubine, to whom he was faithful and by whom a son was born, Adeodatus (“gift from God”). After studying at Madaura and Carthage, Augustine taught at Tagaste and then in Carthage.
3. Manichaean period, 375–82#
Like many Christians, Augustine was attracted by the radical dualism and rational piety of Manichaeism, which presented itself as Christianity for intellectuals. A particularly alluring philosophy, it gave an easy solution to the problem of good and evil. He became an auditor in the religion, in contrast to the perfect observants, the elect.
Augustine, however, began to have doubts about Manichaeism and looked forward to the coming of Faustus, who was expected to answer his questions, but failed to do so. Magic and astrology then caught Augustine’s attention. The beauty of the heavens, considered a manifestation of the divine, led him away from Manichaean dualism.
He moved from North Africa with his mother to Rome. Although disappointed with Manichaeism, he had not totally broken with it. A young man on the make, he found the students in Rome better behaved than those in North Africa, but worse about paying their fees.
4. Neoplatonic period, 382–86#
Apparently he went through a brief period of skepticism, not to be surprised at, for when a complete system (like Manichaeism) begins to crumble, often one loses all faith. He was rescued from his doubts by Neoplatonism: the dualism of Manichaeism was dissolved in the spiritualism of Neoplatonism. He learned from Plotinus that all beings are good and that there are incorporeal realities.
In 384 Augustine was appointed professor of rhetoric at Milan, in part through the influence of Manichaean friends in Rome. As much out of professional curiosity as anything, he went to hear the city’s most famous public speaker, bishop Ambrose, preach. From him, Augustine heard a much more intellectually respectable interpretation of the Scriptures than he had learned growing up in North Africa.
The presbyter Simplicianus took on Augustine as his personal project. Augustine read the commentary on Paul written by Marius Victorinus, who had been converted in 355 from Neoplatonism to Christianity. Augustine underwent an intellectual conversion, but not yet a moral conversion. It took him some time to get his relationship with his concubine straightened out. When his mother finally convinced him to put her away so that a respectable marriage could be arranged, he had another companion within two weeks (his bride-to-be was still under-age).
After this failure of sexual self-control, Augustine heard about the austere lives of uneducated monks, who could control themselves in a way that the intellectual Augustine could not. Conversion for him, as for so many in this period, meant a decision for the highest type of Christianity, asceticism. The problem became now not so much one of belief as of action.
5. Early Christian period, 386–91#
Augustine’s “conversion experience” occurred in 386. While agonizing in the garden of his house over his moral failures, he heard a child in a nearby house repeat in a sing-song voice the refrain, Tolle, lege (“Pick up and read”).
There was a book of the letters of Paul on a bench, and Augustine picked it up and read, “Let us behave decently, as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and debauchery, not in dissension and jealousy. Rather, clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the sinful nature” (Romans 13:13–14).
It was as if the Lord had spoken directly to Augustine. He retired to a country estate to contemplate Christianity seriously. Augustine then enrolled for baptism, which he received from Ambrose on Easter Sunday, 387. He had found his way back to the faith of his childhood and turned his back on his oratorical career.
Augustine and his mother started back to North Africa, but Monica died at Ostia while they awaited passage. The Confessions describes in detail a kind of mystical conversion. The language is still colored with Neoplatonic elements, so the relationship of Neoplatonism and Christianity at this time in Augustine’s life is controverted. Nevertheless, Augustine had found peace and assurance that his final destination was God’s heavenly Israel.
Augustine returned to Tagaste and gathered some friends around him in a monastic community.
6. Clerical period, 391–430#
He was ordained presbyter in 391 for the catholic church at Hippo (a city largely Donatist), where he did the preaching because the bishop was Greek and could not handle Latin and Punic fluently. He became a co-bishop in 395 and within a year the sole bishop of the community.
Augustine continued a monastic community life with his clergy, which was later to be imitated by others. The Augustinian Rule is based on his ideas and kind of life. He led an extraordinarily busy episcopal career. Many hours each day were spent judging and counseling those with disputes and problems. He also had an enormous literary output.
B. Writings#
One authority cites 113 books and treatises by Augustine, close to 250 letters (some of which are equal in length to treatises), and more than 500 sermons.
Perhaps the best introduction to Augustine’s thought, in spite of some careless phrases, is his Enchiridion, or On Faith, Hope, and Love.
Faith is an exposition of the Apostles’ Creed (sections 9–113)
Hope is summed up in the Lord’s Prayer (sections 114–16)
Love is the summary of the commandments (sections 117–21)
Augustine’s On Christian Teaching (De doctrina christiana) is not so much a treatment of Christian doctrine as it is a treatment of Scripture
What it teaches (Book 1)
How it is to be interpreted (Book 2–3)
How it is to be presented (Book 4)
On Catechizing the Uninstructed (De catechizandis rudibus) gives advice on instruction to inquirers concerning the Christian faith. It provides a long and a short form of a sample instruction, which takes the form of a survey of biblical history within which the teacher can develop any points of special need by the student.
His On the Good of Marriage, although upholding the superiority of virginity to marriage, affirmed the benefits of marriage as bringing children into the world, promoting fidelity, and being an indissoluble sacrament symbolizing the union of Christ and the church. It was the textbook on the theology of marriage for the Middle Ages, as Jerome’s Against Jovinian was the textbook for celibacy.
The City of God#
Augustine is best known, after the Confessions, for his City of God, the climax of Latin Christian apologetics and the blueprint for the Middle Ages.
Written between 413 and 426, the City of God was a response to the sack of Rome in 410 by Alaric, leader of the Goths. Pagans were saying that what happened to Rome was a punishment by the gods of the Republic for forsaking their worship. The work grew from an occasional piece to become a comprehensive apologetic responding to paganism and to offer a providential philosophy of history based on the two cities, the city of the world and the heavenly city.
In the City of God the question of providence in relation to the Roman Empire proved too narrow a frame of reference for Augustine, who undertook to study the providential action of God with regard to the whole of human history.
Books 1–10 are the negative, apologetic part, an attack on paganism, dealing with such questions as: Was Christianity responsible for the fall of Rome? What spiritual power presided over the rise of Rome? Has any pagan system a serious claim against Christianity, the true spiritual religion?
Books 11–22 are the positive, philosophy of history part, explaining the origin, progress, and end of the two cities.
“City” is broadened to mean “society.”
There are two cities: of the just (of God, the celestial city) and of the wicked (of the devil, the terrestrial city).
Through their love, human beings adhere to either the one or the other, to God or to self.
The two cities are confused always and everywhere in this world and are in constant strife.
God by providence prepares for the victory of the celestial city to be consummated in the fullness of time.
God’s judgment consists in giving people what they love most, life with him or separation from him.
Augustine had earlier schematized human history as “before the law,” “under law,” “under grace,” and “in peace” — a scheme that he also applied to the stages of spiritual development in the individual believer —o r alternatively as seven periods corresponding to the creation week: five periods of Old Testament history, the period of the new covenant, and the seventh as the millennial rest of the saints after the second coming.
In the City of God, however, Augustine elaborated a view of history that involved a non-millennial eschatology. He understood the 1,000 years of Revelation 20:3, 7 as a symbolic figure for either the age of the church or the completeness of human history. This interpretation largely supplanted a literal millennial eschatology throughout the Middle Ages and beyond in much of Western Christendom.
As the Confessions was theology experienced in a soul (God’s action in the individual), the City of God was theology lived in the historical framework of humanity (God’s action in the world). Augustine treated current questions from such a noble standpoint that the work remains a classic statement of Christian philosophy, offering profound and original views on common problems of the human mind. He covers concerns that still present moral dilemmas — rape, abortion, suicide.
In stating the principles guiding Christians’ relations with human kingdoms, Augustine’s analysis often becomes practically threefold: kingdom of God, kingdom of Satan, and kingdoms of men. This led, in the medieval reading of the work, to a confusion of the two cities with church and state.
De Trinitate#
On the Trinity (De Trinitate, written 399–419) is Augustine’s major doctrinal work, in which he gave definitive Western formulation to the doctrine of the Trinity.
Books 1–7 seek to establish the doctrine according to the Scriptures and to answer objections.
Books 8–15 of On the Trinity explore analogies in human nature.
Since human beings are made in the image of God, the trinitarian nature of God is imprinted on human beings; for instance, the mind consists of three aspects: memory, intellect, and will. Developing the biblical revelation that “God is love,” Augustine hypostasizes love as the eternal relation (the Holy Spirit) between the Father (the Lover) and the Son (the Beloved).
Augustine moved beyond Eastern formulations in a significant way by giving special content to the Third Person, and by laying the basis for seeing the procession of the Holy Spirit as coming from the Father and the Son, not simply from the Father through the Son (as in Eastern formulas).
C. Controversy with Donatists#
The Donatists presented the chief ecclesiological problem of Augustine’s episcopacy, occupying his attention especially from 400 to 412. Since the time of Constantine, Donatism had been the majority church in North Africa, which was nearly all nominally Christian.
By making the holiness of the clergy the hallmark of Christianity, the Donatists stood mid-way between the early view that all Christians are saints and the later view pioneered by Augustine that the holiness of the church is in its sacraments.
Augustine’s position at first was to be moderate and amicable. He engaged in discussions in hope of converting the Donatists, and he interceded on their behalf when the imperial government sought them out. In the end, finding this method unsuccessful, Augustine moved on to the position that the government should compel them to come in, appealing to Jesus’ parable of the wedding feast (Luke 14:23).
This failure to distinguish the church from the Christianized state had very unfortunate consequences later, for this passage in Augustine was used to justify the Inquisition. Augustine himself thought the policy was justified, however, because many Donatists came into the church, and their children grew up to be faithful Catholics.
In answering the Donatist argument against the Catholic clergy and their sacraments, Augustine developed the sacramental view of ordination and the objective character of the sacraments, which prevailed in Western Christendom until the Reformation.
Augustine argued that a royal seal (signum regale), an indelible character (character indelibilis), was imprinted on one at baptism and ordination.
As long as the person intended to be baptized or ordained and the correct action was done and the proper words were spoken, a change in the person was effected.
This understanding was later described by the phrase ex opere operato, “It is worked by the work.” In other words, from the action performed the work is accomplished.
Augustine thus made ordination a permanent possession of the cleric. Sacraments administered by him continued to have validity regardless of his moral character or faithfulness to the church, because ultimately it was God who was doing the work, not the human administrator. This view made ordination no longer an organ of the community, but an individual possession that could be exercised apart from the congregation.
With regard to baptism, this interpretation meant that baptism was valid, whoever performed it, because it imparted an objective character.
Strict Donatists rebaptized Catholics who came to their churches
Catholics did not rebaptize Donatists. Instead, by the laying on of hands they reconciled them to the church.
These practices might seem to devalue Catholic baptism, and indeed Augustine acknowledged that many Catholics sought to cover all bases by receiving Donatist as well as Catholic baptism, since everybody agreed that baptism as administered by the Donatists was valid.
Augustine saved Roman catholicity by saying that the sacraments administered outside the church, although having a formal validity, became actually effective for salvation only in communion with the church. The Donatists, by maintaining their schism, appeared to be sinning against brotherly love, and although persons baptized by the Donatists did not have to be rebaptized, they could not be saved as long as they maintained their separation from the Catholic church.
A conference in Carthage in 411 assembled 284 bishops from each side. The Donatists were not impressed with Augustine’s arguments, and the effort at unity failed. The imperial tribune, however, declared against the Donatists, and an edict in 412 suppressed Donatism, but did not impose the death penalty. The movement declined but did not disappear until the coming of the Muslims in the seventh century.
D. Controversy with Pelagians#
Both Donatism and Pelagianism placed an emphasis on human perfectionism instead of divine grace, the one of the church and the other of human nature. The ultimate results of the controversies were not as Augustine intended, but his writings supported the accommodation of the Catholic church to the existing society that marked the transition from late antiquity to the early medieval world.
In the case of the Donatists, Augustine prepared for the end of a separatist view of the church in favor of a “catholic” view of the church.
In the case of the Pelagianism, he prepared for the rejection of the old ideals of the autonomy of human ethics and reason in favor of a pessimistic view of human morality without divine aid.
As Donatism was important for Augustine’s elaboration of the sacrament of ordination and the nature of the church, Pelagianism was important for his elaboration of the sacrament of baptism and the doctrine of original sin. With regard to the latter, Augustine argued that baptism imparts an indelible character: there is no more possibility of being held guilty of Adam’s sin.
Pelagianism has been regarded as the great “heresy” in the West comparable in significance to Arianism in the East. Pelagianism was akin to the Arian controversy in that both had a soteriological interest — Arianism from the divine side and Pelagianism from the human viewpoint.
Augustine began to oppose Pelagius and his associates about 412, and he wrote on the subject up to his death in 430. He went through three stages in his thinking in regard to human free will.
Related to overcoming Manichaeism, Augustine could affirm, “I will choose this day whom I will serve” (cf. Joshua 24:15). Manichees held a fatalistic view: They were the predetermined elect to see the truth. Augustine opposed them with the older Christian position that affirmed free will in respect to faith. The individual makes his or her own decision as to salvation. From Neoplatonism, Augustine borrowed the image of the attractiveness of the highest good moving the human will as a way of overcoming fatalism.
Next, Augustine could say, “It is the same God who works all things in all” (cf. 1 Corinthians 12:6), but nowhere is it said that it is God who believes all in all. “That we believe well is our affair; that we do well is his affair.” Faith is a human response, but sanctification belongs to the Holy Spirit.
Around 396 Augustine moved to a predestination position: Faith too is given by God. God “is at work in you, enabling you to will and to work” (cf. Philippians 2:13). This found expression in a statement in the Confessions to which Pelagius took great exception, “Give what you command, and command what you will”. Thus Augustine internalized and individualized the Hebrew doctrine of the chosen people. Before one comes to God, there must be a predisposition to do so, and God gives this.
Not until the later stages of the Pelagian controversy did Augustine meet first-class opponents; they pushed him to such extreme positions that the church at large at the time did not follow him.
More than fourth-century commentators on Paul, Augustine explored the conflict between law and grace, and plumbed the depth of sin as not just wrong acts but as something in human nature. The anti-Pelagian views of Augustine may be listed under the following heads.
Adam, made in the image of God, possessed lordship over creation, reason, and ability to live with Eve without lust. Even in paradise he had a fleshly body, not just the resurrection body, as the Eastern fathers said. Moreover, he had a superadded grace that enabled him to choose the good.
This grace that gave the possibility of living without sin was removed when Adam did not exercise the gift and chose sin instead. The whole human race was involved in the fall, and as a result of this original sin became a corrupt mass (massa perditionis).
The transmission of original sin to all human beings is associated with sexual generation. Augustine saw the sexual drive as a principal expression of concupiscence, which may be defined as “sinful desire,” the “lust for power,” or more simply the “weakness of the will” that resulted from the fall.
After the fall, human free will is not implemented, for the fallen nature inclines the will toward sin and away from God. The human will is moved by what delights it, and this delight escapes self-control. Hence, there is a need for the supernatural activity of grace, not only to aid the will (as the Greek fathers would have said), but also to give (restore) free will.
Grace not only turns one toward salvation, but also gives perseverance in it, hence all the means of salvation are absolutely gratuitous.
Predestination of the elect to faith, to holiness, and to eternal glory is not just God’s foreknowledge, but is based on God’s gracious choice. The non-elect are abandoned to the way of perdition, their natural state without God’s gracious intervention.
As a personal act of God, this predestination is different from ancient fatalism (which was impersonal), but it was also different from the earlier emphasis in the church on human free will. Human history may be summarized in three periods: “Able not to sin” [Adam in paradise], “not able not to sin” [the human condition after the fall], and “not able to sin” [the heavenly state].
- God’s will to save all refers to the elect, so the number of the saved is limited.
Augustine insisted on infant baptism because each person is a part of a mass of perdition. Baptism removes the guilt of original sin, but not the weakness that it imparts, hence the need for sustaining grace to impart perseverance in faith to the elect.
Pelagius felt no necessity for infant baptism, but was willing to conform to the custom of the church. Augustine used the practice of infant baptism to argue for original sin. Baptism was “for the forgiveness of sins”; since the infant had not committed any sin, though, the forgiveness must be for the sin associated with the fallen human nature. Thus Augustine found his doctrine implicit in the practice of the church, even if he could find few predecessors who taught his view of original sin and lack of free will in regard to salvation.
Grace for Augustine was more than a soteriological concept. It was also important for epistemology. Human beings are unable to see and know God, not only because of their sinfulness, but also because of their created condition and the limitations of time. Hence, revelation is necessary for knowledge of God, and grace’s effect on the reason is primarily revelatory.
The model of all revelation is the incarnation, in which Jesus Christ in humility accommodated his divine nature to the human condition. The illumination that makes knowledge possible is an infusion of divine grace. This occurs in salvation, but also in preaching and in the sacraments, whose efficacy derives from Christ acting in them.
For all of his genius and positive achievements, Augustine has had a problematic influence on Western Christianity in several areas.
Augustine’s identification of sexuality with the fall and the transmission of original sin has given an unhealthy, negative view of sexuality.
His objectification of grace, closely tied to the sacraments, provided the background for the Reformation protest that the biblical understanding of grace was different.
His emphasis in later life on individual election gave an anxiety about predestination to Western religious thought.
II. PELAGIUS AND CELESTIUS#
Pelagius was born c. 350 in Britain. His father was a physician who had accompanied the bureaucrats there and had married a Celt. Both were Christians and had high ambitions for their son, who was a commanding figure.
By 390 Pelagius was in Rome, where he had come to study law and where he was baptized. He gained influence as a moral reformer and spiritual director. Although an ascetic in reaction against the looseness of Christian life in Rome, he did not advocate a withdrawal from society.
Pelagius had a good background in the classics and the earlier Church Fathers, but he was especially well grounded in the Scriptures. There he found such ideas as free will, moral conduct, doing the will of the Father, good works, following the example of Jesus Christ, and a system of rewards and punishment.
Pelagius distinguished capacity, will, and action.
Grace applies only to the first, as the creation of God.
Will and action are altogether in human power.
So, he located grace in things external to ourselves, in the law and teaching of Jesus Christ, in forgiveness, and in the example of Christ.
Pelagius was not a theologian, much less a mystic; rather, he was a moralist. God, the Father of all justice, makes no exception of persons, and he does not demand the impossible. Human perfection is possible; therefore, it is obligatory.
Pelagius left Rome in 410 with other refugees from the Visigoths, and his ideas provoked sharp reaction in North Africa by the bold and extreme way Celestius presented them. In c. 411 the church in Carthage rejected Celestius for ordination and condemned him for his teachings.
Two points were particularly singled out:
His teaching that the sin of Adam and Eve injured themselves alone
His teaching that a newborn child is in the same state as Adam before the fall, so an infant without baptism has eternal life
Celestius and Pelagius accepted the church’s practice of infant baptism for the forgiveness of sins, but not for transmitted sin
Other teachings of Celestius that were controverted are these:
Adam was made mortal and would have died even if he had not sinned
The law as well as the gospel leads to the kingdom of heaven
Before the coming of Jesus Christ there were people who lived without sin
The whole race does not die because of the sin of Adam and Eve or rise because of the resurrection of Christ
The implication of these teachings was that a person can live without sin and observe all the commands of God.
Celestius moved to Sicily, and Pelagius departed for Palestine. Augustine began a formal refutation specifically directed at Pelagius. At a conference in Jerusalem, Pelagius successfully defended himself, but Jerome, with encouragement from Augustine, began writing his Dialogue against the Pelagians. The Eastern theologians, however, were disposed to give more attention to free will and human deeds, and a council at Diospolis (Lydda) in 415 declared Pelagius and Celestius orthodox.
The North Africans were of a different mind, and a council at Carthage in 416 called on the bishop of Rome to condemn Pelagius. Innocent I in 417 confirmed their condemnation. In response, Pelagius wrote his Libellus fidei (“Book of Faith”) to Innocent I. The brand-new bishop of Rome, Zosimus, a Greek more favorable to Pelagius, reinstated him in 417.
The angered North African bishops at a council in Carthage in 418 approved nine canons dealing with Pelagianism.
Three canons were on original sin, pronouncing anathema on those who say death is not the result of Adam’s sin, on those who say a newborn child is not condemned to eternal punishment for what was acquired from Adam, and on those who assert a distinction between the kingdom of heaven and eternal life (the Pelagians made a distinction in order to avoid the argument from John 3:5 on the necessity of baptism for newborn children to receive eternal life).
Three more canons were on grace, anathematizing those who say grace only brings remission of past sins, those who say grace aids us not in understanding (Augustine said grace enables us both to know and to will the right, but Pelagius allowed only an exterior grace), and those who say grace only enables us to do more easily what we do.
The last three canons, on sin, pronounced anathema on those who say 1 John 1:8 confesses sin only from humility; on those who say the petition in the Lord’s Prayer, “Forgive us our trespasses,” applies only to the congregation, not necessarily the individual; and on those who say this phrase out of humility, not truly.
At this point the state intervened, and the emperor Honorius in 418 banished Pelagius and his followers. Zosimus followed suit, excommunicating Pelagius and Celestius. Pelagius soon passed from the scene.
Eighteen Italian bishops, however, refused to sign Zosimus’s condemnation of Pelagius, and Julian of Eclanum assumed leadership of the Pelagian position. Julian and his associates took their stand in favor of creation, of marriage, of God’s law, of free will, and of the merits of the holy persons of old.
The Council of Ephesus in 431 in its letter to Pope Celestine confirmed the depositions of “Celestius, Pelagius, Julian” and other Pelagians, so while Alexandria was getting what it wanted in regard to Nestorius, Rome was getting what it wanted in regard to Pelagius.
III. SEMIPELAGIANISM#
Even as what was called from the strict Nicene standpoint “Semiarianism” was more nearly the general orthodoxy of Eastern thought on the Trinity, so what was called from the strict Augustinian standpoint “Semi-pelagianism” was a Western formulation of the general Christian orthodoxy on human nature.
The first phase of the Pelagian controversy was Augustine’s controversy with Pelagius and then with Julian of Eclanum. A second phase had already begun before Augustine’s death when in 427 his writings on grace and predestination reached Gaul. Monks in southern Gaul sought a middle course between what they saw as:
The extremes of Pelagianism: limiting grace to the gifts of creation and to the externals of Jesus Christ’s example and death
The extremes of Augustine: limiting human freedom and the extent of God’s will concerning salvation
John Cassian#
The leading intellectual figure in monasticism in southern Gaul was John Cassian, abbot of St. Victor in Masillia (modern Marseilles).
Born in Scythia (c. 365), Cassian joined a monastery in Bethlehem and then left to study monasticism in Egypt. After a time in Constantinople, Cassian established himself in the West. He founded twin monasteries (one for men and one for women) in Marseilles and promoted the ideals of Egyptian asceticism in this new environment. He became an important monastic theorist and organizer for other ascetic communities in the region, including the earlier foundation on the island of Lerins.
Furthermore, Cassian gave an early formulation of the four meanings of Scripture that guided biblical interpretation throughout the Middle Ages. He applied the four meanings to Jerusalem:
Historically, Jerusalem is the city of the Jews
Allegorically, it is the church of Christ
Anagogically, it is the heavenly city of God
Tropologically, it is the human soul
Each passage of Scripture could be approached in this fourfold way so as to draw out relevant teachings.
Cassian presented his own views on the relation of grace and free will in Conference 13.
He rejected Pelagianism, but he also rejected Augustine’s predestination, particularism of grace, and complete bondage of the will.
He affirmed the paradox that everything is the work of God’s grace, yet everything can be ascribed to free will.
The divine image and human freedom were weakened but not destroyed by the fall; human beings are sick, but not dead.
A person cannot help himself, but can desire help and can accept or refuse it when offered.
Either the human will or God’s grace may take the initiative in an individual’s salvation.
The stories in the Gospels of two tax collectors illustrate the possibilities. In the case of Zaccheus, the will determined itself to conversion before the Lord spoke his words of grace. In the case of Matthew, the Lord’s call and grace anticipated the will.
Theologically, Cassian affirmed that every beginning of human salvation is founded on God’s grace. But he argued that this external grace is supplemented by inner grace, which acts on mind and will to effect sanctification. He also argued that God wills the salvation of all, and that predestination is based on foreknowledge of those who accept or reject his grace.
Vincent of Lerins#
In addition to Cassian and others who articulated an alternative to Augustine’s theory of grace, there were also those conservatives who simply reacted against the novelty of Augustine’s teaching.
One such conservative, Vincent of Lerins, pointed out what were to him the illogical and blasphemous deductions from Augustine’s doctrine, namely that God was responsible for sin and damnation.
Vincent declares that we fortify ourselves in the true faith, first, by the authority of the canon of Scripture. Second, Scripture is to be interpreted by the tradition of the church, especially as expressed in the decisions of ecumenical councils. If a question has not been addressed by the councils, Scripture is to be interpreted by the agreement of the Church Fathers on the matter.
In matters of faith, then, Vincent said the “catholic church” follows the principles of “ecumenicity, antiquity, and consensus.”
Vincent argues in a circle by circumscribing such a general consensus to the “orthodox” fathers. Even if one assumes that such a consensus can be found, this rule is limited as a guide since it throws no light on the path in front, only on that which has already been traversed.
Vincent’s exposition does allow for progress in dogma: there can be development, if it does not involve change in essentials.
The first stages of the Pelagian controversy were over, but the issue was not settled. Pelagianism was rejected, but many were not satisfied with the later formulations of Augustine.
Nor did the Semipelagians carry the day, for the Augustinians had their responses to Augustine’s critics.