Post by pieter on Nov 17, 2008 8:49:49 GMT -7
History of Calvinist-Arminian debate
Dispute between Dutch Protestants in the early seventeenth century
Ever since Augustine of Hippo's battle with the Pelagians in the fifth century, there has been dispute, particularly in the western Church, about theological cornerstones of soteriology - including depravity, predestination, and atonement. The Calvinist-Arminian debate is most well-known as a dispute between Dutch Protestants in the early seventeenth century and a current disagreement amongst Protestants (albeit mostly conservative ones, as liberal mainline Protestantism has generally de-emphasized concerns about human salvation for several generations now).
Augustine and Pelagius
Pelagius was a British monk who journeyed to Rome around 400 AD and was appalled at the lax behavior within churches. To combat this lack of holiness, he preached a Gospel that began with justification through faith alone (it was actually Pelagius, not Luther, who first added the word alone to Paul's phrase) but finished through human effort and morality. He had read Augustine's Confessions and believed it to be a fatalistic and pessimistic view of human nature. Pelagius' followers, including Caelestius, went farther than their teacher and removed justification through faith, setting up the morality- and works-based salvation now known as Pelagianism. It should be mentioned that the only historical evidence of the teachings of Pelagius or his followers is found through the writings of his two strongest opponents — Augustine and Jerome.
In response to Pelagius, Augustine adopted a theological system that included not only original sin (which Pelagius denied), but also predestination, limited atonement, and irresistible grace. Critics maintain that part of Augustine's philosophy might have stemmed from his expertise in Greek philosophy, particularly Platonism and Manichaeism, which maintained a very high view of a man's spirit and very low view of a man's body. Against the Pelagian notion that man can do everything right, he taught the notion that man can do nothing right. Thus, he reasoned, man cannot even accept the offer of salvation — it must be God who chooses for himself individuals to bring to salvation.
A group of Italian bishops, led by Julian, defended the Pelagian view against the Augustinian concept of predestination but were rejected by Pope Innocent I at the Council of Ephesus in 431. Later a monastic movement in Southern Gaul (modern-day France) also sought to explain predestination in light of God's foreknowledge, but a flurry of writings from Augustine (Grace and Free Will, Correction and Grace, The Predestination of the Saints and The Gift of Perseverance) helped maintain the papal authority of his doctrines.
The Middle Ages
Augustine’s teaching on grace was considered the touchstone of orthodoxy within the western church throughout the Middle Ages. Nevertheless, within an Augustinian context, theologians continued to debate the precise nature of God and man’s participation in salvation, as well as attempting to work out a place for the church’s emerging system of sacraments in the overall scheme of salvation.
Thomas Aquinas, the most influential Catholic theologian of the Middle Ages, taught that, from man’s fallen state, there were three steps to salvation:
infusio gratiae - God infuses grace into the human soul - the Christian now has faith and, with it, the ability to do good - this step is entirely God’s work and is not done by man, and once a man has faith, he can never entirely lose it - however, faith alone is not enough for salvation;
fides caritate formata - with man’s free will restored, man must now do his best to do good works in order to have a “faith formed by charity”; and then
meritum de condigno - God then judges and awards eternal life on the basis of these good works which Aquinas called man’s “condign merit.”
Aquinas believed that by this system, he had managed to reconcile Ephesians 2:8 (“By grace are ye saved through faith, and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God”) and James 2:20 (“faith without works is dead”) and 2:24 (“by works a man is justified and not by faith only”), and had provided an exposition of the Bible's teaching on salvation compatible with Augustine's teachings.
A second stream of medieval thought, commonly referred to as the Ockhamists after William of Ockham and also including Duns Scotus and Gabriel Biel rejected Aquinas’ system as destroying man’s free will. The Ockhamists argued that if a man loved God simply because of “infused grace”, then man did not love God freely. They argued that before a man received an infusio gratiae, man must do his best in a state of nature (i.e. based on man’s reason and inborn moral sense). They argued that just as God awards eternal life on the basis of man’s condign merit for doing his best to do good works after receiving faith as a gift from God, so too, the original infusio gratiae was given to man on the basis of meritum de congruo “congruent merit”, a reward for man’s doing his best in a state of nature. (Unlike "condign merit", which is fully deserved by man, "congruent merit" is not fully deserved, and includes a measure of grace on God's part. Congruent merit is therefore also sometimes called "semimerit". According to the Ockhamists, a gracious God awards an individual with congruent merit when he or she does the best that he or she is able to do (facere quod in se est).)
Aquinas’ followers, commonly referred to as the Thomists, accused the Ockhamists of Pelagianism for basing the infusio gratiae on man’s works. The Ockhamists defended themselves from charges of Pelagianism by arguing that, in the Ockhamist system, God was not bound to award the infusio gratiae on the basis of congruent merit; rather, God’s decision to award the infusio gratiae on the basis of congruent merit was ex liberalitate Dei, an entirely gracious act on God’s part.
Martin Luther’s condemnation of “justification by works” clearly condemned Ockhamism. Some proponents of ecumenism argue that the Thomist view of salvation is not opposed to Luther’s view of grace, and, since Ockhamism was rejected as semi-Pelagian by the Catholic Church at the Council of Trent, theology of salvation need not pose a bar to Protestant-Catholic reunion. (The major streams of modern Catholic thought on the theology of salvation are Thomism and Molinism, a theology developed by Jesuit theologian Luis Molina in the 16th century and also held today by some Protestants such as William Lane Craig and Alvin Plantinga.)
However, since the Catholic Church’s rejection of Jansenism in the bull Unigenitus, it has been clear that Calvinism could not be accommodated within Catholicism. Arminianism, on the other hand, while it might not square entirely with Catholic theologies of salvation, probably could be accommodated within the Catholic Church, a fact which Arminianism’s Protestant opponents have often pointed out. (Augustus Toplady, for example, famously claimed that Arminianism was the “Road to Rome.”)
Many Protestants believe that Thomism’s requirement of man doing his best in a state of grace in order to earn condign merit is a form of “justification by works” and is therefore semi-Pelagian. They therefore believe that all Catholic salvation theology is semi-Pelagian, and, as such heretical, or at least semi-heretical.
Dispute between Dutch Protestants in the early seventeenth century
Ever since Augustine of Hippo's battle with the Pelagians in the fifth century, there has been dispute, particularly in the western Church, about theological cornerstones of soteriology - including depravity, predestination, and atonement. The Calvinist-Arminian debate is most well-known as a dispute between Dutch Protestants in the early seventeenth century and a current disagreement amongst Protestants (albeit mostly conservative ones, as liberal mainline Protestantism has generally de-emphasized concerns about human salvation for several generations now).
Augustine and Pelagius
Pelagius was a British monk who journeyed to Rome around 400 AD and was appalled at the lax behavior within churches. To combat this lack of holiness, he preached a Gospel that began with justification through faith alone (it was actually Pelagius, not Luther, who first added the word alone to Paul's phrase) but finished through human effort and morality. He had read Augustine's Confessions and believed it to be a fatalistic and pessimistic view of human nature. Pelagius' followers, including Caelestius, went farther than their teacher and removed justification through faith, setting up the morality- and works-based salvation now known as Pelagianism. It should be mentioned that the only historical evidence of the teachings of Pelagius or his followers is found through the writings of his two strongest opponents — Augustine and Jerome.
In response to Pelagius, Augustine adopted a theological system that included not only original sin (which Pelagius denied), but also predestination, limited atonement, and irresistible grace. Critics maintain that part of Augustine's philosophy might have stemmed from his expertise in Greek philosophy, particularly Platonism and Manichaeism, which maintained a very high view of a man's spirit and very low view of a man's body. Against the Pelagian notion that man can do everything right, he taught the notion that man can do nothing right. Thus, he reasoned, man cannot even accept the offer of salvation — it must be God who chooses for himself individuals to bring to salvation.
A group of Italian bishops, led by Julian, defended the Pelagian view against the Augustinian concept of predestination but were rejected by Pope Innocent I at the Council of Ephesus in 431. Later a monastic movement in Southern Gaul (modern-day France) also sought to explain predestination in light of God's foreknowledge, but a flurry of writings from Augustine (Grace and Free Will, Correction and Grace, The Predestination of the Saints and The Gift of Perseverance) helped maintain the papal authority of his doctrines.
The Middle Ages
Augustine’s teaching on grace was considered the touchstone of orthodoxy within the western church throughout the Middle Ages. Nevertheless, within an Augustinian context, theologians continued to debate the precise nature of God and man’s participation in salvation, as well as attempting to work out a place for the church’s emerging system of sacraments in the overall scheme of salvation.
Thomas Aquinas, the most influential Catholic theologian of the Middle Ages, taught that, from man’s fallen state, there were three steps to salvation:
infusio gratiae - God infuses grace into the human soul - the Christian now has faith and, with it, the ability to do good - this step is entirely God’s work and is not done by man, and once a man has faith, he can never entirely lose it - however, faith alone is not enough for salvation;
fides caritate formata - with man’s free will restored, man must now do his best to do good works in order to have a “faith formed by charity”; and then
meritum de condigno - God then judges and awards eternal life on the basis of these good works which Aquinas called man’s “condign merit.”
Aquinas believed that by this system, he had managed to reconcile Ephesians 2:8 (“By grace are ye saved through faith, and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God”) and James 2:20 (“faith without works is dead”) and 2:24 (“by works a man is justified and not by faith only”), and had provided an exposition of the Bible's teaching on salvation compatible with Augustine's teachings.
A second stream of medieval thought, commonly referred to as the Ockhamists after William of Ockham and also including Duns Scotus and Gabriel Biel rejected Aquinas’ system as destroying man’s free will. The Ockhamists argued that if a man loved God simply because of “infused grace”, then man did not love God freely. They argued that before a man received an infusio gratiae, man must do his best in a state of nature (i.e. based on man’s reason and inborn moral sense). They argued that just as God awards eternal life on the basis of man’s condign merit for doing his best to do good works after receiving faith as a gift from God, so too, the original infusio gratiae was given to man on the basis of meritum de congruo “congruent merit”, a reward for man’s doing his best in a state of nature. (Unlike "condign merit", which is fully deserved by man, "congruent merit" is not fully deserved, and includes a measure of grace on God's part. Congruent merit is therefore also sometimes called "semimerit". According to the Ockhamists, a gracious God awards an individual with congruent merit when he or she does the best that he or she is able to do (facere quod in se est).)
Aquinas’ followers, commonly referred to as the Thomists, accused the Ockhamists of Pelagianism for basing the infusio gratiae on man’s works. The Ockhamists defended themselves from charges of Pelagianism by arguing that, in the Ockhamist system, God was not bound to award the infusio gratiae on the basis of congruent merit; rather, God’s decision to award the infusio gratiae on the basis of congruent merit was ex liberalitate Dei, an entirely gracious act on God’s part.
Martin Luther’s condemnation of “justification by works” clearly condemned Ockhamism. Some proponents of ecumenism argue that the Thomist view of salvation is not opposed to Luther’s view of grace, and, since Ockhamism was rejected as semi-Pelagian by the Catholic Church at the Council of Trent, theology of salvation need not pose a bar to Protestant-Catholic reunion. (The major streams of modern Catholic thought on the theology of salvation are Thomism and Molinism, a theology developed by Jesuit theologian Luis Molina in the 16th century and also held today by some Protestants such as William Lane Craig and Alvin Plantinga.)
However, since the Catholic Church’s rejection of Jansenism in the bull Unigenitus, it has been clear that Calvinism could not be accommodated within Catholicism. Arminianism, on the other hand, while it might not square entirely with Catholic theologies of salvation, probably could be accommodated within the Catholic Church, a fact which Arminianism’s Protestant opponents have often pointed out. (Augustus Toplady, for example, famously claimed that Arminianism was the “Road to Rome.”)
Many Protestants believe that Thomism’s requirement of man doing his best in a state of grace in order to earn condign merit is a form of “justification by works” and is therefore semi-Pelagian. They therefore believe that all Catholic salvation theology is semi-Pelagian, and, as such heretical, or at least semi-heretical.