Between Luther and Pelagius

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Posted on 11/23/2024 9:33:07 AM PST by ebb tide

When it comes to our role in salvation, St. Augustine sits squarely between the heretical extremes of Luther and Pelagius.

Editor’s Note: This is the ninth in a series of articles on St. Augustine, one of the greatest of Church Fathers, and how his writings still apply today.

A large mug arrived in the mail the other day, around which I counted twenty or so apothegms written by St. Augustine. It was a gift, anonymously sent by someone who obviously thought I wasn’t getting enough to read from the celebrated Doctor of Grace—or, that being already familiar with Augustine, it might be a nice touch while sipping my coffee to sample a few all over again. Either way, I was grateful to get the mug and have since increased my intake of coffee.

Since most readers may not have such a coffee cup, here’s a sample tagline to suggest where I’m going with this. Think of it as the segue to what follows from the last article: “God provides the wind, but man must raise the sails.”

Neatly put, yes? Notice, too, how it all turns on a paradox, which is that while we depend upon the wind—indeed, without it nothing sails—we’re not wholly passive as if God were the only one piloting the vessel. That would leave us prey to the heresy of Luther, who taught that whatever good we do, we owe wholly to God—man’s will having lost everything in its first headlong plunge into depravity and sin. 

Even concupiscence is a sin, he argued, falsely ascribing the idea to Augustine, and never mind whether we act upon its impulses or not. Which would leave us all in a state of corruption so complete, so totalizing, that evil alone would define our condition. What then would God’s first word to the world be? Condemnation. None more sweeping, nor severe. 

At the other extreme lies the equally erroneous error of Pelagius, who held that all the good we do is ours alone. “It is the easiest thing in the world,” chirped Caelestius, one of his more exuberant disciples, “to change our will by an act of will.” In short, just say no to sin and, presto, it all goes away. And while the Pelagians will grudgingly acknowledge that, yes, it is God who first stretches out His hand, delighted as it were to dispense salvation, it is always the free individual who takes a firm hold of it. It is not God, therefore, who remains at the helm but the self-directing-self whose adroit captaincy of the ship will keep it all afloat. His destiny is in his own hands.

Rather like two poisonous peas in the same pod, I’d say. Or, as Cardinal Journet will put it in a trenchant little study of the subject, to wit, The Meaning of Grace: 

Who, then, does the good act? “Both man and God together,” he concludes. It is as perfect a symbiosis as the world has ever seen. Two wills coming together, each concerting his own distinct freedom: the infinite God on one side, the finite man on the other, orchestrating together the world’s salvation.  

Augustine surely had the sense of it when, in a sentence which perfectly sums up the Church’s long-settled tradition on the matter, he pronounced as follows: “God, who created thee without thee, will not justify thee without thee.”

Only we must, of course, give God top billing, knowing that the performance decisively depends on Him. Although, paraphrasing Chesterton, He takes such an intense interest in all of His secondary characters. Which simply means, once again, that none of us will ever control the wind. Nor is it up to us to try and predict its movements as if we were God’s meteorologist.  

Isn’t there a text somewhere in Scripture telling us this? There is, actually, and it’s in the Gospel of St. John, where Jesus speaks to Nicodemus, who has come under cover of darkness to learn the truth about Christ, telling him: “The wind blows where it wills, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know whence it comes or wither it goes; so it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit” (John 3:8).   

Not surprisingly, Nicodemus is wholly mystified by this, not yet having been born of the Spirit. Nor is he less mystified by what follows, although it is sublimely beautiful. The point is that between God and ourselves there exists so great a distance, so stark a disproportion, that none of us will ever succeed in leaping across that gap. Not on our own dime, we won’t. It is an abyss too deep for mere mortals to plumb. Not even the saints could carry themselves to the other side. Indeed, they are especially aware of the sheer incommensurability between the two. How does Christ put it to Catherine of Siena? “I am He who is. You are she who is not.”   

Which is why, if I may get back to Augustine’s metaphor for a moment, because we remain utterly dependent upon the wind—blowing the boat, as it were, safely across the storm-tossed sea—it is not our business to presume upon its movements. Or even to take credit for having the wit or the will to raise the sail ourselves to receive it. “When God crowns our efforts,” Augustine reminds us, “he crowns his own gifts.” Or, to quote another saint, one perhaps greater even than the holy man from Hippo, “What have you that you did not receive? If then you received it, why do you boast as if it were not a gift” (1 Corinthians 4:7). Or old Isaiah for that matter: 

Nevertheless, it is up to us, it being our unique and special lookout, not to let go if, in the happy event God graciously does hold out His hand, He does give us the grace to take hold of it. The part we play is not at all negligible. We may not be the central character in the story; yet, to ensure the best possible outcome we really must try and do our part. To that degree, we are certainly indispensable to the story God is telling. “God never asks the impossible of us,” says Augustine, “but he does expect us to do what we can, and to ask for help to do what is beyond our means.”  

Yes, and isn’t that just the rub? Here we touch upon a theme so dear to Augustine, so central to his life and thought, which turns on what Peter Brown has described as his “therapeutic attitude” to the whole vexed question of the relation between grace and freedom. It is one which we dare not solve in a facile or slapdash way. It is the idea, says Brown, “that we depend for our ability to determine ourselves, on areas that we cannot determine.” And if we are so determined that it is God whom we desire, God whom we most long to love, then we shall need great dollops of grace to pull that off. 

Tout est grace! (All is grace!), Therese of Lisieux cries out as she lays dying. Like Augustine before her, she too is a Doctor of Grace.

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1 posted on 11/23/2024 9:33:07 AM PST by ebb tide

To: Al Hitan; Fedora; irishjuggler; Jaded; kalee; markomalley; miele man; Mrs. Don-o; ...

2 posted on 11/23/2024 9:35:14 AM PST by ebb tide (I don't engage with habitual liars)

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