Augustine of Hippo and Martin Luther on Original Sin and Justification of the Sinner 9783666550638, 9783525550632, 9783647550633

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Refo500 Academic Studies Edited by Herman J. Selderhuis In Co-operation with Günter Frank (Bretten), Bruce Gordon (New Haven), Ute LotzHeumann (Tucson), Mathijs Lamberigts (Leuven), Barbara Mahlmann-Bauer (Bern), Tarald Rasmussen (Oslo), Johannes Schilling (Kiel), Günther Wassilowsky (Linz), Siegrid Westphal (Osnabrück), David M. Whitford (Trotwood) Volume 15

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Jairzinho Lopes Pereira

Augustine of Hippo and Martin Luther on Original Sin and Justification of the Sinner

Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht

© 2013, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht GmbH & Co. KG, Göttingen ISBN Print: 9783525550632 — ISBN E-Book: 9783647550633

Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data available online: http://dnb.d-nb.de. ISBN 978-3-525-55063-2 ISBN 978-3-647-55063-3 (E-Book) Ó 2013, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht GmbH & Co. KG, Göttingen/ Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht LLC, Bristol, CT, U.S.A. www.v-r.de All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without prior written permission from the publisher. Printing and binding: CPI Buch Bücher.de GmbH, Birkach Printed in Germany

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For Alex and Lore who are sunrise and warmth and deserve better

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Contents

Foreword by Risto Saarinen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

11

Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Abstract . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1. Why Augustine and Luther? Why were Original Sin and justification chosen as the topics of this study? . . . . . . . 2. Tasks, sources and methodological considerations . . . . . 3. The outline of the study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4. Previous Research and the new contributions of this study

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21 23 25 27

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Part I: Original Sin and the development of Saint Augustine’s theology 1. Augustine’s thought regarding Original Sin: concept and nature 1.1 Preliminary remarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.2 How does one explain the presence of sin in the creation of a good God? A key-concept: order (ordo) . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.3 Original Sin, the primitive inordinatio amoris: three key-concepts: order (ordo), love (amor) and will (voluntas) . 1.4 On the gravity of Original Sin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.5 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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61 71 77

2. Inherited sin and its role in the Augustinian doctrine of salvation 2.1 Early writings (previous to 396) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.1.1 The first signs of the break with the early paradigm . . . 2.2 Original Sin and the shaping of the Augustinian soteriological framework. The place of Ad Simplicianum . . . . . . . . . . .

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2.3 The emerging soteriology of Ad Simplicianum and the patristic tradition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.4 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3. Original Sin and Augustine’s doctrine of salvation in the confrontation with Julian of Aeclanum (418 – 430) . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1 Confronting Julian: Preliminary remarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2 Letter 194 to Sixtus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3 Natura vitiata and massa damnata: Original Sin and Augustinian soteriology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3.1 Necessitas peccandi: theological background . . . . . . . . . 3.3.2 Natura vitiata and free will. The loss of libertas . . . . . . . 3.3.3 The crucial role of Romans 7:14 – 25 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.4 Grave iugum super filios Adam: human misery as proof of Original Sin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.5 The case of suffering of infants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.6 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4. Ante omne meritum est gratia: Grace, faith and merit in the Augustinian doctrine of justification (it is all about grace) . . . . . . 4.1 Reconciliation in Christ: Original Sin and the theological background of the Augustinian doctrine of justification . . . . . . 4.2 Spiritum sanctum, qui datus nobis est: On the justifying grace in De Spiritu et littera . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.3 Does Augustine teach justification by faith? . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.4 Justification, a God-driven process. A key word: grace . . . . . . . 4.5 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

113 121

129 129 140 147 147 164 175 195 210 216

219 219 225 232 243 260

Part II: Understanding the rising of a Reformer. Young Luther’s use and reading of Augustine 1. Augustine in the context of Luther’s call for reformation of the doctrine of the Church . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.1 The root of the problem: facientibus quod in se est Deus non denegat gratiam . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.2 A decisive work: Lectures on Romans (1515 – 1516). Augustine and Luther’s theological reforming programme in context . . . 1.3 With Augustine… . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.4 … for a cause: a Church free of the remnants of Pelagianism .

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283 293 307

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2. Original Sin and justification in Luther’s early Pauline commentaries. Interpretation and use of Augustine’s anti-Pelagian theology . . . . . 2.1 Preliminary remarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2 Hereditatis paterne ex Adam: Original Sin and Luther’s portray of the fallen mankind (with particular emphasis on Rom. 5:12 – 19 and 7:14 – 25) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.3 Original Sin and the curvitas of human nature . . . . . . . . . . . 3. Justification by faith: theological and exegetical bases . . . . . . . . . 3.1 Iustificatio Dei, iustificatio nostri: justification as the belief in the Word of God . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2 Faith . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3 On the phrase “iustitia Dei” in Rom. 1:17 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.4 Justification of the sinner : a divine arbitrary decision . . . . . . . 3.5 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4. Approaching the issue of simul iustus et peccator : Luther’s theological anthropology and the doctrine of justification by faith . . 4.1 Simul iustus et peccator. The place of consent and sin . . . . . . . 4.2 Peccatores de facto, iustos in spe: did Luther teach an exclusively forensic justification? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.3 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5. Confessio, humilitas and Luther’s doctrine of justification by faith alone . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.1 Justification as an act of confession . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.2 Adhaesio verbi Dei: defining the justifying faith . . . . . . . . 5.3 Justification through humility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.4 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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324 336 343 343 351 356 361 366

367 367 380 395

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399 399 406 409 420

6. Law, Gospel and grace in Luther’s doctrine of justification . . . . . 6.1 The problem of Natural Law (Rom. 2:12 – 16) . . . . . . . . . . . 6.2 Law, Gospel and grace in Luther’s doctrine of justification . . . 6.3 The doctrine of predestination and young Luther’s approach to salvation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.4 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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425 425 434

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452 461

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Contents

General conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

463

Abbreviations and Bibliography . . . . . . . . A. Abbreviations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . B. Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1. Sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.1 Augustine’s works . . . . . . . 1.2 Classical and Mediaeval authors 2. Translations . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3. Studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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477 477 478 478 478 479 480 481

Index rerum (of terms concepts) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

493

Index Nominum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

499

Index to Scripture passages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Foreword by Risto Saarinen

The relationship between Augustine and Luther belongs to the perennial topics of theology. In recent years, the scholarship has focused on the different “Augustinianisms” available in late medieval and early modern theology. Thanks to the scholarship of Adolar Zumkeller, Leif Grane and Heiko Oberman, among many others, we can nowadays identify several different currents of reading Augustine in the Reformation period. This valuable scholarship has not, however, succeeded in locating Luther’s theological origins to a particular school of Augustinian thought. Luther is influenced by Gregor of Rimini, Pierre d’Ailly and Johannes Staupitz, but he is also reading Augustine very originally and to suit his own purposes. Without denying the value of recent scholarship, we may therefore ask whether the immediate effect of reading Augustine’s texts is, finally, more significant to the emergence of Luther’s theology than the somewhat vague background of alleged late medieval Augustinianisms. Should today’s scholarship again pay more attention to Luther’s immediate reading of Augustine, leaving the influence of late medieval currents in the background? Such considerations led me to supervise the dissertation of Jairzinho Lopes Pereira, a young scholar from Cape Verde who, after studying Augustine at the University of Coimbra, started his postgraduate studies at the University of Helsinki. Knowing that Mr. Lopes Pereira had a strong background in Augustine but was a newcomer to Reformation studies, I thought that he would be a suitable person to ask the question of the immediate relationship between Augustine and young Luther regarding the issues of sin and justification. The present book is a result of this exercise. In addition to its proper research theme, the work witnesses how a young Roman Catholic scholar, coming from Latin (rather than German or English) academic tradition, familiarizes himself with the theology of Luther. A valuable feature of this book is the link that the Latin research tradition, strong in Augustine but less advanced in Reformation theology, establishes with the prevailing currents of Luther studies. Between 2007 and 2012, I had the privilege of supervising two young scholars

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Foreword by Risto Saarinen

who know much more about Augustine than I do myself. The other one is Timo Nisula, whose dissertation Augustine and the Functions of Concupiscence is now also available in English (Vigiliae Christianae Supplements 116, Brill 2012). My initial expectation was that the Roman Catholic scholar Lopes Pereira would defend a more optimistic view of the Christian’s struggle with sin than the Lutheran theologian Nisula would. In reality, the result is quite the opposite. Nisula concludes that even the late anti-Julianic Augustine has a robust conscience and remains confident that the sin can be to some extent overcome already in this life. Lopes Pereira, on the other hand, claims that the young Luther is a true follower of late Augustine and that both teach permanent sinfulness and the lack of human freedom. My own position in this matter is somewhere between these two young scholars; I have attempted to lay it out briefly in my Weakness of Will in Renaissance and Reformation Thought (Oxford 2011). While it cannot be generally recommended for young scholars to oppose their Doktorvater, I have in this case been very glad to have students and co-workers who courageously develop their own position and are not satisfied with the received wisdom of their teachers. Dr. Lopes Pereira’s study also strengthens my conviction that the young monk Luther was not merely continuing some less known traditions of late medieval Augustinianism but that he initiated a new Augustinian theological current. The driving force of this new current was Luther’s first-hand acquaintance with Augustine’s anti-Pelagian and anti-Julianic texts.

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Acknowledgements

To Augustine of Hippo is often attributed the saying “The World is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page”. In the last five years my research took me to several countries. If each of these countries is the equivalent of a few pages of a book, I am glad to say I had the privilege to meet numerous people who made these pages wonderful and unforgettable ones. Many people have helped, encouraged, guided, taught and inspired me throughout these years of research which now result in the present dissertation. To all of them I owe my deep gratitude. The trip has been long! It was in 2004, during the third year of my studies at the University of Coimbra (Portugal) that I started conceiving the possibility of research on Saint Augustine and Martin Luther in the context of a post-graduate programme. I shared my plans with Professor M‚rio A. S. de Carvalho. In him I found full support and all the motivation one can ask for. Professor Carvalho promptly guided me in the task of writing the research project from which the present dissertation was developed. His kindness and willingness to help and guide; together with his refined personality and rare academic and pedagogical skills inspired me then even as they do now. More than the strict academic issues, with Professor Carvalho I learned that being a good teacher implies being a good person, one who pays attention to those around us. For this ethical reference, too, I am most grateful. In 2006 the adventure started. After a short passage to Paris, I arrived in Helsinki. There I met my supervisor, Risto Saarinen. Only his excellent guidance enabled me to overcome most of my limitations as a beginner. I run out of words to express my gratitude for Professor Saarinen’s readiness in helping and guiding me. This long trip was also funded by several institutions. My gratitude goes to Fundażo Calouste Gulbenkian which funded my trip to Paris in summer 2006 in order to prepare the research plan. My gratitude extends to Fundażo para a CiÞncia e Tecnologia, Helsingin Yliopiston Tiedesäätiö (Research Foundation of the University of Helsinki) and Suomen Kulttuurirahasto (Finnish Cultural

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Acknowledgements

Foundation) for funding the research the result of which I now present. Among the institutions I want to thank are also the Lestadion residence in Helsinki which sheltered me for more than 2 years; the directory boards of Martin Luther Bund in Erlangen; as well as those of the residences of Institut für Ökumenische Forschung in Strassbourg and Paus Adrianus VI College, in Leuven. Throughout these years I have enjoyed the support and encouragement of many people in different Universities and Centre of Study. I would like to give my special thanks to my esteemed teacher Maria Helena Coelho (University of Coimbra) with whom I took my first steps in the study of Augustine (by then I was studying the Augustinian monks of Santa Cruz de Coimbra and Saint Augustine’s doctrines on death and suicide). My special thanks go to Professor Isabelle Bochet (Institut des Êtudes Augustiniennes/Institut Catholic de Paris); Professor Jacques-NoÚl PÊRðS (Institut Protestant de Th¦ologie de Paris); Professor Theodor Dieter (Institut für Ökumenische Forschung, Strasbourg); Professor Berndt Hamm (Faculty of Theology of Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg); and Professor Andreas Grote (Zentrum für Augustinus-Forschung in Würzburg). A special note here goes to Professor Mathijs Lamberigts (Katolieke Universiteit Leuven) who patiently and indefatigably read my manuscripts regarding Augustine over and over again, and dedicated a considerable time to discussing this work with me. I cannot imagine the present study without his suggestions and corrections. I would also like to thank Sister Timothy Prokes, FSE, who dedicated a considerable time to revising the manuscript. Due to the commitment of this noble soul my text reached a clarity that it would never have reached if it was only my feeble knowledge of English language on display. The authors I am occupied with in the present study might promptly accuse me of Pelagianism, but I cannot help feeling that Sister Prokes’ noble gesture towards me will not go unnoticed in the eyes of the Creator of us all. Any errors and mistakes, however, which may have been added to the text after her language revision, are my own. My words of gratitude also go to Professor Sameli Juuntunen who supervised my work in my first year in Helsinki, and my colleague Aaro Rytkönen for his dedication in solving all the bureaucratic problems regarding my trip to Germany. I should also record my words of gratitude to my godmother, Maria Manuela Lucas, for her guidance at Alma Mater Conimbricensis. Her comfort in hard times and her motherly love and concern with which she covers me as a hen covers her chicks nurtured me all the way. I also thank my fellow researchers in Helsinki, especially Pekka Karkkäinen and dear friends and doctoral students in Coimbra: Joana Duarte Bernardes, Victor Barros and my German friend Martin Ruben Schmidt for all those innumerable hours of sharing. The last eighteen months of my research was carried out essentially at Augustijns Historisch Instituut (Leuven, Heverlee), a paradise for any Augustinian

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Acknowledgements

scholar. I am grateful to the librarians Geert Van Reyn and Anneke Goovaerts for the impeccable way they assisted me in my work. To the old and wise monk Jules Beullens, OSA who daily opened the door for me (having done it, many times, hours before the opening time and waited for me hours after the closing time), my ineffable gratitude. I also wholeheartedly thank the hospitality and kindness of my friends Kaija and Manu Herd, in Iisalmi, Finland. Those days I spent in their lovely home, away from the academic context, were refreshing and unforgettable. I also do not want to forget my coach Helge Lindström for all his support inside and outside the running track, especially his patience in making all those sacrifices to prevent the daily training from interfering with my research. I cannot and I do not want to forget the contributions of the Missionaries of the Holy Spirit for my education in Cape Verde. My spiritual father Ad¦lio Cunha Fonte, a man that God put in my path, is responsible for practically everything good I have accomplished in my life, including my academic achievements. To my primary and high school teachers from whom I often received words of encouragement and who showed great interest in the progress of my research (a particular mention to Maria Fernanda Marques, Rosa Morais, In‚cio Carvalho, Belmiro Ramos, and Marilene Pereira my teachers at Liceu Domingos Ramos) I record here my deep gratitude. Last, but definitely not least, my most special words of gratitude go to my wife Lore Lieve Raes, this rarissima avis who gave the lion’s share regarding the support I enjoyed in my research. Only I and she know how bravely and patiently she shared the burden of my work since we decided to share each other’s life. Leuven, March 8th, 2013.

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Abstract

This study analyses the relationship between Augustine and Luther in their understandings of the doctrine of Original Sin and the justification of sinners, taking as its main source Augustine’s writings addressed against Julian of Aeclanum as well as Luther’s Lectures on Romans. I argue that the radical anthropological and soteriological insights with which Augustine opposed the theologians associated with fifth century Pelagianism are the key for understanding the early stages of Luther’ call for Reformation of the doctrine of the Catholic Church regarding Original Sin and justification. The study commences with a preliminary discussion on the terminology linked with Augustine’s definition of sin. I claim that the Augustinian concept of sin was defined in intimate connection with a concept he inherited from his contact with neo-Platonism – the concept of order. Sin is disorder. Original Sin was an expression of disorder which implanted disorder in the very core of human nature. This was a line of thought that Luther fully endorsed. The young Luther’s doctrine of Original Sin, I point out, is essentially Augustinian. Although Augustine did not invent the doctrine of Original Sin, he certainly brought a new way of understanding the implications of the Adamic Fall in the human-divine relationship and in the salvation of human beings. I explain that whether Augustine first outlined his radical approach to salvation through the gracious mercy of God and only then developed his theological formulation of Original Sin (or came to it in the reverse order) may be open to dispute. What is certain is that the way Augustine approached the gravity of Original Sin is in harmony with the way he approached the issue of justification of the sinner and the salvation process as a whole. One of the main theses maintained in this study is that the way Augustine approached human beings and their salvation put him on a collision course with the very tradition of the Church Fathers he so eagerly claims to defend. Augustine’s understanding of human salvation, I explain, constitutes a break with the patristic tradition precisely because he took the notion of a general condemnation in to radical consequences. After some hesitations in the initial years

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Abstract

of his literary career, Augustine broke with the line of thought according to which humans start their salvation by turning to God and God then accomplishes their salvation. This turning point was crystallized in two major works authored by the Church Father, Ad Simplicianum and Confessiones. In these two works Augustine unequivocally claims that the very first step one takes towards God is itself a divine gift. The very will to believe is God’s grace. This assessment constituted a break with the traditional view of the Fathers on the issue of salvation. It is precisely this crucial detail that explains Luther’s reliance upon Augustine. Luther’s doctrine of justification by faith alone was essentially a deliberate attempt to recover the old Augustinian claim according to which both the beginnings and the accomplishment of the salvation process belong to God and only to God. This is a crucial point because in this assessment lies the main reason why Luther preferred Augustine to any other Church Father. It was based on this Augustinian defence of the radical gratuity of the salvation process that Luther relied to oppose the Nominalist axiom facientibus quod in se est Deus non denegat gratiam. The teaching of the Fathers according to which human beings start and God accomplishes the process of salvation may have seemed to Luther dangerously close to the teaching of the recentiores doctores he so vehemently opposed. I show my opposition towards the trend within modern Lutheran scholarship to argue that the young Luther’s doctrine of justification found its inspiration elsewhere, not in Augustine’s anti-Pelagian writings. Against the common argument that while Augustine taught justification by grace and by love, Luther taught justification by faith alone, I argue that such a claim is not consistent with the evidence in the sources by showing significant affinities between Augustine and Luther’s positions. Augustine, some scholars argue, never conceived justification as fides Christi, but rather as a transformation of the human will or disposition for God’s commands. A closer look into the two theologians’ understandings of justification would suggest otherwise. Augustine taught justification by grace as well as justification as fides Christi. Luther taught justification by faith, justification as a declaration of righteousness on account of the fides Christi, but his doctrine of justification went beyond a mere declaration of righteousness. For both Augustine and Luther, justification starts with the bestowal of the grace of faith and keeps manifesting itself through moral progress throughout the entire earthly life of the justified sinner. I also try to shed some light upon the old discussion regarding Augustine’s reading of Gal. 5:6. I argue that this passage was used by Augustine with no other purpose than to characterise the the genuine Christian faith, the justifying faith. Augustine’s reading of Gal. 5:6 does not collide with Luther’s doctrine of justification by faith. The essence of Augustine’s doctrine of justification states that

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Abstract

humans are justified through or by the grace of faith (gratia fidei). Faith is not acquired by any merit, so it is a grace, that is, freely given. Justification is entirely God’s doing since it begins once one is bestowed with the grace of faith and proceeds, impelled by the grace of perseverance (which is deep down what Augustine called gratia cooperativa, a reality not absent in Luther’s understanding of the justification process). The Augustinian notion of grace is a very comprehensive one. Grace assumes many forms. Among its main expressions, according to Augustine, are the gifts of faith, hope and love. Luther did not deviate from this path. Perhaps there is only a slight difference in emphasis. Augustine elected love as the great distinctive characteristic of justifying faith, while Luther selected humility. For both theologians, however, faith is the only source of justification. This faith would obviously be useless without love, hope and humility. After all, without these ingredients it would not be the justifying faith.

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© 2013, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht GmbH & Co. KG, Göttingen ISBN Print: 9783525550632 — ISBN E-Book: 9783647550633

Introduction

1.

Why Augustine and Luther? Why were Original Sin and justification chosen as the topics of this study?

The easiest task of a student of Saint Augustine and Martin Luther is to justify the pertinence of studying them both. The task of providing a reason for studying these two representatives of Western Christian theology becomes even easier when the issues under consideration are those such as Original Sin and the justification of the sinner. It is difficult to exaggerate Augustine’s influence over Western theology, especially concerning the Mediaeval and Reformation periods. Modern research on Mediaeval theology tends to regard some crucial discrepancies between Mediaeval theological schools as no more than nuances, some more important than others, incorporated into a sort of a common “Augustinian” tradition. The Bishop of Hippo’s contribution to the shaping of Western Christian dogmatics was truly decisive. But it was with the African Church Father that leading issues such as Original Sin, justification, election, predestination and grace started to be major theological issues. All these issues were of paramount importance in Mediaeval and Reformation theology and were largely discussed in the assemblies of Trent. Today, these same issues may not be less important for the Christian faith than they were in those past centuries. In the Mediaeval and Reformation contexts, i.e between the fifth and seventeenth centuries, Augustine was a sort of centre of gravity around which Western theological production gravitated. “There is, at least since the apostles,” wrote the great Historian of Christian doctrine Jaroslav PELIKAN, “no figure in Christian history who has so dominated a millennium with his teachings as Augustine did. How he was understood (or misunderstood) and how he was transmitted (or superseded) is, therefore, a central element in the story”.1 It is,

1 Pelikan, 1978, viii.

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Introduction

perhaps, for all these reasons that the same scholar defined Mediaeval theology as “a series of footnotes to Augustine”.2 I believe that Augustine deserves scholarly interest for the simple fact that he remains unavoidably at the heart of most theological and moral issues of the corpus of Christian doctrine.3 As for Luther, well Luther was Luther! He marked an entire period. To this period historiography decided to give the name “Reformation”. Luther may be regarded as a protagonist or initiator of a process that led, in many ways, to a major turning point in the history of the West. On account of the impact of Luther’s call for Reformation, the Christian faith, the doctrine of the Church, politics, and society were never to be the same again. Luther, however, would never have been who he was without Augustine. It is perhaps due to this very fact that both the Church Father and the Reformer’s teachings are until now of crucial importance in Western Christian theology. If a reason would be needed to prove this, it would suffice to say that their teachings are extremely important, for instance, for the ongoing Roman Catholic-Lutheran ecumenical dialogue. I believe that all these reasons are enough to claim the pertinence of studying these two major figures of Christian history. Why focus on justification and Original Sin in Augustine and Luther? The pertinence of discussing the issue of justification in contemporary Christian theology is beyond question. Justification is, after all, the articulus stantis et cadentis ecclesiae. It is perhaps for this very reason that several Christian confessions acknowledge the importance of coming to an understanding on this vital theological matter. The point I am trying to make is this: the issue of justification has proven to be a subject of argument. Why Original Sin? If not for many other reasons, because in Augustine’s theology as well as in that of Luther, the issue of justification remains unintelligible if dissociated from the Adamic Fall and its implications for humanity. The origins of the doctrine of Original Sin almost fuse with the name of Augustine. Regarding the Church Father’s contribution for the definition of the doctrine of justification (the great cornerstone of Luther’s theology), Alister McGrath could not be more elucidative when he concludes that 2 Pelikan, 1971, 330. 3 The Cardinal Newman regarded the Church Father as the man who shaped Europe’s intelligence (Newman, 1968). The words recorded by Von Campenhausen in his Lateinische Kirchenväter regarding Augustine’s presence in, and influence over the Western theological tradition, remains accurate. “Augustin”, he writes, ist der einzige Kirchenvater, der bis auf diesen Tag eine geistige Macht geblieben ist. Er lockt Heiden und Christen, Philosophen und Theologen ohne Unterschied der Richtung und Konfession zur Beschäftigung mit seinen Schriften und zur Auseinnandersetzung mit deinen Wollen und seiner Person. Er virkt zugleich auch mittelbar als bewußte oder unbewuße Überlieferung in den abendläsdischen Kirchen und durch sie im allgemeinen Kulturbewußtsein mehr oder weniger verändert und gebrochen fort”. Von Campenhausen, 1986, 151.

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for the first 350 years of the history of the church, its teaching on justification was inchoate and ill-defined […] Augustine’s doctrine of justification is the first discussion of the matter of major significance to emerge from the twilight of the Western theological tradition, establishing the framework within which the future discussion of justification of humankind before God would be conducted4.

Augustine’s strong presence and influence over the young Luther’s theology per se is simply a fact. What is certainly a complex matter is to evaluate to what extent the Church Father’s influence was decisive in the shaping of the reforming programme of the Wittenberg Professor, as well as the very nature of the same influence. How did it operate? In which circumstances and with which purpose did Luther use Augustine? Which Augustine did he rely on? In the attempt to provide a clear approach to Augustine’s influence over Luther, some go to the point of asking whether Augustine was responsible (but not guilty) for the Protestant Reformation; or whether or not, through his doctrine of justification by faith, Luther did nothing else than betray Augustine after finding his own way with the Church Father’s help5. The fact that these questions remain open justifies scholarly interest in both the Church Father and the Reformer.

2.

Tasks, sources and methodological considerations

The first point of clarification that must be made here is the fact that this study is not primarily a comparative study between Augustine and Luther. This study consists in an analysis of the issues of Original Sin and justification in some specific writings authored by these two theologians. The analysis, however, is driven by the concern of clarifying whether the young Luther’s doctrine of Original Sin and justification and, consequently, some of his core reforming insights, remained or not within the Augustinian framework. Accordingly, especially in the second part of this study, I will be discussing the Augustinian background of Luther’s teachings on Original Sin and justification. What must be clear from the outset is the meaning of the term “Augustinian” in this study. Unless a different meaning is explicitly mentioned, the term “Augustinian” throughout this work refers only to Augustine himself. Augustine worked on his extensive written legacy over a span of forty-four of the seventy-five years of his life. Luther’s literary career was also long, having reached approximately four decades. Both Augustine and Luther had enough time to see their theological views undergoing a complex process of development and maturation. This means that significant corrections and adjustments were 4 McGrath, 2005, 38 – 39. 5 Olivier, 1996, 31.

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part of the process. Thus, an important point that must be taken into consideration here is chronology, which, in the present case, makes all the difference when it comes to the theological development of both authors. It is important for the reader to keep in mind that the present work covers a specific time span of the theological productions of both Augustine and Luther. Within this time span, specific works are taken as references6. The present study is occupied with the mature/old Augustine, the anti-Pelagian Augustine, namely the Augustine who opposed Julian of Aeclanum, and with the young Luther. Since both “old” and “young” can be broad terms, further clarifications may be needed. I will be dealing with Augustine’s writings produced in the course of his controversy with Julian of Aeclanum, covering the period of time from 418 – 430. These writings are the following: De Nuptiis et concupiscentia; Contra duas epistulas Pelagianorum; Contra Iulianum and the last of Augustine’s writings, Opus imperfectum Contra Iulianum, which death prevented him from concluding. As for Luther’s works, the analysis will focus on the Reformer’s Lectures on Romans (1515 – 1516). The other two early Pauline commentaries authored by the Reformer, that is, the Lectures on Galatians and the Lectures on Hebrews, as well as works such as De duplici iustitia (1519) and De libertate Christiana (1520) may occasionally be invoked to illustrate the line of reasoning I follow in this work. What Luther taught regarding Original Sin and justification in the aftermath of the assembly of Worms (1521) or in his harsh confrontation with Erasmus of Rotterdam, and in the years that followed, are beyond the scope of this study7. From the methodological point of view, the dominant approach adopted in this work follows the pattern of a systematic approach. For the sake of both accuracy and clarity, a study like the present one requires, however, a combination of both historical consideration and systematic approach. It is obvious that both Augustine and Luther’s theologies cannot be understood unless duly contextualized in the development of the history of doctrine of the Christian Church. It is also crucial, however, to clarify an important point. The use of an 6 This point is of paramount importance especially when it comes to Luther’s use of Augustine and the nature of Luther’s own theological breakthrough. It is known to all scholars of Luther and his works that, for obvious reasons, Luther’s interest in the young anti-Donatist and antiManichean Church Father could not have been the same as the interest he showed in the old anti-Pelagian bishop. It may also be argued that the old Reformer’s enthusiasm towards Augustine may not have been as strong as it was in his youth. 7 For an excellent analysis of the development of Luther’s theology, from the early years to maturity, I suggest Lohse, 1995. On the particular issue of free will (a major point of friction between Luther and Erasmus of Rotterdam), the collection of studies edited by Werner Zager under the title Martin Luther und die Freiheit (Darmstadt, Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2010) is a good starting point.

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historical approach in this study does not imply the predominance of an analysis based on the development of both Augustine and Luther’s theology. The span of time chosen for both Augustine and Luther did not register significant alterations in their discussion regarding justification and Original Sin. When Augustine started his debate with Julian his insights on Original Sin and justification had long reached their final stage. In later works addressed against Julian, when it comes to the issues of Original Sin and justification, Augustine mostly repeated arguments and conclusions he had reached in the preceding years. Regarding Original Sin and justification the period of time between 418 and Augustine’s death in 430, one would look in vain for significant changes in Augustine’s thought. In Luther’s case it may have been different. The time span between 1515 and 1520 was frenetic and turbulent for the young Professor and Reformer. This was the period in which Luther’s core Reformation insights were defined. For this period, a study of the development of the Reformer’s thought would be entirely justifiable. As I have said, however, my focus will not be over this period, but rather on Luther’s Lectures on Romans. I believe that, especially regarding the issue of Original Sin and justification, this work contains the first clear lines of Luther’s Reformation theology. My discussion of Luther’s doctrine of Original Sin and justification does not comprise a long period of time. For all these reasons, the historical approach in this work is not essentially based on the development of both theologians’ doctrine of Original Sin and justification. The historical approach here means more a careful historical contextualization in order to provide an accurate account of the issues under consideration. Because this study has some concern in comparing the way the two theologians approached Original Sin and justification, the need of combining historical and systematic approaches becomes even imperative.

3.

The outline of the study

This work is divided into two parts. The first part starts with a chapter that will review crucial terminology regarding Augustine’s language of sin and its implications, with an emphasis on the concepts of order (ordo), love (caritas/amor), will (voluntas) and desire (concupiscentia). Chapter 2 focuses on the relationship between Original Sin and Augustinian soteriology. In order to make Luther’s use of Augustine’s anti-Pelagian writings easier to understand (an issue addressed in the second part of this study) I shall chart the evolution of Augustine’s early soteriological discourse (previous to 396). I shall then discuss how Augustine’s understanding of the implications of Original Sin after 396 was intimately connected with the way he came to un-

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Introduction

derstand human beings and their salvation in the writings he addressed against Julian of Aeclanum. I shall also summarily discuss Augustine’s radical approach to the Fall of humankind and the radical gratuity of salvation, positions that put him on a collision route with the main line of patristic theology. This point is of utmost importance for understanding one of the main theses maintained in the present study. This is that Luther turned to Augustine because they had a sort of common interest – the struggle against Pelagianism in the Church. I shall discuss how the emergence of Augustine’s mature theology deviated from the path of “orthodoxy” when compared with the tradition of the Fathers who preceded him. This discussion will provide the reader with answers for the following questions: why did Luther turned to Augustine and not to any other Church Father? Was it for the simple fact that Augustine was the patron of the Order to which the Reformer belonged, so he had every reasons to be familiar with the writings of the patron of his own Order rather than those of any other Church Father? Further clarifications regarding the reasons why Augustine was a reference for Luther in the shaping of his reforming insights will be also found in the first paragraphs of the second part of this work. There I shall explain that Luther’s dissatisfaction with the anthropological and soteriological insights of Nominalist theology was the main reason he decided to rely on the anti-Pelagian writings of Augustine. In chapter 3 and 4 the emphasis will be exclusively on Augustine’s debate with Julian. In these chapters I shall discuss issues such as the relationship between Original Sin and free will, and the contours of Augustine’s doctrine of necessitas peccandi. For this discussion the main material upon which I supported my analysis is Augustine’s reading of Romans 7:14 – 25. In point 4 of the third chapter I shall discuss a crucial issue Augustine’s theological and methodological approaches to the doctrine of Original Sin – human misery, especially the suffering of infants. Here my point of focus shall be Augustine’s reading of Sir. 40:1. Chapter 4 shall be dedicated to Augustine’s soteriological discourse as expounded in his debate with Julian. I shall discuss the crucial role of grace in the whole process of salvation as well as the crucial and often overlooked role of faith in Augustine’s doctrine of justification. This discussion will allow the reader to have my own answer to the question: did Augustine teach justification by faith? The second part opens with a theological contextualization aiming to clarify crucial issues regarding Luther’s use of Augustine. I shall review the features of Nominalistic soteriological discourse and explain how Luther turned to Augustine’s anti-Pelagian insights and used them to refute the Nominalist interpretation of human beings and their salvation. In chapter two I shall deal with Luther’s use of Augustine’s anti-Pelagian insights in his definition and theological application of Original Sin in his own anthropological and soteriological

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discourses. My main material of support here is Luther’s interpretation of Romans 5:12 – 19 and 7:14 – 25. In chapter 3 I shall be dealing with the theological exegetical basis of Luther’s doctrine of justification. Here I shall discuss the contours of dialectics of justifications (Iustificatio Dei, iustificatio nostri) in the young Luther, laying special emphasis on humilitas fidei and confessio. In chapter 4 I shall discuss Luther’s famous theological axiom of simul iustus et peccator as well as the issue of consent in the phenomenon of sin, as understood by Luther. In chapter 4 my attention shall be turned to the nature of Luther’s doctrine of justification, namely to the question whether justification as taught by Luther is exclusively forensic or leaves space for spiritual progression or sanctification. In this chapter I shall enter into dialogue with the modern Finnish interpretation of Luther, which will provide a good discussion on the issue under consideration. Chapter 5 deals with the relationship between the notions of confessio and humilitas in the shaping of Luther’s doctrine of justification by faith alone. In chapter 6 I shall dedicate my attention to the role of Law, gospel and grace in Luther’s doctrine of justification by faith. Here I shall also, summarily, discuss some features of Luther’s doctrine of predestination.

4.

Previous Research and the new contributions of this study

Saint Augustine and Martin Luther were two colossi of Western Christian theology. They are among the most studied Christian theologians. Since Original Sin and justification were two major issues in the written legacy of both theologians, it is only normal that the bibliography on the way they approached these issues is vast. It would, however, be tedious to go over all the main studies produced in these fields regarding both the Church Father and the Reformer. In this introductory note I shall therefore focus on the bibliography regarding discussion of the development of young Luther’s reforming insights and to what extent these insights were or were not Augustinian. Priority is given to those studies which in one way or another are dedicated to the confrontation or comparison between Augustine and Luther or to the role played by the Church Father in the development of the young Reformer’s theology. Despite the fact that theologians and historians of Christian doctrine are unanimous in acknowledging Augustine’s extensive influence over Luther’s theology, it is accurate to say that the nature and scope of the same influence are far from being settled matters. It would be illusory, almost presumptuous to aim at settling such a broad issue in this study. I will be glad if the present study manages to shed some light upon such a complex issue. With this goal in mind I

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Introduction

will try to stress new points of discussion, new perspectives in light of which the young Luther’s encounter with Augustine is to be analysed and understood. The origins and the development of scholarly interest in the last century regarding the role played by Augustine in the shaping of the young Luther’s theology was intimately connected to two main facts. The first was the discovery by the Strasbourg University Professor Johannes FICKER of Luther’s Römerbriefvorlesung at Biblioteca Vaticana, in 1899. The second has to do with the progressions achieved in ecumenical dialogue, especially the Roman CatholicLutheran dialogue (which gained momentum in the second half of the last century). As is well known, the issue of justification has been the very backbone of the dialogue between Roman-Catholics and Lutherans in the last decades. FICKER’s precious discovery, the Römerbriefvorlesung (hereafter referred to as Lectures on Romans) was published for the first time in Leipzig, in 1908 (in two volumes), almost four hundred years after Luther wrote it8. The impact of FICKER’s discovery was truly vast. In fact, it is hardly surprising that it was so. It was an unprecedented opportunity to understanding the true contours of initium theologiae Lutheri. As the famous French historian Lucien FÀbvre puts it: “pour la premiÀre fois, il allait Þtre possible d’¦tudier, avec entiÀre s¦curit¦ et en s’appuyant sur un text parfaitement dat¦, le v¦ritable ¦tat de la pens¦e luth¦rienne — la veille des ¦v¦nements d¦cisifs de 1517 – 1520”9. FICKER’s discovery also fed the illusory search for the differences between the “Catholic” and the “Protestant” Luther, allegedly emerging by the time he wrote the Lectures on Romans. The crucial importance of Luther’s Lectures on Romans has to do with three crucial points: a) it is the first writing in which Luther addressed the doctrine of justification in a systematic manner, doctrine which in this work reveal itself already as the core of Luther’s theology ; b) fundamental issues such as Original Sin, election and predestination, all crucial for understanding Luther’s view of human beings and their salvation, were discussed in unprecedented length in this Pauline commentary ; c) Luther’s use of Augustine in Lectures on Romans had taken a new orientation. The mystical ideas of the Church Father, largely exploited in Dictata super psalterium (written in 1513 – 1515, under the guidance of Augustine’s Ennarationes in Psalmsos), was being replaced by a determined insistence on Augustine’s anthropological and soteriological insights produced in the heat of the Pelagian controversies, especially during the long disputation with Julian of Aeclanum10. 8 It was this first critical edition that was edited, in 1938, as the 56th volume of the critical edition of Luther’s works known as Weimarer Ausgabe. 9 FÀbvre, 1928, 31. 10 For a good discussion regarding Luther’s use of Augustine’s anti-Pelagian writings in Lectures on Romans, see Pani, 1983.

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The Lectures on Romans were immediately regarded as a crucial work for understanding the shaping of young Luther’s reforming programme. The lectures are the material which support some of the finest works ever produced regarding the origin of Luther’s theology. After FICKER’s discovery, the approach to the origins of Luther’s reformation insights had to be submitted to a profound reconsideration. It was no wonder that studies started flowing in the aftermath of the discovery11. Here I focus on the most recent works occupied with the influence of Augustine over the young Wittenberg Professor by the time he wrote his Lectures on Romans. Without surprise, in the decades that followed Johannes FICKER’s discovery, scholars focused on Luther gained an increasing awareness of the crucial importance of understanding the role played by Augustine in the development of Luther’s theology by the time the Reformer wrote his Lectures on Romans. In the 1920’s and 1930’s, contributions such as those of Erich VOGELSANG and Adolf

11 While Ficker was still preparing the critical edition of the manuscript, some his collaborators published important works about the development of young Luther’s theology. Chief among these titles are Le d¦veloppement de la pens¦e religieuse de Luther jusqu’en 1517 d’aprÀs des documents in¦dits (Paris, Fischbacher, 1906), by Andre Jundt and Luthers exegese in der frühzeit (Leipzig, 1910) by Karl A. Meissinger. Still in the aftermath of Ficker’s discovery some other studies are worth mentioning here. Among them are Otto Scheel’s “Die Entwicklung Luthers bis zum Abschluss der Vorlesung uber den Romerbrief”, Schriften des Vereins für Reformationsgeschichte, 100, Leipzig, 1910, 63 – 230) and Martin Luther: vom Katholizismus zur Reformation, in two volumes (Tübingen, Mohr Siebeck, 1916 – 1917). This last work is a good account of Luther’s life from infancy to the period when the Reformer entered the collision route with the Church of his time. In 1915 – 17 M.-J. Lagrange published a vast article in two parts under the title “Le Commentaire de Luther sur l’Epitre aux Romains d’apres publications r¦centes”, in the 12th and 13th number of the new series of R¦vue Biblique, 12 (1915, pp. 456 – 484) and 13 (1916, pp. 90 – 120). In the celebration of four hundred years of the beginning of the Reformation, Adolf Schlatter published his Luthers Deutung des Römerbriefs (Gütersloh, 1917). The decades that followed saw many more other important works regarding initium theologiae Lutheri being published. Among those I am familiar with and that are worth mentioning here are Henri Strohl’s L’¦volution religieuse de Luther jusq’en 1515 (Strasbourg, Istra, 1922) and L’epanouissement de la pens¦e religieuse de Luther de 1515 a 1520 (Strasbourg: Istra, 1924). These two works were re-edited in 1962 by Press Universitaires de France in one volume under the title Luther jusq’en 1520, the edition used in the present study. Strohl’s approach to Luther’s encounter with Augustine is quite lucid since it takes Pelagianism as the point of convergence between the two theologians: “Saint Augustin, et Luther, he writes, ramÀnent le salut entiÀrement — la gr–ce de Dieu. Tous deux peuvent employer la formule selon laquelle il faut enttendre par justice: la justice par laquelle Dieu nous rend justes. Il n’ont cru ni l’un ni l’autre — la vertu des paens, — la facult¦ de l’homme p¦cheur de se pr¦parer — recevoir la gr–ce, d’acqu¦rir un m¦rit quelconque. Saint Augustin oppose sa doctrine — la Philosophie paenne et — P¦lage, Luther la sienne — la th¦ologie p¦lagianisante de l’¦cole occamiste et — Erasme, admirateur de l’antiquit¦ paenne. L’adversaire est le mÞme”. Strohl, 1962, 181. A study worth mentioning here is also Luther’s theologia crucis (Witten, 1929) by Walter von Lowenich

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Introduction

HAMEL had made clear that Luther’s early theology heavily relied on Augustine12. Consider what began in the 1950’s. This decade registered a strong wave of publications on Luther’s Lectures on Romans. Many Luther scholars were convinced that it is in this early Pauline commentary that the key to understanding the Reformer’s theology lies. In his study “The Theology of Luther’s Lectures on Romans” A. S. WOOD examines the issues of justification and sanctification and concludes that the Lectures on Romans “are of first importance in the development of Reformation doctrine” since they “represent a theological revolt which found its public and dramatic expression in the posting of the ninety-five Wittenberg Theses”13. WOOD’s study is important for several reason reasons. The author stresses that it is in the Lectures on Romans that resides the key to understanding Luther’s theology since it was in these lectures that the Reformer took the most important 12 The contributions of both Vogelsang and Hamel are worth mentioning here. These two studies are important ones especially when it comes to the matter of the use of Augustine by Luther in works preceding the Reformer’s Lectures on Romans, with special emphasis on the Dictata super psalterium. As a matter of fact, the first detailed studies with the specific goal of shedding light upon the issue of Augustine’s influence over Luther’s theology were based not on Luther’s Lectures on Romans, but rather on the Dictata super Psalterium. Among these studies two are of paramount importance: Erich Vogelsang’s Die Anfänge von Luthers Christologie nach der ersten Psalmsenvorlesung: insbesondere in ihren exgestischen und systematischen Zusammenhängen mit Augustin und der Scholastik dargestellt (Arbeiten zur Kirchengeschichte, 15, Berlin, De Gruyter, 1929) and Der junge Luther und Augustin, by Adolf Hamel, two valuable contributions for understanding how Luther interpreted and used Augustine in his first Lectures on Psalms. Both studies lay emphasis on the doctrine of justification. The full title of Hamel’s work, in two volumes, is Der junge Luther und Augustin: ihere Beziehungen in der Rechtfertigungslehre nach Luthers ersten Vorlesungen 1509 – 1518 untersucht and was published in 1934 – 1935 (Gütersloh, Bertelsmann). Hamel’s work deserves some consideration here. It represents a defining moment in the study of Luther’s exegesis. Der junge Luther und Augustin consists in a very detailed analysis of Luther’s Dictata super psalterium and a systematic account of important material showing intimate connections between Augustine and Luther between 1509 and 1518. After Hamel’s study there was no room for doubt that both in Dictata super psalterium and Lectures on Romans, Luther depended largely on Augustine. Hamel was right in arguing that this dependence is above all seen in the Reformer’s early insights on justification, produced mainly under the guidance of the African Church Father. The German scholar has merit in proving in an unequivocal manner that, by 1515, Luther regarded Augustine not only as a patron of his order, but as the prototype of a theologian, der Saule der Kirchen, as the author puts it (Hamel, 1934, 12). Hamel’s arguments, however, have room for substantial improvements. The study did not shed light regarding the shift that occurred in Luther’s use of Augustine from Dictata super psalterium and his early Pauline commentaries, namely the Lectures on Romans (a task which probably was out of the scope of Hamel’s work). This shift, which will be one of the points I will be emphasizing in the second part of the present study, consisted in an overwhelming use of Augustine anti-Pelagian writings by Luther from the moment he wrote the Lectures on Romans. 13 Wood, 1950, 126.

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step in his reforming programme by transferring the theological centre of gravity “from subject to object from man to God”. “This Godward reorientation of theology”, WOOD remarks, “is the Leitmotif of Luther’s Lectures on Romans”14. The author makes good points in his attempt to prove that it was in the Lectures on Romans that Luther’s doctrine of Original Sin gained its systematic contours. The most important motives, has to do with WOOD’s consistent and clear refutation against the prejudice according to which Luther’s doctrine of justification excludes sanctification and undermines Christian morality. This last of WOOD’s claims, as a matter of fact, has more recently found strong expression in the Finnish School of Luther’s theology. To maintain that Luther taught justification as a mere forensic declaration of righteousness is to misinterpret him. “Luther’s understanding of the divine righteousness”, WOOD rightly argues, “is positive and active. It is this righteousness which God imputes to man in forgiveness and imparts to him in regeneration. The process of Justification implies more than the imputation of righteousness it issues in Sanctification. God actually makes the sinner righteous”15. For Luther, then, justification and sanctification are to be distinguished but without being separated. Sanctification is grounded and rooted in justification. Justification produces sanctification not the other way around. “Far from disrupting the holy alliance between Justification and sanctification, Luther succeeds in discussing the two elements without dissevering them”16. In the decades that followed the scholarly interest in the origin of Luther’s reforming theology intensified and the role of Paul and Augustine in the shaping of this same theology tends to attract the attention of scholars studying Luther. The increasing trend by then was to look for what was new in young Luther, what 14 Wood, 1950, 1. 15 Wood, 1950, 116. 16 Wood, 1950, 113. This line of argument is also followed by Uuras Saarnivaara in his Luther discovers the Gospel. The author argues for an intimate relationship between justification and sanctification, or renewal, in young Luther’s theology. According to Saarnivaara, in Luther’s theology, justification and renewal are distinguishable but not separable: “[…] Luther”, Saarnivaara observes, “does not include in justification before God the actual fulfilment of the Law in the believer. That belongs to the fruits of justifying faith or to sanctification. Justification and renewal must be clearly distinguished but not separated from each other. God never justifies a man without renewing him, and He never renews him without justifying him. Justification or forgiveness has the primary position according to both logic and the Christian experience. But faith implies in itself a new attitude toward God, true knowledge of God, trust and confidence in His goodness and mercy, and also a willingness to obey Him. It is impossible to believe in the grace of God and to lay hold by faith of the forgiveness of sins, unless God gives His Spirit to man and effects this change in Him”. Saarnivaara, 1951, 13 – 14. In 1953, J. W. Heikinnen published “Luther’s Lectures on the Romans” (Interpretation 7, 178 – 194) in which he argues that Lectures on Romans revealed Luther as a revolutionary master of Biblical exegesis on-the-making precisely by that time.

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distinguished his reformation theology, what distinguished the “Catholic” Lutheran from the “Lutheran” Luther. Obviously this fact led to an increasing interest in the study of what influenced Luther in his call for reformation of the doctrine and how determinant was Lectures on Romans in all of this process. Augustinian theology, Ockhamist philosophy and theology, German humanism and the writings of Luther’s direct teachers such as Trutvetter, Stauptiz and Biel became, then, the object of scrutiny in the task of understanding the origins of Luther’s reforming theology. The issue divided Luther’s scholars. In his Fides ex auditu, Ernst BIZER analysed the Dictata super psalterium and Lectures on Romans along with other writings authored by the young Luther. He concluded that one only finds significant exegetical innovations in Luther (those innovations that put him in the collision route with the Roman Catholic Church) around 1518. BIZER seems to have taken for granted Luther’s testimony in the preface of his Opera omnia of 1545. In 1962, Joseph LORTZ studied sin, theology of cross and justification, and argued that Luther’s theology as expounded in the Lectures on Romans was “substantially catholic”, although with a new focus17. In the same line of thought is the Finnish scholar Uuras SAARNIVAARA who argues that Luther’s theology in the Lectures on Romans was still of the “preReformation type” and that it was only around 1518 – 1519 that Luther came to teach justification of the sinner as fides Christi. SAARNIVAARA’s discussion on the origin of Luther’s Reformation insights is pertinent for the present study. The Finnish scholar understood the origins of Luther’s Reformation theology to have been a break with Augustine. SAARNIVAARA’s line of argument is as follows: Luther started his literary career under the guidance of Augustine but abandoned the Augustinian line when he started shaping his Reformation theology, especially when it came to the justification of the sinner. SAARNIVAARA’s work deserves some consideration since, like him, though with other nuances, many scholars continue to resist the idea that the Lutheran call for reformation was made under the inspiration of Augustine. Among the theses defended by SAARNIVAARA which deserve special reference here are: a) in the Lectures on Romans, “Luther’s conception of justification is still of the pre-Reformation type; the dominating aspect is the ethical one, not the religious”. b) Luther’s evangelical conception of justification appeared for first time by late 1518 and early 1519. It was by this time that Luther experienced his discovery in the Tower, and, so goes the argument, abandoned the Augustinian understanding of justification, which consisted in a process of becoming righteous18. 17 Lortz, 1962. 18 See Saarnivaara, 1951, 101 – 102. Saarnivaara’s line of argument is right in pointing to the years of 1518 – 1519 as a defining moment in the maturation of Luther’s Reformation

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Other theologians tend to see Lectures on Romans as a work of a Reformer already in play. In 1963, in his Fede e giustificazione in Lutero, Dino BELLUCCI debated faith and justification in Luther’s Lectures on Romans and Dictata super psalterium and concluded that the theology of Lectures on Romans portrayed Luther as a Reformer, since here Luther had defined his doctrine of primacy of faith, the first and foremost principle of his doctrine of justification by faith alone. In the same line of thought is Hans HÜBNER in his Rechtfertigung und Heiligung in Luthers Römerbriefvorlesung (Luther Verlag, 1965), Gerard EBtheology. It seems that Luther himself regarded those years as crucial in the development of his doctrine. There are, however, few considerations that must be made regarding Saarnivaara’s argument. In my opinion, the Finnish scholar not only overlooks the importance of Lectures on Romans in the process of maturation of Luther’s Reformation theology, but also fails to grasp the Augustinian doctrine of justification. According to Saarnivaara, Luther’s basic conception of justification in the Lectures on Romans was “essentially Augustinian or about the same as that which is expressed in the Dictata super psalterium (see pages 59 – 86). I agree with the first part of the assessment but disagree with the second. Regarding the doctrine of justification, there is a considerable gap between the two works. The differences are basically explained by the intensive use of Augustine anti-Pelagian insights in the Lectures on Romans. In the Dictata super psalterium Luther used Augustine with a different purpose and the nature and orientation of the use were also different. Saarnivaara portrays Luther’s progression towards evangelical righteousness to have been defined in a bitter opposition to Augustine. One of the theses maintained in the present study intends to prove that Luther’s reformation insights were, in large extent, shaped in Lectures on Romans and under the guidance of Augustine’s anti-Pelagian works. In order to refute Saarnivaara’s arguments one must recall two points: Luther’s Lectures on Romans played a major role in the maturation of Luther’s reformation theology. It is certainly inaccurate to maintain that the theology of justification of the Lectures on Romans is simply of the “pre-Reformation type”. Another assessment that I consider highly inaccurate in Saarnivaara’s argument is the assessment according to which Luther’s development towards the evangelical conception of justification was a break with “Augustinian-Catholic” understanding of justification. The author uses the term “Augustinian-Catholic doctrine of justification”. When it comes to the doctrine of justification in the time of Reformation, the term “Augustinian-Catholic” can hardly be accurately used. What does “Catholic” mean here? What does “Augustinian” mean here? If with “Catholic” Saarnivaara means the Nominalism theologians to whom Luther opposed, and by “Augustinian” he means the teachings of Augustine himself, then one can openly say that there was no harmony between the two. When it comes to the doctrine of justification, Augustine, the Nominalist and most Scholastics to whom Luther was opposed followed totally different patterns. So I think the use of the term “Augustinian Catholic” here is inappropriate. Luther turned to Augustine to oppose the Nominalist theologians precisely because he started to realize that Augustine’s doctrine of justification was in open opposition to that of recentiores doctores who spoke of facientibus quod in se est Deus denegat gratiam. Saarnivvara’s main thesis is that Luther himself broke himself free from the Augustinian understanding of justification when he came to realize that justification is primarily not a process of being righteous through the healing of a depraved nature, but rather the appropriation of the righteousness of Christ. The problem here is that Saarnivaara’s account of Luther’s understanding of justification is fair but he misunderstands Augustine’s doctrine of justification. The question is: did Augustine teach justification as being merely the renewal through grace? As I will try to demonstrate, a careful analysis of Augustine’s writings would prove that the accurate answer to this question can only be negative.

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ELING’s Luther: An introduction to his Thought (Tübingen, 1964), among others19. In 1965 Bernard LOHSE published an excellent article under the title “De Bedeutung Augustins für den jungen Luther” in the 11th volume of Kerigma und Dogma. In this article the author placed emphasis on the importance of Augustine’s anti-Pelagian writings, especially De Spiritu et littera. For LOHSE, the 19 It is hardly surprising that the Lectures on Romans, the first Pauline commentary authored by Luther, attracted so much attention. In fact, this works represents a defining moment in the development of Luther’s reformation theology. To understand the nature of this Pauline commentary one must not lose sight of two main facts. First, Luther’s reformation theology was the result of years of exegetical meditations, personal and spiritual struggle/crisis (encapsulated by Luther in the famous term Anfechtung). Second, the struggle led Luther to search for the genuine meaning of the Christian doctrine of salvation both in the Scriptures and in the tradition of the Church. It was this process of searching for a gracious and merciful God that would ease his conscience and allow Luther’s relationship with figures like Staupitz, and Augustine and Saint Paul to grow solid. Luther’s reformation insights were, from the outset, shaped partially by a deep familiarity with and strong reliance upon Augustine’s antiPelagian writings. It was in these writings that Augustine interpreted the most polemical of Pauline passages. One of the main theses of this study is that Luther’s Lectures on Romans represented a defining moment in the development of Luther’s reformation theology and that this is intimately connected with his remarkable reliance upon Augustine’s anti-Pelagian insights. It is my conviction that a careful analysis of Luther’s doctrine of Original Sin and justification as expound in his Lectures on Romans leads to the conclusion that the young Luther’s reformation theology, as far as human beings and their salvation is concerned, was, at large extent, the recuperation of Augustine’s line of thought (according to Luther, the closest one to Paul) which Luther considered was sadly abandoned during the Middle Ages. All this, however, does not imply that I deny the presence of reforming insights in Luther’s writings preceding the Lectures on Romans. Much to the contrary! I think the development of Luther’s reformation theology stretches back to the earlier years of his literary career. I just think it is undeniable that the Lectures on Romans constituted a defining moment in the process for the simple fact that it was the first of Luther’s writings in which the main lines of thought shaping Luther’s reforming career are perfectly identifiable. That the process started long before Luther wrote his Lectures on Romans, I consider, is beyond doubt. The recent Luther scholarship is, in fact quite clear in this aspect. In his recent study Der Frühe Luther, Berndt Hamm presents a detailed account of the origins of Luther’s reformation theology. Hamm argues that the origin of Luther’s reformation theology is intimately connected to the developments his theology went through during the early years in Erfurt monastery (“in der ersten Erfurter Klosterjahren). This initial impulse, according to Hamm, is of utmost importance for understanding Luther’s approach to Christ and grace that was expounded in his writings from 1513 onwards. Hamm is very convincing in his argument according to which there is important religious continuity between Luther’s Erfurt period and his later life story and that the process of shaping his reformation theology may have started as early as 1505. “Meine Ausgangsthese ist”, the German scholar writes, “daher, dass es nicht nur wichtige religiöse Kontinuitäten zwischen Erfurt und Luthers späterer Lebensgeschichte gibt, sondern dass das reformatorisch Neue und Zukunftsweisende schon in den Jahren 1505 bis 1511 aufbricht. Diesser Zeitraum unfasst die Erfurter Ära von Juli 1505 bis Herbst 1508, die Wittenberger Phase von Herbst 1508 bis Herbst 1509 und schließlich die zweite Erfurter Zeit von Herbst 1509 bis Spätsommer 1511, die durch die Romreise Luthers im Winter 1510/11 unterbrochen wurde”. Hamm, 2010, 30.

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Lectures on Romans make it clear that Luther’s early reforming insights were shaped under the inspiration of Augustine. LOHSE argued that Luther found the confirmation for his new theology in Augustine’s De spiritu et littera, a work which LOHSE regards as containing the key to understanding the young Luther’s reformation theology, especially when it comes to justification.20 In 1975, the Danish scholar Leif GRANE wrote his monumental Modus loquendi theologicus: Luthers Kampf um die Erneuerung der Theologie (1515 – 1518). The first part of this book consists in a remarkable analysis of Luther’s Lectures on Romans and how Luther used Augustinian anti-Pelagian theological insights in the shaping of his own theology. To the question “with which Augustine is Luther occupied in his struggle against Scholastic theology?”, GRANE is forthright: with the Augustine nemesis of the Pelagians. It was with the same anti-Pelagian Augustine (and Paul, of course) GRANE concludes, that Luther was opposed to the humanists. Although GRANE notices that in his Lectures on Romans Luther sometimes quoted passages from Augustine in the margin and then did something entirely on his own in the gloss, he is clear in his argument according to which, by the time the Reformer produced his first Pauline commentary, “Augustin war für Luther Lanze und Shild, sowohl in der literarischen Polemik als auch in kirchenrechtlichen Konlfikt”21. By the 1970’s the general opinion is that the Lectures on Romans contain the main line of Luther’s reformation doctrine regarding issues such as Original Sin and the justification of the sinner. I think it is fair to say that the general trend among Luther’s contemporary scholars is to argue that the roots of Luther’s Reformation theology were essentially Augustinian. Heiko A. OBERMAN, to take a reliable example, argues that “Luther is primarily to be seen as an Augustinian reared in a nominalistic climate of thought […] an Augustinian carried on the waves of the rising tide of German humanism in Germany”22. Luther was, however, not the first member of the Augustinian Order who undertook 20 “Um das zu tun, wollen wir hier nicht die Bedeutung Augustins für den jungen Luther in ihrem ganzen Umfang umreißen, sondern bei einen speziellen Problem einsetzen, nämlich bei der Bedeutung von Augustinus Schrift De spiritu et littera für Luther. Hier dürfte zugleich auch der Angelpunkt für die Beantwortung der Frage nach dem Verhältnis von Augustin und Luther liegen. Denn keine andere Schrift des bischofs von Hippo steht der reformatorischen Theologie Luthers so nahe wie diese. Zugleich läßt sich aber auch in Gegenüber mit dieser Schrift die Eigenständigkeit Luthers sowohl in seiner theologischen Fragestellung als auch bei seiner reformatorischen Erkenntnis dartun”. Lohse, 1965, 120. To Lohse’s articles followed another important study, Lutherus interpres. Der theologische Neuansatz in seiner Römerbriefexegese unter besonderer Berücksichtigung Augustins (Witten: Luther-Verlag, 1968) by Dorothea Demmer. The study focuses on the analysis of the influence of Augustine over Luther’s theology of Lectures on Romans and basically follows the same line of thought developed by Lohse and Hamel. 21 Grane, 1975, 25. 22 Oberman, 1986, 52. see also Oberman, 1994, 28sqq.

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continuous effort for the reformation of the doctrine of the Catholic Church. As an Augustinian friar his claims for reformation of doctrine appeared within a larger platform (to use SAAK’s word) of Augustinian reformists which included figures Luther himself admired and to whom he turned for guidance. Among them were the great fourteenth century Augustinian Gregory of Rimini and young Luther’s own mentor Johannes Staupitz23. In 1984 an important book on Luther’s use of Augustine came to light. The book I have in mind was authored by Hans-Ulrich DELIUS and bear an elucidative title, Augustin als Quelle Luthers: Eine Materialsammlung. The book consists of a detailed collection of Luther’s quotations from Augustine. If there would be any doubt, DELIUS’ work would put an end to it: Augustine was by far the theologian Luther quoted the most. Though it remains a meritorious or even an impressive work, DELIUS’ contribution basically came to prove what was already known to most scholars studying Luther : Luther relied extensively on Augustine’s theological insights and the Church Father’s writings were very important work-material for the Reformer. As recent studies have pointed out, however, quoting or being a follower of Augustine, per se, hardly makes one an Augustinian, much less a Reformer. Scholars such as Eric SAAK and Alister McGrath have argued well that the very notion of late-Mediaeval Augustinianism remains an unclear concept24. What, then, made of Luther a Reformer? Here is a question that has not yet met a consistent answer. One may say he was a Reformer because he developed an entirely new theology. The question now, however, is: was it really new? Luther may have taught new things in many fields such as sacramental theology and ecclesiology among others. Was his doctrine concerning Original Sin and justification by faith alone (the backbone of his Reformation theology) really new? My answer to these questions may constitute a new approach to the nature of young Luther’s Reformation theology. My preliminary thesis is that Luther could hardly have been a Reformer without the anti-Pelagian works of Augustine. Luther’s clash with the theological and exegetical pattern of his days resulted from his strong radicalism. This strong radicalism had two main pillars: the total corruption of human nature and the total gratuity inherent in the salvation 23 Saak, 2002, 670 – 673. 24 Saak, 1999, 2001 and 2002, 683, sqq; McGrath, 1981 a. Saak’s following words are worth citing here: “Late Medieval Augustinianism is not a term with a clear definition. Though the past century of scholarship has produced seminal editions of texts and interpretive insights that have deepened and expanded the knowledge of Augustine’s heritage in the later Middle Ages, modern research has yet to yield a consensus on how to characterize what can be categorized as “Augustinian”. Was Augustinianism essentially a renaissance of Augustine’s anti-Pelagianism, or a specific theological tradition in the Order? At stake in this debate is not only the shape of late medieval intellectual history, but also the relationship between late medieval Augustinianism and the emergence of the Reformation theology”. Saak, 2001, 683.

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process, which from its beginnings to its completion Luther considered to be nothing more and nothing less than divine grace. Luther became a Reformer because he was radical in his reading of the Bible. What made him a Reformer was the way he used Augustine’s radical reading of Paul to maintain his own radical reading of Paul. As I hope to make it clear, this radical reading made of Luther a Reformer because with it he broke with the main anthropological and soteriological insights of his days. This is why it is hardly possible to understand young Luther’s reformation theology without taking into account that Luther regarded his own theology as a constant effort to ensure the continuity of a fight that occupied Augustine some twenty years of his life, the fight against Pelagianism. Augustine’s struggle against Pelagianism remains of paramount importance for grasping the very essence of Luther’s Reformation theology. Luther’s doctrine of justification by faith, the very core of Luther’s theology, should not be dissociated from the issue of Pelagianism. As I will try to prove, Luther insisted on the doctrine of justification by faith because he understood that the theologians of his time (including his teachers) did not accept Augustine’s anthropological and soteriological insights. Evidence from the sources clearly suggest that Luther opposed the recentiores doctores under the assumption that they did not take Augustine’s anthropological pessimism seriously enough (or they refused to accept it) so they did not follow him in his radical teaching of the gratuity of salvation. Since they failed to accept the Pauline-Augustinian anthropological and soteriological insights, they agreed with the heresy of the Pelagians25. Against the evidence of the source some modern scholars tend to neglect or deny the fact that Luther’s radical approach to human beings and their salvation was profoundly Augustinian. The trend is to deny the Augustinian background of main anthropological and soteriological positions in Luther’s theology which Luther himself claimed to have been drawn from the writings of the Church Father. Granted, evoking Augustine does not mean to understand him or 25 Regarding the relationship between Luther’s doctrine of justification and the Augustinian anthropology in the context of the anti-Pelagian struggle, Jaroslav Pelikan rightly argues that “The presupposition for the doctrine of justification was a vigorous reassertion of Augustinian anthropology. Joining himself to the criticism levelled by late medieval Augustinianism against ‘the new Pelagians’, Luther identified Pelagianism as the one perennial heresy of Christian history which had never been fully exterminated and which, under the patronage of the Church of Rome, had now become dominant. He used his exposition of the epistle to the Romans to rehearse Augustine’s polemic against Pelagius and the Pelagians, and he noted three years later that Augustine had been at his best as an interpreter of Paul when he was writing in opposition to the Pelagians. […] Hence it is clear that in condemning ‘the Pelagians and others who deny that original sin is sin’, those who spoke for Luther had in mind the adherents of various confessional camps who minimized the power of sin; for ‘what is the difference between the Pelagians and our opponents? ”. Pelikan, 1984, 139 – 140.

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maintain fidelity to his line of reasoning. If the Reformer evoked Augustine to teach some doctrine which seems radical, the trend among some contemporary scholars is to deny the Augustinian background of that doctrine. The fact is that, when it comes to soteriological and anthropological insights, Luther understood Augustine very well and was much more faithful to him than modern scholars tend to assume he was. Let us take a brief look into some recent studies comparing Augustine and Luther. Among the best ones are Ginacarlo PANI’s Martin Luther : Lezioni sulla Lettera ai Romani. PANI’s study is a remarkable contribution to the debate regarding the Augustinian background of young Luther’s theology. It is a detailed analysis of Luther’s Lectures on Romans. It is fair to mention that PANI’s work has the merit of insisting that the young Luther as commentator of Romans, had direct access to Augustine and that the Reformer’s knowledge of the Church Father went far beyond a mere indirect contact mediated by the Augustinian tradition passed through the Augustinian order to which Luther belonged26. A thesis maintained by PANI, however, is to be corrected. The Italian scholar argues that it was with Luther’s Lectures on Romans that “il peccato sembra davvero avere una dignit— che gli era sconosciuta nella storia del Cristianesimo: si direbbe la parte del protagonista. L’uomo dopo il peccato di Adamo, À peccatore semplicemente prech¦ À uomo; il peccato non À qualche cosa di accidentale, un dato contingente che si lasci distinguere dall’uomo stesso, ma À un tratto radicalmente constitutivo della sua umanit—. Per dimonstrarlo Lutero deve far vedere che col peccato di origine l’intera strutura morale dell’uomo À viziata e corrotta di una corruzione che rimane ache dopo il battesimo”27.

Here is a clear example that some modern scholars fail to realize that Luther’s radical reading of Paul is based on Augustine’s radical reading of the Apostle. PANI’s arguments are based on the assumption that Luther’s doctrine of sin points to a stronger radicalism than that of Augustine. It is not my intention to open a debate on the accuracy of this assumption. What is important to stress here is the fact that Luther’s doctrine of fallen human nature was essentially Augustinian. Only someone who is not familiar with the Augustinian doctrine of Original Sin and its theological and ethical implications (or fails to understand 26 “Ma quando Lutero decise la letura della Lettera ai Romani esisteva tra lui ed Agostino un rapporto piu diretto, non mediato della tradizione dell’Ordine, e stretamente connesso con la sua vicenda spirituale. Il retorno al piu genuino spiritu agostinianao era legato intimamente con la crisi spirituale di Lutero andava attravessando fin quase dalle origini della sua vocazione reliogiosa. Come Agostino, sabbene per altro itinerario, egli si sentiva un convertito: una affinita che si esprime spontaneamente, sia per agostino che per Lutero, con una partecipazione viva all’esperienza dell’apostolo Paolo, ache egli un convertito, e ill modello di tuti converititi cristiani”. Pani, 1983, 19 – 20. 27 Pani, 1983, 241.

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the same doctrine) can maintain that Luther innovated by teaching that, after Adam’s sin, humans are sinners because they are humans. Perhaps no other theologian before Luther stated this assessment as clearly as Augustine did. For Augustine, after Adam’s fall, sin started to be part of human beings, like a sort of default defect. Isn’t this what Augustine taught when he maintained, against Julian of Aeclanum, that the children of regenerated/baptized parents come into this world as sinners? Only when one misunderstands Augustine can one maintain that Luther innovated in teaching that after Adam’s Fall sin becomes part of a human’s constitution and that this sin remains even after baptism. Granted, Augustine was often not clear whether remaining concupiscence is sin in the baptized or not. In his struggle against Pelagians, however, he was forthright in stating that the roots of sin remain after baptism like the roots of hair remains after being shaved. Luther quoted with approval the Augustinian assessment according to which concupiscence is sin, that although it is not imputed to the baptized, it remains even after baptism (for instance in nupt. et conc. I, XXV, 28). Besides, as it will be seen, clear signs of Luther’s indebtedness to Augustine’s doctrine of concupiscence remaining in baptized persons are verifiable in Luther’s doctrine of simul iustus et peccator. Luther was radical in his approach to the postlapsarian human condition precisely because he was strongly Augustinian in this regard. There is a certain trend in modern Luther research to minimize the Augustinian background of young Luther’s Reformation insights. The trend is an old one. It can be traced back to studies such as those of Julius Köstlin 28 in the opening of the last century, as well in some recent and influential studies such as those of the Oxford Professor Alister McGrath. Like Köstlin , McGrath argues that though Augustine’s influence over Luther is beyond question, the Reformer’s main reformation insights were not drawn from Augustine, but “elsewhere”. Luther’s main Reformation insights, so goes the argument of these scholars, could not have been derived from Augustine because Luther denied free will, taught justification by faith and not by love; he insisted in a forensic justification, that is, taught that Christians are regarded as just by God purely by faith since the Christian concept of justification implies that they are unable to perform anything meritorious in God’s sight. All this, according to these scholars, was not taught by Augustine29. Let us take McGrath as an example since his work is a recent and influential one. According to this great Oxford scholar, Luther’s early theology of justification, namely between 1508 – 1514, was moulded by the concept of “right28 See Köstlin, 1903, 138. 29 McGrath, 1987, 176 – 181 and 2005, esp. 218 – 235.

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eousness of God” as understood by the Nominalist theologians. By rejecting the implication of supernatural habits in justification, so goes McGrath’s arguments, the Reformer followed both via moderna and the schola Augustiniana moderna. In this period Luther accepted human involvement in justification based on the notion of pactum developed by the via moderna and on the axiom facientibus quod in se est Deus non denegat gratiam. In 1513 – 1514, McGrath explains, Luther’s understanding of iustitia Dei was determined by the following line of reasoning: humans must recognize their spiritual weakness and inadequacy, and turn to humility from their attempts at self-justification to ask for God’s grace. This is the humilitas fidei which is regarded by God as the precondition necessary for justification under the terms of the pactum, that is, the quod in se est demanded of humans. Once this step is taken, God would be under a sort of obligation to bestow grace upon the one who humbles self and begs for grace and mercy. In this period, McGrath explains, “it is clear that Luther understands humans to be capable of making a response towards God without the assistance of special grace, and that this response of iustitia fidei is the necessary precondition (quod in se est) for the bestowal of justifying grace”30. It was only between 1514 and 1519 that Luther’s theology of justification underwent a “radical alteration” and it was during this period that he developed his reformation insights regarding justification. Luther’s main target was not the tradition of the Church but rather the recent doctors such as Gabriel Biel and the teachers of the Reformer, the moderni of Erfurt31. McGrath tends rightly to point to the year of 1515 as a defining moment in all this process and rightly points to the Lectures on Romans as the work that marked Luther’s “decisive break” with the theology of justification he had developed until then32. In the Lectures on Romans, McGrath argues, three major alterations are verifiable: a) in this work Luther argued that humans are passive in their own justification. Although the Reformer does not deny that humans have any role in their justification, he was forthright in his claim according to which humans are not capable of initiating, or collaborating with, the process leading to justification. “Whereas in the Dictatum super Psalterium, humans were understood to be active in the process of their justification (in that they were able to turn to God in humility and faith, and cry out for grace), Luther now unequivocally states that it is God who converts humans”33. b) Luther insisted that human will is held captive by concupiscentia, and is incapable of attaining righteousness unaided by divine grace. One should speak 30 McGrath, 2005, 220. 31 McGrath, 2005, 218 – 219. 32 For a detailed discussion on the nature of Luther’s theological breakthrough and the period of time in which it occurred, see McGRATH, 1985, esp. 95 – 147 and LOHSE, 1968 and 1988. 33 McGrath, 2005, 220 – 221.

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of servum potius quam liberum arbitrium, as Augustine reminded Julian of Aeclanun; and c) Luther stated that the idea that humans can do quod in se est “is nothing more and nothing less than Pelagian, even though he once held this position himself34. McGrath is totally right when he says that all these elements are clear proofs that Luther’s breakthrough, with emphasis on his understanding of justification took place in by the time he wrote the Lectures on Romans35 (the Oxford scholar is also right in arguing that Luther himself may have regarded the process of his own theological breakthrough to have reached completion by 1519)36. What is striking, however, is how McGrath approaches the relationship between Luther’s break with the soteriological line of thought maintained among the recentiores doctores and Augustine’s soteriological teachings. McGrath argues that in Dictata super Psalteirum Luther had adopted the nominalist view according to which humans are required to meet the precondition of facere quod in se est so they can be saved. In the Lectures on Romans, the Reformer came to realize that the justification process contradicts all human standard of justice (which basically comes down to giving to each what is due) since justification occurs when “God Himself meets a precondition that humans cannot fulfil. In other words, that God himself bestows upon humankind the gift of fides Christi”37. The main point of Luther’s theological breakthrough is, then, “the destruction of the framework upon which his early soteriology was based”38. So far, so good! The problem with McGRAT’s arguments lies in the claim according to which this shift in Luther’s soteriology constituted a break with the soteriology of Saint Augustine. Discussing the evident change in Luther’s approach to the issue of the righteousness of God that becomes evident when Luther’s Dictata super Psalterium and Lectures on Romans are compared, McGrath argues that in the Lectures on Romans Luther taught

34 McGrath 2005, 221. 35 “Despite the fact that his theology of justification up to this point was based on the explicitlystated presupposition that humans were capable of doing quod in se est, he now concedes the Pelagianism of the opinion that salvation is dependent upon a decision of the human will. Even though he will continue to identify fides and humilitas for some time to come, it is clear that a genuine and radical alteration in his theology of justification has taken place. Although he may not have arrived at any dramatically new understanding of the nature of faith, he has certainly arrived at a radically new understanding of how faith comes about in the first place” McGrath, 2005, 221. 36 McGrath, 2005, 222. 37 McGrath, 2005, 223. 38 McGrath, 2005, 221.

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Introduction

– A righteousness which is a gift from God, rather than a righteousness which belongs to God; – A righteousness which is revealed in the Cross of Christ; – A righteousness which contradicts human preconceptions. – After having defined these three features that show Luther’s new understanding of righteousness of God, McGrath concludes that while the first of these three elements unquestionably corresponds to an important aspect of Augustine’s concept of iustitia Dei, the remaining two serve to distinguish Luther from Augustine on this point. For Luther, the righteousness of God is revealed exclusively in the cross, contradicting human preconceptions and expectations of the form that revelation should take39. In this study I will try to prove that McGrath’s analysis fails to show understanding of two crucial points: Luther’s change of approach to justification from Dictata to Lectures on Romans was very similar to that what happened to Augustine in middle of 390’s, namely by the time he wrote Ad Simplicanum and started writing his Confessiones. Up to the first years of 390’s Augustine’s approach to justification admitted human collaboration in justification, arguing that humans could, through the use of free will, call for divine grace and mercy (the human initiative Augustine admitted to be in the origin of justification can be considered an equivalent of the Nominalist facientibus quod in se est Deus non denegat gratiam). The mature Augustine’s opinion is radically different from the one he held in his youth. This fact determined the development of his doctrine of justification, which turned out to be the abandonment of that old line of reasoning. Especially when facing the Pelagians, Augustine’s approach to justification was totally grace-oriented and based on human passivity. The mature Augustine was clear that humans do not collaborate in their justification. This was the line Luther followed and this is precisely why Luther preferred the antiPelagian bishop to the anti-manichean priest. The second point that McGrath failed to understand is that Augustine’s view of justification was also based in the very conviction that God righteousness does not respect the standards of human righteousness. I think Augustine’s late antiPelagian writings contain enough material to argue that the shift occurred in Luther’s theology by the time he wrote his Lectures on Romans fits perfectly within the soteriological framework used by Augustine in his struggle against the Pelagians, especially against Julian of Aeclanum. As will be seen, in his confrontation with Julian, Augustine often stressed that God’s righteousness exists and operates outside of the human framework, conception or expectations of human righteousness 39 McGrath, 2005, 222 – 223.

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Previous Research and the new contributions of this study

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What I think to be a new contribution in the present study is the claim that the young Luther’s call for reformation was more Augustinian than modern scholarship admits it to be. I will be approaching Luther’s call for reformation of doctrine, especially regarding the issue of human beings and their salvation, as an attempt to revive a radically grace-oriented theology which, according to Luther, was not well assimilated or accepted in the late-Mediaeval schools of theology. It was precisely because Augustine’s radicalism of grace and his insights regarding fallen mankind were not entirely endorsed by the main Mediaeval theological currents, that, according to Luther, Pelagianism remained a dangerous threat within the Christian Church of his own time. It is only by taking this fact as Luther’s point of departure that anyone will be able to understand the true nature of young Luther’s call for reformation. What the reader must, however, bear in mind, in order to understand the line of reasoning I follow in the present study is this: Luther’s call for reformation surpassed the issues of justification and Original Sin. Luther and Augustine maintained different or even divergent views on many other issues. The two were separated by over a thousand years. They had different concerns. For obvious reasons, it would be almost impossible for the Reformer to endorse the Church Father’s teachings, for instance, on the authority of Church or sacraments. In the case of Original Sin and its effects and its relationship to the justification of the sinner, the two theologians had, however, a common concern: the struggle against self-righteousness and the promotion of a theocentric and grace-oriented understanding of human salvation. It is only with all this present in mind that one can understand that the young Luther’s call for reformation was essentially an attempt to recuperate the old Pauline-Augustinian approach to salvation which he thought had been lost somewhere in the tradition of the Christian Church40.

40 I am aware that the position may not be totally new. I am familiar with the recent study by Mark Ellingsen published in the number 64 of the Scottish Journal of Theology (2011, pp. 13 – 28), under the title “Augustinian origins of the Reformation reconsidered” in which very similar positions are maintained. Ellingsen criticizes the positions of those who try to minimize the Augustinian background of Lutheran reformation insights. Ellingsen rightly claims that Luther was much more in line with Augustine than the modern scholarship claims him to have been. “When they [Augustine and Luther], Ellingsen concludes, addressed similar contexts, Luther was clearly in line with the Augustinian heritage”. Ellingsen, 2011, 28.

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Part I: Original Sin and the development of Saint Augustine’s theology

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1. Augustine’s thought regarding Original Sin: concept and nature

1.1

Preliminary remarks

AUGUSTINE of Hippo’s literary career started practically with his engagement in the anti-Manichean controversy. As is known, the topic of creation is central to the Manichean doctrinal structure. This is one of the reasons why Augustine dedicated a particular attention, in the first years of his exegetical activity, to the first chapters of the book of Genesis1. Genesis’ opening account on the act of creation states that God created the world and, when He had concluded His work, totally approved it, seeing “how good it was” (Gen. 1:18 and 21). The Christian metaphysics of creation explains that the world was created and is sustained by an omnipotent, omniscient and omni-benevolent God, who created everything good. This basic principle Augustine not only unconditionally endorsed but also used as the starting point in his treatment of the presence of sin and evil in the world. A question, however, becomes unavoidable: how explain the presence of evil in a world created by an omnipotent God, Himself the Supreme Good? This is one of the most intriguing questions with which Augustine had to deal from the very beginning of his anti-Manichean campaign. The question is an old one; it has endured and grown in pertinence since the rise of Gnosticism in the second century of the Christian Era. The Gnostic approach to the issue was, at least, disturbing since it even suggested that the world is not a creation of the true God, but rather of an evil Demiurge. The Manichees can be regarded as radical Gnostics; they did not hesitate in blaming created matter for the existence of evil. Augustine, it is known, professed a firm faith in the goodness of both the Creator and His creation. The answer for the presence of evil, he insisted, had to be found elsewhere. It did not take long for the Church Father to determine the cause for the resolution of the problem – human free will. From the very outset, he argued that it was the misuse of human free will that lies at the origin of moral 1 Among the detailed studies on this issue, see Pelland, 1972.

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Augustine’s thought regarding Original Sin: concept and nature

evil, i. e. sin. Not all evils in the world are sins. Sin, according to Augustine, however, was at the very beginning of the process leading to the present state of the human condition and existence, filled with that evil which humans do not do but from which they suffer. In other words, it was the sins of the first human couple that introduced death and disorder in the world and in the human condition. Accordingly, it is in light of a broader problem, the origin of evil itself (considered by G. MINOIS as the great pierre d’achoppment of Christian doctrine2) that the approach to the doctrine of Original Sin must necessarily be taken. I shall, then, open the discussion with a telegraphic treatment of the issue of evil in Augustine’s written legacy (without losing sight of the Pelagian controversy, namely his confrontation with Julian of Aeclanum), in order to understand his theological formulation of Original Sin, a term (not a concept, or, much less, a belief) which he himself may have brought into the Christian lexicon3. 2 Minois, 2002, 14. 3 It was, especially, in the first decades of the last century that J. Turmel’s theory according to which Augustine invented the doctrine of Original Sin made school (see Turmel’s Histoire des Dogmes and a series of articles he published in the RHLR between 1900 – 1904). Turmel’s thesis is followed by Williams, 1927 and Gross 1960, but vehemently denied by Pelikan, 1969, 73 – 94; and 1971, 278 – 331; by Newman, 1968, 126 – 127, and many others. The most complete and detailed study proving the pre-Augustinian background of the doctrine of Original Sin is, however, Beatrice, 1978 in which Turmel’s position is convincingly refuted. The issue may still be a matter of dispute. It thus deserves a few considerations here. In my opinion, it is clear that many features of the doctrine of Original Sin were already taught in the West by some of Augustine’s eminent predecessors such as Ambrose and the anonymous exegete known as Ambrosiaster, especially in their reading of Rom. 5:12, making Adam the antecedent of the expression in quo. This, however, does not mean that the Augustinian doctrine of Original Sin lacks originality or novelty of any sort. In the discussion whether or not Augustine invented the doctrine of Original Sin, it is important to recall two crucial details. The first is that, though Augustine was probably the first making use of the term originale peccatum (Simpl. I, I, 10), it is clear that it is inaccurate to attribute to him the full paternity of the doctrine of Original Sin. There can be no doubt that important features of the doctrine of Original Sin as taught by Augustine are present in some of his predecessors. To make this clear it would suffice to recall that both the parallelism Adam-Christ and the monogenic approach used by Augustine to teach that it was human nature that sinned in Adam, are very recurrent in some of his predecessors. Such a parallelism always points to a crucial soteriological statement (as a matter of fact, of crucial importance to grasp the essence of the message inherent in Augustine’s doctrine of Original Sin): through Adam came the condemnation and through Christ only can salvation be reached. In his adv. haer. IV, V, 7, Irenaeus of Lyon is peremptory : “Non aliter salvari homines ab antiqua serpentis plaga, – he writes – nisi credant in eum qui secundum similitudinem carnis peccati in ligno martyrii exaltatur a terra et omnia trahit ad se, et vivificavit mortuos”. Patrologiae Graecae 7, col. 979 (this passage is quoted by Augustine in C. Jul. I, III, 5, PL 44, col. 644). The writings of Ambrose often refer to a general condemnation of all humanity in Adam on account of our ancestors’ first sin, and point human conception as the very vehicle of this sin

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Preliminary remarks

49

in which every and each human being is condemned. Only Christ is free of such a sin given the fact that His conception was not a carnal conception, but a special one, through a virginal conception effected by the Holy Spirit, hence an immaculate one: “Non enim sicut omnes homines ex viri erat et feminae permixtione generatus, sed natus de Spiritu Sancto et Virgine inmaculatum corpus susceperat, quod non solum nulla vitia maculaverant, sed nec generationis aut conceptionis concretio iniuriosa fuscaverat. Nam omnes homines sub peccato nascimur, quorum ipse ortus in vitio est, sicut habes lectum dicente David: Ecce enim in iniquitatibus conceptus sum, et in delictis peperit me mater mea. Ideo Pauli caro corpus mortis erat, sicut ipse ait: Quis me liberabit de corpore mortis huius?’ I, III, 13, SC, 179, 62 – 64. Augustine’s discussion with Julian is flooded with quotations from Ambrose in order to show that the Milanese prelate had, before himself, maintained that in Adam we all sinned and perished. Amongst the more recurrent passages quoted by Augustine from the Milanese prelate’s writings are: “Fuit Adam et in illo fuimus omnes: periit Adam et in illo omnes perierunt” (exp. Luc. VII, 234, SC 52, 96) and “Nam omnes sub homines peccato nascimur, quorum ipse ortus in vitio est” (paen I, 3, 13, SC 179, 62). Furthermore: the term massa, the key conceptual image backing the Augustinian claim according to which it was human nature that sinned and perished in Adam, I think it is safe to say, the Church Father borrowed it from Ambrosiaster in whom the parallelism Adam-Christ and the idea of a general condemnation in Adam is rather explicit. In his comm. in Rom., commenting the verse 5:12, the anonymous writer states: “[…] dei patris per unum Christum filium eius declarat, ut quia unus Adam – id est Eva, quia et mulier Adam est – peccavit in omnibus, ita unus Christus filius dei peccatum vicit in omnibus. […] manifestum est itaque omnes in Adam peccasse quasi in massa. ipse enim per peccatum corruptus quos genuit, omnes nati sunt sub peccato. ex eo igitur cuncti peccatores, quia ex ipso sumus omnes”. CSEL 81/1, 163 – 165. Commenting on verse 7, 14, the same author not only stresses the general condemnation in Adam but also another strong trace of the Augustinian doctrine of Original Sin: the weakness and the inability of human nature to carry out the divine commands without divine assistance, when he writes: “Venditus sub peccato. hoc est venditum esse sub peccato, ex Adam, qui prior peccavit, originem trahere et proprio delicto subiectum fieri peccato. […] Adam enim vendidit se prior, ac per hoc omne semen eius subiectum est peccato. […]quamobrem infirmum esse hominem ad praecepta legis servanda, nisi divini auxiliis muniatur. Hinc est unde ait: lex spiritalis est, ego autem carnalis sum, venditus sub peccato. hoc est: lex firma est et iusta et caret culpa, homo autem fragilis est et paterno vel proprio subiugatus delicto, ut potestate sui non uti possit circa obaudentiam legis. ideo ad dei misericordiam confugiendum est, ut severitatem legis effugiat et exoneratus delictis de cetero deo favente inimico resistat. quid est enim subiectum esse peccatum, nisi corpus habere vitio animae corruptum, cui se inserat peccatum et inpellat hominem quasi captivum delictis, ut faciat voluntatem eius?”. CSEL 80/1, 233 – 235. Secondly, it is, however, important to recall that when compared to the earlier tradition, Augustine introduced a new and crucial detail (hardly possible to find in his predecessors), namely the claim according to which on account of Original Sin unbaptized babies end up in hell. Augustine’s predecessors seem to avoid speaking of culpa when it comes to the children. According to Augustine, newborn children come into this world involved in a originalis reatus and this is not annihilated unless through the bath of regeneration i. e. baptism (cf. Bonner, 1967). This detail is important not only because it is a new one in the shaping of the doctrine, but also because the very core of the of the debate with Julian is the guilt of babies. It is precisely the guilt of babies that Julian denied and it was on account of this that he accused Augustine of heterodoxy by teaching Original Sin. Julian was probably right stressing that the Fathers never taught that babies are guilty on account of Adam’s sin. Julian had the impression that Augustine was going too far by involving the little ones in the culpa of the Adamic sin. Whether Augustine did, indeed, go too far may be a matter of dispute. But there is among modern Augustinian scholars the awareness that the Church Father developed the contours of

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Augustine’s thought regarding Original Sin: concept and nature

The Augustinian metaphysic of evil must be the point of departure in the attempt to understand the phenomenon of sin as understood by the Church Father. The issue of origin and nature of evil can be said to be omnipresent in the path leading Augustine to embrace the Christian faith4. The problem seems to have been solved by the clash of two different approaches to the issue of evil, held by the two great doctrinal expressions in Augustine’s road to Christianity – Manichaeism and neo-Platonism. Once converted to Christianity, Augustine started a sort of intellectual and literary penance. He then focused on writing contra Manichaeos. The propter Manicheaei oriented theological reflection that marked Augustine’s youth must not be neglected when it comes to his theological development, specifically regarding some central issues of his theology such as the doctrine of sin and free will. As I hope to make it clear, some of the theological postulates he firmly maintained against the Manichees, such as the unconditional human free will and its relation to moral act, provided a great deal of trouble for him in the struggle against Pelagians5. the doctrine of Original Sin more than any of his predecessors. Jesse Couenhoven is very clear in his conclusions, writing that “while Augustine was the great systematizer, developer, and defender of the doctrine of original sin, he was not its inventor”. He certainly pursued the doctrine more than any before him, and few since, and he pressed it into a form peculiar, in many ways, to himself – especially by his clear emphasis on inherited sin – but it did not originate with him”. Couenhoven, 2005, 389 – 390. See also Bonner, 1967, esp. pp. 112 – 116 4 It must be said that from the very beginning of the literary career of the African theologian, the issue of evil was more than a simple question of academic disputation; it was deeply intertwined with his own personal and spiritual life, playing an essential role in his very conversion to Christianity, marked by his inner conflicts with his Manichean beliefs. Troubled by the issue of the origin of evil, Augustine says, he became an easy target for the Manichean heresy (“Eam questionem moues, quae me admodum adulescentem uehementer exercuit et fatigatum in hereticos impulit atque deiecit”; lib. arb. I, II, 4, 10). Source evidences suggest that Augustine’s conversion to Christianity was partly the result of the solution he believed to have found for the problem of evil. Augustine’s own account in conf. (and some other writings) makes it clear that, even before his conversion to Christianity, the problem of evil was for him much more than a simple academic issue, confined to the pleasant exercises of metaphysical speculations; it was rather a truly existential question for him. The fact can be easily explained by recalling the centrality of the problem of evil (or rather an obsession with it) throughout Augustine’s youth and, mainly, in the process leading to his conversion to Christianity. Accordingly, it can be said, without incurring in any misjudgement, that Augustine’s conversion to Christianity itself occurred partly due to the answer he believed to have found (with the assistance of the Christian neo-Platonist circle of Milan) for the problem of evil, or at least, it is intimately connected with it. 5 The position I assume here collides with that of Harrison, 2006 who considers that Augustine’s early works portray him as fully anti-Manichean and anti-Pelagian. Augustine’s early thought, HARRISON argues, is not only “fully Christian but also fully Augustinian”. I find it hard to maintain Harrison’s position especially when one takes into account that issues such as grace and predestination are absent in Augustine’s writings produced before the Church Father was ordained to the priesthood. In the very few times that the word “grace” occurs in his early writings, its meaning does not point to divine assistance. This began only in the context of his reading of Paul, by the opening of 390’s.

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How does one explain the presence of sin in the creation of a good God?

1.2

51

How does one explain the presence of sin in the creation of a good God? A key-concept: order (ordo)

There can be no doubt that the discussion on the consciousness of sin knew a defining moment with Augustine. This fact contributed largely to his passionate approach to free will and its relationship with the sinful act6. The Augustinian insistence on pointing to the human will as the origin of sin is proverbial. Any sin, including (perhaps one should say above all) the primitive sin of our first parents, originates in the human will. In order to understand this assertion it is important not to loose sight of a crucial detail: the primal goal of Augustine’s focus on the human free will is to serve rigorously the scrutiny of moral responsibility. This detail is of utmost importance for understanding the theological background of Augustine’s discussion on sin. It is the detail that ultimately leads his readers to grasp what he understood by sin. It is not without a reason that, in the opening words of his very first treatise Augustine addressed the issue of free will – De libero arbitrio – he put in Evodius’ mouth the question “dic mihi, quaeso te, utrum Deus non sit auctor mali”? To this question the Church Father answers by requesting from his interlocutor a more precise definition on the sort of evil to which he was referring, since there are two sorts of evils: the evil one practices (male quemque fecisse) and the evil one suffers (mali aliquid esse perpessum)7. In these first two interventions in the dialogue two things become very clear : Evodius’ question gives direction or focus to the search of the dialogue which intended to attribute the responsibility for the moral evil, that is, sin. To whom is it due? Augustine’s reply points to an important feature of the Augustinian approach to the phenomenon of sin, leading to the basic definition of sin adopted by the Church Father. From Augustine’s reply it becomes evident that he made a recurrent and essential distinction between sin and evil: sin is a particular form of evil, a culpable mistreatment of God and the world, i. e. sin is essentially a blameworthy human doing, a misconduct for which one is responsible. These opening words, then, provide a glimpse of what was about to be developed through the entire dialogue8. Before going into the crucial issue of relationship between human will and sin, I consider it helpful to outline the Augustinian metaphysics of creation, since his doctrine of sin becomes far more intelligible when his account of the pre-laps6 See Rubio, 1964. 7 Lib. arb. I, 1: “dicam, si planum feceris, de quo malo quaeras. duobus enim modis appellare malum solemus: uno, cum male quemque fecisse dicimus, alio, cum mali aliquid esse perpessum”. 8 Springsted, 1998, 83sqq.

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Augustine’s thought regarding Original Sin: concept and nature

arian human existence is taken into consideration. The topic of creation is largely present in Augustine’s early theology. It is another issue he could not avoid on his path to Christianity and this becomes clear when one pays attention to the explanations he struggles to provide for some of his closest friends and contemporaries regarding his decision to embrace the Christian religion9. The book of Genesis, as K. POLLMANN notices, “played a crucial part in Augustine’s decision first to join and then to leave the Manichees”10. What is crucial to mention here is that one of the issues that started to sow the seeds of doubt in Augustine’s mind in relation to his Manichean convictions seems to have been precisely the Manichean account of creation. The young auditor had never been satisfied with the rational and simplistic Manichean Weltanschauung where basically good is light and spirit; and evil is darkness and matter. Moral issues were approached in highly incongruous substantial formulations, and, above all, the most confusing they held a dualistic conception of God. In this sense, Augustine’s contact with Ambrose turned out, then, to be a decisive step towards Christianity. It was the Milanese prelate who introduced him to the allegorical reading of the Scriptures. It was what Augustine needed to set himself free from the chains of the Manichean materialism framing his modus cogitandi up to that point. It was a considerable strike in his Manichean convictions. Under the supervision of his neo-Platonist companions, Augustine came to a crucial conclusion – that of the immateriality of God: God is not matter and nothing material can be God11Augustine had, then, once and for all, overcome his acceptance of Manichean materialism. This, in turn, led him to admit a fact that was to become crucial in his treatment of evil and sin: God is perfectly good, the highest Good (Summum Bonum) and everything in His creation is good, with God Himself at the apex of the ontological pyramid. Firmly convinced of God’s transcendence, Augustine learned from the libri platonicorum a new metaphysical equation for the issue of evil: Evil is not a substance, it is rather a 9 As Carol Harrison rightly observes “Augustine’s preoccupation with creation and his refutation of Manichaeism are inextricably interlinked in his early works. There is no doubt that the traditional preoccupation of both Philosophers and theologians with accounts of creation, as the basis of their reflection on the nature of reality, would have prompted his own early engagement with this question, but the immediate and pressing need he felt to dissociate himself from, and definitively refute, his former co-religionists, meant that the doctrine of creation was a pressing and unavoidable issue in everything he thought and wrote from the moment of his conversion. This was not least because it was precisely in respect of this doctrine that Christianity and Manichaeism decisively and dramatically diverged”. Harrison, 2006, 80. 10 Pollmann, 2007, 206. 11 This assertion can be found, among many other Augustine’s works, in conf., especially the VII book.

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How does one explain the presence of sin in the creation of a good God?

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privation of good (priuatio boni), the absence of what should be12. Evil is simply not a “thing” at all, it is a “no-thing”, the absence of being, as vice is absence of virtue and disease is the absence of health. God, as Augustine portrayed it, is Existence, or Being itself (Ipsum Esse). The Church Father adopted the intimate relationship between being and existence that shapes the (neo)Platonist ontology, and applied it to what he believed to be the orthodox understanding of Christian ontology : God is perfectly good, any creature is good and evil is to be identified with non-being. In other words, evil is not natural since it is contrary to the nature as God created it. This is the basic intellectual framework within which Augustine approached the issue of evil by the time of his conversion, and he remained faithful to it for the rest of his life13. Thus, it is my sincere conviction that Augustine’s metaphysics of creation is the great point of departure for understanding his doctrine of sin. This becomes even clearer when a fundamental concept of the Augustinian theology of creation is taken into account: order. Within the Augustinian lexicon, peccatum (sin) 12 Augustine often used, in his formulation of evil as the concepts of limit, form and order. Evil, he argued, is nothing more than the corruption of limit, form and order. These are a sort of basis or support upon which the created nature, which as such is always good, lies. It is the integrity and the “amount” of these three features that determine the integrity of the created nature. Where limit, form and order are great there are great goods, where they are small, there are small goods, where they are not present, substance is not present, so there is no good at all (nat. b. 3). The corruption of limits, form and order is evil because it is the corruption of the created nature, which is good as such, but evil insofar as it is a corrupted nature: “proinde cum quaeritur, unde sit malum, prius quaerendum est, quid sit malum. quod nihil aliud est quam corruptio uel modi uel speciei uel ordinis naturalis. mala itaque natura dicitur, quae corrupta est; nam incorrupta utique bona est. sed etiam ipsa corrupta, in quantum natura est, bona est; in quantum corrupta est, mala est. ”. nat. b. 4. CSEL 25/2, 857, l. 3. 13 See, for instance, civ. XIV, 11. Some Augustinian scholars, among them Carol Harrison, see in this contact with the Neo-Platonic Philosophy the real origin of the Augustinian revolution which, according to her, if one is to speak of such a revolution, took place in 386 rather than in 396. Augustine, Harrison argues, came to embrace Christianity in line with a tradition of Christian apologists who were converted to Christianity because of their recognition that it is indeed the true Philosophy which supersedes all others. He did not convert to neo-Platonism in 386 to come later to an understanding of the superiority of Christianity, but in light of the neo-Platonist teaching he came to understand key-issues of the Christian doctrine. It is, for instance, in light of neo-Platonist teaching, that he rejects the Manichean materialism applied to the notion of God, that he came to conceive God as Being itself, beyond space, time and change, and adopted the definition of evil as privation of good, a non-being, a no-thing. By reading Confessiones, Harrison argues, it is possible to see “not just how the Platonists reconciled Augustine to the specific features of Christianity he had found offensive, confusing, or unacceptable, but also how his eclectic incorporation of them into his Christian Philosophy had much wider, and very serious repercussions on his understanding of Christian life and doctrine in general, which in turn give a first glimpse of his mature theological system. It is this that I have in mind, Harrison concludes, when I refer to 386 as being the moment when, if one is to speak of a revolution in his thought, it is most appropriate to do so”. Harrison, 2006, 30.

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is defined and is to be understood in light of the concept of order14 (t²ni/ordo), and it is the great reference for the Augustinian imagery of sin. Having been inherited from his contact with neo-Platonism, this concept became central to his whole theological and philosophical system. The Augustinian approach to evil as privation of good is an indirect heritage of the Plotinian conception of evil as “deficiency”((ekke¸vi)15 which came to Augustine with an “Ambrosian” taste16. It also brings about the problem of participation. The Highest expression of Good is to be linked with the Highest expression of Being. The theory of participation, then, allowed Augustine to teach evil as privation of good. God does not participate, He simply is. God is the Good itself and any expression of good in this world is His gift and comes from Him. Everything which exists (existence itself is expression of goodness) exists in God (book XIV of De civitate Dei gives a clear account of this issue). God is perfection; His creation, through participation in His existence, has perfections17. Thus, in order to explain the presence of evil in the world, created by the good and almighty God, Augustine relied on a sharp categorical separation between the eternal Good (the Creator), the temporal creatures, and evil itself. According to the Augustinian understanding of creation, time is itself creation. It is the creation of the world ex nihilo that marks the beginning of universal history, an event which sets the beginning of time as distinct from eternity (procul dubio non est mundus factus in tempore, sed cum tempore)18. The Creator exists “before the dawn of ages” and in Him “stand firm the causes of all unstable things”; He is supreme and does not change, in Him there is no “today” that passes and His years are one “Today”19. But, according to Augustine, the creation is far different i. e. mutable. Time is itself a creation and it marks the beginning of creation. In other words, the world was created, it did not always exist and it is subject to changes, which can be changes for worse. Accordingly, evil was not created, it was the result of an 14 For a detailed discussion on the concept of order in Augustine’s theology, see BoutonTouboulic, 2004, esp. 255 – 371. 15 Enn. III, 2, 5, 25 – 26. 16 See Ambrose’s De Isaac 7, 60, CSEL 32/I, 685: “ex bonis igitur mala orta sunt; non enim sunt mala nisi quae priuantur bonis. per mala tamen factum est, ut bona eminerent. ergo indigentia boni radix malitiae est et definitione boni malitia deprehenditur, quoniam per disciplinam boni malum repperitur. ”, passage quoted by Augustine in C. Jul. I, VIII, 38 – 42 to refute Julian’s claim according to which only a Manichee can maintain that evil can have origin in good. 17 Cf. Meconi, 1996. This study has the advantage of containing the summary of the most prominent studies on Augustine’s doctrine of participation. 18 civ. XI, 6 19 conf. I, 9 – 10 (translation Boulding, 1997, 44 – 45).

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undesired change in the order of creation, caused by a break or disturbance (perturbatio) in the created order. In sin or moral evil (that evil that one practices) lies the origin of such a disturbance. There was, then, a “moment” in which neither the world nor evil existed. Unlike the Creator, they had a beginning. What sets the tone for the Augustinian discourse on the metaphysics of creation is, then, certainly the concept of order. God is the highest expression and source of order, and the entire creation came to existence impregnated with His order (omnia enim in ordine suo creata sunt)20. In practical terms, this means that the rational creature was created in the state of adherence (conversio) to the Creator, with that love for the Creator that constitutes the very basis of Civitas Dei. This love for the Supreme Good is contrary to the love of self upon which the civitas terrena is founded, which is the sort of love that tends to rule in the post-innocence era. The good and almighty God created everything in the state which Augustine identified with coaptatio, a term coined by the African philosopher in his own translation of the Greek word "qlom¸a21, meaning a perfect fitting of parts of a whole, where there is a perfect dialectics of the part and the whole. Human existence itself was an expression of such coaptatio, of such an order. Before sin, the body, an inferior reality, was under the command of the soul, a superior one. It was, Augustine explained, a special time ubi praesertim nondum uoluntati cupiditas resistebat, “when desire was not yet in opposition to the will”22. Human being’s creation occurred in this process and our first parents were integrated in this tranquilitas ordinis, peculiar to the pre-lapsarian period. They were not just voyeurs of the system but part of it and had the responsibility of keeping the established order. All they had to do was to maintain in state of contemplation of the Creator, i. e. avoid sin. Already in his early works (such as De ordine, De natura boni, De moribus ecclesiae catholicae et de moribus Manichaeorum, Contra epistulam Manichaei quam vocant fundamenti), Augustine defined the framework and set the tone which would orient him in the future debates on the nature of sin, discussed in greater length in the seventh book of Confessiones and kept as such in the altercation with the Pelagians: sin/evil/vice is contrary to good, is the corruption of good. This conviction echoes his teaching according to which there is a relation of reciprocity between “ontological goodness” and “being”, i. e., an identification of good with being and evil with non-being. This is why Augustine refused to admit total corruption of good since there would be no nature at all23. 20 21 22 23

lib. arb. III, V, 16. Lewis and Short, 1975, 357. civ. XIV, 12. conf. VII, 12, 18; nat. b. 6.

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Accordingly, ultimately sin is par excellence, the perturbation of the natural order of things. Thus, to Augustine’s eyes, sin is and can only lead to ontological deprivation/ impoverishment. Since all created things are good, sin has its origin in nothing else but in good. Not in the Highest Good (Sumum Bonum), insisted the saint, but in His creation, which, unlike Him, is mutable and can change from good to evil, that is, is subject to corruption24 Augustine’s metaphysics of creation, it becomes evident, shields itself in an old Christian teaching according to which all the created things are not ex or de Deo, but created ex nihilo or de nihilo, denying, against the Manichean approach to the creation, that creature and Creator had a communion of substance. This is a key detail for understanding Augustine’s explanation of the origin of evil. Augustine used the ontological distinction between Creator and creation as the point of departure in his explanation of the possibility of evil. The creation is not made de Deo, so, though created good, it is created apart from the supreme Bounty of the Creator. Though there can be no doubt that Augustine used Neoplatonic concepts in his metaphysical explanations on issues such as evil (defined by Neoplatonists also as privation of good) and creation, the Augustinian notion of creation, in line with the Christian tradition, differs substantially from the Neoplatonic doctrine of emanation. In Augustine’s account of creation no creature enjoys ontological communion with God, that is, no creature is ontologically made of God25. This distinction results in crucial ethical implications. Among them is the possibility of sinning, the human’s capacity to fall away from God, the Creator. The capacity to sin is, thus, deeply intertwined with the fact the creature is not de Deo, and thus subject to an ontological instability which can by no means affect 24 See, for instance, nupt. et conc. II, XXVIII, 48. 25 As Tarcisius Van Bavel explains, Augustine, following the lead of some of his preceding fellow Church Fathers, made a sharp distinction between emanation and creation. “We can say that the world is “from God” only if we take this in the sense of “being created by God”, not in the sense of emanating or proceeding from God. In the case of emanation, there would be no distinction between God and creatures, all would be equal. Creatures are not part of the divine Being, not even the human mind”. Van Bavel, 1990, 7. Or, as Carol Harrison puts it, God created out of nothing, ex nihilo, and this implies a “dramatic ontological gap between Creator and creation which characterizes the Christian doctrine” which is “completely lacking in the continuous outflowing, or emanation of the One in Neoplatonism”. Harrison, 2006, 77. It is, however, important to remind the reader that though Augustine turns to neoPlatonism in order to provide a more consistent explanation on the issue of evil, he is aware that neo-Platonism did not represent the solution for the problem of evil, neither from the theoretical point of view nor from the existential point of view. It was simply the Philosophical doctrine in which he could find what he understands to be some of the necessary tools to shape a more credible line of defence for the the Christian doctrine of evil and present it as the most rational and attractive one. For a good discussion on this issue, see Matthews, 1982.

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the Creator26. Corruption is, then, the natural effect of the fact that the created nature came from nothing. The fifth book of Contra Julianum opus imperfectum is among the best sources to explore this issue in the mature Augustine. The Augustinian God is an entity to whom existence is intrinsic, for He is Himself the cause of His existing. He immutably exists and continues doing so in and through Himself. It is, as a matter of fact, based on the notion of divine essence which is eternal, unchangeable and incorruptible, source of true principles, in contrast with the contingent status of rational creature, that some sense of necessity can be detected in Augustine’s theology of sin. This is particularly clear, for instance, in the Church Father’s discussion on the desire for sin in the rational creature and its total absence in the Creator. A concluding example of this fact, to mention just one of the most important cases, are the ethical implications of Original Sin which clearly determine Augustine’s Biblical exegesis of the much debated Pauline verses of Rom. 7:14 – 25 (especially 7:19). Augustine sees this passage as an ideal one to elucidate the fundamental difference between the rational creature in its pre- and post-lapsarian conditions, namely regarding its ability to avoid sin. The Church Father linked the possibility of the rising of evil in the work of God with the fact that it was made out of nothing, though it did not arise for this reason. When the rational creature 26 C. Jul. I, 36 – 37. See also C. Jul. imp. V, 42. Carol Harrison sees in the results of this impact of Augustine’s encounter with neo-Platonism, a decisive moment in the shaping of the Church Father’s faith and points to creation ex nihilo as a revealing detail in this matter. Augustine’s faith, she argues, is pretty much the same from the outset and knew no significant change in the mid 390s and the implications of his contact with neo-Platonism clearly proves it. “Augustine’s encounter with the “books of the Platonists” revolutionized his thought by providing an escape from the suffocating materialism which the Manichees shared with most of their contemporaries. […] The Platonists’ teaching that there is one transcendent divine nature from which all else derives, and that evil is an absence of the good, provided Augustine with the intellectual armour, as it were, to overcome the Manichees, and any other type of Philosophical dualism and materialism, once and for all. By revealing to Augustine “another reality… which truly is» a God who is “Spirit”, they resolved his intellectual doubts and opened up the way for him to embrace Christianity. What they actually did, much more specifically […] is enable him to embrace the Christian doctrine of creation from nothing, both as the basis of his refutation of Manichaeism , and as the belief which provided the foundation for the entire structure of his Christian faith. In this sense, Neoplatonism provided Augustine with the ontological, Philosophical framework to move decisively beyond it, and to transform it, in embracing the uniquely Christian doctrine of creation from nothing. If this assertion is correct, then it is clear that Augustine’s faith from the outset, was unquestionably and distinctively Christian; that everything was weighed, judged, used, or rejected, according to the uniquely Christian doctrine of creation from nothing, and that it was this, more than anything else, which shaped his characteristic understanding of the faith, and not least his reflection on humanity’s fallenness, the difficulty which human beings experience in willing and doing the good, and their need for divine grace”. Harrison, 2006, 76 – 77.

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(rationalis creatura) was first created, it was created so, that, if it did not will to sin, it would simply not sin. There would have been nothing in the rational creature working against the desire of keeping away from sin. But since the moment a human being committed sin, the scenario changed. Now there is in human beings a strong proneness to sin, and to wish not to sin is, per se, not enough to prevent sin. That is why committed Christians like Paul find themselves doing the evil they do not want to do and refraining from doing the good they want to do (Rom. 7:19)27. It is here that the notion of grace reveals itself as one of the great pillars of the Augustinian ethics. Without divine assistance, the reliance upon the strength of human will to prevent sin is nothing but presumptuousness, a fools’ errand. The rational creature would absolutely not will something evil or do something evil, even unwillingly, if it were not made out of nothing, that is, if it were the nature of God. Only the nature of God was not made out of nothing, because it was not made, and, for that reason, it can change in absolutely no way28. The creation was created good but, not being de Deo, it is not immutably good and this is consonant with the metaphysical possibility of carrying out moral evil, i. e. with the ability to sin. It does not impose, Augustine explained, the necessity of sin upon the rational creature, but it certainly explains the possibility of sin. Neither an angel nor a human being can be compelled to sin by some external force, and they would not have sinned if they had not willed to sin, since they could also have not willed to sin. If they would have been made de Deo, however, they would be under the blessed necessity by which God cannot will to commit or commit sin, i. e. they would not even have been able to sin (“nec angelus nec homo vi aliqua peccare compulsus est nec peccassent, si peccare noluissent, qui etiam nolle potuissent, uerum et posse peccare non in his esset, si natura dei

27 c. Jul imp. V, 38, CSEL 85/2, 236, l. 55: “rationalis quippe creatura cum primum facta est, ita fact est, ut si peccare nollet, nulla necessitate urgeretur ut uellet, aut etiam non uolens id est inuita peccaret et non quod uellet faceret bonum, sed malum quod nollet hoc ageret, ubi iam non peccatum illud quod simpliciter peccatum dicitur, sed etiam poena peccati est”. Cf. nat. b. 7. 28 c. Jul. imp. V, 38, CSEL 85/2, 236, l. 61: “uerumtamen malem aliquid uelle uel mali aliquid etiam nolens facere omnino non posset nisi de nihilo facta esset, id est si dei natura esset. sola enim dei natura de nihilo facta non est, quia nec facta est et ideo nullo prorsus modo mutari potest”. See also V, 31, CSEL 85/2, 230 – 231, l. 40: “peccare autem nulla res posset, si de dei natura facta esset, nec iam facta esset, sed de illo esset, quicquid esset, et hoc ille esset, sicut est filius et spiritus sanctus, quoniam de illo sunt hoc ille sunt, alius nascendo, alius procedendo atque ita sunt de illo, ut numquam fuerit ipse prior illis. et ideo ista natura non potest omnino peccare, quia non potest se ipsam deserere, nec habet meliorem cui debeat inhaerere et cuius possit desertione peccare. Nec tamen ita rationalis est facta creatura, ut haberet peccandi necessitatem, sed nec possibilitatem haberet, si natura dei esset, quoniam dei natura peccare nec vult posse nec potest velle”.

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essent”)29. But what happened is that God created changeable creatures. These do not emanate from Him, but are created by Him. If they would enjoy an ontological communion with Him, it would be God creating God, another unchangeable good, i. e. another nature supreme in being. More than one “supreme being” sounded contradictory to Augustine, so he rejected the possibility. The created beings are good but they have to be changeable/corruptible, unlike the Creator who cannot change, cannot but remain good. This claim (a parenthesis is required here, though I will be dealing with this issue afterwards) calls attention to the Augustinian understanding of freedom. Unlike his opponent Julian, Augustine understood that freedom is much more than the ability or possibility of choosing between good and evil. Such a definition would imply the denial of God’s freedom since He cannot but remain in the good, that is, He cannot desire evil. It is to be noticed that Augustine understood that the value of freedom is violated when sin occurs, since doing evil results from the misuse of free will which is ultimately not true freedom. Human beings were created free, that is, in the contemplation of the Creator. God is the very source of human freedom. Since sin is the abandonment of such contemplation, it is an attempt against human freedom and it only compromises it. So, though sin is committed through the use of free will, sin is never a proof of freedom. For Augustine, freedom (libertas) is the capacity of remaining (in) the good, i. e. obedience to God. Being free is, then, being capable to recognize the goodness of divine order and submit oneself to it. The rational creature was created with this capacity but it was seriously compromised in paradise so it was libertas which the first couple and all humanity lost; not free will, liberum 29 c. Jul. imp. V, 32, CSEL 85/2, 232, l. 21. The issue of creation ex nihilo is considered by some Augustinian scholars as of crucial importance in the development of Augustine’s theology of grace. Harrison 2006, for instance, in order to back up her thesis according to which the Augustinian theology did not know any sort of dramatic change in the mid 390s, points Augustine’s adoption of the doctrine of creation ex nihilo as the great landmark of Augustine’s mature theology. According to Harrison the generally known Augustinian teaching according to which humans are not able to wish or perform good when unaided by grace is to be traced back to Augustine’s doctrine of creation ex nihilo. Aware of the limitations of a rational creature created out of nothing, Harrison argues, the young Augustine, unlike some scholars accused him, does not share the anthropological optimism of the classical Philosophers. One does not have to wait for the mid 390s to find a clear doctrine of Fall or Original Sin in Augustine’s theology. The doctrines of creation ex nihilo and Fall walk hand to hand in Augustine. Accordingly it would suffice to turn to his early works in which, according to Harrison, Augustine emphasises the radical dependence of humans on divine assistance when it comes to the desire for and performance of good, to find his “mature” system of doctrine including that of Fall and Original Sin. Augustine’s adoption of the doctrine of creation ex nihilo and the role it plays in his theological discourse from the moment of the Church Father’s conversion assumes a crucial importance in Harrison’s portray of young Augustine as a “proto-anti-Pelagian”. See Harrison, 2006, esp. 74 – 114, 167 – 197 and 238 – 287.

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abitrium voluntatis. Without free will it is also not possible to sin. Human being has, then, free will, but free will is no longer enough to perform good, grace is absolutely necessary for the performance of good30. Human free will is able to perform both good and evil. What happened, according to Augustine, is that the capacity for remaining in good, the ability to perform good were compromised or lost in Adam’s sin. Thus humankind lost that freedom/liberty which Augustine usually identifies with libertas christiana31. Throughout the Pelagian controversies Augustine often stresses the divine origin of this libertas against the Pelagians who maintained that in order that human beings make use of the free will of choice this libertas (capacity of choosing and remaining in good) must be in human nature and cannot be lost. Augustine argued that it was lost in Adam’s transgression and thus, after sin, free will is only valuable for committing sin. Human beings were created with an upright will, able to avoid sin (posse non peccare). This grace or first liberty (prima libertas) when properly used enabled them to continue in goodness as long as they willed to act upright. But they did not possess the non posse non peccare. They decided to choose evil and, by doing so, fell from goodness and their fall had as consequence the loss of the uprightness of the will, which means to say that they lost the first liberty to do good. The capacity of remaining (in) good was annihilated by the first couple’s sin and this is precisely why the Redeemer is necessary. Without divine assistance they can neither perfect nor reacquire goodness through the exercise of free choice32. This is what characterizes the post-lapsarian liberty : an evil nature inevitably produces evil acts. Unless healed by the Redeemer this human free will tends only to sin. It is no longer free since it no longer wishes to serve the Highest Good. It only turns to this Good if assisted by the gracious mercy of the Redeemer. This, as will be explained in due course, is what makes of Augustine’s doctrines of Original Sin and grace two complementary and mutually clarifying issues. In other words, while Augustine’s doctrine of grace is the only reliable 30 c. Jul. imp. V, 38. 31 Jos¦ Rubio’s words may be helpful here. According to Augustine, he observes, “El hombre no tiene otro destino que Dios. En Dios y en su destinaciûn a Dios radica la essencia misma del ser humano. Sin ser privado de su libertad personal, el hombre nace “enmarcado” – metafisica y teolûgicamente – en un orden divino, conforme al cual ha sido estructurado en su ser ontolûgico y en su destino sobrehumano. Eso s†, el hombre puede eligir libremente la disyuntiva de someterse o rebelarse frente a el orden divino. En cada hombre, individualmente, se repite la tentaciûn original. Si el hombre elige el orden divino, el hombre est‚ salavado ûntica y teolûgicamente. Si elige la rebeliûn, y constituirse en su propio centro, su perdiciûn es igualmente total: caûticamente desorganizado en su ser y esclavo de las cosas. De este modo, Dios es la libertad del hombre, ya que el hombre es fflnicamente libre someti¦ndose al orden de Dios. Un orden que nos es tirania, sino imposiciûn natural, enra†zada en el mismo hecho de ser hombre”. Rubio, 1964, 52. 32 Djuth, 1999, 496.

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angle from which his doctrine of Original Sin is to be analysed and properly understood, the universal guilty and condemnation subsequent to his doctrine of Original Sin is what ultimately backs up his radical notion of salvation through the gracious mercy of God. Since Augustine is convinced that salvation is not for all, he pointed to a general guilt (such as the concept of Original Sin) a term proved apt for his understanding of salvation as a highly selective process depending only on the arbitrary divine mercy. All share Adam’s condemnation since all sinned in him. Salvation, however, depends exclusively on God’s gracious mercy. These claims encapsulate the great line of reasoning of Augustine’s soteriology : God is just when he condemns those He condemns (who were already worthy to be condemned due to Original Sin) and merciful when He saves those He saves although they deserve condemnation on account of Original Sin. By saying this I do not mean Augustine’s doctrine regarding Original Sin derived from his doctrine of grace. The main tenets of Augustine’s doctrines concerning both grace and Original Sin arise in his theological works by the same time (second half of 390’s) precisely because they are inter-complementary issues. Augustine did not formulate his doctrine of grace and then, as result of it, come to teach Original Sin later. The two doctrines developed entangled into each other.

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Original Sin, the primitive inordinatio amoris: three key-concepts: order (ordo), love (amor) and will (voluntas)

Bracketing the metaphysical account of the possibility of sin, the focus of this paper will now be the concepts of sin and Original Sin. It has been stressed above that the goodness of creation comes by a good Creator who is Himself goodness. The fact that sin took place, leads to a rather obvious question: what happened? For Augustine, placing guilt in the Creator is out of the question. He vehemently denied both the Platonist and Manichean approach which blames the body, taking for granted the simple fact that, like the soul, the body, is also God’s creation and, thus, created good. Augustine, it is true, linked the term “carnal” with concupiscence. But he often explained that even in the Scriptures the term “flesh” is used to refer to the whole human being, that is, spirit and flesh. If flesh was to be blamed, the Devil would have no fault at all. The Devil has no body, but many faults, especially envy and pride. As a matter of fact, one thing is very clear in Augustine’s psychological reasoning: flesh

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cannot desire without the soul. When he speaks of flesh desiring, all he means is that the soul desires in a carnal manner33. So the body is not to be blamed. God, Augustine argues, is the supreme and immutable nature. Accordingly, sin is not nature (which, as such, is always good, omnis natura in quantum natura est bona est), but, rather, the vices of nature (vitia naturarum): corruption, absence or the privation of good (privatio boni). Natura is to be identified with substantia and substantia is an expression of good (bonum) since any substantia insofar as it exists is either God or comes from God34 Augustine remained faithful to this metaphysical explanation on the phenomenon of sin from his early confrontation with the Manicheans to the late years of his life, when facing the Italian bishop, Julian of Aeclanum35. Creation per se is not to be blamed since it was created good and in harmony. Before sin it was peace, not war, which existed in human nature. Adam’s first sin was a sin tout court (simpliciter peccatum), so to say ; it was neither that sin which is itself punishment of sin (poena peccati) nor both sin and punishment of sin. Unlike his righteous descendants, Adam was perfectly free to avoid his first sin; he had no contrary law in his flesh. The first sin was, then, not a sin of weakness, but a sin of Pride. The state of war was introduced into human nature by nothing else but sin (of which God is not author) that came to put an end to that happy state in which there was nothing in the flesh that had desires opposed to the spirit and that the same flesh was ruled by the spirit that had desires opposed to it (“illam felicitatem, ubi nihil erat in carne, quod adversus spiritum concupisceret, et concupiscente adversus se spiritu frenaretur: quia in natura hominis ante peccatum pacem decebat esse, non bellum”)36. Augustine, however, still had to explain how sin could occur in such a good creation. This fact raises unavoidable questions, among them the following: if sin occurs in God’s creation how avoid tracing sin back to God? How avoid imputing some responsibility on the part of the Creator in whose creation sin 33 Jenson, 2006, 15; Couenhoven, 2005, 373 – 374, along with c. Jul. II, VII, 19; III, VIII, 17-IX, 18. 34 lib. arb. III, XIII, 36; nat. b. 19. 35 This is the argument Augustine developed in his early anti-Manichean treatises, but the same argument is present in C. Jul. I, VIII, 37, where, in reply to Julian’s opposition to the statement according to which evil finds its origin in the created good things, Augustine writes: “Quaerunt itaque a nobis, unde sit malum. respondemus, ex bono, sed non summo et incommutabili bono. Ex bonis igitur inferioribus atque mutabilibus orta sunt mala. Quae mala licet intelligamus non esse naturas, sed vitia naturarum: tamen simul intelligimus ea, nisi ex aliquibus et in aliquibus naturis esse non posse; nec aliquid esse malum, nisi a bonitate defectum. Sed cuius defectum, nisi alicuius sine dubitatione naturae? Quia et ipsa voluntas mala, nonnisi alicuius uoluntas est profecto naturae. Et angelus quippe et homo naturae sunt”. PL 44, col. 666. The insistence on the definition of evil as disorder is regarded by some to be one of the most remarkable Stoic influences over Augustine’s early thought. See, for instance, Verbeke, 1958, esp. 86 – 88. 36 C. Jul. III, XI, 23, PL 44, col. 714.

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occurs? To clearly answer these questions, one must ask first (if not for any other purpose, at least to avoid confusion): what does Augustine understands by Original Sin? A detailed analysis on the use of the term originale peccatum and its equivalents reveals that for Augustine, originale peccatum meant, the origin of sin; the first sin committed by the first couple, as well as the condition each human being inherits on account of that sin when coming into this world. Though such analysis falls outside the scope of this study, the answer to the last question just formulated can be reformulated (putting aside, for now, the complex issue of inherited human condition which is often closely linked with the term originale pecatum in Augustine’s works). The question restated, then, is this: what does Augustine understand by the sin of Adam, that sin of the origins? I believe no better answer than the one Augustine himself provided can be found. Original Sin, Augustine summarized in his epistle 118, is that “first voluntary falling away” motivated by a disordered love which consisted in an act of man “taking pleasure in his own power”; it was that sin that happened at the moment Adam, with a misguided will, took pleasure in something inferior rather than rejoicing in the power of God (“primum autem peccatum, hoc est primum uoluntarium defectum esse gaudere ad propriam potestatem; ad minus enim gaudet, quam si ad dei potestatem gaudeat, quae utique maior est”)37. This definition will be my starting point. I want to mention here that, from the outset, Augustine’s reasoning places a special stress on the voluntary origin of human actions. Hence in the definition of Original Sin Augustine could not afford to give up the phrase uoluntarium defectum. This is, after all, what defines the Augustinian conception of sin: sin is always a voluntary defectivus motus. It is certainly not without reason that Augustine’s approach to sin almost always involves a close (and perhaps even a dialectical) relationship between the concept of sin and, at least, two other concepts central to his thought: love (amor/ dilectio) and will (voluntas), constantly present in both anti-Manichean and anti-Pelagian debates38. 37 ep. 118, CSEL 34/2, 680, l. 13. 38 As a matter of fact, it must be stressed, at every stage of his theological development, that Augustine opposed Manichean and Pelagian interpretation of the issue. The fatalistic approach of the Manicheans (which denied free will) he refused to accept. As for the Pelagians he suggested corrections especially regarding what he considered their excessively optimistic approach to human free will. According to Augustine, they overemphasised the role of free will in the justification of the sinner. Augustine insisted that human will, or, better said, the depraved human will (which means a misguided and so disordered will), is the very cause of sin. Augustine regarded Manichaeism and Pelagianism as two antithetical heresies. The antithetical errors comprise fundamental aberrations regarding baptism and the person of Christ. The Pelagians, Augustine argued, in order to defend the notion that no flesh is born sinful, put the flesh of the redeemed on a par with that of the Redeemer; and the Manichees in

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From his early writings Augustine argued that no other cause for sin can be found apart from the free will. Sin is thus nothing else but a motus auersionis of the will in relation to what is good39. This motus aversionis in the will Augustine identified with libido, an evil form of desire (cupiditas)40. With the stress Augustine lays upon voluntas his aim was none other than to state and defend the human responsibility in the sinful act, against the Manichean according to which God would be the one truly responsible for the human sinful acts, since humans are compelled to sin. It is, in my opinion, the relationship between order, love and will that brings Augustine to a deeper and more consistent theological approach to the phenomenon of sin. It has been noticed that in the Augustinian phraseology peccatum assumes diverse meanings: sometimes it means the evil present in human deeds; at other times Original Sin or the punishment inflicted upon the human race on account of the primal guilt, that is, the ignorance and the concupiscence with which we all come into this world. Sometimes, Christ Himself is called sin since He made Himself the victim of our sins41. One of the most striking definitions of sin Augustine provided is, however, to be found in his anti-Manichean work known as Contra Faustum, written around the year 400. Here the Bishop of Hippo explained to his interlocutor and former co-religionist that “sin is any transgression in deed, word or desire against the eternal law” (“ergo peccatum est factum uel dictum uel concupitum aliquid contra aeternam legem”)42. Immediately after having provided his lapidary definition of sin, Augustine defined the eternal law as “the divine reason or God’s will which commands the natural order to be safeguarded and prohibits its perturbation (“lex uero aeterna est ratio diuina uel uoluntas dei ordinem naturalem conseruari iubens, perturbari uetans”)43. It would be hard not to notice the centrality of the concept of order in both Augustine’s definitions of sin and eternal law. Order is indeed the concept that sets the tone for Augustinian ethics. The same role is played by the ordo in Augustine’s understanding of natural law from the very beginning of his literary career. “Ut igitur breuiter aeternae legis notionem, quae inpressa nobis

39 40

41 42 43

the hatred of flesh held a docetist vision of Christ’s body. For our concern, it is Augustine’s doctrine of creation and ethical theology (mainly the doctrine of free will and its role on the salvation process) which are the two most important realms for illustrating Augustine’s conviction. See, for instance, c. ep. Pel.II, II, 3. lib. arb. III, XIX, 53sqq It is to be noted that variations are found in Augustine’s use of terms to denominate both positive and negative forms of love. Thus in Nisula 2010, 128 a most opportune remark is made, namely that “the evil form of love is usually, but not always, equated with cupiditas, whereas the good form of love is usually, but not always, denoted with caritas. Other words used are libido or concupiscentia and amor or dilectio, respectively”. Armas, 1956, 169. See XXII, 27, CSEL 25/1, 621. Ibidem

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est, quantum ualeo, uerbis explicem, ea est, qua iustum est, ut omnia sint ordinatissima”. It is with these words tat Augustine summarised the concept of eternal law in De libero arbitrio44. Once again, Augustine’s ontological discourse is clearly determined by a framework according to which there is a clear sense of reciprocity between “ontological goodness” and “being”. God is the highest expression of goodness and only He really is in the full sense of the word; He is immutable and represents or is the perfection of order45. God, Himself source of order, created an ordered world in which each thing has its proper place and role. Thus, Augustine uses a system of categorization or division of all things (and it is to be remembered that all created things are good) into two kinds: temporal and eternal. Augustine’s commentary on the first verses of Genesis is very clear in one aspect: he vehemently opposes both the Platonist and Manichean dualisms and the monism of Stoicism. His metaphysic of creation bases itself in the radical difference between creation and the Creator. It is true that both are good, but, it must be stressed, Augustine claims, aperteque distincta sunt, they are clearly different. A creature is made ex or de nihilo; it cannot be compared either to God or to what is of God. This implies that nothing is the same as what God begets from Himself, since that would be to equate God with nothing (nihil), which Augustine takes as a procedure that does not fall short from being sacrilegious (“sacrilega enim audacia coaequantur nihil et deus, si quale est illud, quod de deo natum est, tale uelimus esse illud, quod ab eo de nihilo factum est”)46. Only the 44 lib. arb. I, VI, 15, CchL 29, 220, l. 64. The preservation of order is a major issue in Augustine’s both theological and Philosophical reasoning. To understand this is of utmost importance to grasp the entire Augustinian thought, especially the most controversial of his teachings. For instance, it is not possible to understand the much debated Augustinian “just war” theory (along with the Augustinian insight on State and politics) without taking into account the crucial importance of the preservation of order in Augustinian thought. For a good discussion on this issue, see Mattox, 2008, esp. pp. 45 – 120. 45 For a detailed studied on the intrinsic relationship between order and being in Augustine’s thought, see OLIVEIRA, 2004. 46 nat. b. 10, CSEL 25/2, 859, l. 13. “From Him” (ex ipso) Augustine argued, is not the same as “of Him”. What is of God comes from Him and is of Him. Heaven and earth are from Him but not of Him, since they are not made of His substance. It is like a man who begets a son and builds a house. The son comes from him as the house comes from him, but the son is of him while the house is of the material he uses to built it. The difference here is that man builds the house of the material he uses for building, while God creates out of nothing: ”ex ipso” autem non hoc significat quod ”de ipso”. quod enim de ipso est, potest dici ”ex ipso;” non autem omne, quod ”ex ipso” est, recte dicitur ”de ipso;” ex ipso enim caelum et terra, quia ipse fecit ea, non autem de ipso, quia non de substantia sua. sicut aliquis homo si gignat filium et faciat domum, ex ipso filius, ex ipso domus, sed filius de ipso, domus de terra et de ligno. sed hoc quia homo est, qui non potest aliquid etiam de nihilo facere; deus autem, ex quo omnia, per quem omnia, in quo omnia, non opus habebat aliqua materia, quam ipse non fecerat, adiuuari omnipotentiam suam. ” nat. b. 27, CSEL 25/2, 868, l. 7.

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one He begot from Himself is like Him, i. e. made of Him, enjoys an ontological communion with Him. God is so omnipotent that He could (and can), through His will, create ex nihilo a creature different from Himself, a mutable nature, without being Himself affected by such mutability47. There is the Highest Good (Sumum Bonum/incommutabile bonum) which is God; but there are also eternal and temporal goods. Since any sort of good either comes from God or is God Himself, the temporal good finds its origin in nowhere else but in the Sumum Bonum i. e. God48 Augustine stressed, however, as has been said, that though the temporal goods come from God they do not enjoy an ontological communion with God; that is, they are not made of God, de Deo. This fundamental distinction can be found very explicitly, among many other places, in the opening words of Augustine’s anti-Manichean work De natura boni where God is defined as the Highest Good (Summum bonum, quo superius non est; Deus est) and, thus, immutable Good (ac per hoc incommutabile bonum est). All the other goods comes from Him but are not made of Him (cetera omnia bona nonnisi ab illo sunt sed non de illo). Since God alone is immutable Good, all the remaining goods created by Him are created ex nihilo and are, thus mutable (“ac per hoc si solus ipse incommutabilis, omnia quae fecit, quia ex nihilo fecit, mutabilia sunt”)49. It is to be noted, however, that even among the other sort of goods that distinguish themselves from the Highest Good, there is a hierarchy to be considered, i. e. some are superior to others. For instance, according to Augustine, the spirit is superior to the body, as spiritual goods are always superior to the material ones. This distinction is the key for understanding Augustine’s definition of sin as inordinatio amoris. Virtue and sin depend ultimately on the priority the rational creature gives to the aforementioned sort of goods. Virtue requires an ordered love and such a love is determined by a single criterion: the eternal goods should always be preferred to temporal goods, that is, the order of value determines the order of love. When this is the case it is proper to speak of 47 lib. arb. I, XVI, 34, CCSL 29, 234, l. 3: rerum duo genera, aeternalium et temporalium, duo que rursus hominum, aliorum aeternas aliorum temporales sequentium et diligentium, satis aperte que distincta sunt […]”. See also conf. XII, XXVIII, 38. 48 One of the scriptural bases for the Augustinian insistence on this singular ontological consistence of God from whom all the existence emanates are the divine words addressed to Moses in Ex. 3:14: “magnifice igitur et diuine deus noster famulo suo dixit: ego sum qui sum et: dices filiis Israhel, qui est, misit me ad uos. uere enim ipse est, quia incommutabilis est; omnis enim mutatio facit non esse quod erat. uere ergo ille est, qui incommutabilis est; cetera, quae ab illo facta sunt, ab illo pro modo suo esse acceperunt. ei ergo, qui summe est, non potest esse contrarium nisi quod non est; ac per hoc sicut ab illo est omne, quod bonum est, sic ab illo est omne, quod naturale est, quoniam omne, quod naturaliter est, bonum est. omnis itaque natura bona est et omne bonum a deo est; omnis ergo natura a deo est”. nat. b. 19, CSEL 25/2, 863, l. 1. 49 nat. b. 1, CSEL 25/2, 855, l. 7.

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an ordinatio amoris and virtue reigns. When it is not the case, there is an inordinatio amoris and sin reigns. Sin is, thus, nothing more than the submission of reason to the passions. When such a thing happens one has an example of homo inordinatus. Homo ordinatus can be seen only when there is no defectivus motus, that is, the movements of the soul are controlled by the right reason which allows greater goods to be preferred to inferior ones (“hisce igitur animae motibus cum ratio dominatur, ordinatus homo dicendus est. non enim ordo rectus aut ordo appellandus omnino est, ubi deterioribus meliora subiciuntur”)50. The chief conclusion of all this is that evil does not come from the world, but from the misuse of the free will with which the rational creature was created. The disorder in the love which causes sin to occur and the gravity of the sinful act are well encapsulated in the Augustinian image of humanity curved upon itself51: since God exists in a supreme degree and everything that exists, exists through the participation in God’s supreme form of existence, any self-oriented act, being a step away from God, from whom the rational creature draws its existence, the personal sin leads only to ontological poverty. This is to say that the more we adhere to God, i. e. struggle to keep the integrity of created order, the more united we become in relation to our Creator and the stronger our ontological consistency will be. God is the source of all order. By respecting the order in His creation we do no more than to act in line with our main and ultimate vocation – to be. To lead a holy life is to live according to the right order, well expressed in the divine precepts. The more we avoid sin the more we are, since we keep ourselves close to Him who is in the highest sense. The more we cling to sin, the less we are, since sin is nothing more than stepping away from the source of being. These form the anthropological and ontological basis of the Augustinian approach to the phenomenon of sin. Order of love, order in the love, this is what Augustine’s ethics is all about. According to Augustine, love is the will directed to God. Any other orientation of the will assumes a self-centered contour. Love’s orientation, a well-guided love, in Augustine’s eyes, points essentially to the idea of right proportion, ends up, then, being the tiny line between virtue and sin. The order of love, is what 50 lib. arb. I, VIII, 18, CCSL 29, 223, l. 27. That is why that shameful and ugly kind of love, with which Augustine identified cupiditas, is considered the “root of all evil”. As Timo Nisula explains, according to Augustine, in determining the quality of love, one has to evaluate its object, that is, the direction of its movement (ad quo moueri). In case of the “ugly love”, the objects are perishable, and always entail the possibility of being taken away from the one who loves or enjoys them. In contrast, the right kind of love immediately possesses the imperishable objects of its knowledge”. Nisula 2010, 129 – 130. On Augustine’s discussion concerning the scriptural support from the claim according to which cupiditas is the root of sin, namely the use of I Tim 6:10 on the formulation of this claim, see Ibidem 139 – 155. For further details see also Rubio 1964, esp. sqq. 51 For a good survey, see Jenson 2006, 8 – 46.

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determines what is virtuous and what is sinful and it lies at the core of Augustine’s treatment of sin: sin is nothing else than a disordered love, a soul in love with itself resulting in the preference for temporal things. It is identified with private and inferior goods and mistreatment of the eternal, identified with the immutable and common goods (“Voluntas auersa ab incommutabili et communi bono et conuersa ad proprium bonum aut ad exterius, aut ad inferius, peccat”)52. Accordingly, the origin of sin is to be found in pride. In love with itself, the soul feeds the foolish desire of independence from God, falls away from God in the illusory attempt to have a self-sustained being, when, actually, there is no greater good for it than to contemplate and enjoy the presence of God. The elevation of the self above the Creator : this is the most comprehensive and accurate way to define sin as Augustine understood it. This sense of elevation of the self above the Creator is what defines Augustine’s concept of sin lato sensu. Sin, be it Adamic, angelic, or committed now daily, it is always an aversio a Deo, conversio ad creaturas i. e. love of the self53. What I have been describing in these last lines was, according to Augustine, precisely what occurred in paradise where our First Parents were living. They preferred minus to maior. Augustine insisted that Adam was created free, i. e. capable of remaining in the good. However, the freedom he possessed before sinning was not the non posse non peccare, i. e. the inability to sin (which Augustine claims to be the true liberty enjoyed in heaven by the blessed ones)54, but of the posse non peccare, that is, the ability not to sin (“Prima ergo libertas voluntatis erat, posse non peccare”)55. Accordingly, he was created with a good will, that is, devoted to fulfil God’s commands. The established order of things makes it clear that his soul mastered his body ; his will mastered his carnal desires, and God mastered his will. How could he sin with all this? Within the Augustinian approach to sin, it becomes easy to understand. What does really matter when it comes to sin? What ultimately defines sin? It is, once again, in the order of love that the answers are to be found. For Augustine, the real detail defining the phenomenon of sin comes down to the order or lack of it in love (ordo amoris). The order was 52 lib. arb., II, XIX, 53, CCSL 29, 272, l. 59 see also Simpl. I, II, 18, CCSL 44, 45, l. 550: “est autem peccatum hominis inordinatio atque peruersitas, id est a praestantiore conditore auersio et ad condita inferiora conuersio”. See Plotinus’ Enn. 5, 5. 53 It is, as a matter of fact, this definition of sin as elevation of self above the Creator that lies at the basis of the Augustinian image of the Two Cities, lapidarily described in book XIV of De ciuitate Dei. The heavenly city glories in God, unlike the earthly city which glories in itself, i. e. its members are not humble enough to submit themselves to the Creator, but rather place their own selves above Him. See Hombert, 1996, 217 – 251. 54 On Augustine’s approach to the perseverance of the saints in this earthly life, see Wright, 2001. 55 corrept. XII, 33.

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broken, and it provoked changes in the human being. What changes? The answer he provides, among many other places, in book XIV of De ciuitate Dei where he explains that what changed after the Fall of human beings is the force which drives the originally blameless movements of the bodily members, a new stirring of the primitive couple’s flesh. This is called libido and it arises regardless of the decision of the will56. The inordinatio amoris, it becomes clear, is what provides the basis for a wider understanding of the term concupiscentia carnis in Augustine’s writings. It has been suggested that the best translation for “concupiscentia carnis” in Augustine would be “sinful longing”57. The suggestion is entirely consistent. “Together with the verb concupisco, Timo NISULA observes, it [concupiscentia] may be said to be Augustine’s standard word stem for evil desire”58. This becomes evident when one takes into account that Augustine’s definition of sin has always as its basis the imagery of an inordinatio amoris. The term concupiscentia often occurs in Augustine with a meaning which helps to understand the crucial issue of the order of love. When Augustine associates the term concupiscentia with a negative sense he often makes it clear by adding the adjective/noum carnalis/carnis. Concupiscentia carnis is, then, nothing more than a strong passion/desire (libido) which goes against the order of things. It is the desire for forbidden things, hence misguided and sinful. He who perversely loves a good, regardless of the nature of that good, even if he/she gets it, becomes evil in this good and miserable on account of the privation of a higher good59. 56 civ. XIV, 17. 57 Lamberigts, 1997, 157. 58 Nisula, 2010, 33. This study is a remarkable doctoral thesis submitted by Timo Nisula in the end of year 2010 to the Department of Systematic Theology of the University of Helsinki. For lexical and semantic considerations on the terms concupiscence, cupiditas and libido I recommend the reading of this work, especially pp. 33 – 55. 59 All this proves how inaccurate it is to circumscribe the term concupiscentia carnis to the sexual lust, impulses or desires. Augustine himself tried to make sure his readers would not understand it that way. Throughout Augustine’s writings it is possible to find two main terms referring to sexual lust: libido, the classical word used to denominate all desires (cupiditates) and concupiscentia carnis or simply concupiscentia, a Biblical term resulting from the translation of the Greek epithumia (John 2:15 – 16). It is true that, when talking about spiritual disorders, the term concupiscentia carnis may be closely related to sensual pleasure, and when the object of concupiscence is not specified it refers to the lust arousing the sexual organs (civ. XIV, 16). However, Augustine was clear in his debate with Julian when the Italian bishop accused him of condemning sexual desires as concupiscentia carnis without any scriptural basis. Augustine replied that Julian’s accusation presumed something he never did, i. e. to restrict the term concupiscentia carnis to a sexual connotation. He stressed that such concupiscentia becomes evident whenever the flesh opposes the spirit, that is when an inner disorder reigns in human beings Cf. c. Jul. imp. IV, 28, CSEL 85/2, 28, l. 12: “ita hoc dicis, quasi nos concupiscentiam carnis in solam uoluptatem genitalium dicamus aestutare. prorsus in quocumque corporis sensu caro contra spiritum concupiscit ipsa cognoscitur, et

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According to the Church Father the answer to the question why Adam, being created good, abandoned the contemplation of God by sinning is rather quite clear : though created good, the rational creature is not Sumum Bonum, hence able to sin. In other words, Adam’s true weakness lays in his condition of creature, that is, in the fact he was changeable by nature and so liable to turn away from the transcendent good, to abandon the contemplation of the Summum Bonum. For this to constitute sin it is not even necessary to turn to an evil thing. It suffices to turn to a lower/mutable good, i. e. to love perversely, to love against the natural order (“non ad malas naturas, sed ideo male, quia contra ordinem naturarum ab eo quod summe est ad id quod minus est”.)60. Sin, then, is not to desire an evil nature but to abandon a better one. Original Sin is a paradigmatic case: the soul fell in love with something good (itself, the soul, a creation of God, is unquestionably good in the eyes of Augustine) but such love is a perverted sort of love. It is motivated by self-oriented concerns, since it aims at its own good instead of the common good. The analysis Augustine does on Adam’s sin is quite clear : the forbidden tree placed in the paradise was a good tree, not an evil nature. Thus when Adam touched the forbidden tree he did not desire an evil nature; he, rather, committed an evil act, when out of disobedience he abandoned what was better, that is, God and His commands61. These conclusions lead Augustine to the following argument: sin occurs on account of the voluntary dimension of human pride. Rather than the flesh bringing the soul to corruption, it was the sinful soul that made the flesh corruptible. And the soul was cast into corruption by an act of pride. The evil act is preceded by an evil will. Pride alone is the start of the evil wills, Augustine asserts, quoting Eccl. 10:13. Pride is nothing else but a longing for a perverse kind of exaltation as it abandons (deserto) the basis on which the mind should be quoniam si non aduersus eam spiritus fortius concupiscat, ad mala pertrahit, malum esse conuincitur”. M. Lamberigts’ thesis according to which “one needs to view Augustine’s comments on concupicentia carnis not so much as an exposition on sexuality in itself but rather as a part of the flesh-spirit antinomy with which Paul was also familiar” and that “Augustine’s point, in other words, it that due to the disobedience of the first human beings, the original harmony has been fundamentally disrupted, as the opposition between Gen 2, 25 and Gen 3,7, sufficiently shows” is, thus entirely accurate. See Lamberigts, 1997, 156. 60 civ.. XII, 8, CCSL 48, 362, l. 9. Augustine takes Adam’s sin to be a paradigmatic case. The forbidden tree placed in the paradise was not an evil tree, it was a good tree. 61 nat. b. 34, CSEL 25/2, 872, l. 4: “item quia peccatum uel iniquitas non est appetitio naturarum malarum, sed desertio meliorum, sic in scripturis inuenitur scriptum: omnis creatura dei bona est, ac per hoc et omne lignum, quod in paradiso deus plantauit, utique bonum est. non ergo malam naturam homo appetiuit, cum arborem uetitam tetigit, sed id, quod melius erat, deserendo factum malum ipse commisit. melior quippe creator quam ulla creatura, quam condidit: cuius imperium non erat deserendum, ut tangeretur prohibitum quamuis bonum, quoniam deserto meliore bonum creaturae appetebatur, quod contra creatoris imperium tangebatur. non itaque deus arborem malam in paradiso plantauerat, sed ipse erat melior, qui eam tangi prohibebat”.

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firmly focused and becomes and remains focused on oneself. This is only possible when the rational creature is too pleased with itself and, thus, abandons the immutable God in whom, instead of in itself, it should find satisfaction. So in an act of pride, out of a disordered love, Adam desired to replace God with the self62. This was Original Sin. Such a desertion was (and continues to be) voluntary. When Adam transgressed God’s commands by eating the forbidden fruit, he committed an act when he was already evil63. It was Adam’s creatureliness that made possible this change in the will, leading to this disastrous search for the proud satisfaction of the self, a fact that explains our first parents’ listening to the Tempter with the consequence of condemning mankind to a miserable condition and fate. It is, then, clear that the order of love is what draws the line of separation between virtue and sin. Too pleased with himself, Adam decided to love his own self above his Creator. Adam neglected totally the order of love in a crucial matter, namely the very relationship between God and man. He let himself be led astray from the immutable and Highest Good, taking pleasure in his own self. This is precisely why the beginnings of sin is pride and the beginnings of human pride ends up being the very apostasy from God, in whom the rational soul is supposed to take pleasure above all things64. To sum up, it can be said that, according to Augustine, the possibility and execution of sin find its basis in the following scheme: a misguided will inverses the right order of love (leading to the surrender of reason to the passions) and shows an outrageous disrespect for the entire order of creation.

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On the gravity of Original Sin

That, for Augustine, the first sin committed by Adam and Eve at the Garden was not only their own but also ours (i. e. mankind’s) is clearly seen in the Church Father’s use of one of the passages which became the strongest prooftext of his doctrine of Original Sin – I Cor. 15:22 (In Adam we all die, and in Christ we shall rise again). The gravity of that great sin is well encapsulated in his almost axiomatic use of the term poena peccati. The highly stressed punitive dimension of sin is, one must say, quite in line with Augustine’s insistence on the fact that sin is a particular form of evil, a blameworthy/culpable evil. This is an important detail to assist in understanding Augustine’s approach to the gravity of Original 62 civ. XIV, 13 63 Ibidem. See also Rubio 1964, 62 – 64 64 For an excellent survey on the relationship between self-love and the Adamic Fall, see O’Donovan, 1980, esp. 93 – 111.

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Sin. Committed voluntarily, and motivated by pride alone, Adam’s first sin brought heavy punishments upon humankind. In fact, one may not be overreacting if one says that all the kinds of evil one suffers directly or indirectly find their origins in that first evil committed by the first couple in paradise. However, among all the punishments brought upon humankind on account of the primitive sin, one is of particular importance for understanding Augustine’s position on its gravity : the predisposition, the proneness to sin, the disorientation or the nausea towards good, often encapsulated in the term concupiscentia carnis. Adam, when committing the first sin, did more than that. He also sowed a sinful desire in human nature; he planted a sort of thirst for sin in all his descendants. On account of Original Sin each and every of Adam’s descendants inherits what Augustine calls ignorantia and difficultas i. e. the inability to perform what one knows to be right. Jesse COUENHOVEN is right when he states that, according to Augustine, Original Sin differs from other sins in that “it is an inherited condition, and a corruption of human nature. In general terms, original sin is a fundamental disorientation, away from God and towards lesser goods” and that “Augustine’s multi-purpose term for this corrupted orientation is carnal concupiscence”65. It is precisely around the idea of concupiscentia carnis that Augustine’s approach to the gravity of Original Sin revolves. As is well known, one of the burning issues in Augustine’s theology is the theological weight he ascribes to Original Sin. In Augustine’s view concerning human beings there are two major periods for human condition: before and after sin. Sin brought disorder, suffering, condemnation and all sort of evils to the world. The Church Father, it must be remembered, divides the moral pathology of the human condition into two aspects: pride and moral weakness. The emphasis he lays on moral weakness on account of the lex peccati i. e. concupiscentia carnis, installed in human persons after sin, as will become clear, is a major point of friction in his debate with Julian of Aeclanum. Augustine speaks of Original Sin as a congenital pathology, both bodily and spiritual. It was not an ordinary sin. Though committed by one man, it implied the condemnation of all humankind, it impoverished the meaning of human gender, compromising both its union with the Creator and its own freedom. It is never too much to recall that, in Augustine, freedom means the capacity of doing and remaining in good. The opposition to Augustine’s exposition of the heavy consequences of Adam’s sin was vigorously initiated during his own lifetime. It is important to mention here that the crucial detail in the Pelagian criticism against the Augustinian doctrine of Original Sin is its gravity, i. e. the real consequences of the 65 Couenhoven, 2005, 372.

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Adamic sin for the first couple and their descendants. Julian was a fervent spokesman for this criticism. Unlike what Julian maintained, the voluntary falling away from ordered love, by which Adam came to sin, Augustine stresses, is not a fait divers. It was not a simple sin committed by a man dead long ago66. Based on the idea of a universal involvement through a seminal participation in the sin of Adam, Augustine maintains that the first man’s sin involved the entirety of mankind as if we were all in the original lump (massa) of humanity and thus we all share the miseries of Adam’s sin which turns out to be ours as well. All are sinners now because all were in Adam when he sinned and, somehow participated in his sin.67 This brought upon mankind, a reality that, according to Augustine, is emphatically expressed in Sir. 40:1, since he very often argues, that the reality of Original Sin is the only way to explain not only human miseries but also the only theological angle from which the justice of such miseries brought upon the entire human race, especially “innocent” infants, can be explained68. The pride leading to the Fall was the opening of a new and different stage of human existence of which the main feature is ontological deprivation. Since he abandoned God and took pleasure in himself, Adam became then less than what he was while living in the contemplation of God, the Supreme Being, the source from which the very existence of humans emanates. It is true that this ontological deprivation falls short from annihilation, but it may approximate it. This is the result of the foolish sin of pride: intending to be greater or more than it should be, the human being became less than it could have been. In the perverse will to be like God and enjoy His power, the human being was bringing ontological impoverishment upon himself; the more the created being pretended to be, the less it became (“Si autem tamquam obuius placet sibi ad perverse imitandum deum, ut potestate sua frui uelit, tanto fit minor, quanto se cupit esse maiorem”)69. These considerations are crucial for understanding the ethical implications of Augustine’s doctrine of Original Sin. As it has been said, Original Sin carries with it a very strong sense of disorder. It was the inauguration of the rule of the self, a sort of imitatio diaboli expressing itself in a dangerous and ultimate act of pride, i. e. the attempt to “undermine our participation in God by setting us up as persons good in themselves rather than by the virtue of participation in an-

66 Lamberigts, 1990, 381. 67 Couenhoven, 2005, 369 – 370 68 C. Jul. III, XVIII, 35, PL 44, cols. 720 – 721: “an uero nec sic tandem respicis, illud primitus in paradiso datum possibile ac facile fuisse praeceptum, quo contempto atque uiolato, omnes ex uno homine, tanquam in massa originis commune illud habere peccatum; et hinc esse iugum graue super filios adam, a die exitus de uentre matris eorum, usque in diem sepulturae in matrem omnium? ” 69 lib. arb. III, XXV, 76, CCSL 29, l. 46.

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other”70. It was the birth of homo incurvatus in se having resulted in a deep disturbance in the created order of things. This disorder is, according to Augustine, visible in the inversion of hierarchy of order in the human being itself. On account of sin a contrary law erupted in human nature. The flesh, so far under the imperium of the spirit, rebelled against its master. It was the end of that time “when desire was not yet in opposition to the will”. Besides it was the opening of the gates through which every sort of evil came to the world. Every sort of suffering, corruption and death, so far unknown anywhere, began on account of Original Sin. For instance, before sin, not the least sign of death could be found in that loco vitae; wild animals were no threat to human beings; even thorns came out after sin71. Misusing a good with which he was created, that is free will, Adam committed sin which inaugurated the historical process marked by the worst of calamities. This conviction according to which, on account of Original Sin, the whole posterity of Adam is generated with an innate disorder and with a strong and practically unrestrained proneness to sin is, perhaps, the main stone in the wall separating Augustine from his Pelagian opponents, especially Julian. As will be seen, the theological weight Augustine ascribes to the Adamic sin, progressively, determined his approach to human will and his growing insistence on exclusivity of grace in the shaping of the salvation process which would finally open the gates to his doctrine of predestination. The human will is now corrupted; the human being carries a strong self-satisfying desire to sin. Original Sin thus marked the birth of man incurvatus in se. Human free will was no longer the same as that with which the first couple was created. It is at the lex peccati’s mercy, this very lex peccati erupted with the breaking of the commands given to our first parents in paradise (“Tunc nata est ista lex quando transgressa est prima lex. Tunc nata est, inquam, ista lex quando contempta et transgressa prima lex”)72. 70 Jenson, 2006, 22. 71 c Jul. imp. III, 147; Gn. litt. III, XV, 24, PL 34, col. 289: “De generibus quoque animalium venenosis et perniciosis quaeri solet, utrum post peccatum hominis ad vindictam creata sint; an potius cum jam creata essent innoxia, nonnisi postea peccatoribus nocere coeperint”. Ibidem III, XVIII, 28, PL 34, col. 290: “Et de spinis quidem ac tribulis absolutior potest esse responsio, quia post peccatum dictum est homini de terra, Spinas et tribulos pariet tibi. Nec tamen facile dicendum est tunc coepisse ista oriri ex terra”. 72 s. 151, 5, CCSL 41 Ba, 22, l. 120. According to Augustine it is clear that the confusion mentioned in the book of Genesis finds its origin in sin. Before the presence of sin in the order of creation such confusion would not be possible. That is why the first couple, before sin, was naked and not ashamed, and immediately after sinning irrupted in a desperate need for clothing. For Julian the search for the covering for the body was a simple sign of the progress of the civilization; for Augustine it was the utmost prove of the eruption of the lex peccati, i. e. concupiscentia carnis; a contrary motion in the body human being had never felt before. This is the real meaning of the “opening of the eyes” of which an interpretation ad litteram would make no sense at all. See s. 151, 5.

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Performing the good now is more than just a matter of will; there is a strong blocking force called concupiscentia carnis, acting over the will, the flesh weighing down the soul, rebelling against the spirit in an inversion of hierarchy of the ordered created human being. After Adam’s sin, humans are driven by an internal longing toward the self, constantly pushing them away from God. The ungodly gladly follows those impulses. For the righteous, there began the cry for liberation to which Paul testifies in Rom. 7:14 – 25. From the first transgression sprang the lust against which the righteous are engaged in combat. Doing (facere) good (different from accomplishing – perficere – good) is now basically not consenting to evil desires. This, Augustine insists, is the Christian combat in light of which Paul’s dramatic outcry in Rom. 7:24 must be understood. The combat of the righteous who always resist the newly emerging law of sin (failing to do good whenever one likes, but also doing the evil one does not desire), are unlike the wicked, who gladly follows it by their own accord73. It must be recalled here that, while Augustine treats the paradise where the first couple were living as a physical place, it was also a state of spirit, of a communion with God. Adam and Eve had a commandment of life given to them by God, and lived in communion with God. There is no greater good in this life. Had they kept His commandment, safeguarding their communion with God, their bodies would have gone through a mysterious transformation into a spiritual body without the experience of death74. Accordingly, the present human condition, as Augustine understands it, is itself an explanation for what happened in the Fall of humankind. The coaptatio of the creation, the happiness (beatitudo), the spiritual and intellectual wisdom (sapientia), and the very features of a “state of things” called paradise ended on account of sin. A new era, then, began; the era of disorder in its entire dimension. It was the beginning of human drama. A heavy punishment that the first couple brought upon mankind by committing sin, Augustine insists, is death, not only spiritual but also physical. Unlike the Pelagians, he regarded physical death as a penal reality fitting perfectly with Original Sin as he understood it, i. e. death is the result of sin and not a necessity of a biological process. If sin would not have occurred, not even the 73 s. 151, 7, CCSL 41 Ba, 25 – 26, l. 164: “Quod ergo bonum ago? Quia concupiscentiae malae non consentio, ago bonum et non perficio bonum – et concupiscentia hostis mea agit malum et non perficit malum. Quomodo ago et non perficio bonum? Ago bonum, cum malae concupiscentiae non consentio, sed non perficio bonum, ut omnino non concupiscam. Rursus ergo et hostis meus quomodo agit malum et non perficit malum? Agit malum, quia mouet desiderium malum; non perficit malum, quia me non trahit ad malum. Et in isto bello est tota uita sanctorum. Iam quid dicam de immundis, qui nec pugnant? Subiugati pertrahuntur – nec pertrahuntur, quia libenter sequuntur”. 74 pecc. mer. I, II, 2-III, 3. For a detailed study on characteristics of the corpus animale and corpus spirituale as conceived by Augustine, see Alfeche, 1992.

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weight of old age would result in death for Adam (“neque enim metuendum fuit, ne forte, si diutius hic uiueret in corpore animali, senectute grauaretur et paulatim ueterescendo perueniret ad mortem”)75 Adam was created mortal, that is, since his creation, death was a possibility for him if he committed sin; but he did not have to die, for, according to Augustine, it is one thing to be mortal, and another to be subject to death76 Adam was created mortal, but the submission to death, the necessity of death, he brought upon himself and his descendants when he violated God’s command. Appealing to Rom. 8:10 – 11, Augustine claims that Scripture is clear in stating that this death on account of sin is also a physical death77, not only spiritual. Thus he stressed a clear statement of Eph. 4:21 – 24 to explain what Adam lost for us when he first sinned: the new man Christ came to restore, i. e. the man created by God in justice and holiness of truth78. This heavy loss in Adam, denied by Augustine’s opponents, and its regeneration in Christ are the two pillars of Augustine’s soteriology. Hence, COUENHOVEN’s following words are entirely justified: For Augustine, the author writes, it appears that Adam and Eve, at least, were human beings with the power fundamentally to harm all other human beings, making them sinners before God. God, however, works through the Church, associating sinners in Christ’s work of redemption via baptism. Human beings are thus vulnerable to the influence of others on the most important of matters, even to the extent that their relation to others determines their stand before God. It is this provocative thesis about human moral and spiritual fragility that – more than anything else – has made Augustine’s doctrine of original sin seems both so profound and so troublesome79. 75 pecc. mer. I, III, 3, CSEL 60, 4 l. 21. 76 For further details on this issue, see Augustine’s series of explanations in Gn. litt. VI, XXVI, 37, PL 34, col. 354: “Quamuis enim restabat adhuc ut immutaretur, et spirituale factum plenam immortalitatem perciperet, ubi cibo corruptibili non egeret; tamen si justi viueret homo, et in spiritalem habitudinem corpus ejus mutaretur, non iret in mortem. In nobis autem etiam juste viventibus, corpus moriturum est; propter quam necessitatem, ex illius primi hominis peccato venientem, non mortale , sed mortuum corpus nostrum dixit Apostolus, quia omnes in Adam morimur [Rom. V, 12; et I Cor. XV, 22]. See also pecc. mer. I, V, 5, CSEL 60, 6, l. 12: “namque antequam inmutaretur in illam incorruptionem, quae in sanctorum resurrectione promittitur, poterat esse mortale, quamuis non moriturum, sicut hoc nostrum potest, ut ita dicam, esse aegrotabile, quamuis non aegrotaturum. cuius enim caro est, quae non aegrotare possit, etiamsi aliquo casu priusquam aegrotet occumbat? sic et illud corpus iam erat mortale. quam mortalitatem fuerat absumptura mutatio in aeternam incorruptionem, si in homine iustitia, id est oboedientia, permaneret; sed ipsum mortale non est factum mortuum nisi propter peccatum”. 77 pecc. mer. I, IV, 4, CSEL 60, 6, l. 8: “corpus, inquit, mortuum est non propter fragilitatem terrenam, quia de terrae puluere factum est, sed propter peccatum. quid quaerimus amplius? et uigilantissime non ait mortale sed mortuum”. 78 Gn. litt. VI, XXVI, 37 79 Couenhoven, 2005, 381.

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1.5

Conclusions

According to Augustine, human being was created in the state of contemplation of the Creator and no superior good could or can be found apart from Him. The rational creature was created by God but not made of God; it was created ex nihilo, a fact that explains its capacity of incurring moral evil. The first moral evil that a human committed was motivated by the desire and illusion of attaining a self-sustained existence, the independence from God, i. e. pride. Pride was in the origin of the misguidance of our first parents’ will when they decided to go astray from the Creator. This was Original Sin, and this is the very basis of all sins. Original Sin, as any actual sin, was motivated by a defective motion of the will. The same disorder henceforth in our first parents is now inherent within human nature. The order with which man was created is now under a ferocious attack. In a just retribution for the disobedience of sin, human being, after breaking the coaptatio of the created order, faces a grave sense of disorder which becomes inherent in human nature. The flesh, which had been so far mastered by the spirit, rose in constant rebellion against it. This is a key ingredient in the shaping of the Augustinian psychology of sin: based on this insubordination of the flesh, Augustine explains, after the first sin, many sins are simultaneously sin and punishment of sins (“peccatum habitans in membris nostris. Sic est autem hoc peccatum, ut sit poena peccati”)80. Clear proofs of these punishments are concupiscentia carnis and every sort of libido which we all bear within us. But one must ask: how explain sin in perfect human beings? I think according to Augustine’s portrayal of human nature, there can be no logical explanation for the occurrence of sin in paradise. The sin of our first parents had its origin somewhere. Augustine says it is in the human will (in a misguided will, to be more precise) but denies that humans were created with concupiscentia which he understands to have fuelled the first human sinful act. Here Julian’s arguments seem more consistent. Humans were created with desires, it is just up to them to consent to such desires, excess or not. Sin occurs when one exaggerates. Moreover, for Julian, unlike for Augustine, concupiscence is not to be regarded as the result of the sin of Adam; Julian sees 80 pecc. mer. II, XXII, 36, CSEL 60, 108, l. 16. Augustine’s often makes uses of sexual desire to define the contours of this sense of disorder installed in human beings on account of original Fall. Book XIV of civ. is a good place to study the issue. Here Augustine explains that the libido that came to be installed in human nature and challenges the reason, the once settled order in human being (body mastered by the soul) arose after sin, on account of sin (Post peccatum quippe orta est haec libido, civ. XIV, 21). This libido, which Augustine identifies with sexual concupiscence, is nothing more than a strong proneness to disobedience (which implies disorder) and it was imposed on human nature as a punishment for its prior disobedience. For further discussion see, Oort, 1989.

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no problem in considering the existence and use of concupiscence within the context of a legal marriage as a good. Concupiscence is simply the result of God’s creative activity, an integral part of sexual intercourse, a pre-requisite for procreation. Why should one condemn such a thing if it is part of God’s own creation? For all these reasons Julian considers that concupiscence per se should not be considered a problem at all81. For Augustine, the features which define Original Sin are its universality and its tragic consequences for all of us. We were there; it is our sin. We inherited it not through the exercise of our own free will but through a mysterious natural law of propagation (naturalis propaginis iure)82 and thus we also share its consequences. It is the evocation of this naturalis propaginis iure that supports the Augustinian approach to Original Sin as a congenital pathology and even catapults the Church Father’s discussion on the inherited sin into a close (though unclear) relationship between theology and biology. Perhaps no other Christian theologian before Luther painted the Adamic sin with such tragic tones as Augustine did. Though the Augustinian stress on the disastrous consequences of Original Sin precedes the Pelagian controversy, it was in the heat of the theological debate with the Pelagians that Augustine 81 For a good analysis on Julian’s often moderate positive vision of concupiscence, see Lamberigts, 2008c. 82 This is the term Augustine uses when he endeavours to explain to Julian how every sin has its origin in free will (since Original Sin finds its origin in Adam’s misuse of free will), and how sin come to be in innocent little ones. See, for instance c. Jul. imp. VI, 22. Augustine sees this monogenic approach on Adamic sin to be in line with reference in the seventh chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews, namely where it is mentioned the payment of the tithes by Abraham who, having paid by his own will, also paid for his descendants. He paid by the natural law of propagation: “Non autem diceres aliorum peccata nos aliis imputare, qui ibi quando commissa sunt non fuerunt, si recoleres quod scriptum est in lumbis Abrahae fuisse Levi, quando eundem Abraham Melchisedech dei excelsi decimavit antistes. Ibi enim videres, si te pervicacia non caecaret in lumbis Adae fuisse genus humanum, quando perpetravit illud grande peccatum”. c. Jul. imp. IV, 76, CSEL 85/2,79, l. 23. The relationship between what is physical and what is abstract is often very strong in Augustine’s reasoning on Original Sin. Apart from the recurrent image of wild and domesticated olive trees, the image of removal of foreskin in the ritual of circumcision is also used with the purpose to corroborate the transmission of Original Sin. An example: when Julian denies Original Sin, arguing that it is impossible that parents pass onto children what parents themselves lack, Augustine refutes this assertion making use of circumcision. The circumcised father lacks foreskin, but his son still comes to this world with what his own father lacks. Foreskin, he stresses, represents the inherited sin. Thus he finds the following parallelism to be perfectly applicable in this case: “verum etiam quia praeputium peccatum significat, et invenitur in nascente, quod iam non erat in parente; profecto originale peccatum quod iam remissum est parentibus baptizatis, manere demonstrat in parvulis, nisi et ipsi baptizentur, id est, spiritali circumcisione mundentur : vosque convincit esse verissimum quod negatis; quia et ipse parvulus, de quo dictum est: Peribit anima eius de populo suo, si octavo die non fuerit circumcisus, invenire sub iusto iudice cur pereat non potestis, negantes originale peccatum”. c. Jul. VI, VII, 20, PL 44, cols. 834 – 835.

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provided a more systematic account of the issue, since he was confronted with what he considered the Pelagian attempt to minimize the heavy legacy of Adamic sin in mankind. Unlike Pelagians, Augustine refused to approach the Adamic sin as an isolated fact, with restricted consequences for its perpetrator. To corroborate his assertion he evoked not only the Scriptures, namely the Pauline letters to the Romans, Galatians and Corinthians, and key passages of the Old Testament such as Psalms 51:5 or Sir. 40:1 LXX83, but also the tradition of the early Church Fathers. For instance, throughout the confrontation with Julian, Ambrose’s words “Fuit Adam et in illo fuimus omnes: periit Adam et in illo omnes perierunt” and “Nam omnes sub homines peccato nascimur, quorum ipse ortus in vitio est”84 were constantly used by Augustine to explain how, through Original Sin, the whole of mankind is bound to Adam and thus shares with him the heavy legacy of his. We were in Adam and we sinned in him, so the whole of humanity was in Adam and, thus, constitutes the massa peccatorum. This is what can be considered the very core of what can be called the Augustinian psychology of Original Sin85. Original Sin is also a key concept in the understanding of the Augustinian theology of history. To Augustine’s eyes, Original Sin is above all an act of pride (echoing the Biblical statement according to which pride is in the beginning of every sin), in its origin it is the very human desire for or the revolt against God’s prerogatives. One may say here that nothing breeds disorder like disorder. The disorder on account of Original Sin goes to the point of reaching the very core of human existence and world-view. It gave rise to concupiscentia and unleashed a selfish trend orienting, since then, human acts, which affect negatively our sense of the order of love. Without Original Sin there would be no such thing as a libido dominandi fuelling the desire of exploitation and submission within and among 83 The centrality of this passage for the issue I hope to make clear when I come to the relationship between Original Sin and human misery. 84 exp Luc. VII, 234, SC 52, 96 and paen. I, 3, 13, SC 179, 62. 85 A good example of this can be found in c. ep. Pel I, IX, 16 where, dealing with the issue of the identity of the Pauline “I” of Rom. 7, Augustine provides an interesting interpretation of verse 9b. The Apostle’s words “But with the arrival of the commandment sin came back to life” means that sin stood out and was seen. Paul does not say it “came to life”, but rather “came back to life” (nec tamem ait “uixit”, sed “reuixit”). This is explained, Augustine claims, by the simple fact that sin had come to life long ago in paradise were God’s precepts where clearly violated. However, when contracted by those who are born, sin lies hidden as if it were dead, until its prohibition makes us to realise its evil when it resists righteousness, when we endorse what righteousness commands but still finds delight in something else exerting control over us. Accordingly, the Church Father concludes, in the conscience of a human person born in this world, there somehow comes back to life the sin that had long ago come to life in the conscience of the first human beings God created (tunc peccatum quodammodo in notitia nati hominis reuiuescit, quod in noticia primum facti hominis aliquando iam uixerat). c. ep. Pel., I, X, 17, CSEL 60, 438 – 439, l. 27.

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human communities. Even many approved acts (in light of human ethics of the time) in human communities such as wars, slavery and the domination of women by men would never be possible if Original Sin had not occurred86. For Augustine, Original Sin is an historical fact as are, for instance, Christ’s incarnation, birth, passion, death and resurrection. Original Sin was the first expression of a disordered love in human beings, with the mysterious particularity (here must be stressed, theological particularity) of involving the entire human race. That historical fact, on account of its theological significance, broke the pre-lapsarian tranquilitas ordinis, (a sort of “stability in duration”, as Augustine’s theology of history would suggest). It opened an era of calamities which afflict both the members of the earthly City and those of the heavenly City in their peregrination in this world87, though these afflictions have a different meaning for the members of the two Cities.

86 For a detailed treatment of the issue, see MacQueen, 1973, 227 – 293, esp. 247sqq. 87 civ. XIII, 14, CCSL 48, 395, l. 10: “ac per hoc a liberi arbitrii malo usu series calamitatis huius exorta est, quae humanum genus origine deprauata, uelut radice corrupta, usque ad secundae mortis exitium, quae non habet finem, solis eis exceptis qui per dei gratiam liberantur, miseriarum conexione perducit.”.

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2. Inherited sin and its role in the Augustinian doctrine of salvation

2.1

Early writings (previous to 396)

Augustine often proves to have been a thinker sharply attentive to his own literary production. If it is true that sometimes his teachings seem to be on a shaky ground due to his constant reconsiderations, it is also true that such reconsiderations often provide important hints on the development or progression of his thought in different stages of his career. Most of these hints are, obviously, to be found in his Retractationes (“rectractatio”, it must be said, does not mean “recantation” as sometimes one translates, but rather “reconsideration”, which though not diametrically different, is still not so strong, since it points to corrections/adjustments, and not to total rejection/negation). In retr. II, I, 1, when reporting the issues he dealt with in De diversis quaestionibus ad Simplicianum (written around 396), Augustine makes this striking declaration: laboratum est quidem pro libero arbitrio uoluntatis humanae, sed uicit Dei gratia (I tried hard to maintain the free choice of the human will, but the grace of God prevailed). This declaration is a clear proof of what has just been said. What this declaration reveals is that Augustine is aware of the small and decisive change in his understanding of salvation. Here he sums up the development of his own theological insights on human salvation. What Augustine means here is obviously not that he came to present grace as denial of human free will, but rather that he came to regard grace as the only way out for the free will of the fallen mankind in the process of salvation. In this chapter my aim is to explain the contours of this fairly long and reluctant process and argue that its peak is materialized in Augustine’s answer to Simplicianus in 396, as it is directly applied to the Church Father’s own personal and spiritual experience and growth as reported in his much studied Confessiones. I will also try to provide a voice to my conviction that it is the radicalism of grace that emerged from Simpl. that shaped the mature Augustine’s doctrine of justification by grace, apart from any sort of human moral or ethical engagement.

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What is today known as Augustine’s doctrine of salvation (and, perhaps, his theology as a whole) carries as its distinctive mark the unconditional reliance upon the divine grace, the radical exclusivity of grace that distinguishes the Augustinian doctrine of salvation (the term “Augustinian” applied to the Church Father alone). What is important to mention is that Augustine did not adopt this radicalism of grace overnight. It was the result of years of theological reflections. I think it is safe to say that this only started to germinate in Augustine’s mind in his early engagement with the Pauline corpus. After several hesitations, exegetical corrections and even adjustments, Augustine’s doctrine of grace and its relation to the process of salvation reached its decisive stage by the second half of 390’s, namely with Simpl. (396/397). It was certainly not without reason that by this time Augustine was taking an inner journey into his spiritual life of which his Confessiones were an excellent product. In Confessiones (c. 400) Augustine revealed to his readers how aware he was that salvation is all about grace. In this masterpiece he outlined a practical application of how humans are called through grace to God. Taking his own spiritual life as point of departure, the Church Father revealed himself, more than ever, convinced of a crucial principle of his soteriology : good works, any whatsoever, even the very will to believe, the beginnings of faith (initium fidei) do not produce grace, but are rather produced by grace1. 1 For a different approach to the development of Augustine’s understanding of salvation, see Drecoll 1999 and Harrison 2006. Harrison is convinced that the neophyte Augustine and the bishop Augustine are one and the same when it comes to fundamental theological insights on salvation. She denies any sort of fundamental change in the theology of Augustine in the mid390s arguing that if one is to speak of a revolution in Augustine’s theology such a revolution took place in 386 when Augustine embraced the new Christian faith. Though I do not agree with the author when she tries to argue for an absolute continuity in Augustine’s theology, her arguments have some merits since it refutes some exaggerations of those who argue that there is, in fact, a fundamental change in Augustine’s theology in mid-390. Harrison’s thesis may be summarised as follows: Augustine did not convert from paganism to Christianity, but rather decided in 386 to accept a new Christian faith, having Paul and the Platonists playing a crucial role in the process. One of the main points of Augustine’s conversion is the acceptance of creatio ex nihilo. This is, according to Harrison, the detail that puts Augustine on a collision route with the anthropological optimism of the classical Philosophy and opens the road for his doctrine of human radical need of divine assistance. Being created from nothing and the idea of Fall walk hand in hand. In other words, the Augustinian doctrine of grace is to be traced back to his acceptance of creation out of nothing. Accordingly it is not accurate to maintain that there is an absence of Fall and grace in Augustine’s early theology. Augustine has never been an apologist for the possibility of humans attaining perfection (hence Harrison’s criticism to Peter Brown’s idea of a “Lost Future” in the development of Augustine’s theology). He, Harrison explains, from the beginning, insists on the divine initiative as the root of good deeds. Here the author sees as plausible parallelism between Confessiones’ motto “Grant what you command and command what you will” and key-passages of Soliloquia, for instance 1, 5 (cf. Harrison 2006, 54 – 66). Augustine’s conversion was essentially a conversion to grace. His radical approach in Ad Simplicianum, according to which everything concerning salvation is

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It is true that the soteriological framework provided in Simpl. already stands for the radicalism of grace with which Augustine fought the Pelagians. However, as it has been fairly demonstrated in recent studies, the answer the young bishop produced for Simplicianus was not created overnight, but it was rather the fruit of years of exegetical exercises, involving adjustments, even profound corrections2. It seems to me that Augustine did not always conceive a soteriological process which depended on divine grace and on divine grace alone. It is, in fact, obvious that, though Augustine never regarded human free will and grace as incompatible realities (since ultimately human free will is set free by grace alone and it is only after being healed by grace that the human will can freely love righteousness)3, in his early writings the Church Father ascribes a broader range of action to human free will than in those of his ages of maturity. It seems the turning point in this issue started to be designed in the writings that appeared around the date of Augustine’s ordination to the priesthood (391) and progressively sharpened by the second half of 390s, when Augustine’s attention was more and more turned to Paul, especially his letter to the Romans, and its seventh and ninth chapters4. As I hope to make clear, there are significant differences between the conclusions the Church Father reached in his early writings (previous to 396) and those contained, for instance, in epistle 194 to Sixtus or in the whole antiPelagian corpus. In Augustine’s discourse of salvation, grace is always the key, grace, does not constitute a volte-face in his theology, but rather a confirmation of what he had been teaching in the last 10 years. Among many issues, Harrison presents the doctrine of will as a proof. “Augustine’s reflections on the will in his early works”, she writes, “cannot be recounted as a satisfying story of progress from nave, youthful optimism to realistic, mature pessimism. His understanding of the will, in theory and in practice, was present in his mind when he begun to write De libero arbitrio in 388. He never held the free choice of the will as the origin of evil without also being acutely aware of its fallen ignorance and difficulty and its need for God’s grace. While arguing the former against the Manichees, his consciousness of the latter demonstrates that he was also arguing in advance against the Pelagians. His early thought did not need to be revised, corrected or rejected in order to meet their challenge, it simply needed to be properly understood. This is what a reading of his early works suggests; it is what Augustine tells us in the Retractationes: why should we not believe him?” Harrison, 2006, 237. Harrison is right when she argues that Augustine converted to Christianity and not to Platonism and she is also right when maintaining that Augustine teaches grace from the outset. But what she fails to grasp is that Augustine’s conception of grace tends to sharpen as the years go by. Augustine teaches grace from the outset but this very same grace had never played such a prominent role in his understanding of human salvation as it started to play from mid-390s onwards. The young Augustine was certainly not a Pelagian avant la lettre, but his early theology is far from being so anti-Pelagian oriented as Harrison claims it to be. 2 This decisive moment of Augustine’s exegetical activity is masterly treated in Babcock, 1979 and 1985 and Lössl, 2002. All the three studies focus on the Augustinian reading of Paul, namely the epistle to the Romans. 3 See, for instance, spir. et litt. XXX, 52. 4 Babcock, 1985, 474 – 479.

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but the concept of grace to the eyes of the presbyter Augustine is not as broad as it was to the eyes of the bishop Augustine. Consequently, his early reading of passages such as Rom. 9 (an important Biblical reference for the Augustinian doctrine of election and predestination) was not always determined by the radicalism of grace with which he opposed the Pelagians. Thus, it is safe to say that in the specific linked realms such as his anthropology and soteriology it is definitely impossible to argue for an idea of continuity within the Augustinian theology. Perhaps in no other field of Augustine’s theology can one see such radical transformations as those in his development regarding his approach to humankind and its salvation. I now proceed with a summary analysis in order to understand how the radicalism of grace rose within the Augustinian system. In this attempt I intend to put emphasis on the portrayal of humankind as conceived by Augustine, since it is of utmost importance to consider that this conviction about the radicalism of grace grew in its intimate connection with the visible development and alterations in his approach to humanity and the abilities of human nature. These are, in its turn, determined by the weight the Church Father ascribes to the Adamic fall. It was, I believe, not a mere coincidence that by the time the idea of an inherited sin was emerging in the Bishop of Hippo’s theological reflection (here, the importance of Simpl. and conf. in the formulation of the doctrine of Original Sin should not be neglected), some decisive reconsiderations were running in parallel: Augustine tended to narrow the range of human free will when it comes to the performance of the good and, consequently he gave less and less credit to it in the processus salvationis, showing himself more and more reluctant concerning any sort of possible human-rooted merit in the very same process (Simpl. marks the total denial of any sort of human-rooted merit in the salvation process). All this resulted in a very important theological insight which would be decisive in the making of Augustine’s mature theology – the unprecedented theological scope of grace (which especially from Simpl. onwards, comprehends the very act of believing, the beginning of faith, initium fidei) developed by Augustine, with a crucial and decisive effect over his discourse regarding salvation. It is important to discuss the contours of this development. For the mature Augustine, the salvation process, from predestination, call to faith, till the final salvation, is all about God’s merciful operation for the sake of His own elect (as a matter of fact, such a process shaped the very mature Augustine’s notion of grace). It fitted and found its meaning in light of a notion of a very comprehensive theological reality – grace. But, by the time he first found himself engaged with the Pauline theology, Augustine’s understanding of the process of salvation was different. Grace was by no means denied, but more was ascribed to

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the free choice of the will as is clear in Augustine’s early approach to the issues of predestination, election and justification. An example of this fact is his early reading of Rom. 9: 12 – 13, regarding the polemical case of the election of Jacob and rejection of Esau. Unlike he would later do, Augustine read the most intriguing passages of Rom. 9 without any special connection to the seventh chapter of the same epistle, the very same passage he relied on to claim the captivity of the free will in fallen human nature. There are new questions to be confronted. Why was it different in the early years of Augustine and why did it change? These two questions, for the sake of clarity, must be answered in two phases. To the first, if one takes into consideration Augustine’s own spiritual progress in his early ages as neophyte, and the very way he understood the Christian message of salvation, one concludes that he simply could not afford the radicalism of grace that he would later adopt. To understand Augustine’s early discourse of salvation requires a careful contextual approach. The development of his early anthropological and soteriological insights during the years he wrote his major Pauline commentaries, between 394 – 397 cannot be grasped unless it is analysed in its very comprehensive context. This includes the important details concerning the context in which Augustine embraced the Christian faith, without ignoring the shadows of his recent Manichean past. One must also have present that he suddenly had to assume important responsibilities in the life of the Church since he was called to be a bishop5. Augustine had come to Christian faith within the borders of an empire in deep turmoil. A Christian empire that was going through an unprecedented transformation due to the progressive invasions of Christian barbarian hordes, a new detail in Roman history. For the sake of Christian identity, a strong emphasis was being laid upon the sense of Christian ethics, a detail that should not be neglected, for instance in the understanding of the rising of the Pelagian movement and all the waves it made. The ideal virtues framing the portrait of the fierce brave soldier in the battlefield, or the wise philosopher were now being redirected towards the notion of the saint. The truly brave man, without underestimating courage in the battlefield, is the saint who resists the strikes of the Tempter. A true wise man and philosopher is the pious saint who loves God6 in 5 Pierre-Marie Hombert is, thus, right when, arguing that Augustine’s theology of grace precedes the Pelagian controversy, he maintains that in order to understand this same theology of grace it is “undispensable de suivre Augustin, — la fois dans ses pr¦occupations personelles, et dans son ministÀre pastoral dont sa th¦ologie de la gr–ce ne peut Þtre d¦tach¦e. Celle-ci, he continues, nous est apparue na„tre et se d¦velopper au carrefour de sa propre exp¦rience de converti, de la m¦ditation des Êcreitures, et d’un ministÀre qui lui fait rencontrer l’orgueil du manich¦isme, du paganisme, et du donatisme”. Hombert, 1996, 157. 6 b. vita, I, IV, 34, BA 4, 282: “Quae est autem dicenda sapientia, nisi quae Dei Sapientia est?

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the pursuit of perfection in the observance of His commandments is a true philosopher and soldier. In the Augustinian terminology, Philosophy carries the same meaning as the term carried in classical antiquity7. That is, it is a way of life oriented by the praxis of what is good, in this case, philosophia christiana, a genuine Christian life8. Augustine’s conversion to Christianity is regarded by him partly as a behavioural conversion. It is not without reason that the Pauline verses (Rom. 13:13 – 14) that he read at the garden just before his conversion, one of which exhorts to a behavioural conversion, signed a radical change in his way of life, the adoption of a new ethical paradigm9. Accepimus autem etiam auctoritate divina, Dei Fillium nihil esse aliud quam Dei Sapientiam [I Cor. I, 24]: et Dei Filius profecto Deus”. See also c. Acad. I, 3 e ord., I, XI, 31 – 32 7 The standard work on the meaning the term “Philosophy” carried in classical antiquity may still be Hadot, 1995. 8 Boyer, 1920, 156; Kevane, 1986. See also ord. I, XI, 32. At Cassiciacum Augustine frequently identifies Philosophy with a certain praxis having meditation and contemplation of God as its centre. In the opening of Contra academicos, Augustine, exhorting Romanianus to Philosophy, informs his former patron about the moral state of Licentius (Romanianus’ son and Augustine’s learner), in the following words: “In hac mecum studiosissime vivit noster Licentius: ad eam totus a juuenilibus inlecebris voluptatibusque conversus est, ita ut eum non temere patri audeam imitandum proponere. Philosophia est enim, a cujus uberibus se nulla aetas queretur exclude […]”. c. Acad. I, 4, BA 4, 20. This idea of Philosopher as he who pursue a life of self-control and moderation emerges and spread, above all from the patterns of the socalled Socratic intellectualism, largely present in the concept of Philosopher in Plato’s dialogues. In Plato’s Republic the Philosopher is defined as a virtuous man. Thus the Philosopher distinguishes Philosophos (friend or lover of wisdom), from Philodoxos (friend or lover of an opinion). Based on this notion of Philosopher as a virtuous man and Philosophy as an education toward virtue, Plato holds that the government of the city will perfectly work out when Philosophers are entrusted with such task (rep. V, 473d – X). The Church Fathers were not indifferent to these teachings; they often adopted them. The doctrine of the Eternal Logos is pointed by them as the way to explain why ancient pagan Philosophers had taught some right things and defined such a good way of life through the pursuit of wisdom. The fact that the Greek Philosophers had reached some truths before the advent of the Gospel of Christ has only one possible explanation: all those who had spoken any truth before the revelation of Christ in the New Testament, could do it on account of the seminal Reason/Word (kocºr speqlatijºr). Because the Christian God is the true wisdom, what the ancient Philosophers’ teaching needs is to be enlightened with the Christian faith. They were wise, says Origen in c.ontra Cels. VII, 49, but they needed someone to advice them in order that they could acquire a “rational piety” (kocijµm eqs´biam). 9 I am, however aware of the fact that some scholars question or even deny an actual importance of this verse in Augustine’s conversion. Leo C. Ferrari, for instance, based on the fact that this verse hardly occurs in Augustine’s works produced between his conversion in 386 and the time he described it in Confessiones (397 – 401), argues the passage Augustine reported to have read in the tolle lege scene is to be regarded as part of the “artistic embellishments” of which Augustine made use to portray his own conversion and that of his friend Alypius. “[…] it must be concluded”, Ferrari writes, “that there is an incredible indifference to Romans xiii, 13 – 14 and Romans xiv, 1 in Augustine’s writings between his conversion and the appearance of the Confessions in 397 – 401. Considering the supreme importance imputed to those particular texts in the conversion scene of the Confessions, one can only conclude that those particular texts did not function in the real conversions of Augustine and Alypius after the manner in

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For all these reasons, the strong ethical tone inherent in Augustine’s understanding of his own conversion fed the saint’s early enthusiastic belief in the conciliation between the Christian faith and neo-Platonism10. This was the philosophical current on which he relied the most and which was in his path just before his conversion to Christianity. Augustine’s early works, especially when concerning the salvation issue, cannot be understood without these details I have just outlined. The unquenchable thirst in the pursuit of wisdom affected Augustine before he embraced Christianity and it remained with extra zeal after his conversion in 386. Augustine did, indeed, embrace Christian faith with great enthusiasm. Such enthusiasm came to reveal a great naivet¦ of the saint. The role of neo-Platonism in Augustine’s conversion to Christianity and to what extent it makes of his thought a synthesis between Ancient Philosophy and Christian postulates is not my concern here. The influence was certainly significant. J.-Marie LE BLOND speaks, with a certain accuracy, of a r¦v¦lation platonicienne experienced by Augustine11. What is crucial here is the fact that, as Peter BROWN rightly points out, prior to 396, Augustine’s conception of spiritual life was essentially moulded by the Platonic challenge of ascent to perfection12. It is this pious ascension to perfection in the continuous contemplation of God that Augustine identifies with beata uita. While still under strong influence of Stoic ethics the young retired rhetor was deeply convinced that he would find beata uita living as a Christian philosopher. It must be stressed that the neophyte Augustine does not neglect the crucial need of divine assistance i. e. grace, in this process. Through meditation and asceticism, he would go as close as possible to that perfection that the Christian neo-Platonist circles of his time aimed at and the Apostle himself recommended13.

10 11 12

13

which these are depicted in the Confessions. Rather would it seem that those textual encounters are artistic embellishments added later in Augustine’s carefully constructed portrayal of their conversion”. Ferrari, 1980, 17. c. Acad. II, XX, 43. See Le Blond, 1947, 116sqq. Brown, 2000, 139 – 150. Most of the Augustinian scholars agree with Peter Brown that the neophyte Augustine, motivated by the Neoplatonic ideal of ascension and progression in virtue, reveals himself much more optimistic than the mature bishop Augustine. This optimism, they explain, was interrupted or tended to progressively diminish on account of Augustine’s deeper reading of Paul in mid 390’s. This explanation, however, does not go unchallenged. Drecoll, 1999 and Harrison 2006, for instance, argue that this alleged change in mid 390s is motivated by a deficient reading of Augustine’s early works, since the Church Father, from the moment of his conversion, emphasises human frailty and weakness and teaches the radical need for grace. The neophyte Augustine is, thus, portrayed as a “protoanti-Pelagian”. ep. 10, 2. On the influences of neo-Platonism over Augustine’s early conception of man, see O’Connell, 1968.

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This enthusiasm behind the young Augustine’s approach to the Christian faith had direct implications in his understanding of the Christian discourse of salvation. Although he conceives virtues as being God’s gift, previous to 396 the Augustinian soteriological framework was shaped with a significant reliance on the abilities of the human free will. The young Augustine’s approach to the relationship between virtue and human free will is, as a matter of fact, close to that of his future so-called semi-Pelagian (accurate or not, this is the term commonly used) opponents. What is truly worth pointing out here is the fact that, at least, the act of believing in God, the first step towards God, is placed within the scope of human initiative, quite in line with the main theological trend of the first centuries of Christian thought. As will become clear, the slight and significant change in this initial framework, was not only the turning point in Augustine’s relationship with the Pelagian party. It also became the very trademark of the Augustinian soteriology and, in a certain way, drew the line of separation between the young and the mature Augustine. It is evident that Augustine’s early approach to the Christian discourse of salvation was deeply intertwined with his conception of human being, which, at the time, was much more optimistic than the one emerging during the second half of 390s. How could someone who believed in the resources of human will and was committed to the pursuit of an ideal way of life admit the strong restriction over the human free will as the anti-Pelagian Augustine came to do? In his early writings, reacting against his former Manichean co-religionists, Augustine condemned the Manichean determinism against which he presented a fierce defence of human free will. To the Manichean metaphysics of creation, according to which human nature is under the “Power of the Darkness”, Augustine opposed a convinced defence of the goodness of nature, without emphasizing the defect, vitium, as he would do later, the very trademark of the Augustinian ontology. As it has been said, in every stage of his theological development Augustine conceived grace and human free will as two perfectly compatible realities, regarding divine grace not as an object of coercion over the human free will and compromising it (as the Pelagians would later accuse him). Rather he saw grace as something which helps, heals and sets the will free. In his early works, however, the Church Father tends to ascribe a greater range/ability to the human free will than he does in his maturity14. In lib. arb. he points to human will as the sole origin of sin, stressing that it would otherwise be unfair to punish sinners unless sin is entirely voluntary. Here he barely mentioned Adam’s sin in his approach to free will and its abilities15. 14 For an excellent study on the development of Augustine’s doctrine of grace see Cary, 2008. 15 lib. arb. II, I, 3; II, XIX, 53; III, I, 2; III, X, 29; III, XXVI, 45; etc. The unconditional defence of

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In the Expositio quarundam propositionum ex epistula Apostoli ad Romanos 44 Augustine clearly states that in the spiritual ascent to God, the human being can take the initiative by believing in God and calling for salvation. This would be the role of human free will – to take the first step towards God16. Here Augustine provided an evident proof of an attempt to hold an unrestricted human free will, but more important than this, is the fact that Augustine attributes the initium fidei (beginnings of faith) to the human free will. The same opinion is held by his later opponents commonly known as Semi-Pelagians. As matter of fact, this is quite in line withthe Patristic approach to human salvation which basically comes down to the principle according to which it is human to believe, and divine to cooperate with the believer. Augustine’s statement in proposition 53 [61] is quite clear : “nostrum enim est credere et velle, illius autem dare credentibus et volentibus facultatem bene operandi per spiritum sanctum, per quem caritas dei diffunditur in cordibus nostris, ut nos misericordes efficiat”. This last opinion according to which initium fidei is at the range of unaided human free will, would sound terribly dangerous to the mature Augustine who, time and again, vividly corrects and condemns it17. However, it must be noted, Augustine’s early emphasis on human free will was not motivated simply by ethical concerns. Deep theological and exegetical the the free will is made at the expense of an unclear explanation of the conciliation between human free will and God’s foreknowledge Only book III (though Augustine started to write lib. arb. In 386, the third book was written after his ordination to the priesthood) Augustine mentions the sense of “difficulty” in avoiding sin due to the punishment inflicted upon human race on account of sin, with a random reference to Rom. 7:18 and 19 and Gal. 5:17. See III, XVII, 51-XX, 57. 16 exp. prop. Rm. 44, CSEL 84, 19, l. 18: “Libero autem arbitrio habet, ut credat liberatori, et accipiat gratiam, ut iam illo, qui eam donat, liberante et adiuvante non peccet atque ita desinat esse sub lege, sed cum lege vel in lege implens eam caritate dei, quod timore non poterat” The same reasoning may be also present in s. Dom. mon. I, XVIII, 55. 17 See Simpl. I, II, 7; praed. sanct. III, 7. Any sort of argument which directly or indirectly links the young Augustine to Pelagianism is strongly criticized by Carol Harrison who, arguing for the continuity within the Augustine’s theological framework, writes: “We thus see a thoroughly anti-Pelagian set of antitheses emerging as the structure of Augustine’s early thought: he emphasises authority and faith rather than reason; grace rather than law; love rather than fear; the spirit rather than the letter ; humility rather than pride, dependence rather than autonomy, confession rather than presumption. These characteristically Augustinian antitheses are founded upon “the most intimate feeling of [his] mind”: his conviction of fallen humanity’s total helplessness without divine grace. They distinguish his thought not only from “Pelagianism”, but also from Platonism, Stoicism, the Academics, the Maniches and Donatists – in short from any system which did not have the fallenness and incapacity of humankind, and the humility of the incarnate God, at his heart. Augustine’s early thought was not only fully Christian; it was also fully Augustinian. We may have to wait until the Pelagian controversy for this thought to crystallize and harden into firm doctrine, but, following the eruption of God’s grace in 386, it runs throughout the early works like molten lava, consuming everything in its path with the fire of God’s love and holding everything within the gravity of his grace”. Harrsion, 2006, 286 – 287.

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concerns which shape the Church Father’s soteriology are behind it, for which his early engagement with Rom. 9 was decisive. Here intricate theological questions arise, concerning the meaning such as call, election and predestination. On Augustine’s theological horizon is the case of twin babies whose distinct fate is decided even before they are born. The equation is complicated: a pair of twins in their mother’s womb, without any previous merit or demerit, one is loved and the other hated by God. How is this to be understood since they are in the very same situation? The young Augustine’s merit-oriented theology fits well with his early fierce and almost unconditional defence of free will (and God’s unquestionable righteousness). It determines a key exegetical procedure which consists in the evocation of a divine prerogative – foreknowledge18. Not willing to adopt the radical anti-merit language as he would later do, the young priest Augustine sees in divine foreknowledge the solution for the equation. The difficulty in solving this question in the very first attempt sowed in his mind a theological notion which was to become a burning issue, about which he never managed to provide a clear explanation as to its nature and criteria – predestination. If it is evident that the young priest’s first attempts to explain the case of the election of Jacob and rejection of Esau, based itself on God’s foreknowledge. One must ask (as he himself did): foreknowledge of what? Their future works? Wouldn’t it contradict Paul’s claim according to which election was not based in works (“quomodo dicit apostolus non ex operibus factam electionem?”)? Is it acceptable to admit any sort of momenta meritorum in this process? I think it is accurate to maintain that, at first, Augustine did not see any problem in linking human-rooted merit to election. His concern was rather to deny a specific sort of merit – that of works – to avoid a direct contradiction to the Apostle’s teaching. God, he claims, even before the twins were born, knew what sort of person each would be and could justly love one and hate the other before either had actually done good or evil (the very same position later defended by Julian of Aeclanum, against which Augustine ferociously stood). This, however, was not based on their future works. The idea of futuribilia is vehemently attacked by Augustine. He exemplified this when confronted with the Pelagian teaching according to which infants who died unbaptized received the divine punishment based on what God foresees regarding what sort of person they would be in case they had reached adulthood. But if man’s actions do not provide the basis for God’s election, what, then, does? What, after all, made one twin’s election and the other’s rejection? Augustine’s answer to these very problems reveals much hesitation over a period of years. Yet not ready to empty the process of salvation of every sort of human18 Cf. Babcock, 1985, 476 – 477.

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rooted sense of merit and collaboration, he framed a question, quite suitable to the conclusion he intended to reach: what had God chosen (quid ergo eligit deus)? The exp. prop. Rm19 provides the answer : Jacob’s election and Esau’s rejection are to be understood in light of the fact that God foreknew, not their future works but their future faith. God foresaw that Jacob, using his own free will, would believe, and Esau, also using his own free will, would not. The same is to be applied to the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart (mentioned several times in the book of Exodus). God, Augustine is urged to say, hardened Pharaoh’s heart on account of his prior unbelief20. In other words: neither the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart, nor the election of Jacob and the rejection of Esau result from God’s arbitrary decision. It is the merit of faith, then, that distinguishes one sinner from the other. Both God’s election and rejection turn out to have a basis: the individual’s most hidden merits (occultissimis meritis). Humanity’s common origin in the massa peccati

19 The exp. prop. Rm. is to be seen as containing the embryonic form of Augustine’s doctrine of predestination. Joseph Lössl is right in his claim according to which the first roots of Augustinian doctrine of predestination is to be found in the the Church Father’s first attempt to provide a literal reading of Romans 8:28 – 30 in this Pauline commentary. See Lössl, 2002, 242. 20 . exp. prop. Rm 60, CSEL 84, 33 – 35, l. 21: “Quod autem ait: Nondum enim nascentium neque aliquid boni aut mali, ut secundum electionem propositionum dei maneret, non ex operibus sed ex vocante dictum est ei: “Quia maior serviet minori”, sicut scriptum est: Iacob dilexi, Esau autem odio habui, nonnullos movet, ut putent apostolum Paulum abstulisse liberum voluntatis arbitrium, quo promeremur deum bono pietatis vel malo impietatis offendimus. Dicunt enim, quod ante opera aliqua seu bona seu mala duorum nondum nascentium deus unum dilexerit, alterum odio habuerit. Sed respondemus praescentia dei factum esse, qua novit etiam de nondum natis, qualis quisque futurus sit. Sed ne quis dicat: Opera ergo elegit deus in eo, quem dilexit, quamquam nondum erant, quod ea futura praesciebat; quod si opera elegit, quomodo dicit apostolus non ex operibus factam electionem? Propterea ergo intelligendum est opera bona per dilectionem fieri, dilectionem autem esse in nobis per donum spiritus sancti, sicut idem dicit apostolus: Caritas dei diffusa est in cordibus nostris per spiritum sanctum, qui datus est nobis. Non ergo quisquam gloriari debet ex operibus tamquam suis, quae per donum dei habet, cum ipsa dilectio in eo bonum operatur. Quid ergo elegit deus? Si enim cui vult, donat spiritum sanctum, per quem dilectio bonum operatur, quomodo elegit, cui donet? Si enim nullo merito non est electio, aequales enim omnes sunt ante meritum nec potest in rebus omnino aequalibus electio nominari. Sed quoniam spiritus sanctus non datur nisi credentibus, non quidem deus elegit opera, quae ipse largitur, cum dat spiritum sanctum, ut per caritatem bona operemur, sed tamem elegit fidem. Quia nisi quisque credat, in eum et in accipiendi voluntate permaneat, non accipit donum dei, id est spiritum sanctum, per quem diffusa caritate bonum possit operari. Non ergo elegit deus opera cuiusquam in praescientia, quae ipse daturus est, sed fidem elegit in praescientia, ut quidem sibi crediturum esse praescivit ipsum elegerit, cui spiritum sanctum daret, ut bona operando etiam aeternam vitam consequeretur. See also 62, 8 – 9. It is well known that, since lib. arb., Augustine deeply believes in the conciliation between divine foreknowledge and human free will (though, in my opinion, he was never able to come up with a satisfactory explanation on the issue).

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and the divine choice based on the individual’s “hidden” merit of freely willed faith annihilate any possible accusation that may be raised against God21. This solution, Augustine believed, would conflict neither with God’s unquestionable justice/equity nor with human free will. The Church Father was simply not ready to admit the total absence of a human-rooted merit in salvation’s modus procedendi. Theological assertions such as those he would later maintain in epistle 194, according to which God, when rewards us with eternal life, does not reward our merits but rather crowns His own gifts, would have sounded absurd to him at that time. In the twins’ case, by this time, he thought that if one cannot talk of merit of works, one can, after all speak of merits of faith (merita fidei). As J. LÖSSL explains, here Augustine argued that God foreknew (praescire) those who will respond positively to his call to faith. God’s call is therefore, a call that corresponds to the foreknown outcome, vocatio secundum propositum. The called are only those who are going to respond positively. They are the electi, foreseen by God to have faith (fides), which is equivalent to their being predestined to conform to Christ quos praescivit et praedestinavit. The cornerstones of Augustine’s readings of these verses in exp. prop. Rm is therefore, the same author concludes, God’s prescience and the elects’ free decision to believe. The former, God’s prescience, seeks to uphold the principle that salvation can only come from God. The latter, the elects free decision, that this must not contradict human freedom, means that humanity must remain involved in the God-driven salvation process22. LÖSSL provides a fair explanation on how highly convenient the notion of praescentia Dei was to Augustine’s exegesis of Romans 9:11 at this time. The usefulness of the notion of divine praescentia, he says, was illustrated by Augustine in exp. prop. Rm, in his exegesis of Rom. 9:11 – 13 in that same work. Again, human freedom is among Augustine’s prior concerns. Is it not denied, Augustine asks, if Rom. 9:13 (Iacob dilexi, Esau autem odio habui) is understood to state that God decides a priori who is elected and who is rejected? The answer lies in the divine praescientia: God foreknows how either twin will “act” – acting here not understood as “performing good works”. That would contradict Rom. 9:12 non ex operibus, but as meritum that triggers the electio (nullo merito non est electio), a free act of faith that opens the hearts of the electi to receive the Holy Spirit, who in turn grants God’s gift. This enables the electi to perform good works (bonum operari). No one can do good without this grace of God, yet God does not force grace upon any one. He merely foresees those who by their own

21 div. qu. 68, 3; exp. prop. Rm. 62, 9. 22 Lössl, 2002, 242.

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free will are going to open themselves in a merited act of faith to receive it, and then grants them unmerited grace23. Augustine’s greatest concern here is not to eliminate the connection between merit and election, but rather to deny a specific sort of merit which would contradict Paul’s statement concerning the merit of works. The merit of works is totally excluded. The merit of faith, on the other hand, provides the very basis for the distinction between the twins Jacob and Esau. What God chose in his foreknowledge when he chose Jacob, was not Jacob’s future works, but rather his future faith, and faith, the priest Augustine maintained, unlike good works, is not a divine gift. It is man’s free response to the divine call (vocatio) which God addresses to all, but one still does so through one’s will. The same explanation is to be applied in relation to the hardening of Pharao’s heart by God. The fact, Augustine explains, reveals that the basis of election is faith and not works24. Hence, W. BABCOCK concludes that, by this time, Augustine had carefully excluded the merit of works from his theology of grace, but has replaced it, in effect, with the merit of belief25. BABCOCK’s conclusion does not surprise the Augustinian scholars who are aware that, up to the first half of 390s, Augustine conceived the process of sanctification as a continuous ascent to God, starting with the free decision of responding positively to God’s call. That meant to embrace faith, which he still ascribed to human free will. This solution, as BABCOCK stresses, safeguards the unmerited character of grace in the sense, at least, that God’s call comes to all mankind without regard to human worth. It preserved man’s freedom in the sense, at least, that man’s free response to God’s call remains the basis for election or rejection; and it preserved God’s justice in the sense that both election and rejection rest not upon arbitrary whim but upon human merit even though it is the very restricted merit of belief rather than of works26. His optimistic enthusiasm as a neophyte did not allow him to grasp the complexity of a process involving many complications, as he would later realize.

23 Lössl, 2002, 242 – 243 24 exp. prop. Rm. 62, CSEL 84, 37, l. 16: “Sicut enim in his, quos eligit deus, non opera sed fides inchoat meritum, ut per munus dei bene operentur, sic in his quos damnat, infidelitas et impietas inchoat poenae meritum, ut per ipsam poenam etiam male operentur […]”. 25 Babcock, 1979, 64 and 1985, 1985, 476 – 477. 26 Ibidem p. 65. The same author explains the same issue elsewhere with the following words: “In the Expositio, Augustine appears to have satisfied himself that he could portray a God who is gracious, but not arbitrary or unjust: God’s call although unmerited by men, is not unjust because it is addressed equally to all; God’s gift of the grace that transforms the will is not unjust because it comes to those who have believed in response to that call”. Babcock, 1985, 477.

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2.1.1 The first signs of the break with the early paradigm One must not lose sight of what has been stressed in the beginning of this study : Augustine embraced Christianity with a nave enthusiasm and this determined his initial understanding of the Christian doctrine of salvation. Approximately five years after his conversion, Augustine was ordained a priest. In those interim years he had learned a lot about the challenging experience of being Christian. A brilliant future as Christian philosopher which the neophyte Augustine planned, faded as the years went by, and it was now lost27. This fact also influenced the development of Augustine’s approach to human salvation. It seems that Augustine, in a given moment of his life, admitted that human free will is not so unrestricted as he had earlier taught. This is evident in his reconsiderations of crucial Pauline passages shaping his soteriology, especially Rom. 9. Another Pauline text – Rom 7 – was gaining prominence. It is my conviction that the solution for the twins’ case which, at first seemed very satisfactory to Augustine, did not last, mostly due to the deeper reflections and reconsiderations regarding the seventh chapter of Romans. The issue, had crucial importance. The substantial change in the Augustinian exegesis of Rom. 7, especially regarding verses 14 – 25, is familiar to Augustinian scholars28. It is true that in the opening of Simpl. Augustine suggests that in these passages (7:7 – 25) the Apostle refers to the man living under the dominion of the Law and uses the expressions of such person (“quo loco uidetur mihi apostolus transfigurasse in se hominem sub lege positum, cuius uerbis ex persona sua loquitur”)29. It is also true, that only during the confrontation with Julian of Aeclanum Augustine did come to clearly link the identity of the “I” in those verses with the person of Paul himself, the Paulus christianus. It was from De nuptiis et concupiscentia onwards that he openly admitted that Paul is speaking ex sua persona30. All this, however, does not nullify the importance of the fact that, soon after having been ordained a priest, Augustine started giving some signs of a progressively strong anthropological pessimism. The navet¦ with which he faced Christian living in Cassiciacum already seemed a distant past. It was fading day by day. Pastoral experience, the analysis in loco of the spiritual difficulties of his fellow brothers, and his own personal spiritual troubles may have been behind this fact. The most important data for our purpose here is to notice that, somewhere after having written exp. prop. Rm. (393/394), Augustine was pro27 For a good discussion on this issue, see Brown, 2000, 139 – 150. 28 For a detailed study on the evolution of Augustine’s reading of Romans 7, see Berrouard, 1981, 101 – 195. 29 Simpl. I, q. I, 1. CCSL 44, 8, l. 20. 30 nupt. et conc. I, XXVII, 30.

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gressively changing his mind regarding the scope of human free will and its role in the salvation process. He started to emphasize some important limitations upon the human will, due to what he progressively admitted as a considerable gap between willing and doing good. Though he maintains that any sin has its roots in the will, in practical terms, Augustine no longer insisted (as he does, for instance in duab. an.) that sin consists only in doing what one wills. Christ, who is both God and man, is the only one who is and will ever be completely free from any sin or temptation, since He alone is not bound to Adam by sin and is free from concupiscentia carnis, this congenital pathology we all inherit on account of the primitive transgression. In other words, Augustine admitted sin of necessity, claiming the presence of concupiscence that is in every human being on account of the solidarity bonding the entire mankind in Adam’s sin. This detail leads me to take the risk of saying that Augustine’s exegesis of Rom. 7:14 – 25, already by this time, does not totally exclude the sense of Christian combat (for instance, in Confessiones, the phrase ego miser homo is personalized and applied to Augustine’s own cry for redemption)31, though only much later he will admit the man under grace and the very person of Paul in those verses32. 31 See Martin, 1997,180. 32 The evolution of Augustine’s reading of Rom. 7:14 – 25, a widely discussed issue among Augustine’s scholars, is very complex. Amongst the most outstanding studies on the issue are Berrouard, 1981, Delaroche, 1996 and Dodaro, 2004. In my opinion it is accurate to maintain, as Berrouard does, that it was in the heat of the Pelagian controversy, namely in nupt. et conc., that Augustine more clearly shows that he changed his opinion on the identity of the subject of Rom. 7:14 – 25, arguing that Paul is clearly speaking about his own inner struggle as Christian. However, I find most opportune Dodaro’s criticism pointing out that Berrouard “goes too far when he allows his texts to conclude that Augustine did not change his opinion on the attribution of the sentiments expressed in these verses to Paul prior to AD 418/419”. Robert Dodaro’s study I mention here focuses on pecc. mer. and rightly concludes that, though it is true that in this work Augustine “demurs from meaning Paul explicitly as the subject of the passages quoted from Rom. 7, and that he leaves it to his readers to infer the attribution for themselves […] the logic of Augustine’s argument clearly leads to the conclusion that Paul is speaking in these verses about his sinful condition. Berrouard reasons that, although between AD 411 – 418 Augustine appeals to the words of the Apostle in order to rebut Pelagian thesis concerning sinlessness, he nevertheless does not appeal during this time to the apostle as the case in point. But in saying this, he is also wrong, as De peccatorum meritis shows. There, Augustine quotes Paul not only in order to provide a mirror through which Christians are invited to acknowledge their own sinfulness, as Berrouard suggests, but also as an example of that sinfulness”. Dodaro, 2004, 143 – 144. Thomas Martin studied Augustine’s use of Rom 7:24 – 25a and settled three distinct phases: in the first 390 – 401, the author emphasises the fact that, during this time, the verses have become “deeply personalized as Augustine takes the Pauline text and applies it to himself, making it serve in the Confessions as the North African’s own cry for redemption”; during the second phase, 402 – 417 i. e. before writing nupt. et conc., the author argues that the verse miser ego homo cry “gradually find its way to the keeps of someone sub gratia” and that “Augustine thus begins to devote increasing attention to his discovery that this segment of the text eloquently

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Referring to the occurrences and applications of Rom. 7 in Confessiones, Timo NISULA observes that “despite his fluctuating practice of assigning especially verses 24 – 25 to either a sub lege or a sub gratia stage, he mainly sees Romans 7 as depicting too serious a division for it is to be read as a selfdescription of a Christian self”33. Without questioning the accuracy of this statement, I think here one must recall the following: Augustine may not have, before nupt. et conc., openly admitted that those verses of Rom. 7 applied to Paul. This does not mean he denied that the verses are referring to baptised Christians. To Augustine’s eyes, not every Christian, living under grace, is as virtuous as Paul. If it is true that the Church Father hesitates, for years, to admit that such a paradigmatic Christian as Paul should, even after conversion and baptism, be regarded as the subject living under such a terrible spiritual distress as exposed in Rom. 7, he clearly admits that the ordinary Christian does34. What is also important to take into consideration is the fact that Augustine discusses the identity of the subject of Rom. 7 having as background themes the sinlessness or the perfection of human righteousness. Apart from the fact that, much before his confrontation with Julian, he makes it clear that Paul’s righteousness even as a converted Christian is not a perfect one35, a crucial detail must not be neglected: for Augustine, being righteous does not mean being free from sin36. He often stresses the inner struggle of many prominent Biblical figures, models of justice in the Old Testament (such as Noah, Daniel, Job, Zechariah and Elizabeth), who were not free either from involuntary sin nor from spiritual distress on account of temptation37. In his early works, Augustine was not so careful as he would later be, especially facing the Pelagians. Previously, the young anti-Manichean, not much aware of many of the theological problems he would later face on account of his reading of Paul, had conceived human being’s movement towards God as a more or less linear continuum, a steady progression from the recognition of God as the eternal good to the willing of God as one’s own highest Good. In this process of

33 34 35 36 37

expresses “present captivity of struggling Christian”. The third phase, 418 – 430, coinciding with the span of Augustine’s confrontation with Julian, Martin argues, one of the development that should not be neglected in the distinction between corpus vitae illius and corpus mortis huius. “At first, the author concludes, Paul’s cry was seen to inititate the conversion process. Then it served to poignantly express present captivity of the Christian. Finally, out of it Augustine generated an antithesis that clarified the embodied condition – from paradisical bliss all the way to hoped-for resurrection”. See Martin, 1997, 180 – 182. Nisula, 2010, 269. diu. qu. 66, 7. pecc. mer. XX, 20 This is a recurrent argument used by Augustine in his confrontation with Pelagians, namely in his discussion with Caelestius in perf. just. See pecc. mer. II, VIII, 25, along with Dodaro, 2004, 136 – 139.

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ascension towards God, Augustine defined four stages (gradus): ante legem, sub lege, sub gratia and in pace. The stage ante legem consisted in ignorance of sin (cum peccatum ignoramus, et sequimus carnales concupiscentias); in the sub lege phase, the legal act forbids sin but we commit sin on account of habitual sin, since one lacks the assistance of faith (“cum jam prohibemur a peccato, et tamem consuetudine ejus victi peccamus quoniam nos nondum adjuvat fides”). In third, sub gratia, one trusts totally in the Saviour and claims nothing of good in order to stress one’s own merit, but rather relies on the Lord’s mercy and takes pleasure in his percepts, i. e. when ones is no longer overwhelmed by the desire of practising evil, but struggles to avoid sin (“quando jam plenissime credimus Liberatori nostro, nec meritis nostris aliquid tribuimus, sed ejus misericordiam diligendo, jam non vincimur dilectatione consuetudinis malae, cum ad peccatum nos ducere nititur”). The fourth stage, the stage which is marked by the total absence of any sort of struggle between spirit and flesh, is simply not of this world38. A new decisive and distinctive line of this scheme, which distinguishes Augustine’s early understanding of process of salvation from the second to the third stage is “a subtle, but decisive change in his exegesis of Rom. 7:24 – 25”39. What makes it possible for a person to serve the Law of God with the mind, even while serving the law of sin with the flesh, is not human effort, not the human willing, but rather the grace of God, through Jesus Christ our Lord. This theological insight will then lead to Augustine’s break with the linear continuum of man’s moral progress toward God: the recognition of the good – which comes in the second stage, i. e. sub lege – is no longer the basis for the transition to willing and doing the good – which comes in the third stage, sub gratia. Instead, God’s grace must intervene, must enable the will to will the good. Without that intervention, “there is no transition from seeing the good to willing the good, for there is no liberation from the body of this death apart from the grace of God”40. 38 div. qu. LXXXIII, 66, 3, BA 10, 240 – 242: “Quarta est actio, cum omnino nihil est in homine quod resistat spiritui, sed omnia sibimet concorditer juncta et conexa unum aliquid firma pace custodiunt: quod fiet mortali corpore vivificato, cum corruptibile hoc induerit incorruptionem, et mortale hoc induerit immortalitatem”. See also Van Fleteren, 2001, 92 – 94. 39 Babcock, 1979, 61 40 Ibidem. It was precisely by the second half of 390’s that Augustine’s soteriological insights more and more collide with his early Stoic influences. He starts to see in the Stoic ethics too much of human sufficiency, and no room for God’s grace to act and save humans. As G. Verbeke points out, “Le principal reproche avanc¦ par saint Augustin contre cet id¦al, c’est la suffisance des stociens: ils ne se rendent pas compte de la faiblesse humaine et de la n¦cessit¦ constante de la gr–ce divine, mais, par un sentiment d’orgueil et de vanit¦, ils veulent gu¦rir par eux-mÞmes les maladies de leur –me […] excluant l’–me du sage tout sentiment de pit¦ et de mis¦ricorde et prÞchant ainsi un id¦al de duret¦ et d’inflexibilit¦, id¦al qui est bien loin de la charit¦ chr¦tienne. […] D’une maniÀre g¦n¦rale d’ailleurs, Saint Augustin reproche souvent aux stociens de ne pas avoir d¦pass¦ le niveau purement humain dans leur id¦al de

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Inherited sin and its role in the Augustinian doctrine of salvation

Original Sin and the shaping of the Augustinian soteriological framework. The place of Ad Simplicianum

While dealing with his uncertainties concerning the soteriological assertions he had maintained so far – in which Augustine placed emphasis in the decisive range of human free will and its role on the salvation process, a crucial fact took place in Augustine’s life. He was appointed to the episcopal chair of Hippo, a pastoral assignment which may have provided him with some experiences which resulted in even stronger reservations regarding humanity’s active role in salvation. Simplicianus, now, sees the man he assisted in the adherence to Christian faith, joining him in the office of episcopacy. Augustine was already a renowned theologian in Africa due to his opposition to the Manichees. Ecclesiastical responsibility, friendship and Augustine’s reputation as theologian led Simplicianus to confront his fellow bishop with some theological and exegetical inquiries. These inquiries led Augustine to a deeper and decisive engagement with the Pauline approach to salvation (especially as expounded in the epistle to the Romans) from which a new understanding on man and its salvation started to emerge within the Augustinian theology. The questions raised by Simplicianus brought the Biblical twin’s case of Esau and Jacob, once again, to Augustine’s attention. The Church Father is, thus, back on familiar ground. This time, the approach to the issue seems to have been more careful and the conclusions he reached contain decisive adjustments and corrections in relation to his earlier interpretation of Rom. 9: 11 and following verses. This is one of the main details making of Simpl., without a doubt, a landmark in Augustine’s theological development. It is the work where lies the seeds of Augustine’s theological identity (acknowledged time and again by the Church Father himself) with particular emphasis on his anthropological and soteriological insights41. perfection et d’avoir plac¦ cet id¦al dans une vie conforme — la raison, c’est-—-dire en harmonie avec ce qu’il y a de plus ¦lev¦ et de plus noble en l’homme. Car ce n’est pas en luimÞme que l’homme peut trouver la source de son v¦ritable bonheur et de sa perfection, mais en Dieu qui est — l’origine de tout ce qu’il y a de digne dans la personne humaine”. Verbeke, 1958, 73. 41 The transformations in Augustine’s theology by the year 396 (year of the appearance of Simpl.) is such that some scholars go as far as to claim that this year marks the extinction of “Philosophical Augustine”. He emerged more than ever as the “theological Augustine” who reconsiders the insights of his early writings. For a good discussion on this issue, see Djuth, 2003, 53 – 68. This study helps one to understand the scope of the transformations which took place in Augustine’s theology and the effects the very same transformations had in his approach to vera Philosophia. Though the author maintains that “both before and after 396 Augustine remains a faithful adherent of vera Philosophia in the integral sense of the term” he reveals changes in the Cassiciacum dialogues” (p. 54). The importance of the transforma-

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Augustine himself was only too well aware of the importance of this work in the shaping of his own theology. By the end of his life he constantly recalls it as the turning point in his understanding of the Christian message of salvation. In retr. I, XXIII, 3 – 4 the old bishop shows himself concerned about reminding his readers that the opinions he had issued, for example, in the exp. prop. Rm. (394) had been later revised and corrected. What should be accepted are his teachings in his later insights on grace drawn from the understanding of Christian discourse on salvation he teaches from Simpl. onwards. It is not without reason that giants of Augustinian studies such as Gerald BONNER (and many others) speak of “an intellectual conversion” behind the radical transformation of Augustine’s theology of which the treatise is a clear proof42. It is necessary, then, to turn to this work which was crucial to Augustine’s theological development. tions are not denied, rather emphasized. Djuth rightly maintains that Augustine’s new insights on grace and human freedom by this time had direct effects on his conception of vera Philosophia: “At this point”, she writes, “some concerns arise in regard to Augustine’s conception of vera Philosophia, especially in light of the change that occurs in his thinking in 396. Not only Augustine’s view of grace and freedom change at this time, but a notable shift in perspective occurs in his works, one that some scholars represent as a definitive break with the classical idea of Philosophy that permeates his early dialogues” (page 58). Further, she concludes: “Despite this continuity in outlook, the changes that occur in Augustine’s thinking in 396 inevitably affect his understanding of vera Philosophia. There are at least three significant ways in which this is the case. First, Augustine’s entry into the ecclesiastical life of the Church requires him to broaden the scope of his method of seeking the truth through questions and answers moderating the emphasis that he placed on the liberal arts as a means of salvation in the Cassiciacum dialogues. Second, Augustine’s reassessment of the Platonists leads him to curb his youthful enthusiasm for their writings and to submit more rigorously to the standard of Christ’s authority. Third, Augustine’s altered perspective on grace and human freedom requires him to align the notion of vera Philosophia with the doctrine of grace that he defends during the Pelagian controversy” [p. 65]. […] “Augustine’s acknowledgement of the congruence between pagan and Christian wisdom both before and after 396 reveal a gradual but ever depending of what vera Philosophia means in the context of the search for Christian wisdom. Perhaps the most significant change that occurs in his thinking on this subject is the abandonment of the belief that human effort alone suffices to initiate the search for truth. Augustine’s pessimism regarding fallen humanity’s ability to lift itself up to the truth through his own endeavour is nonetheless completely consonant with the Platonic notion that God is the source of all truth, beauty, and goodness in the world”. p. 67. The issue here is not whether Augustine stopped being a Philosopher or not. I think it is undeniable that Augustine remained a fierce supporter of what he calls Philosophia christiana. What is noteworthy is his disdainful attitude towards several Philosophical and religious currents of his time (such as Manichaeism, Donatism, Pelagianism Judaism, the non-Christian Platonism) and the reason behind this attitude. Augustine considers all of them to annihilate the value of humility in human salvation by exalting the role of human reason and will in justification, which ultimately means to regard the self as the source of justice. See Dodaro, 2003, 86 – 95. 42 The transformations in Augustine’s theology by the year 396 (year of the appearance of Simpl.) is such that some scholars go as far as to claim that this year marks the extinction of “Philosophical Augustine”. He emerged more than ever as the “theological Augustine” who reconsiders the insights of his early writings. For a good discussion on this issue, see Djuth,

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Simpl. was Augustine’s first work after ascending to episcopacy. What makes this writing so important in the development of Augustine’s understanding of Christian soteriology? The answer, generally speaking, is that here, especially concerning the issue of human beings and their salvation, there is a clear transformation in relation to Augustine’s early soteriological insight, and there is defined the framework within which Augustine operated and approached the issue of human salvation for the rest of his literary career. This framework was shaped by the conviction that human salvation, from election, predestination and justification to eternal life has a single architect – God. All these ultimately depend on His gracious mercy alone. It is on account of this theological claim that grace naturally assumes the position of cornerstone in the entire Augusti2003, 53 – 68. This study helps one to understand the scope of the transformations which took place in Augustine’s theology and the effects the very same transformations had in his approach to vera Philosophia. Though the author maintains that “both before and after 396 Augustine remains a faithful adherent of vera Philosophia in the integral sense of the term” he reveals changes in the Cassiciacum dialogues” (p. 54). The importance of the transformations are not denied, rather emphasized. Djuth rightly maintains that Augustine’s new insights on grace and human freedom by this time had direct effects on his conception of vera Philosophia: “At this point”, she writes, “some concerns arise in regard to Augustine’s conception of vera Philosophia, especially in light of the change that occurs in his thinking in 396. Not only Augustine’s view of grace and freedom change at this time, but a notable shift in perspective occurs in his works, one that some scholars represent as a definitive break with the classical idea of Philosophy that permeates his early dialogues” (page 58). Further, she concludes: “Despite this continuity in outlook, the changes that occur in Augustine’s thinking in 396 inevitably affect his understanding of vera Philosophia. There are at least three significant ways in which this is the case. First, Augustine’s entry into the ecclesiastical life of the Church requires him to broaden the scope of his method of seeking the truth through questions and answers moderating the emphasis that he placed on the liberal arts as a means of salvation in the Cassiciacum dialogues. Second, Augustine’s reassessment of the Platonists leads him to curb his youthful enthusiasm for their writings and to submit more rigorously to the standard of Christ’s authority. Third, Augustine’s altered perspective on grace and human freedom requires him to align the notion of vera Philosophia with the doctrine of grace that he defends during the Pelagian controversy” [p. 65]. […] “Augustine’s acknowledgement of the congruence between pagan and Christian wisdom both before and after 396 reveal a gradual but ever depending of what vera Philosophia means in the context of the search for Christian wisdom. Perhaps the most significant change that occurs in his thinking on this subject is the abandonment of the belief that human effort alone suffices to initiate the search for truth. Augustine’s pessimism regarding fallen humanity’s ability to lift itself up to the truth through his own endeavour is nonetheless completely consonant with the Platonic notion that God is the source of all truth, beauty, and goodness in the world”. p. 67. The issue here is not whether Augustine stopped being a Philosopher or not. I think it is undeniable that Augustine remained a fierce supporter of what he calls Philosophia christiana. What is noteworthy is his disdainful attitude towards several Philosophical and religious currents of his time (such as Manichaeism, Donatism, Pelagianism Judaism, the non-Christian Platonism) and the reason behind this attitude. Augustine considers all of them to annihilate the value of humility in human salvation by exalting the role of human reason and will in justification, which ultimately means to regard the self as the source of justice. See Dodaro, 2003, 86 – 95.

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nian theological building. In short, Simpl. is a landmark in Augustine’s theology since it is in this treatise that the uncompromised and radically theocentric nature of salvation through divine grace, the radical gratuity of grace, that the main detail of Augustine’s theological identity is, for first time, clearly present in his theological and exegetical reasoning43. In discussing Augustine’s theology from this point, E. TeSELLE, in his Augustine the Tehologian, writes that “All the indications suggest that a major turn came in Augustine’s thought at some time in 396 or 397 with his arrival at a fully Paulinized understanding of grace and the bondage of the will”44. This is precisely the great pillar of the transformation taking place in Augustine’s theology during the time he wrote Ad Simplicianum (as well as Confessiones). It is evident that this transformation is shaped by the results of a deep scrutiny in which Augustine submitted the concept of grace and human free will and their relation to the salvation process. Ad Simplicianum reveals it. Augustine wrote Simpl. as the result of a series of inquiries on central issues in his theological thought such as predestination, election, grace, and justification. It was written as a “conscious, deliberate reply to his own earlier interpretation of the text [of Rom. 9] – repeating the arguments and often the very phrases of the Expositio, but only to deny them”45. By the time he produced his answer to Simplicianus, Augustine bore the burden of episcopal responsibility and was comparatively better trained in Biblical exegesis, and had larger reservations concerning the abilities of human nature. This last detail is of crucial importance. It is no wonder that Augustine found himself in need of retracting some of his youthful positions concerning the range of human free will46. His progressive reluctance to consider human free choice as cause of performing any sort of good (even the taking of the first step towards God) had a crucial out43 Though the mainline Augustinian scholars sees a breakthrough in this work, the issue is not consensual. Drecoll 1999 and Harrison 2006 argues that one does not have to wait till the appearance of Ad Simplicianum to find this radicalism of grace in Augustine’s theology. Since it is, they argue, present in Church Father’s first writings. 44 (rep). TeSelle, 1970, 185. 45 Babcock, 1985, 477. 46 The roots/sources of the deep and visible transformations in Augustine’s exegesis of Pauline texts and his new understanding of salvation process emerging from it is a fertile ground for speculation. Some suggest that Augustine was influenced by theologians who preceded him such as Tyconius. I think the problem cannot be dissociated from three intimately related realities: Augustine’s own spiritual experiences and growth, his increasing daily pastoral responsibilities which led him to (and here is the third reason) to a deeper and deeper engagement with the Pauline corpus itself. William Babcock could not put it in a better way when he wrote that “Whatever other factors may have been involved in these tremendous transformations of his thought, the most obvious is precisely that intensive study of the Pauline text itself through which Augustine hoped to prepare himself for the role as priest and bishop in the Catholic church of Hippo Regius”. Babcock, 1985, 479.

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come: though grace and free will do not collide in the process of salvation, divine grace emerges as the source, sole and unconditional requisite lying behind the entire salvation process. The first book of Simpl. deals with a series of questions which lay emphasis on Rom. 9. The disturbing issue, the core of the problem has to do with the distinct fates of Jacob and Esau, as verse 13 reports. Why did God hate Esau? This is the chief question inter alia, Augustine endeavours to answer in the first of the two books of Simpl. He had studied and explained the Pauline excerpt before. But, it is my sincere believe that on account of the growing reservations in his mind regarding the human rúle in salvation, the Church Father decided to reconsider and provide a new answer to his colleague. The question is a basic one but Augustine knew only too well that the answer to it would necessarily involve some crucial issues and he was no longer satisfied with his previous approach to this tricky case. Reconsideration was the best path! Throughout his career Augustine showed great skills in reconsidering. Here he does one of the most decisive of them all. Jacob and Esau, were twin babies in their mother’s womb. Neither of them could possibly have performed any sort of good or evil. This fact, however, is no impediment to God’s loving one and hating the other. This fact is of utmost importance since it immediately raises the question of the relationship between the call (uocatio) and merit, and how they are related to true nature of predestination and justification. Augustine is here faced with some basic problems: first, he is now convinced that neither Jacob was chosen for his merits nor Esau rejected for his demerits. A particular detail of Augustine’s theological development should not be neglected: if in his early writings Augustine tended to focus on the causes of Adam’s sin, in the 390’s the Church Father’s concern seemed to be directed towards its consequences. The transformation of arguments evident in the soteriology emerging from Ad Simplicianum is not without connection to this crucial detail. The notion of Original Sin which emerged in the Church Father’s writings precisely by this time; allowed Augustine to stress, more and more, the general condemnation of all in Adam. The terms massa peccati/perditionis stand as the ideal when it comes to the explanation of the notion of this ensemble image of condemnation47. The twins were precisely in the same situation since they belonged to the very same clay of condemnation. Both deserved condemnation on account of a sin relating to all of us, by the law of propagation, to Adam. Augustine no longer 47 If Gerald Bonner’s conclusion is correct, the doctrine of massa first appears in Augustine’s writings in Question 68 of De diversis quaestionibus LXXXIII, published in 395/396. According to Bonner the doctrine must have been formulated some time before that date, when Augustine was presbyter of Hippo. Bonner, 1993, 32.

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admits that Jacob was elected on account of faith that God foreknew in him nor was Esau rejected for the unbelief. In Simpl. Augustine “rigorously and ruthlessly excludes any and every moral distinction, no matter how slight which might serve as the basis for God’s election of Jacob and rejection of Esau”48. Augustine, however, raised the following objection: without differences there can be no election. How can one speak of choice where there is no differences between the items to be chosen (“quomodo est enim iusta aut qualiscumque omnino electio, ubi nulla distantia est?”)49 ? Yet, God elected one and rejected the other. Why? With all this in mind, Augustine analysed the question at great length and answers Simplicianus. It has been said that Augustine had reconsidered his early reading of Romans 7:14 – 25. There is no room for any sort of doubt that, by the time he answered to Simplicianus, he already saw some strong limitations upon human free will and had a revised understanding of the relationship between nature and grace. All this becomes more intelligible if one takes into account that, by 396/397, a decisive concept – concupiscentia carnis – was gaining an unprecedented significance in Augustine’s portrayal of humankind, its ability to perform good. This fact, obviously affects Augustine’s understanding of man’s spiritual ascension to God, especially from the stage sub lege to sub gratia. This shift resulted in a key-transformation in Augustinian soteriology that had serious repercussions through his whole ethical system. From then on Augustine had a sharp sense of difficulties involved in what he had earlier considered a simple transition from recognizing the good to willing the good. The spiritual ascension towards God now seemed much more difficult, and presented a more comprehensive theological issue. Augustine was forced to abandon the notion of linear progress altogether. “Under the impact of – or, at least, in immediate relation to – his study of the Pauline text, Augustine produced a significantly different scheme for understanding the transformation whereby a person comes not only to recognise but also to will and to do the good”50. Dealing with the twins’ case in Simpl. Augustine pointed out that this specific case must be understood in light of the purpose of the entire epistle to the Romans: Paul’s intention was to annihilate, to abolish the language of merit in the salvation process in order to deny the Jewish claim of their special status in relation to the gentiles, since Jews, Augustine stressed, claimed a special status on account of the observance of the Law. But any grace given as due, he advised

48 Babcock, 1985, 477. 49 Simpl. I, II, 4, CCSL 44, 28, l. 113. 50 Babcock, 1979, 59.

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his readers, is no longer grace. It is not the grace of Gospel51. The example of Jacob and Esau served, then, to illustrate most obviously Paul’s intention52. Against his earlier convictions, Augustine now stressed, that, having been born in the circle of traduce peccati, poena mortalitatis, bound in Adam into massa peccatorum, humanity has absolutely no merit of its own. Why, then are some sinners redeemed by God? Augustine was urged to answer: anyone redeemed is simply being benefited by a divine favour. From the massa peccatorum, some are justly punished by the divine justice and so are condemned; and others are rescued by the divine mercy, though they do not deserve it. God is praiseworthy since in His mysterious mercy, He rescues unworthy ones as He did in the case of Paul. Accordingly, the slight, but decisive change in Augustine’s soteriological framework crystallized in Simpl. cannot be grasped unless close attention is paid to two key-concepts which were increasingly determining Augustine’s theology – concupiscentia carnis and massa damnata. The first reveals itself as the concept upon which Augustine relies more and more when dealing with the notion of man and the abilities of human nature. The concept of concupiscentia carnis, as it has been convincingly demonstrated in some recent studies, has in Augustine’s writings, a punitive connotation53. “It is Augustine’s deeply held conviction, writes Timo NISULA, that our bodily and emotional disorder in the form of concupiscentia has deep roots in the history of humankind and in the choices of its first representatives”54. Concupiscentia carnis is the notion Augustine finds the most fitting to describe how the sense of disorder, on account of the sin of disobedience carried out by our first parents, penetrates the very core of human living and existence. 51 Simpl. I, II, 2, CCSL 44. 24, l. 12: “et primo intentionem apostoli quae per totam epistulam uiget tenebo quam consulam. haec est autem, ut de operum meritis nemo glorietur. de quibus audebant israelitae gloriari, quod datae sibi legi seruissent et ex hoc euangelicam gratiam tamquam debitam meritis suis percepissent, quia legi seruiebant. unde nolebant eandem gratiam dari gentibus tamquam indignis, nisi iudaica sacramenta susciperent, quae orta quaestio in apostolorum actibus soluitur. non enim intellegebant quia eo ipso quo gratia est euangelica operibus non debetur, alioquin gratia iam non est gratia [Rom.. XI, 6].” 52 Katayanagi, 1991, 647sqq. 53 For an excellent discussion on concupiscentia carnis as a divine punishment brought by God upon humankind on account of the primitive sin of Adam and Eve, see Nisula, 2010, 56 – 126 where the development of Augustine’s notion of concupiscence as divine punishment is traced in detail. 54 Nisula, 2010, 56. Of utmost importance is to stress that his approach on concupiscence as divine punishment which explains every sort of disorders present in human beings is not a reaction to the teachings of his future Pelagian opponents. “The basic elements for a neatly balanced and reciprocal view of an original “theological” disobedience corresponding to a present “psychological” and bodily disorder were already established in Augustine’s earlier expositions on Paradise, the human will and divine retribution. A full blown description of this reciprocity was given during the early years of the fifth century, to be finally challenged by Augustine’s sharpest theological critic, Julian of Aeclanum”. Nisula, 2010, 56.

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Specific Pauline passages are pointed out by the Church Father to be immensely clear in this regard. The two main passages Augustine evokes when debating this issue are Rom. 7:14 and following verses, and Gal. 5:7. With these verses in mind, Augustine is more and more convinced that human free will was seriously wounded by the disorder that erupted on account of sin; free will did not disappear, but is substantially limited in its abilities (“Liberum uoluntatis arbitrium plurimum ualet, immo uero est quidem, sed in uenundatis sub peccato quid ualet?”)55. Later facing Julian, Augustine made use of Rom. 7:14sqq, and goes so far as declaring that the free choice of the will, as that capacity of desiring and doing good with which Adam was created, was lost with Adam’s first sin. Only grace can solve this problem. He claims that it is definitely not in the range of free will to accomplish God’s commandments (“hoc enim restat in ista mortali uita libero arbitrio, non ut impleat homo iustitiam cum uoluerit, sed ut se supplici pietate conuertat ad eum cuius dono eam possit implere”)56. In short, in Ad Simplcianum Augustine already admits the loss of libertas (the capacity to wish, do and remain in good) on account of our seminal participation in Adam’s sin. The term massa damnata (and its equivalents such as massa perditionis, etc), introduced by Augustine regarding Rom. 9:20 – 21, represents the very anthropological image of fallen mankind due to Adam’s sin. It the starting point for Augustine’s new soteriological framework, the ordo iustificationis with which he would face Pelagians some years later. By the time Augustine concluded Simpl., this soteriological framework could be expressed in the following theological equation: on account of Original Sin, the whole mankind was made a massa perditionis, a massa damnata. Since all, with no exception, have sinned in Adam and with him deserted God’s grace (“ex Adam massa peccatorum et impiorum, in qua et Iudaei et gentes remota gratia dei ad unam pertinent consparsionem”)57, condemnation is justly deserved by all. Accordingly, God owes absolutely nothing to anyone. No one can possibly claim the right to salvation. Any benefit to prepare a human being for a different fate is nothing but mercy and grace; any sort of good in us is simply God’s work, not our merit (“tunc facta est una massa omnium, ueniens de traduce peccati et de poena mortalitatis, quamuis deo formante et creante quae bona sunt”)58. From the mass of perdition, in His limitless mercy, God decided to choose some to be the vessel of election, not on account of any sort of merit. That is, some will be prepared by Him in order to come to enjoy the eternal beatitude with Him, while others, remaining vessel of condemnation, will justly perish. 55 56 57 58

Simpl. I, II, 21, CCSL 44, 53, l. 740. Simpl. I, I, 14, CCSL 44, 18, l. 247. Simpl. I, II, 19, CCSL 44, 48, l. 621. Simpl. I, II, 20, CCSL 44, 51, l. 697.

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It is, thus, perfectly safe to maintain that the emphasis on concupiscencia carnis, inherited from Adam’s sin, which not only annihilates the human capacity to carry God’s commands, since human free will by itself is able only to sin, but also makes condemnation to be deserved to all. Massa damnata allowed Augustine’s reading of Rom. 9 in Simpl. to result in a crucial reconfiguration: human salvation is, in its essence, a God-oriented process. Since condemnation is deserved by all but, nonetheless, not all are abandoned to such a grim fate, predestination rises as the way out. A careful consideration of Augustine’s reading of Rom. 9 on the twins’ case reveals that the main lines of the Augustinian doctrine of predestination are perfectly identifiable in Simpl. with almost the same astonishing radicalism one finds in his later writings such as Contra duas epistulas Pelagianorum (see II, V, 9-VII, 16) or De praedestinatione sanctorum59. From a single mass of perdition, God freely and justly saves whom He pleases. In one case it is Jacob, by reorienting his will towards the divine path. Freely and justly He also condemns whom He pleases, in this case, Esau, by abandoning him to the weight of Adam’s heavy and sinful heritage, of concupiscence, the unquenchable thirst for sin. The radicalism of this assertion explains why, in his answer to Simplicianus, Augustine abandons the early focus on God’s foreknowledge of Jacob’s piety and Esau’s impiety as the key-concept in explaining the election of the first and rejecting of the second. It seems evident to me that foreknowledge is a theological notion which served Augustine in his earlier explanations since the Church Father’s starting point in the investigation of the election of the patriarchs was the question “what has God elected” (quia enim eligit Deus)? This question suited Augustine’s early understanding of human salvation, which ultimately admitted at least the merit of him who decides to call for God’s help. He was looking for differences in some way concerning the origin of the twins, in order to explain the discrepancies between the fate of the two babies. He admitted a certain sort of merit which underlay Jacob’s election. At this point, in Augustine’s new ordo iustificationis and salvationis, according to which grace precedes any sort of human-rooted merit, God’s foreknowledge lost its crucial role in the equation. Election was now linked to grace. Since election is one of the many expressions of grace, it is itself grace. In Simpl. the interrogation is a far different one. Instead of what, Augustine is wondering how God elects. As a matter of fact, he never provided a satisfactory answer to this question and the unclear and controversial explanation he provides to it may be accurately called the Augustinian doctrine of predestination. Predestination, according to Augustine is not for human understanding but hidden in God’s 59 This claim may collide with the positions held in Burnaby, 1947, 1955 and 1985 (?), but I am supported in this contention by Katayanagi, 1991 and Bonner, 1993, 38sqq.

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prescience (“Praedestinatio nostra non in nobis facta est, sed in occulto apud ipsum, in eius praescientia”)60. Time and again, Augustine maintained, Paul taught that the grace of faith precedes works, not to ruin works, but to show that works follow grace. Humans start receiving grace at the moment they believe God61. This is exactly what Paul had in mind when approaching the twins’ case: it is not acceptable to admit that Jacob, not even born had merited God’s favour leading to the divine sentence “The elder shall be submitted to the younger” (Gen. 25:23)62. Augustine is applying here his new ordo justificationis with which, he claims, the very spiritual life of Saint Paul himself concurs. One is justified in order to live according to justice, not the other way around. In other words, grace comes from He who calls, and the good works that follow are the fruit of grace (Rom. 9: 11 – 12)63. Paul’s personal life, Augustine argues, is a proof of this; he received grace to fight the good fight. Future good works cannot be the basis for election since it is the effect, not the cause of the very same election. If the twins are from the same parents and created by the same God, how explain such preference? On which criterion would it be based? If Jacob was made good in order to please God, how did he 60 en. Ps. 150, 3. Here Augustine’s reasoning is profoundly ambiguous. The concepts of praedestinatio and praescentia turn out to be the source of confusion in his explanation on the nature of divine predestination. This (divine predestination), he argues, belongs to God’s praescentia and it is beyond the grasp of humans. Though Augustine never provided a clear and acceptable explanation on the nature and contours of divine predestination, it cannot be denied that he ventured on a quest for explanation for the problem and tried to do his best to explain what he himself admits to be beyond a reasonable explanation. In this desperate attempt to explain divine predestination, Augustine, it can be justly said, assumes too much. For someone who continuously stresses the hidden divine mysteries inherent in predestination, Augustine knew and taught too much on predestination. It is understandable that he did not want to keep silent on predestination, one of the great cornerstones of his doctrine of salvation, but the fact is that he not only contradicted himself by venturing to teaching in detail what he assumed to be beyond human grasp. He also failed to provide an acceptable account of the same problem. 61 Simpl. I, II, 2, CCSL 44, 24 – 25, l. 22: “et multis locis hoc saepe testatur fidei gratiam praeponens operibus, non ut opera extinguat, sed ut ostendat non esse opera praecedentia gratiam sed consequentia, ut scilicet non se quisque arbitretur ideo percepisse gratiam, quia bene operatus est, sed bene operari non posse, nisi per fidem perceperit gratiam. incipit autem homo percipere gratiam, ex quo incipit deo credere […]”. 62 Simpl. I, II, 3 63 Simpl. I, II, 3, CCSL 44, 27, l. 84: “uocantis est ergo gratia, percipientis uero gratiam consequenter sunt opera bona, non quae gratiam pariant, sed quae gratia pariantur. non enim ut ferueat calefacit ignis, sed quia feruet; nec ideo bene currit rota ut rotunda sit, sed quia rotunda est. sic nemo propterea bene operatur ut accipiat gratiam, sed quia accepit. quomodo enim potest iuste uiuere qui non fuerit iustificatus? quomodo nec sancte uiuere qui non fuerit sanctificatus, nec omnino uiuere qui non fuerit uiuificatus. iustificat autem gratia, ut iustificatus possit iuste uiuere. prima est igitur gratia, secunda opera bona […]”.

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please Him even before he was born? One is to conclude, Augustine states, he was not chosen because he was made good, but because he was made good he could be chosen (“Non itaque electus est fieret bonus, sed bonus factus eligi potuit”)64. If one admits that Jacob was loved on account of the merit of justice, it would be false to hold that he was not loved on account of his works (“Ut autem odisset Esau nisi iniustitiae merito, iniustum est. Quod si concedimus, incipit et Iacob iustitiae merito deligi. Quod si verum est, falsum est quod non ex operibus. An forte ex iustitia fidei?”)65. Accordingly, one is elected, justified not because one is good, but in order to become good. Our libertas, as Augustine stressed, was lost in Adam. Now one is free only when God gives freedom. One is saved just because the gracious mercy of God wishes one to be saved. In short, the elect are not chosen because they have believed but in order they may believe. Paul himself is a living prove of it. There is no room here for human initiative of any sort. Augustine now (in Simpl.) admits that the twins were exactly in the same situation and there was no difference between them to be foreseen. Jacob was not created good to be elected, but rather elected to be good. The fact that he believed was due to grace coming to assist him in his decision to believe. This new opinion adopted by Augustine, had to do with his revised understanding of faith and the divine call66. Faith was no longer regarded as having its origin in the operation of human free will, but was rather defined as God’s gift67. All comes from the calling and the justifying mercy of God. Being so, even the act of believing, the first step towards God is caused by grace68. Faith is, too now, included in those works of which human being cannot boast. I Cor. 4:7 had suddenly and decisively entered the Augustinian equation: man has nothing that he has not received, and that includes even the initial belief whereby he responds to the divine call itself69. This alteration in the Augustinian approach to the

64 65 66 67

Simpl. I, II, 4, CCSL, 29, l. 136. Simpl. I, II, 8, CSEL 44, 33, l. 241. Babcock, 1979, 66. Simpl. I, II, 7, CCSL 44, 31 – 32, l. 199: “quaeritur autem, utrum uel fides mereatur hominis iustificationem, an uero nec fidei merita praecedant misericordiam dei, sed et fides ipsa inter dona gratiae numeretur, quia et hoc loco, cum dixisset: non ex operibus, non ait: sed ex fide dictum est ei quia maior seruiet minori, ait autem: sed ex uocante. nemo enim credit qui non uocatur. misericors autem deus uocat nullis hoc uel fidei meritis largiens, quia merita fidei sequuntur uocationem potius quam praecedunt. […] nisi ergo uocando praecedat misericordia dei, nec credere quisquam potest, ut ex hoc incipiat iustificari et accipere facultatem bene operandi. ergo ante omne meritum est gratia; etenim christus pro impiis mortuus est. ex uocante igitur minor accepit, non ex ullis meritis operum suorum, ut maior ei seruiret, ut etiam quod scriptum est: iacob dilexi, ex uocante sit deo, non ex operante iacob ”. 68 Simpl. I, II, 9. 69 Babcock, 1979, 66; Bonner, 1993, 35 – 39. For a detailed and exhaustive treatment of I Cor. 4:7

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relationship between grace and free will, Frederick VAN FLETEREN calls the “fourth conversion” in the life of the Church Father70. The radical gratuity of human salvation left no room for any sort of human initiative. This brought serious trouble for Augustine, not only with the rising of Pelagianism, but also with the protest of the so-called Semi-Pelagians. The claims of the Semi-Pelagians, Gerald BONNER rightly judges, can be accurately described “as a reassertion and defence of the same principles which Augustine had himself affirmed in his Expositio in Epistulam ad Romanos in 395”71. By the time Augustine faced both Pelagians and the monks of Adrumetum and Marseilles who accused Augustine in his doctrine of grace of annihilating the freedom by which one responds to God’s call. The sense of the gratuitous mercy of God from which the salvation process unfolded, was deeply rooted in his reasoning and there was no way back. Thus, “one may well believe that Augustine’s sudden understanding of the significance of I Corinthians 4:7 when writing to Simplicianus had made him impervious to any argument pointing in another direction”72. in the development of Augustine’s theology, namely his doctrine of grace and humility, see Hombert, 1996. 70 “The treatment of the second question in Ad Simplicianum in 396, the author writes, constituted a turning point in Augustine’s career. Together with his conversion at the age of eighteen in Confessiones III, his intellectual conversion in Confessiones VII, and his moral conversion in Confessiones VIII, Augustine’s change of mind on the relation between grace and free will constitutes a fourth conversion in his life”.Van Fleteren, 2001, 95. Gerald Bonner also convincingly argues for the centrality of I Cor. 4:7 in Augustine’s new approach on human salvation: “A year after writing the Expositio in Epistulam ad Romanos, Augustine’s attitude changed, with portentous consequences. Having been asked by his old pastor Simplicianus, the presbyter of Milan who succeeded St. Ambrose as bishop in 397, to explain certain passages of Scripture, Augustine suddenly came to comprehend, with an absolute clarity, what he believed to be the full significance of I Corinthians 4:7: for who singles thee out? Or what hast thou that thou didst not receive? And if thou hast received, why dost thou boast, as if it were not a gift? As an intellectual conversion, this illumination while writing to Simplicianus in 396 falls only a little short of that experience at Milan 10 years before, for by it Augustine came to perceive that the elect are not chosen because they believe, but in order that they may believe. Put in another way, a conviction that God’s absolute power took possession of Augustine’s mind, and what he was to write subsequently in the later stage of the Pelagian Controversy represented a restatement, with with increased emphasis and harshness, of the conclusions to which he had come in 396. […] One can see the Confessions, indeed, as the exemplification in Augustine’s own career, up to his baptism, of the message of the illumination of 396. What hast thou that thou didst not receive? And if thou hast received, why dost thou boast, as if it were not a gift? “Give what thou dost command, and command what thou wilt” Is not this famous prayer effectively a practical application of the text of I Corinthians 4:7?”. Bonner, 1993, 35 – 36. 71 Bonner, 1993, 38. 72 Bonner, 1993, 39. Bonner’s belief according to which Augustine’s engagement in the Pelagian controversy was made essentially with ideas he had already developed around 396 seems to be very consistent, and I myself, think the same way. Some important theological insights upon which Augustine shapes his anti-Pelagian campaigns are clearly present in the Church

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What Augustine means with this radical gratuity of electio is to point out that God, in his mercy, loved Jacob as a sinner. This does not mean God loves sin in humans73. Grace precedes every sort of good in a human being, including faith, works and good will itself. Augustine is very clear in his reading of Rom. 9:16, a passage whose message he maintains is that not only are we unable to accomplish what we want, but more precisely that we cannot wish good things without God’s call (vocatione) which precedes all good will. (“non igitur ideo dictum putandum est: non uolentis neque currentis sed miserentis est dei, quia nisi eius adiutorio non possumus adipisci quod uolumus, sed ideo potius quia nisi eius uocatione non uolumus”)74. So Jacob was provided with grace which enabled him to walk in God’s path when he came to this world. He freely answered the call, but God operated over his will in order to make him answer positively. This, Augustine insists, does not mean he did not answer freely. The call is a free act of mercy75. The uocatio secundum propositum (or the uocatio congrua) is that call which will certainly meet a positive answer. It is an ineffable mystery of God’s mercy. The very will to believe is also God’s gift. The elect/called or the believer

Father’s works produced during the second half of 390s, namely Confessiones and Ad Simplicianum. A clear proof of this fact is that the first known reaction of Pelagius against Augustine’s approach on human salvation is a vehement opposition to the Church Father’s prayer “give what you command and command what you will” in the Confessiones, a practical outcome of Augustine’s believe in the radical gratuity of human salvation which neither Pelagians, nor the monks of Adrumetum and Marseilles, though with different degree of difficulty, were willing to accept. Accordingly I agree with Bonner when he writes that “If one considers Augustine’s role in the Pelagian controversy, it is difficult not to be impressed by his overwhelming energy. Between 411 and his death in 430, treatises flowed, at his dictation, from the pens of his amanuenses, even when, at the end of his life, he was fighting a war on two fronts maintaining, against the Semi-Pelagians, the absolute decree of God over human initiative, and defending, against Julian, his own understanding of the transmission of Adam’s sin and denying that there could be any injustice in the apparently undeserved fate of unbaptized infants. Nevertheless, the author argues, in all this productivity, Augustine was essentially re-stating the arguments which he had employed at the very beginning of the controversy in De peccatorum meritis et remissione; and these arguments in turn derived from the theological conclusions which he had reached in 396 when answering the questions to Simplicianus”. Bonner, 1993, 43. 73 Simpl. I, II, 18 74 Simpl. I, II, 12, CCSL 44, 37, l. 341. 75 Simpl. I, II, 10, CCSL 44, 34 – 35, l. 276: “si ergo iacob ideo credidit quia uoluit, non ei deus donauit fidem, sed eam sibi ipse uolendo praestitit et habuit aliquid quod non accepit. an quia nemo potest credere nisi uelit, nemo uelle nisi uocetur, nemo autem sibi potest praestare ut uocetur, uocando deus praestat et fidem, quia sine uocatione non potest quisquam credere, quamuis nullus credat inuitus? quomodo enim credent quem non audierunt? aut quomodo audient sine praedicante? nemo itaque credit non uocatus, sed non omnis credit uocatus; multi enim uocati, pauci autem electi, utique hi qui uocantem non contemserunt sed credendo secuti sunt. uolentes autem sine dubio crediderunt ”.

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has no reason for self-glorification76. After all, what has a human being got which was not received? – Augustine often asks that question, quoting I Cor. 4, 777. God is merciful and wishing the sinner to come to Him, He operates in order to make it so. Salvation is nothing but God searching for human being; it is not a meritorious human search for God. This soteriological structure, however, sounds wonderful until one notices that this God’s redemptive operation through grace and mercy is not only a selective process but also that such a selection process is oriented by arbitrary criteria. Jacob, part of massa peccati, deserved condemnation. However, he enjoyed all those benefits which saved him from the grim fate of a deserved condemnation. His brother, in the same situation, did not. Why so? The case is fraught with difficulties. Augustine’s approach to it is of fundamental importance in his soteriology since he sees in the twins’ case the prototype of processus salvationis applied to the whole mankind. Whether or not this was a right course of action I do not intend to dispute here (although I believe here lays one of the main problems of Augustine’s soteriology). The fact is that it was the course Augustine took. He started by pointing out that Scripture provides several different cases of individuals coming to the faith. The divine call is, in fact, the source of good will of one who decides to believe. To solve Esau’s case, Augustine does not evoke the difference between the twins, but considers the very nature of the divine call itself. Since faith is God’s gift, how explain Esau’s failure in responding to the divine call? Was he not called at all? Was he called in a different way, a less effective way? Augustine picks this last possibility. God calls some congruenter, in ways that suit their situations and evoke their belief, and others he does not. Mt 20:16 (multi enim uocati, pauci autem electi) is par excellence the Scriptural statement used by Augustine to corroborate this assertion of his according to which what ultimately draws the line between the elect and the condemned are the differences in the nature of the divine call (congruenter/secundum propositum or not). Esau then fills the number of those called but not chosen, and they are not chosen because the call that comes to them is such that they cannot be moved by it and are not fitted to receive it. After all there is no distinction between the twins, or between those who believe and those who do not. The distinction lays in God’s call itself, which is congruenter or not78. God’s vocation and God’s mercy are not the same thing. The individual can reject God’s call, but when God has mercy on him and, consequently calls him congruenter, then the merciful 76 Cf. Reta, 1989, esp. 302 – 305. 77 There can be no doubt that this passage is one of the main scriptural bases for Augustine’s radicalism when it comes to the doctrine of grace. For a detailed study on the role of I Cor. 4:7 in the shaping of the Augustinian doctrine of grace, see Hombert, 1996. 78 Babcock, 1979, 66 and 1985, 478.

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call, so to say, fuels the individual’s desire to answer positively to the same call. Accordingly, God’s gracious mercy turns out to be the tiny line which distinguishes the elect from the rejected. As KATAYANAGI points out, God’s mercy has an absolute efficacy through the “congruous vocation”. This divine efficacy through the congruous vocation is the true reason why a person can respond to a vocation. All depends upon God’s mercy. Man’s faculty plays no decisive role” […] God has means to call suitably the man who has a stone heart and rebels against God, if God has mercy upon him. All depends upon God’s mercy79.

But one may still ask: if, apart from grace, there is no relevant moral difference between Jacob and Esau, how can then, the election be just? Augustine provides no answer. The best he could do was to refer to a “certain hidden equity” in replacement of “the most hidden merits of souls”, an idea which he had previously used as the criterion for the election80. Augustine insists, especially in his later works, on the doctrine of predestination. However, he never succeeded in the attempt to conciliate it with two other central concepts of his own theology – human free will and God’s justice. W. BABCOCK is probably right when he argues that “under the impact of Paul’s text and in keeping with his own conviction that the movement from discerning the good to willing the good depends on the divine grace rather than human action, Augustine has, in effect, sacrificed both man’s freedom and God’s justice on the altar of the sheer gratuity of God’s grace, unqualified by even a residual correlation with man’s merit. Why does God’s grace come to some and not to others? Augustine can no longer discern an answer to the question, can no longer delineate a God who is gracious but not arbitrary, can no longer define a sphere of man’s action (even the minimal “action” of belief) which affects the outcome of man’s destiny. All is engulfed in the impenetrable darkness of the “hidden equity” with which God elects some and rejects others”81.

As the same author argues elsewhere, in the second half of the 390s, Augustine emerges from his study of the Pauline letters in general and of Romans in particular, with a new conception of man, since he no longer supposes that the transformation of the human will from the evil to the good can be achieved, even in the slightest degree, apart from grace or on man’s own. He also puts forward a new conception of God, since he emphasises the sheer gratuity of God’s grace, but “only by casting God’s justice into impenetrable shadow”; and a new “Paul” (the supreme theologian of grace always threatening to become perpetrator of an

79 Katayanagi, 1991, 649. For a good study on the nature of divine call secundum propositum as understood by Augustine, see Zumkeller, 1987. 80 Babcock, 1979, 66 – 67 81 Ibidem, 67

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utterly arbitrary God) whom he bequeathed to Latin Christianity from that time forward”82. What is clear is that, by the time Augustine produced his answers to Simplicianus, two key-concepts of his theology, namely grace and human free will and their role in the salvation process are under a serious scrutiny. From this scrutiny then resulted a strong conviction: since mankind is under the power of sin, free will does not decide human salvation. This is, in its whole, grace. Salvation is ultimately a God’s exclusive operation. Augustine’s confrontation with Pelagians forced him to give a systematic account of this theological reasoning. It is this thoroughly theocentrical approach to human salvation developed by Augustine, in a certain contrast with Patristic tradition, that Luther exploited to the last consequences when he developed his reforming doctrine of justification by faith alone. If one wants to understand why Luther preferred Augustine to any other Church Father, it would suffice to take a look into the way Augustine broke with tradition of the Fathers in his interpretation human beings and their salvation. This rupture started in Ad Simplicianum. In the following paragraph I intend to summarily look into the basic teachings of the pre-Augustinian Fathers and explain in which way they diverged from Augustine in their understanding of salvation.

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Simpl. represents the apex of a process, a turning point in Augustine’s theology. This turning point gains an extra importance if one takes into consideration that it meant not only significant changes in relation to Augustine’s own previous works, but also a break with the very tradition of the Fathers he so eagerly claims to defend. Since in the present dissertation I am occupied not only with Augustine but also with Luther, I think it opportune to say that I am convinced that it is the radicalism of grace shaping the Augustinian soteriology which emerges from Simpl. that makes of St. Augustine Luther’s favourite theologian among the Church Fathers. If Augustine had stopped his literary production by 394/5 or had continued within the same framework he adopted up to this time, he may have seemed to Luther to be just another theologian among many. More: the Reformer would probably have accused him of being a Pelagian sympathizer as he accused the Scholastic theologians, namely the Nominalists, to whom he ascribes the prin82 Babcock, 1985, 479.

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ciple facientibus quod in se est Deus non denegat gratiam, of being Pelagians while disguised as orthodox theologians. It is precisely Augustine’s radical break with the tradition by ascribing to divine grace a scope far beyond of that of his fellow Church Fathers that explains why Luther often shields himself in the Bishop of Hippo’s authority to claim the orthodoxy of his own radical approach to the issue of human salvation. He sees in Augustine’s radicalism of grace something very similar to his doctrine of justification by faith alone. It will be necessary to consider this later in this study. Let us telegraphically analyse how the emerging discourse of salvation in Simpl. constituted a break with the traditional Church teaching on salvation. If it is true that Augustine’s soteriology is the theological field that makes of him a colossal figure in the western theological tradition, it is also true that much of the criticism of his theology focuses on this very same field. It is, for instance, his revolutionary concept of grace, upon which Augustine’s entire theological system is based that makes of Augustine’s mature theology a sort of giant iceberg on the collision route with the ship of Church. The Pelagian controversy was only one result of the impact. The oppositions of the Massilians and monks of Adrumetum was certainly another important outcome of this Augustinian revolution which was regarded as outrageous by Augustine’s opponents. His position was difficult of acceptance even by some theologians whose doctrine of salvation was relatively close to the African Church Father’s. Not even Augustine’s physical disappearance, in 430, meant the end of the contention, as some theological quarrels in the fifth-century Southern Gaul clearly demonstrate83. In order to make it plain that Augustine’s soteriological insights are, compared to the patristic standards, “heterodox” (as were those of the Pelagians), it would suffice to pay attention to how even some of the most vehement opponents of the Pelagians present a different proposal than that of Augustine when dealing with the salvation process. The common denominator in the mainline patristic approach to human salvation is that the scope of grace falls short from that ascribed to it by Augustine. In other words, many Fathers recognized that salvation is attained by grace, but they were not so peremptory in saying that even its beginning is grace. They tended to ascribe the beginning of the process to human being. Jerome is a paradigmatic case. For instance, in the opening of the first chapter of his Dialogus Adversus Pelagianis (I, 1), the presbyter raises the question concerning the alleged Pelagian statement according to which humans can be without sin if they want to, and that the precepts of God are easy84. Disapproving and attacking the Pelagian principle by using the very words of Romans 9:16, 83 See, Marin, 2010. 84 dial. adu. Pelag. I, 1.

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Jerome drew a conclusion about the role of the human being in his own salvation in contradiction to the Augustinian reading of that Pauline passage. This is clear when Aticus (the Catholic character of the dialogue) holds the need of God’s assistance in every single action, and holds that grace does not obstruct freedom, while Critobulus (the heretic/Pelagian) claims that if one cannot do anything without God, unless He helps one in every single action that one performs, God will neither crown one with justice for one’s good deeds, nor will he punish one for one’s evil deeds. In both cases He will either reward or condemn His own assistance. Critobulus’ claim is basically that if God is the cooperator in every action, then the act is not to be imputed to man, but rather to God who helps him, since one cannot accomplish anything without Him85. To this claim Augustine’s answer would certainly be his famous statement according to which, when God rewards humans with eternal salvation He, after all, crowns His own gifts. Well, Jerome’s position is different and, it must be stressed, is in line with the patristic tradition. Though, like Augustine, Jerome appeals to Biblical passages such as John 15:5 to emphasize the weakness of human nature and its consequent inability to accomplish the good it may wish86, Jerome ascribes to the human being a decisive role in the salvation process: the will/desire/initiative of stepping towards God. His formula is simple: it is God who calls, but it belongs to human beings only to believe (Dei vocare est … et nostrum credere)87- a statement to which, previous to 396 Augustine would perhaps have easily endorsed. In his very treatise against the Pelagians, Jerome puts the words of Rom. 9:16 in Aticus’ mouth in order to claim that it is clear from this passage that what is within the range of the rational creature is the willing and the running, but the accomplishing of the same willing and running is to be ascribed to the mercy of God. Thus the human free will is safeguarded as far as our own willing and running are concerned; and that all things depend on the power of God, as far as the accomplishing of our willing and of our running is concerned88. 85 dial. adv. Pel. I, 3 – 4. 86 dial. Adu. Pel. III, 9, CCSL 80, 110, l. 20: Sicut rami et flagella uitium illico contabescunt, cum fuerint a matrice praecisa, ita omnis hominum fortitudo marcescit et deperit, si a Dei auxilio deseratur. Nemo, inquit, potest uenire ad me, nisi Pater, quia misit me, traxerit eum. Quando dicit: nemo potest uenire ad me, frangit superbientem arbitrii libertatem, quod etiam qui uelit ad Christum pergere, nisi fiat illud quod sequitur : Pater meus caelestis traxerit eum, nequicquam cupiat, frustra nitatur. Simul et hoc animaduertendum, quod qui trahitur, non sponte currit, sed aut retractans et tardus aut initus adducitur”. 87 in Isaiam, PL 24, col. 45 88 dial. adu. Pel. I, 5, CChL 80, 9, l. 7: “Oro te, non legisti: Non est uolentis neque currentis, sed miserentis est Dei? Ex quo intellegimus nostrum quidem esse uelle et currere; sed ut uoluntas nostra compleatur et cursus, ad Dei misericordiam pertinere, atque ita fieri ut et in uoluntate nostra et in cursu liberum seruetur arbitrium, et in consummatione uoluntatis et cursus Dei

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Jerome insists in the same argument that there is conciliation between the perfection to which Christians are called and his opposition to the alleged Pelagian claim of impeccability, a claim which sounds more like Jerome’s own invention rather than a Pelagian teaching89. To deny the possibility of human impeccability necessarily raises the following question: if it is impossible for humans to lead a sinless life, what is, then, the raison d’Þtre of God’s call to perfection? Jerome understands that this call to perfection is simply in the sense that each of us faces the challenge to do the best of his/her ability in order to obtain and lay hold of the prize of the heavenly call (“Hac ratione qua dixi ut secundum uires nostras unusquisque quantum ualerit extendatur, si quo modo possit peruenire et comprehendere brauium supernae uocationis”)90. If one would need a reason, here is one why Luther preferred the anti-Pelagian Augustine’s understanding of the salvation process rather than Jerome’s. A summary analysis of the patristic account of the issue demonstrates that Jerome’s arguments are in line with the tradition. In opposition to the Donatist “puritanism”, Optatus of Milevis, appealed to Romans 9:16 in holding that the human being is given to will and to run, not to accomplish, which is God’s alone (“Quod nostrum est velle, nostrum est currere, Dei perficere”)91. cuncta potentiae relinquantur”. To the question “What God shall crown in us”, Jerome replies that He crowns the will which offered all that it could; our effort, that strove to do all that it could do, and our humility that always had taken refuge in God’s help: Quid igitur coronat in nobis atque laudat quod ipse operatus est? Voluntatem nostram, quae obtulit omne quod potuit, et laborem, quo contendit ut faceret, et humilitatem, quae semper respexit auxilium Dei”. dial. adu. Pel., III, 6, CChL 80, 104, l. 5. 89 The term Jerome uses is “impeccantia” which, to my knowledge does not occur in Pelagian writings. Jerome seems to convincingly ascribe to Pelagians a doctrine they themselves did not hold. This reality is not strange throughout the Pelagian controversies. There are also similar cases involving Augustine himself, namely when the Church Father argues to be a Pelagian teaching the distinction Kingdom of Heaven-Eternal life. FranÅois Refoul¦ studied the issue in detail and concludes that the Pelagians themselves never maintained such distinction. According to Refoul¦ Augustine’s insistence in this claim may have its roots in a misunderstanding concerning the Pelagian claim that according to which unbaptized infants do not perish neither are condemned. For Augustine this means they have eternal life. Cf. Refoul¦, 1963, 252 – 253 90 (rep). dial. adv. Pel I, 19, CChL 80, 24, l. 2. This explanation is developed in III, 1: (Et tamen hoc scito, baptismum praeterita donare peccata, non futuram seruare iustitiam, quae labore et industria ac diligentia, et super omnia Dei clementia custoditur, ut nostrum sit rogare, illius tribuere quod rogatur, nostrum incipere, illius perficere, nostrum offere quod possumus, illius implere quod non possumus. Nisi enim Dominus aedificauerit domum, in uanum laborauerunt qui aedificant eam. Nisi Dominus custodierit ciuitatem, in uanum uigilabit qui costodit eam”. CChL 80, 98, l. 13. 91 de schism. Don. II, XX, PL 11, cols. 974 – 975: “Est enim Christiani hominis, quod bonum est, velle; et in eo quod bene voluerit currere, sed hominis non est datum perficere: ut post spacia, quae debet homo implere, restet aliquid Deo, ubi deficienti siccurrat: quia ipse solus est perfectio, et perfectus solus Dei Filius Christus. Caeteri omnes semi-perfecti sumus. Quia nostrum est velle, nostrum est currere; Dei perficere. Unde beatissimus Paulus, ait: Neque

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Though Cyprian acknowledged that “our power is of God, all of it is of God” (To Donatus 4) he clearly taught that “God brings help to he who starts”. But if you hold to the way of innocence” the African prelate writes in To Donatus 5, “to the way of justice, with the firmness of your step unbroken, if depending upon God with all strength and your whole heart you only be what you began to be, so much power is given you in the way of freedom to act as there is an increase in spiritual grace92.

Following the path of Tertulian, Cyprian admits that the practice of virtue makes of God our debtor. In The dress of the Virgins he exhorts the virgins to make God their debtor leading a life of pure chastity and charity93. One must make God one’s debtor by meriting His mercy through good works94. Mercy and pardon are to be deserved, according to Cyprian as is clear from the bishop of Chartage’s concluding words in The Lapsed95. It is obvious that this pre-Augustinian patristic emphasis on human initiative as a sine qua non condition for the shaping of the salvation process had to do with the role of human merit in the same process. While the mature Augustine relied on the notion of a total fall, the captivity of the free will and denied any sort of human-rooted merit in the ordo salvationis (no wonder why he insists more and more on predestination) many other Fathers tended to paint the notion of the fall with less sombre tone than the mature Augustine. They gave some room to the human free will in response to God’s call to faith and justification96. Hilary teaches that the meritorious act comes before the reward of the merit. One does what pleases and then ask for the consideration from whom it pleases (“Opus merendi antefertur, et dehinc meriti praemium postulatur. Fit enim primum quod placeat; et tum dignatio eius cui per opus placetur oratur”)97. According to the bishop of Poitiers, the beginning of salvation coincides with prayer asking for mercy and salvation. Man’s salvation has its origins in God’s

92 93

94 95 96

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volentis, neque currentis, sed ad Dei gratiam pertinentis (Rom. 9:16). Nam et a Christo salvatore nostro, perfecta sanctitas, non est data, sed promissa”. To Donatus 5, FC 36, 10 – 11 (translation DeFerrari, 1977b, 10 – 11) The Dress of Virgins 11, FC 36, 40: “You say that you are wealthy and rich and you think that you must use the things that God has wished you to possess. Use them but for your salvation and for good works; use them for what God has ordained, for what the Lord has pointed out. Let the poor feel that you are rich; let the needy feel you are wealthy ; through your patrimony make God your debtor ; feed Christ” (translation, Keenan, 1977, 40). The Lapsed 35. The Lapsed 36, FC 36, 88. McGrath, 1986, 17 sqq. In De exhortationis castitatis 2, 2 Tertulian is clear in teaching that one should not ascribe the whole responsibility to God; there is room in faith for man’s will which chooses freely (2, 3) – with which Augustine would agree, but would evoke Prov. 8:5 (LXX) to claim that the human will is prepared by the Lord, otherwise it is not in condition to respond positively. That God’s help is brought to he who “starts” is also referred to by Cyprian To Donatus 5 – with which Augustine would fully disagree. Psalmsus CXVIII, XVI letter 2, SC 347, 176, l. 3.

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mercy and this gift of His bounty is in us; so the beginning of the prayer for mercy and salvation also sets the beginning of the salvation of the supplicant (“Salus enim nostra ex misericordia Dei est, et bonitatis suae hoc munus in nobis est; et inde coepit oratio, unde et salus inchoat deprecantis”)98. Though Hilary’s explanation insisted on the sense of coincidence of two events, namely prayer and the beginning of the salvation process, it is clear that he maintained that what ultimately triggers the salvation process is the sinner’s initiative in turning to God, seeking His mercy and salvation through prayer. This claim may seem to concur with Augustine’s soteriological insights, but the “munus in nobis” he would say, was weakened by Adam’s sin in which we are all involved. After all, the acknowledgement of need for prayer is already grace, so grace precedes the prayer, as Augustine would stress. Besides, though Hilary points out that our salvation depends on God’s mercy (“Opus salutis nostrae non in sacrificio, sed in misericordia est et lege cessante, in Dei bonitate saluamur”)99, his soteriological discourse largely differs from that of Augustine who placed the very initium fidei within the scope of the grace and mercy of God alone. Hilary ascribes to the human initiative the searching for God’s gift. It is with this conviction that he explains the Psalmsist’s words “That I may search always for it” (Et exquiram eam semper). The Psalmsist laid a special stress on his own duty of piety. After he joins and connects the two propositions by a sort of relationship between them, he asks to be “led” and he also wished for it. He had, indeed, mentioned in first instance, the place of honour, what comes from God, and after that added, by confessing his humility and his duty, what depends on man. Consequently he asked that God would bestow His gifts upon him. Thus, the fact that we pray reveals that the initiative to turn to God and seek His gracious mercy belongs to us. Ultimately, God’s gifts (e. g. grace and mercy) are triggered by human desire to turn to God. So God’s gift depends on our initiative, but it depends also on us that it may be searched for, that it is received and maintained100. Hilary’s position, like many of other Augustine’s predecessors, supported the line of reasoning according to which it is ours to search and God’s to give. It is ours to start and God’s to accomplish (“ex nobis autem initium est, ut ille perficiat”)101. 98 Psalmsus CXVIII, VI letter 2, SC 344, 226, l. 4. 99 In Mathaeum XII, 5, SC 254, 272. 100 Psalmsus CXVIII, V letter 12, SC 344, 214, l. 13: “Cum autem subiecit: Et exquiram eam semper, officium deuotionis suae protulit. Et in ceteris quoque utrumque quodam complexu sibi inuicem conligauit, cum deduci se in semitam postulat et cum id ipsum uoluit. Prius enim, quae a Deo sunt cum honore praeposuit; et tunc, quae hominis sunt, cum humilitatis atque officii sui confessione subiecit. Orat igitur ut Deus tribuat. A nobis est ergo, cum oramus, exordium, ut munus ab eo sit; dehinc, quia de exordio nostro munus eius est, ex nostro rursum est ut exquiratur et obtineatur et maneat”. 101 Tractatus super Psalmsos littera XVI, 10, PL 9, col. 610: Nam in eo ipso quod dixit, Fac;

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Some scholars, as is the case of Peter BURNELL, tend to argue that the radical dependency of grace from the human side as maintained in Augustine’s doctrine of salvation is, somehow traditional, i. e. in line with the teaching of the Fathers who preceded Augustine102. It is true that the pre-Augustinian Church Fathers ascribed a preponderant role to grace in the salvation process, but, in my opinion it still falls short of the radical view of grace as presented in Augustine’s doctrine of initium fidei. For Augustine, our initiative to turn to God is triggered by God merciful and gracious call. This is a new insight in the patristic soteriology. By 397 the theological insights rising in Augustine’s understanding of salvation leave no room for doubt: with his doctrine of initium fidei Augustine broke with the main line patristic understanding of salvation. He innovated essentially in the following manner : for the Fathers it is human’s to start and God’s to accomplish. For Augustine both start and accomplishing belongs to God and to God alone. God gives the commandments and their accomplishment. Thus, Pelagius was entirely right when he identified Augustine’s statement in conf. X, 29 Da quod iubes, et iube quod vis (Give what you command, and command what you will) as a break with the standard patristic approach to human salvation. It is this break, emphatically expressed by the aforementioned statement of conf. (397 – 400), that triggered the Pelagian controversies. It is now known that, adjecit cum seruo tuo. Et quia servitus nostra ad id ipsum, ut in servitus fide maneat, misericordia Domini indiget; superaddidit, secundum misericordiam tuam: quia miseratione eius opus est, ut in hac servitus nostrae professione maneamus. Imbecilla enim est per se ad aliquid obtinendum humana infirmitas: et hoc tantum naturae suae officium est, ut aggregare se in familiam Dei et velit coeperit. Divinae misericordiae est, ut volentes adjuvet, incipiens confirmet, adeuntes recipiat: ex nobis autem initium est, ut ille perficiat. 102 See Burnell, 1995. It is true that Augustine does not deny the importance of good works in the life of a justified Christian. After being justified, the life of a Christian is radically different, his/her behaviour changes, so he/she performs good works. These works, however, are not the detail that will decide human salvation. What does this is divine grace in which faith itself is included. Good works, Augustine stresses (in line with the tradition of the Fathers), come about in the life of justified Christians. Not even Luther, in all his crusade against human merit in justification, denies this. It is, as Eno 1984 proves, consensual in the mainline patristic tradition that after being justified, Christians engage themselves in performing good works. In this Augustine is not new at all. What makes Augustine the representative of a crucial break in the tradition is his constant emphasis on divine grace as the great motor of the justification process from beginning to end. Of course one finds statements in the other Fathers pointing to grace as the start of justification, but none of them emphasised the issue as did Augustine. Augustine came down in history as the “Doctor of Grace” not only because his theology gravitated around the concept of grace, but because his understanding of grace was revolutionary. Any good in humans, including the abandonment of the self in order to adhere to God, i. e. faith, is grace. The very first step to salvation is grace. Faith, without which salvation cannot happen, is grace. So justification in Augustine is exactly as it is in Luther : it is by faith, but though grace. When it comes to justification in these two theologians, the great difference lies on conceptual emphasis only. Luther puts the accent on faith, Augustine on grace. But for Augustine faith is one of the expressions of grace.

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though the official start of the controversy is commonly admitted to be around 411, the first signs of Pelagius’ distaste and consequent opposition to Augustine’s doctrine of grace was already evident by the year 405, by the time the British heresiarch’s work De natura started circulating103. It is the very break with the teaching of the earlier Fathers by claiming that the entire salvation process depends on God and on God alone that led Augustine to turn increasingly to a profoundly Augustinian topic – the doctrine of predestination and to make assertions such as one found in the epistle 194 according to which when God crowns human merit He does nothing more than crown His own gifts. It was a clear denial of any sort of human-rooted merit in the salvation process that inflamed some reactions against Augustine’s insights on salvation. If in some cases it is largely documented, as in the case with the Massilian and Adrumetum’s monastic communities, where the monks openly accused Augustine of heterodoxy on account of his view on grace, it is because the issue was not taken lightly even ad intra (if one decides to consider Pelagianism as a movement outside the Church). This fact becomes even clearer if one takes into account Augustine’s large authority within the Church of his time104. It is this same break that, ultimately made Augustine a figure of contention throughout Middle Ages and the Reformation period. It is the same break that made the anti-Pelagian Augustine Luther’s favourite theologian and made the Reformer look to the Church Father’s De Spiritu et littera and other anti-Pelagian writings as source of inspiration, guidance and authority in his claim for a new understanding of the salvation process. This new understanding, I consider 103 On the origins of the frictions between Augustine and the “Pelagian” circle before the beginning of the controversy in 411, see Martinetto, 1971; TeSelle, 1972 and Pincherle, 1974. 104 I believe D. Ogliari’s explanation on the issue to be relevant here. “Within this framework, he writes, we can understand the unease felt by those brethren of Hadrumetum who were inclined to think of themselves as specialists in asceticism, when faced with Augustine’s views on grace. They felt threatened in their monastic Weltanschauung by the ideas on divine predestination and absolute gratuity of grace that Augustine had expounded in his Ep. 194, and summarized so well when he said: Cum Deus coronat merita nostra, nihil aliud coronet quam munera sua. These words, the authors goes on to say, sounded like a serious challenge to their monastic undertaking, the achievement of which rested on the central role played by human agency. It was their conviction that the pattern of their daily living, together with the spiritual scope offered by monastic life, would form a tension resulting in evangelical perfection./ Other monks, beside those at Hadrumetum, must have had the same difficulty in harmonizing the idea of free will and the divine grace; at least in as far as grace was regarded as an overwhelming cause in the annihilation of human effort. If everything was ultimately the work of grace, what would be then the point of leading an ascetic life? If in crowning human merit God merely crowns his divine gifts, what was then the purpose of fasting, nightwatches, obedience and all the other practices that make up an integral and essential part of monastic life? These were the kind of questions the monks were asking themselves, driven by a real concern about the meaningfulness of their way of life”. Ogliari, 2003, 56.

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it to be, in great extent, the recovery of Augustine’s radicalism of grace, grace through which God comes in rescue of the fallen mankind.

2.4

Conclusions

I think it is accurate to say that in Ad Simplicianum a new or, at least, a transformed concept of the Christian condition is emerged in Augustine’s theology and, with it, a soteriological framework for which, more than 10 years later Augustine would stand and fight against the Pelagians. At the core of this adjustment lies what Augustine considers a more careful analysis regarding the real theological range of both divine grace and human free will in the process of salvation. If earlier, Augustine admitted human free will would be the start of human salvation, since free will is responsible for the decision of believing and calling for God’s mercy and assistance, now he is more careful and recognized greater limitations to this same free will (enslaved by sin, thus unassisted by grace, cannot do anything but sin), and ascribed the initium fidei to God’s grace and to God’s grace alone. From Simpl. onwards, Augustine reveals himself more careful than ever concerning the range of human free will. What is particularly important in the Church Father’s reluctance regarding the abilities of human free will and its role and relationship with human salvation is the fact that the act of belief/the first step towards God/ the beginning of faith (initium fidei) is now regarded as a fruit of God’s gracious mercy. Though a free act, the act of believing in God is a gift of His mercy, not a meritorious movement of the freedom of will. All this has to do with the fact that, by the time Augustine produced his answer to Simplicianus, he regarded human free will as an unquestionable reality in se, but under serious limitations. Hence he laid a special stress on the Fall of mankind in Adam, using strong terms such as “massa peccati” or “massa peccatorum” to describe the very state of fallen humankind105, and openly admits that human free will is bonded by sin (“liberum uoluntatis arbitrium plurimum ualet, immo uero est quidem, sed in uenundatis sub peccato quid ualet?”)106. Accordingly in approaching Augustine’s theological development, one sees that Simpl. was a landmark, with particular importance in the following aspects: First, there is central issue of Augustinian conception of man emerges and gains its definitive shape: Original Sin and its effects with particular importance ascribed to concupiscentia, the illness/weakness/proneness to sin we all inherit from Adam. Augustine is, perhaps for the first time, establishing a clear dis105 Simpl. I, II, 19 – 20 106 Simpl. I, II, 21, CCSL 44, 53, l. 740.

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tinction between Original Sin and actual sins that one commits in daily life (“unde nisi ex traduce mortalitatis et adsiduitate uoluptatis? illud est ex poena originalis peccati, hoc ex poena frequentati peccati; cum illo in hanc uitam nascimur, hoc uiuendo addimus”)107. To the free will Augustine now associated stronger limitations on account of the damages the Adamic sin caused the human nature; the fall of man as a theological issue started to determine his approach in other crucial issues108 and, thus gain greater importance in Augustinian theological production (and the discourse, in my opinion, does not actually radicalise as the years go through, it only gains further emphasis and more detailed explanations). Thus it is fair to say that Augustine started to approach human free will as more than a simple matter of choice. The enthusiast neophyte and philosopher’s approach to the free will was progressively giving room to that of a “pessimistic” theologian. This does not mean he stopped being a philosopher. Created as imago Dei, man allowed sin to weaken this image. It can be progressively restored with our “return” from the dominion of sin to God109. Such a process will not be complete in this earthly life. All this leads to the conclusion that a new concept of man is emerging in Augustine’s theology. That image of the Christian Paul depicts in Rom. 7: 14 – 25 struggling against a contrary law which dwells in his flesh sounds more and more suitable to Augustine for his own portrayal of the Christian condition. The very passage to which Augustine earlier applied to carnal man, Augustine now progressively associate with Christian combat (pugna/certamen). Finally, Augustine found his case in Paul’s speaking of the spiritual man. Augustine insisted to the end that, on account of the Adamic sin, in which we are all bound, our condition of Christian could not be better depicted than in the way it is in the dramatic words of Paul in Rom. 7:14 – 25. Secondly : in harmony with this new concept of the Christian condition was Augustine’s reflections on Rom. 9: 10 – 29 regarding election and justification. Augustine then understood humanity’s election as based on God’s eternal decree of predestination. Earlier, as Alister McGRATH has pointed out, Augustine had held that humanity’s temporal election by God is prior to God’s eternal election 107 Simpl. I, I, 10, CCSL 44, 15, 173. The question whether Augustine’s doctrine of Original Sin gained its maturity before the Pelagian controversy leads Augustine’s scholars against one another. I join my voice to those who argue that the doctrine of Original Sin as Augustine presents it in the beginning of the Pelagian controversy was clearly present by the time he answered Simplicianus and wrote his Confessions. In his article “P¦ch¦ originel. Naissance d’un dogme” A. Sage argues that it was only around 412 – 413 that Augustine provides his definitive formulation of Original Sin (see Sage, 1967, 213), but most Augustinian scholars maintain that Augustine’s doctrine of Original Sin knew its main feature long before the Pelagian controversies. 108 Simpl. I, II, 20 – 21 109 Fay, 1974, 187.

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of humanity110. God’s eternal decree of predestination as depicted by Augustine in Simpl. is what ultimately defines the soteriological framework with which he will later oppose the Pelagians; a soteriological framework essentially shaped by a radicalism of grace where the entire salvation process depends on nothing else but God’s gracious mercy. Hence the key role of divine election was clearly expressed in several verses of Simpl. such as the ones in I, II, 6 (“non tamen electio praecedit iustificationem sed electionem iustificatio”) or another in I, II, 22 (“non ut iustificatorum electio fiat ad uitam aeternam, sed ut eligantur qui iustificentur”) These two statements leave no room for doubt. According to Augustine, the justification process starts with the distinction of God’s gracious mercy which operates amongst a mass of the condemned. To understand the key importance of this sense of distinctio in the justification process it suffices to see how Augustine approached Jacob and Esau’s different fate: it was not because of their works that God loved Jacob and hated Esau, what was determinant was the divine call. Putting it in other way, there is a choice, but God’s purpose does not abide on account of a choice: the choice results from the purpose. It is not the discovery of good deeds in human beings that leads God to choose them and, in doing so, makes them, righteous, but because he chooses them they are made righteous by grace so that God finds in them good works that he may now choose them for the kingdom of heaven. The “making righteous” precedes making a choice and not the other way around, since no one is chosen because he/she is entirely different from the rejected111. The key importance of distinctio here is hardly surprising. Augustine does, after all, teach Original Sin. Because of Original Sin we all became part of the same lump of condemnation. God’s gracious mercy is now the only thing that distinguishes the elect from the condemned. Thus Augustine’s doctrine of Original Sin is indissociable from his doctrine of election and predestination. The doctrine of predestination emerged from Simpl. guided Augustine for the rest of his literary career. Thus, the same scheme is found in his later works such as epistle 194 to Sixtus; De gratia et libero arbitrio; De correptione et gratia; De praedestinatione sanctorum; De dono perseverantia, etc. is quite peremptory. Generally condemned in Adam, mankind is not in a position either to save itself or to claim a right to salvation. This is not to be achieved, but rather to be hoped for since it depends not on any sort of meritorious moral engagement on the part of the human being, it comes from a gratuitous-acting and merciful God. Another aspect worth pointing out is that, as it has been said, Augustine no longer attributed the initium fidei to human free will, but to God’s grace. The 110 McGrath, 2005, 40 111 Simpl. I, II, 6 and I, II, 22.

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unaided free will is unable to provide the response of faith to God’s offer of grace. This response is now seen in itself as God’s gift. The unaided human free will is under a sort of dictatorship of sin and, though able to do many things (for instance, to sin) and it is to be recalled that for Augustine even apparently good deeds are sinful in case they do not serve the right purpose i. e. the glorification of God. Free will cannot lead to justification unless it is first liberated by grace. This is the notion of justification emerging in Simpl. and it becomes the core of Augustine’s anti-Pelagian doctrine of justification. God, operating through grace over human will, makes the ungodly righteous without any previous merits of his/her own. More: the idea of God’s decree of predestination, behind these assertions, allowed Augustine to define the theological basis of divine call (uocatio) to salvation. Those who are called secundum propositum (Rom. 8:28) will unequivocally reach salvation since salvation depends neither on humans’ moral engagement nor on God’s foreknowledge of human good deeds, but rather on the divine and eternal decree. Predestination is for some, not for all. The predestined will be saved because predestination implies not only the call to grace, but also the call to glory present in the gift of perseverance. It is in light of this scheme that Augustine’s distinction between gratia operativa and cooperativa is to be understood. The first makes sure that the elect answer positively to the call to faith; the second, being ultimately the grace of perseverance, makes sure that the elect persevere to the end in the faith to which they were called and, thus, reach salvation. Thirdly : the framework of the Augustinian doctrine of justification is now defined. If Augustine ever taught justification before, his teaching is now substantially altered. It is the same radicalism of grace shaping the Augustinian doctrine of salvation in Simpl. that points the north to the Church Father in his anti-Pelagian struggle112. He never came to provide a systematic approach to the 112 Here I cannot help evoking Gerald Bonner in my support, since he writes that Ad Simplicianum was produced in a context in which “God’s absolute power took possession of Augustine’s mind, and what he was to write subsequently in the later stage of the Pelagian Controversy represented a restatement, with increased emphasis and harshness [my stress], of the conclusions to which he had come in 396” (see Bonner, 1993, 36). Besides, time and again Augustine presents the treatise as a landmark in his theological career. Confessiones, which Augustine started to write about this time (397) was also a key element which cannot be neglected. It is perhaps the most impressive proof that Augustine was deeply aware of the transformations occurring in his theological thought by the time he wrote to Simplicianus. What can explain Augustine’s change of opinion? How could he drop all that colourful future he had traced for his spiritual life, that future which Peter Brown, in a strike of brilliancy, calls the “Lost future”? Much could be said about the issue. However, here it suffices to say that this changing of opinion was the result of years of meditations over the Scriptures, a process which may have been determined by the wave of studies of the Pauline corpus. Simplicianus’ questions came in this same wave and may have “rushed” Augustine’s “breakthrough”. It is certainly a deeper engagement with the Pauline soteriological dis-

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doctrine of justification, but the main line of the doctrine he defined in Simpl. i. e. the total gratuity of justification, he firmly maintained through the years. It was here, then, that the Augustinian ordo or processus justificationis emerged in its definitive shape. The framework defined then is the one he would make use of in the next decades of his career. The Church Father is now ready to admit that ascribing all to God’s grace in the process of human justification and salvation does not annihilate free will, and I consider it safe to admit this may have been one of his major problems in the preceding years. Moreover, coming into deeper acquaintance with Pauline soteriology he progressively came to realise that admitting the human initiative in the ascent to God, on the one hand, means the admission of human merits in justification. On the other hand, this would contradict the Pauline concept of grace, according to which grace is present from the very beginning and it comes from the One who calls and he who runs has no merit since he would not run if not called (Rom. 9:16)113. The best way to make this plain, according to Augustine, is to go further, to enlarge the scope of the divine grace. He did it even at the cost of a break with the tradition of the Fathers he so often claims to defend. What better way to attribute the entire salvation process to God’s gracious mercy than to admit that this is in operation from the moment one is predestined, and elected, when one take the first step towards God by believing in Him? The call to faith is itself God’s gift and excludes any sort of human-rooted merit in the perseverance in this faith (which implies performing good deeds) till final salvation. It is precisely what Augustine’s theology emerging in Ad Simplicianum did and this was the soteriological framework against which Pelagians would fight. It was then that anti-Pelagian Augustine and Luther’s favourite theologian started rising. Augustine’s theology, emerging from the soteriological framework put forward in Simpl. was already a disapproval avant la lettre of what he understood to be a Pelagian claim, Dei faciendo uoluntatem diuinam mereamur gratiam. Luther obviously, as it will become clear, felt himself close to Augustine’s opposition to Pelagians mainly when opposing what he considered the trademark of the Nominalist soteriology – Facientibus quod in se est, Deus non denegat gratiam – in particular and, to the unacceptable association between course (a discourse suitable for a once-damned and still depraved human being) along with Augustine’s reflection over his own spiritual life. It may be said with emphasis on the wonders that occurred in his life, especially his conversion, for which he considered to have done nothing to merit that explains this turning point in his theology, with special emphasis on Original Sin, grace, justification and predestination. 113 Simpl. I, II, 21: “quid ergo aliud ostenditur nobis, nisi quia et petere et quaerere et pulsare ille concedit qui haec ut faciamus iubet. {…}quando quidem nec uelle nec currere nisi eo mouente atque excitante poterimus ”, CCSL 44, 54, l. 763.

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Christian and Aristotelian notions of justice, which he labelled as trademark of the Scholastic theology in general. Later, Augustine will insist that this alleged Pelagian claim can only be made by him who misunderstands the very concept of grace114. It is with the most firm certainty that the whole process of salvation is grace, fruit of God’s limitless mercy, that Augustine developed the theology with which he opposed the Pelagians: a theological paradigm in which salvation is certainly God searching for humankind, rather than the other way around. This was the detail fuelling Augustine’s unconditional radicalism in his approach to an eventual human merit in the salvation process. Accordingly, he vehemently insisted that we have nothing for which to boast, on account of our act of believing, since the very beginning of faith is God’s gift which is given to some and not to others (“Fides igitur, et inchoata, et perfecta, donum Dei est: et hoc donum quibusdam dari, quibusdam non dari omnino non dubitet, qui non vult manifestissimis sacris Littteris repugnare”)115. As for the reason why that is so, Augustine appealed to Rom. 9:20 to claim it lies in the realm of mystery. So no one knows116. Is faith not an act of will? The bishop of Hippo saw no problem in this fact for his teaching since he held the sovereign dominion of God over the will itself. God’s grace operates over the will, so God prepares the will; grace does not coerce human will, but changes it from evil to good. It not only changes it, but also leads and directs it towards good deeds and eternal life. God has under His power the will which remains his creation, which He makes to incline when He wants and to the side He wants, for the advantage of some and punishment of the other. Then He judges them under a mysterious way but certainly just117 (that’s why sins are sometimes punishments for others sins)118. 114 gr. et pecc. or. I, XXIII, BA 22, 100 – 102: “Quomodo est ergo gratia, si non gratis datur? Quomodo est gratia, si ex debito redditur? Quomodo uerum dicit apostolus: Non ex nobis sed Dei donum est; non ex operibus, ne forte quis extollatur, et iterum: si autem gratia, inquit, iam non ex operibus, alioquin gratia iam non est gratia? Quomodo inquam, hoc uerum est, si opera tanta praecedunt, quae nobis adipiscendae gratiae meritum faciant, quo nobis non donetur gratuito sed reddatur ex debito? Ergone, ut perueniatur ad adiutorium Dei, ad Deum curritur sine audiutorio Dei? Et ut Deo adhaerentes adiuuemur a Deo, a Deo non adiuti adhaeremus Deo?” 115 praed. sanct. I, VIII, 16, PL 44, col. 972 116 Ibidem 117 gr. et lib. arb., I, XX, 41, PL 44, col. 906: “[…]quae Scriptura divina si diligenter inspiciatur, ostendit non solum bonas hominum voluntates quas ipse facit ex malis, et a se factas bonas in actus bonos et in aeternam dirigit vitam, verum etiam illas quae conservant saeculi creaturam, ita esse in Dei potestate, ut eas quo voluerit, quando voluerit, faciat inclinari, vel ad beneficia quibusdam praestanda, vel ad poenas quibusdam ingerendas, sicut ipse judicat, ocultissimo quidem judicio, sed sine ulla dubitatione justissimo”. 118 Such is the case in this vase of wrath the Apostle says was made for perdition. The example Augustine pointed out is the case of Pharaoh’s hardening of the heart (Rom. 9:22) which God does to show his power. Another case revealing that God mastering human wills is what

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All this had a purpose in Augustine’s conception of salvation. His fear was that to admit we believe by ourselves is to admit that, ultimately, salvation depends on us and it is not totally operated by God. So in De praedestinationum sanctorum he reminded those who contest his positions according to which faith is itself God’s gift, that Pelagius himself denied that salvation is due to our merits119. To deny any sort of human-rooted merit Augustine argued that if man searches for grace it is sign that his steps are going towards God and he wants to walk in His path. He ascribed the highest theological scope to the the notion of grace by claiming that the desire for God’s assistance is the very beginning of grace (“desiderare auxilium gratiae, initium gratiae est”)120. So if faith is grace and grace is by its own nature freely given, the act of believing does not imply any sort of human merit. It is hardly necessary to say that it was the radical approach regarding divine grace and its decisive role in human salvation against human merit that led Augustine out of the path of the tradition of the Fathers. Pelagius and some of those Augustine considered to be the heresiarch’s followers had deserted the same path on account of their focus on the range of human free will in the process of salvation. For this reason, the Pelagian controversy was a true collision of revolutionaries. If the tradition of the preceding Fathers is taken as reference for orthodoxy, both Pelagians and the mature Augustine’s accounts of salvation process are unorthodox. Augustine’s victory over the Pelagians, I have no doubt, finds its basis in a disconcerting process of deconstruction, a de-constructive process shaped with a double negation: the negation of Augustine’s own early theological insights (a fact that Augustine often openly admitted), and the negation of the very traditional teachings of the Church by Augustine (the fact that the Church Father denied till the end of his life)121. is reported in Joshua 7, 4 – 5 and 10 – 12. The enemies of Israel did not attack Israel, because God operated over their own will in order to prevent it. That is said because God is the master of human wills and he does with them what he pleases (“Quare non subsistebant per liberum arbitrium, sed per timorem turbata voluntate fugiebant; nisi quia Deus dominatur et voluntatibus hominum, et quos vult in formidinem convertit iratus? Numquid non hostes Israelitarum adversus populum Dei, quem ducebat Jesus Nave, sua voluntate pugnarunt? Et tamem dicit Scriptura, quia per Dominum factum est confortari cor eorum ut obviam irent ad bellum ad Israel, ut exterminarentur”. gr. et lib. arb., I, XX, 41, PL 44, col. 906. 119 praed. sanct. I, II, 3, PL 44, cols. 961 – 962: “Sed nunc eis respondendum esse video, qui divina testimonia, quae de hac re adhibuimus, ad hoc dicunt valere, ut noverimus ex nobis quidem nos habere ipsam fidem, sed incrimentum ejus ex Deo: tamquam fides non ab ipso donetur nobis, sed ad ipso tantum augeatur in nobis, eo merito, quo coepit a nobis. Non ergo receditur ab ea sententia, quam Pelagius ipse in episcopali judicio Palestino sicut eadem Gesta testantur damnare compulsus est: “Gratiam Dei secundum merita nostra dari”. 120 corrept., I, I, 2. 121 Cf. Brown, 1977, 183 – 207.

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3. Original Sin and Augustine’s doctrine of salvation in the confrontation with Julian of Aeclanum (418 – 430)

3.1

Confronting Julian: Preliminary remarks

The rising of the theological frictions known as Pelagian controversies followed a pattern similar to all main controversies which involved heretical movements in the early Church. At the beginning, a leader emerged with an important doctrine, concept or idea moulded by a certain theological and exegetical orientation regarded as conflicting with the traditional standard of Church teachings. The norm was that the movement itself was named after the heresiarch who continuously provided its historical basis and underlying inspiration. For instance, in Arius the focus was on the oneness of God; for Nestorius on the person of Jesus, and for Pelagius, on grace and nature. Then, after this initial impulse, as a movement grew solid and spread, in the footsteps of the leader, there followed a systematician who zealously provided a precise intellectual formulation of the heretical teaching. Eunomius and Eutyches, for instance, played the very same role in the rising of Arianism and Nestorianism respectively that Julian of Aeclanum would later play in the case of Pelagianism. The systematic thinker or teacher normally confronts a colossal nemesis and champion of orthodoxy, who, in case of the Pelagian controversies, was Augustine of Hippo. It is true that the Pelagian movement was per se troubling with the appearance of Pelagius and Caelestius, but the situation was further inflamed by the arrival of Julian of Aeclanum1. Julian was one of the most prominent of the fifth-century 1 As most of the figures associated with Pelagianism in fifth century, not more than a few details of Julian’s life are clear. Known as Iulianus Aeclanensis (since he came to occupy the episcopal chair of Aeclanum), by the time he entered the stage of the Pelagian crisis, Julian was a young bishop (young enough to be Augustine’s son). Julian was probably born around 380, in Apulia and was son of Memor, a bishop with whom Augustine himself maintained literary relationship. Of utmost importance is to note that Julian received a very refined education, and his controversy with Augustine suggests a wide knowledge not only of the Bible but also of the classical authors. Under the papacy of Innocent I, Julian became bishop of Aeclanum. The Pelagian crisis ran the final years of its first stage. Julian hardly assumed any position which could be connected with Pelagianism. Even in controversy with Augustine, he seldom refers to

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theologians; he was associated with the Pelagian movement and climbed the stage of history by entering into a depressive controversy with the colossal figure of Augustine of Hippo. It is now important to explain the context in which he entered this controversy. On April 30th of the year 418, Pelagius and Caelestius were condemned and exiled by the Imperial court in Ravenna. The Council of Carthage issued a few canons attacking the Pelagian doctrine of grace, without mentioning either Pelagius or Caelestius by name. In early summer, Pope Zozimus confirmed the emperor’s action in his Epistula Tractoria. With such a strong wave of adversity, Pelagius and Caelestius had no other option but to quit the scene. Thus, in 418, Augustine had, once again (as against the Donatists, in 411) emerged as the champion of orthodoxy. The African bishop himself pronounced the disputation with Pelagians a closed case (Causa finita est) in Sermon 131. However, the course of things proved he was deeply mistaken. A ferocious confrontation was ahead of him, a confrontation which only his own death would close. At the head of eighteen other bishops, Julian of Aeclanum refused to sign the Epistula Tractoria issued by Zozimus to condemn Pelagius and Caelestius. It was the beginning of the second period of the Pelagian controversy. Julian started his campaign against Augustine, attacking the Church Father’s doctrine of Original Sin, laying a special stress on the concept of concupiscentia carnis and its relationship to marriage, based on a central assertion – that teaching Original Sin implies condemnation of marriage and makes of it a work of the Devil. To these accusations Augustine replied with De Nuptiis et concupiscentia 1 (418/419) pointing out that the evil of concupiscentia must be distinguished from the good of marriage. nupt. et conc. 1 not only set the beginning of Augustine’s contra Iulianum campaign, but also, mutatis mutandis set the framework of the controversy in such a way that “all the succeeding works of the controversies were little more than a depending and rehashing of the questions raised in this work”2. Julian’s reaction came through Ad Turbantium3 in which he defines one of the Pelagius. However, his sympathies towards the Pelagian ideas became evident in his reaction against the gesture which is linked with the end of the first stage of the Pelagian controversies – the condemnation of Pelagianism in the figures of Pelagius and Caelestius by Pope Zozimus through Epistula Tractoria, in 418. Julian seems to be regarded as the leading figure amongst the 18/19 bishops who refused to accept the papal document claiming, in a series of letters, that the trial was not fair. This attitude made him an heretic. He was condemned by Zozimus and had to leave Italy in 419 (C. Jul. I, 3). Cf. survey “Iulianus Aeclanensis”, Lamberigts, 2008, 836. For a detailed analysis on Julian of Aeclanum’s life, see Lössl, 2001. 2 Lamberigts, 2005, 167 3 Turbantium was one of the 18/19 bishops who initially refused to accept Zozimus’ Epistula Tractoria, but some passages of c. Jul. imp. (cf., for instance, V, 4) suggest that he came to rejoin the “Catholic” party. Even clearer is Augustine’s report in letter 10*, namely showing his surprise with the fact that he was not informed about the “correction” of Turbantius to whom

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main arguments of his whole disputation with Augustine: the doctrine of Original Sin is the result of the remnant of Augustine’s Manichean education and it is an outrageous attack against God’s goodness and equity. Augustine replied by adding a second book to nupt. et conc. (419/420)4, based on a deficient summary which came to his hands through Alypius (this fact explains why a substantial part of Julian’s Ad Florum, reply to nupt. et conc. 2, focuses on accusations of falsifications). Soon after nupt. et conc. 2, Augustine was confronted with two letters from the Pelagian party : one from Julian to Pope Boniface and another from Julian together with eighteen dissident bishops, addressed to Rufus, bishop of Thessalonica. In both letters Augustine’s doctrine of Original Sin and doctrine of salvation are vehemently criticized. In reaction, Augustine wrote Contra duas epistulas Pelagianorum which he addressed to Pope Boniface. By the year 421/ 422 Augustine was producing a detailed reaction against Ad Turbantium of which he had received the complete version. This reaction came in six books under the title Contra Julianum Haeresis Pelagianae Defensorem. Shortly hereafter Julian received the second book of nupt. et conc. The reply came through the eight books of Ad Florum (concluded before 426/427), of which, as it has been mentioned, six books fully survived in Augustine’s last work – Contra Julianum Opus Imperfectus, written in response to Ad Florum5. Rare are the cases of theologians associated with heretical movements for whom historical and theological researches have done justice. Julian is certainly not one of them. Because he faced the colossal figure of Augustine, Julian could hardly be treated with impartiality by many scholars. He has been unfairly and inaccurately called “more Pelagian than Pelagius (“pelanischer” waren als Pelagius)6. According to LÖSSL, Julian’s exegesis has even been labelled as deeply “rationalist” and, ultimately, “atheist”7. The most recent research on Pelagianism, however, provides new insights on its nature, providing students with a more accurate understanding of the movement, and preventing the constant and present danger of interpreting it in light of its appreciation by the nemesis of Pelagianism such as an Augustine or a Jerome. J. LÖSSL convincingly opposes those who endeavour to argue that the Italian bishop’s theology was rationalist and atheist. He argues that, when it comes to

4 5 6 7

Julian had written a treatise in four books: “[…] et quod multum mirarer, quod mihi nihil nuntiasse curaueris de correctione Turbanti, ad quem scripsit libros illos quattuor Iulianus” ep. 10*, BA 46B, 166. The date of this work may be a matter of disputation. 420/421 is also given by some as the probable date. I find 419/420 a more plausible one. For a good overview of Augustine’s literary production in late 419, see BERROUARD, 1983, 301 – 327. cf. Bonner, 1999a, b and c. Pesch, 1981, 30. Lössl, 2003, 79.

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Biblical hermeneutics, Julian “keeps well within the boundaries of early Christian exegesis, and to a large extent even within the boundaries defined by Augustine, even when exclusively judged by his polemical works”. The author argues that When we look at his Julian’s exegetical practice his exegesis is, just as Augustine’s, not driven by some “rationalist atheism”, but by very particular theological influences and concerns, pertaining to Christian tradition and spirituality. Consequently, the main difference between the two lies less in their Biblical hermeneutics than in certain fundamental understandings of the Christian creed, which drive their hermeneutics”8.

The accuracy of LÖSSL’s argument can be clearly proved, for instance, by paying attention to the way in which the very same concept, that of God’s justice and equity, plays a crucial role in Augustine’s arguments for Original Sin, and in Julian’s opposition to the same doctrine. The issue, in fact, deserves attention, though here the approach cannot but be telegraphic. There is no substantial difference between the exegetical modus operandi adopted by Julian to deny Original Sin and that adopted by Augustine to assert it. If one considers Julian’s arguments “rationalist” there is no way to accurately deny such an adjective to those of Augustine. The differences lay more in the understanding and application of certain attributes to God in the way He deals with humans. Both Julian and Augustine profess their faith in the Good Creator who creates only good things and is unquestionably just. The great point of friction between them in this particular issue, as it has been convincingly explained by A. McGRATH, is how the adjective “just”, attributed to God, interferes with or determines God’s dealings with humans. To agree on the basic premise that God is just is one thing; a very different one is to agree on how this very same justice is defined. Julian applies the Ciceronian concept of justice (iustitia as reddens unicuique quod suum est) and, thus, argues that, being iustissimus, God created human 8 Ibidem, pp. 79 – 80. Accordingly, Lössl points out that there can be no doubt that Julian’s exegesis is, in fact, rationalist, but to consider it “ultimately godless” is a different story. Is Augustine’s exegesis not rationalist as well? The author believes it is. Accordingly, the real line of distinction between the two lies not in the nature of their exegesis, “not between a spiritual and tendentiously atheist, rationalist, world view”, but rather “between different views on certain aspects of Biblical hermeneutics within a wider framework, common to both, namely that of the Early Christian exegetical tradition. The differences arise partly from specific exegetical influences (e. g. Antiochene exegesis upon Julian), but far more so from certain doctrinal convictions and interpretations of the Creed (e. g. concerning the nature of God and creation). Thus it is above all Julian’s own theology that shapes his Biblical hermeneutics in its individual character. Though it is not without a context or tradition, its tradition is different from Augustine’s, and it is Augustine’s that is to carry the day. It is mainly this set of circumstances, individual and collective, which explains why Julian’s exegesis lay itself open to the charge of Pelagianism, and why on the other hand, it could also be accepted and defended as orthodox (in the east, but also in large parts of the west)”. p. 84

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beings sine reatu, with an innocent nature; so it is absurd to teach an “inherited” sin. It would be unjust for God to create guilty human beings. God judges in equity. His justice, then, knows no fraud and it does not favour anybody. It limits itself to give to each one what is due (“iustitiam nihil esse aliud quam uirtutem numquam quicquam inique iudicantem, nihil inique facientem, sed reddentem sua unicuique sine fraude sine gratia, id est sine personarum acceptione”)9. To create guilty human beings would correspond to bringing upon them an undeserved punishment. “This definition of divine justice”, McGRATH observes, “amounts to a direct transfer of the human concept of justice from its proper context to that of a divine dispensation towards mankind, without any modification”10, and concludes that “as a result of this understanding of the divine justice, Julian is totally unable to accept two key aspects of Augustine’s soteriology – the concepts of Original Sin and the justification of the ungodly”11. The fact is that the biblical account on the issue of divine justice is ambiguous. Both Augustine and Julian provided good arguments based on Scriptures. Though Julian approached iustitia in light of Roman civil Law, he also had scriptural passages in mind. The elucidative chapter 18 of the book of Prophet Ezekiel, where it is clearly stated that no son pays for or dies on account of his father’s sins, is certainly one regarded by Julian as a strong scriptural evidence supporting his claims12. Of 9 Ad Florum III, 2, CSEL 85/1. 352, l. 4. For a discussion on the concepts of acceptio and acceptatio integrated in the debate on predestination, see Smalbrugge, 1995, esp. pp. 45 – 49. 10 McGrath, 1983, 314. 11 Ibidem, 315. 12 The whole passage is extensive, but certainly worth quoting here: “Thus the word of the LORD came to me: Son of man, what is the meaning of this proverb that you recite in the land of Israel: ”Fathers have eaten green grapes, thus their children’s teeth are on edge”? As I live, says the Lord GOD: I swear that there shall no longer be anyone among you who will repeat this proverb in Israel. For all lives are mine; the life of the father is like the life of the son, both are mine; only the one who sins shall die. If a man is virtuous – if he does what is right and just, if he does not eat on the mountains, nor raise his eyes to the idols of the house of Israel; if he does not defile his neighbor’s wife, nor have relations with a woman in her menstrual period; if he oppresses no one, gives back the pledge received for a debt, commits no robbery ; if he gives food to the hungry and clothes the naked; if he does not lend at interest nor exact usury ; if he holds off from evildoing, judges fairly between a man and his opponent; if he lives by my statutes and is careful to observe my ordinances, that man is virtuous – he shall surely live, says the Lord GOD. but if he begets a son who is a thief, a murderer, or who does any of these things (though the father does none of them), a son who eats on the mountains, defiles the wife of his neighbor, oppresses the poor and needy, commits robbery, does not give back a pledge, raises his eyes to idols, does abominable things, lends at interest and exacts usury – this son certainly shall not live. Because he practiced all these abominations, he shall surely die; his death shall be his own fault. On the other hand, if a man begets a son who, seeing all the sins his father commits, yet fears and does not imitate him; a son who does not eat on the mountains, or raise his eyes to the idols of the house of Israel, or defile his neighbor’s wife; who does not oppress anyone, or exact a pledge, or commit

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course the tricky point in Augustine’s argument is that the Original Sin is not the sin of a Father, but belongs to all since it was committed by all mankind present in Adam). Augustine’s argument also found its starting point in the indisputable goodness and justice of God, the Creator. It only emphasized that this very same justice would be threatened, if, looking to humans’ undeniably miserable condition, one refuses to accept its only possible explanation – the Original Sin. In other words, Augustine suggests a different angle from which Original Sin should be related to God’s justice, the only viable one, he claims. Stressing the heavy theological tone inherent in the notion of fall, Augustine presented human miseries as an unequivocal proof of God’s justice. It must be recalled that the starting point of Augustine’s doctrine of sin is the concept of order. The natural order implies that transgressions be punished. God, the source of all order, would never punish a human being for a transgression he/she did not committed. Accordingly, all the miseria which humans face, especially infants, would be unjust unless there would be a sin involving us all. God’s equity, thus, served Augustine to teach Original Sin as it served Julian to deny it. If, for Julian, robbery ; who gives his food to the hungry and clothes the naked; who holds off from evildoing, accepts no interest or usury, but keeps my ordinances and lives by my statutes – this one shall not die for the sins of his father, but shall surely live. Only the father, since he violated rights, and robbed, and did what was not good among his people, shall in truth die for his sins. You ask: ”Why is not the son charged with the guilt of his father?” Because the son has done what is right and just, and has been careful to observe all my statutes, he shall surely live. Only the one who sins shall die. The son shall not be charged with the guilt of his father, nor shall the father be charged with the guilt of his son. The virtuous man’s virtue shall be his own, as the wicked man’s wickedness shall be his own. But if the wicked man turns away from all the sins he committed, if he keeps all my statutes and does what is right and just, he shall surely live, he shall not die. None of the crimes he committed shall be remembered against him; he shall live because of the virtue he has practiced. Do I indeed derive any pleasure from the death of the wicked? says the Lord GOD. Do I not rather rejoice when he turns from his evil way that he may live? And if the virtuous man turns from the path of virtue to do evil, the same kind of abominable things that the wicked man does, can he do this and still live? None of his virtuous deeds shall be remembered, because he has broken faith and committed sin; because of this, he shall die. You say, ”The LORD’S way is not fair!” Hear now, house of Israel: Is it my way that is unfair, or rather, are not your ways unfair? When a virtuous man turns away from virtue to commit iniquity, and dies, it is because of the iniquity he committed that he must die. But if a wicked man, turning from the wickedness he has committed, does what is right and just, he shall preserve his life; since he has turned away from all the sins which he committed, he shall surely live, he shall not die. And yet the house of Israel says, ”The LORD’S way is not fair!” Is it my way that is not fair, house of Israel, or rather, is it not that your ways are not fair? Therefore I will judge you, house of Israel, each one according to his ways, says the Lord GOD. Turn and be converted from all your crimes, that they may be no cause of guilt for you. Cast away from you all the crimes you have committed, and make for yourselves a new heart and a new spirit. Why should you die, O house of Israel? For I have no pleasure in the death of anyone who dies, says the Lord GOD. Return and live! NAB, 1329 – 1330.

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Original Sin is an outrageous doctrine which makes of a just God a nascentium persecutor13, for Augustine, because divine justice is simply undeniable, the miseries endured by infants are unquestionably just, and the only way to maintain that this is so is to admit that they are not free from Original Sin (“quia de dei aequitate non ambigitur, ideo graue iugum super paruulum iustum esse creditur et, quia hoc iustum esse creditur, ideo paruulus sine originali peccato esse non creditur”)14. There are no remarkable differences in exegetical procedures, but rather in the theological orientation taken regarding the concept of divine justice in the formulation of the arguments. This is one more topic which reveals that Augustine’s break with some of fundamental soteriological insights he had maintained during his young age (namely up to mid-390s) constituted a break which lead him astray from a theological reasoning very close to his future Pelagian opponents. If, before 396, Julian had presented Augustine with a theological argument, for instance on the justification of the sinner, according to which the Ciceronian understanding of justice is applied to interpret the modus operandi of the divine justice regarding God’s dealing with humans, Augustine’s opposition would probably not have been so strong, if he would have shown any opposition at all. It was only Simplicianus’ inquiries on Rom. 9:10 – 29 – namely “Why did God hate Esau? – that Augustine started to give clear signs that he realised that his youthful understanding of divine justice (like Julian’s, also inspired in the Ciceronian idea of reddere quod suum est) was not applicable to the Christian doctrine of salvation, namely to God’s dealings with humans. In other words, “the human concept of equity was simply inapplicable to God’s dealings with men”15. God’s hatred towards Esau is impossible to rationalize. He had done nothing which justified such divine feeling towards him, but none of this makes this divine attitude an unjust one. This divine hatred is beyond the scope of human reason. To grasp the reasons of this divine hatred is simply not possible to human beings. All Augustine was certain of is that in the origin of this divine hatred is the mystery of Original Sin. In Adam, mankind was made enemy of God, so though Esau had personally done nothing to deserve such hatred, he was paying for what he did when he was (as we all were) in Adam. It was the sense of “corporate personality” that allowed Augustine to argue that, in light of divine justice, children pay for their ancestors’ in this case, Adam’s sin. In his confrontation with Julian, then, he made it perfectly clear. God’s ways are not human ways. His ways are impenetrable and mysterious. Not even what 13 Ad Florum I, 48 14 c. Jul. imp. III, 7, CSEL 85/1, 354, l. 5. 15 McGrath, 1983, 313.

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he commands humans to do should be used to evaluate His justice, for He justly does the very same thing that, done by humans, is unjust. This, Augustine explains, is clearly seen in God’s commands that children must not pay for their parents fault, a law to which as several divine actions show, God is not bound16. God judges in one way and commands humans to judge in another, as it is clear from Ex. 20:5, without His justice being, in any possible way, questionable (“diuinae legis auctoritas in iudiciis humanis noluit filios pendere pro parentibus poenas, non in diuinis, ubi deus dicit: reddam peccata patrum in filios”)17. Several points of clarification can be telegraphically approached regarding the nature of the doctrine of Pelagius and his associates in light of recent academical interest for the “Pelagian” literature. It is evident that Augustinian scholars have been recently revealing a renewed interest in studying and publishing the written legacy of the “Pelagians”. The effort has now materialized with laudable works on the issue, namely editions and translations of some known remaining writings18. This renewed interest in the study of the Pelagian theological legacy has also resulted in remarkable studies. These not only provide a critical analysis of Augustine’s own understanding of the theology of the persons he linked with Pelagianism, but also they shed light on the understanding of some of Augustine’s theological claims in light of his own understanding of Pelagianism. In other words, these studies call attention to the fact that Augustine’s own interpretation of Pelagianism must not go unquestioned. That interpretation requires much prudence from the modern scholar19. This is precisely what can be attested in the most recent trend among Au16 c. Jul. imp. III, 12. 17 c. Jul. imp. III, 15, CSEL 85/1, 359, l. 6. Augustine’s main thesis is that what is unjust for humans may not be just for God. Accordingly any analogy between Creator and creature is to be excluded here. God’s justice is, after all, inscrutable. For a good discussion, see Thonhard, 1967. 18 After the monumental enterprise of Alexander Souter in editing Pelagius’s Comentaries on the Thirteen Epistles of Saint Paul (1913), the editorial board of Oxford Early Christian Studies has, for first time, made available in English language, the Pelagius’ Commentary on St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans (translated by Theodore de Bruyn, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1993). Thanks to the laborious engagement of B. R. Rees we have The Letters of Pelagius and his Followers (The Boydel Press, 1991) and Pelgius: Life and letters (first published in 1988, reprinted in 1991, Boydel Press, 1998); to name some of the most relevant. 19 See, for instance, Lamberigts, 2002, 198. On the issue, the author observes: “We are inclined to argue on the basis of the present survey that progress in research into Pelagian controversy has led to a degree of “dogmatic deterioration”. What we mean thereby is that traditional representations of Pelagianism are no longer tenable in light of the fact that historical research has demonstrated such a thing as a Pelagian School never existed. It is the present author’s opinion that differentiation and nuance with respect to the idea of a “school” belong among the most valuable contributions of patristic research. In spite of the scarcity of sources, it has become apparent that consistent “theories” have not done justice to the complex historical reality”. Ibidem.

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gustinian scholars. Recent studies have satisfactorily demonstrated that the traditional representation of Pelagianism, i. e. having as a starting point Augustine’s own account (or that of Jerome) of it is to be questioned. For instance, F. REFOULÊ has provided a paradigmatic case, proving that when the bishop of Hippo ascribes the theologically untenable distinction between Kingdom of God and eternal life, discussed in the context of the fate of infants who die unbaptised, Augustine is linking Pelagians with a doctrine which they themselves never taught220. There are other issues, such as human impeccability or the central theme of grace, as presented by Augustine as being Pelagian teaching. In the case of grace, Augustine attributes to Pelagianism the very denial of grace. They, he often claimed, are inimici gratiae. Augustine’s zeal may have led him to misread some details concerning the teachings of his adversaries. I have stressed that up to mid-390s Augustine’s soteriology is within the boundaries of the Church’s traditional teachings, close to his predecessors Church Fathers and relatively close to his future Pelagian opponents. This fact may provide clues regarding 20 Refoul¦, 1963, 253: “Aucun text provenant des p¦lagiens eux-mÞmes” – writes the French dominican – “ne nous autorise — penser qu’ils aient jamais voulu accorder aux enfants morts sans baptÞme plus qu’une b¦atitude naturelle. […] il nous semble probable que les p¦lagiens n’ont jamais propos¦ eux-mÞmes la distinction “royaume de Dieu-vie ¦ternelle”. Augustin leur attribua, croyant de bonne foi qu’elle exprimait authentiquement leur pens¦e v¦ritable, et en vertu des presuppos¦s de sa th¦ologie, il ne pouvait en effet interpreter autrement la doctrine de ses adversaires. Mais eux-mÞmes n’ont d˜ disitnguer qu’entre un “¦tat de non damnation” ou de f¦licit¦ ¦ternelle, et le royaume de Dieu, c’est-—-dire un lieu de f¦licit¦ surnaturelle”. Refoul¦’s following words may serve as a good explanation why Augustine was driven to such conclusion, having as starting point their position on the issue of baptism of infants: “Ainsi, pour Augustin, affirmer que les enfants ne p¦rissent pas, ne sont pas damn¦s, revient ¦quivalement — dire qu’ils “ont la vie eternelle”. Cette conclusion lui para„t in¦vitable. Comme on l’a souvent relev¦, il ne peut envisager d’autre alternative que le ciel ou l’enfer, la vie ¦ternelle ou la mort ¦ternelle. Aussi l’hypothÀse mÞme d’un troisiÀme lieu lui para„t-elle un non-sens, et, il n’h¦site pas — l’ecrire, une absurdit¦.. Pour Augustin, il ne peut y avoir de milieu entre la vie ¦ternelle et la mort ¦ternelle. Ainsi pouvait-il de bonne fois pr¦tendre que ses adversaires soutenaient que le enfants morts sans baptÞme poss¦daient la vie ¦ternelle puisqu’ils affirmaient qu’ils n’¦taient ni damn¦s, ni vou¦s — la mort ¦ternelle, tout en sachant qu’eux-mÞme n’usaient pas de cette expression. […] Cette question de vocabulaire pourrait para„tre secondaire, puisqu’il reste assur¦ que les p¦lagiens de toute faÅon assignaient aux enfants morts sans baptÞme un lieu interm¦diaire. En le pr¦sentant sous le non de “vie ¦ternelle”, Augustin sugg¦rait in¦vitablement que les p¦lagiens attribuaient aux enfants non baptis¦s une b¦atitude qu’aujourd’hui nous nommerions “surnaturelle”, c’est-—-dire un b¦atitude comportant la soci¦t¦ du Christ et la vision de Dieu. La vie eterenelle ne consist-telle pas “— conna„tre la veritable Dieu et son envoy¦ J¦sus-Christ” (Jo. 17, 34). Augustin a certainement interpret¦ en ce sens la doctrine de ses adversaires et son interpr¦tation fut adopt¦ pour les ¦vÞques africains et les papes Innocent et Zosime. Mais il est pour le moins douteux que les p¦lagiens aient attribu¦ un tel caractÀre — ce troisiÀme lieu et c’est sans aucune doute la raison pour laquelle ils se bornaient, sans plus, a le pr¦senter comme un ¦tat de “non damnation”. […]”. Ibidem, pp. 252 – 253.

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several of the so-called Pelagian documents (such as Pelagius’ famous Epistula ad Demitriadem), that have survived to the present day because they had been ascribed to other “orthodox”, Christian authors including Augustine himself. This fact, as M. LAMBERIGTS points out, suggests that the tradition of the Church itself was not always uncomfortable with the Pelagian perspective as Augustine was21. Pelagius’ inquietude towards some of Augustine’s theological insights, as its known, dates back to the year of 405, by the time he wrote his De natura in which he shows opposition to some of Augustine’s insights on ethical theology. It is to be remembered that Augustine’s radical pessimistic approach regarding fallen human nature was clearly rising in works such as Ad Simplicianum and Confessiones. In these works he maintained that the ability of human free will to fulfil God’s commands is practically at the mercy of concupiscentia carnis on account of the discordia spiritus carnis caused by Adam’s sin. This teaching is emphatically expressed in Augustine’s statement in Confessiones X, 29 Da quod iubes, et iube quod vis. Pelagius, it is known through Augustine, did not like the statement and raised opposition to it. It is evident that Pelagius, particularly sensitive to the issue of human free will (as was Augustine) saw a threat against human free will in this statement. Later Julian would openly accuse Augustine of denying human free will on account of his Manichean background and teach the pagan notion of fate (fatum) under the name of grace. Augustine replied saying Julian taught that salvation could be attained apart from Christ. The two bishops entered into a depressing exchange of accusations, which brings me to a particularly interesting detail in the debate between them i. e. the mutual accusations of breaking with the tradition. For Julian, the Augustinian doctrine of Original Sin was nothing more than the result of the remnants of the Manichean past of the Church Father, a belief he had never totally gotten rid of. The teaching, Julian argues, was not in the tradition of the Church; it was rather a North African invention spread by this poenus disputator (“Punic debater”, Julian insultingly called Augustine)22. Augustine, said Julian, was Mani’s faithful soldier (fidelite militare)23, and taught a doctrine that contradicted both reason and piety, with which Augustine mislead uneducated believers. Though he had dealt with the tradition of the Fathers before, namely in his anti-Donatist campaign, it is fair to say that Augustine’s knowledge of the Church tradition had never been challenged as it was during the Pelagian con21 Lamberigts, 2002, 176. However, I must warn the reader, the term Pelagianism is here used in the very sense Augustine uses it, i. e. to refer to a corpus of doctrine he associated to Pelagius and those he considered the followers of the British heresiarch. 22 See, for instance, C. Jul. III, XVII, 31 – 32; Ad Florum, I, VII. 23 This expression can be found, for instance, in Ad Florum III, 195.

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troversy, especially in the altercations with Julian24. Augustine’s reply to Julian is clear in one aspect: by the time the two bishops entered into controversy, the Church Father had a significant knowledge of some of his Latin predecessors, especially Cyprian of Carthage and Ambrose of Milan. His knowledge of the Greek Fathers was limited. The first two books of Contra Iulianum and few passages of Contra Iulianum Opus imperfectum would suffice to prove this. Original Sin, Augustine argues, was taught in the Church long before the rise of the Manichean heresy. It was a Christian belief that never varied in the Church (“de qua numquam fides Christiana et Ecclesia catholica variavit”)25. So he claims to profess the same teaching established by the Catholic Church without a dissenting voice (“Nimquid et istum Manichaei sapere vel jacere venena dicturus? Audis omnes uno corde, uno ore, una fide idipsum dicere, et hanc esse catholicam fidem non dissonante contestatione firmatam”)26. He, then, often identified his own doctrine of Original Sin with that fundatissima fides Ecclesiae, the most sure and ancient foundation of faith. The multitude of Christians scattered over the whole earth did not disagree on this matter of faith (“in hoc fidei firmissimo et antiquissimo fundamento ipsa toto orbe diffusa non a se discrepat multitudo”)27. Perhaps Augustine saw more about Original Sin in the 24 25 26 27

For a survey, see Lamberigts, 2010, 14sqq. C. Jul. I, VI, 23, PL 44, col. 656. C. Jul. I, V, 15, PL 44, col. 650. C. Jul. I, VII, 32, PL 44, col. 662. Augustine identifies his own doctrine of Original Sin with the ancient and strongly-rooted faith of the Church. In nupt. et conc. I, XII, 25 He writes “Non ego finxi originale peccatum, quod catholica fides credit antiquitus; sed tu, qui hoc negas sine dubio es nouus hareticus” (It was not me who invented Original Sin, it is rather professed by the antiquity of the Catholic faith. You who deny it are certainly a new heretic). It is for these reasons, Augustine argues, claiming that the accusation Julian makes against him is not only against him, but against the generality of the Church Fathers, both in the West and in the East: “Tu interim habes in conspectus non solum Occidentis, verum etiam Orientis episcopos. Nam qui nobis deesse videbantur, plures Orientis invenimus. Omnes uno eodemque modo credunt, per unum hominem peccatum intrasse in mundum, et per peccatum mortem, et ita in omnes homines pertransisse, in quo omnes peccaverunt (Rom. 5:12): qui modus hic est, ut peccato illius unius hominis primi omnes nasci credantur obnoxii (…) Si autem istos Manichaeos esse non dicis, nec me poteris invenire cur dicas. Neque enim me ob aliud hoc esse dicis, nisi quia de peccato primi hominis, cui omnis carnalis nativitas obligavit, nec inde quemquam nisi spiritalis nativitas solvit; quod credunt credo, quod tenent teneo, quod docet doceo, quod praedicant, praedico.” C. Jul. I, V, 20, PL 44, col. 654. This trend of evoking the consensus among the Father on the issue of Original Sin clearly increased in Augustine’s anti-Pelagian writings, especially in his confrontation with Julian. See Rebillard, 2001, esp. 257 – 263 and Lamberigts, 2010. Eric Rebillard recalls the importance of taking into consideration that, according to Augustine there is a crucial difference between “l’autorit¦ d’un auteur et l’autorit¦ qui provient du consensus d’un ensemble d’auteurs sur un point d’une doctrine donn¦”; and argues that while “Augustin a toujours, ou presque, refus¦ un argument d’un autorit¦ fond¦ sur tel ou tel auteur en lui opposant l’autorit¦ absolue des Êcritures, la controverse p¦lagienne l’a conduit — d¦finir un argument d’autorit¦ autre

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Fathers than they really addressed. Julian’s accusation, however, according to which the Church Father “invented” Original Sin does not seem fair to me. It is true that one would look in vain for a detailed and systematic treatment of Original Sin in the pre-Augustinian patristic tradition, but this does not mean the issue was unknown to this period. As J. N. D. KELLYobserves, “though falling short of Augustinianism, there was here [in the pre-Augustinian period] the outline of a real theory of Original Sin. The fathers might well have filled it in and given it greater sharpness of definition had the subject been directly cavassed in their day”28. It does not, however, fit in the spatial economy of this study to go into details of these mutual accusations of heterodoxy on account of the teaching or denial of Original Sin.

3.2

Letter 194 to Sixtus

After having discussed the theological and doctrinal context in which Augustine entered the long controversy with Julian of Aeclanum, it may be useful to outline the basis of Augustine’s soteriological and anthropological theology on the eve of this confrontation. For this purpose the famous letter 194 to Sixtus would suffice. On the year 418, shortly before the beginning of his confrontation with Julian, and immediately after the condemnation of Pelagius, Augustine added to his written legacy a very important document containing an expressive account of his doctrine of grace, justification, predestination and its relationship with the Adamic sin – his letter 194, to Sixtus. It is a crucial document for understanding the mature Augustine’s approach to Christian soteriology. It was one of his weighty epistolary interventions in the Pelagian controversies, and it is of utmost importance not only to understand where Augustine stood in relation to the main doctrinal issues under consideration in the Pelagian controversy when Julian was about to enter the scene, but also to understand the positions of some important ecclesiastical and monastic communities regarding Augustine’s revolutionary doctrine of grace, free will and its relationship with the salvation process. This letter, it is to be remembered, brought about a state of unrest in the monastic community of Adrumetum, an event which turned out to be the be-

que les Êcritures: l’a accord de tous les int¦rprÀtes catholiques sur un point de doctrine”. Rebillard, 2001, 245. 28 Kelly, 1965, 350 – 351. What is of crucial importance here is also to mention that although the pre-Augustinian Fathers may have admitted the idea of Fall or condemnation in Adam, Augustine seems to innovate in a crucial matter : he, perhaps for the first time, declares and insists on the teaching according to which unbaptized children are condemned to eternal punishment on account of Original Sin.

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ginnings of the so-called semi-Pelagian movement. It was a true challenge to the radicalism of grace that was shaping the Augustinian discourse of salvation29. In this letter, Augustine sums up his understanding of Christian soteriology on the eve of the confrontation with Julian. Here some decisive changes in relation to his early theology become very evident. I have already argued that it is not accurate to define Augustine’s theology as a continuum, and pointed out the crucial transformations that the Augustinian theology underwent by the second half of 390s – with the appearance of Ad Simplicianum and Confessiones. It is hard to read these two writings and deny a significant transformation in Augustine’s theology around the second half of 390’s (I have, however, mentioned different approaches held namely by V. H. DRECOLL and C. HARRISON). The discontinuity was shaped precisely by the growing radicalism with which Augustine understood divine grace and the consequent range he ascribed to it in the justification of the sinner, in particular, and in the salvation process in general. If there were any doubt, the letter to Sixtus makes it clear that, by the time Augustine entered the debate with Julian he remained or was more than ever convinced of the radical gratuity of the justification of the sinner which cannot be but a God-oriented process, thus determined by divine grace and divine grace alone. This conviction of the totally gratuitous justification of the sinner had its base in nothing else but Augustine’s own understanding of grace, which is, by definition, freely given: “It is grace”, he writes, “which justifies the ungodly, that is, the one formerly ungodly/ impious, thereby becomes just. Hence the receiving of this grace is not preceded by any merits because the ungodly deserves punishment, not grace, and it would not be grace if it were awarded as something due and not freely given”30.

In this extensive letter addressed to the presbyter (later pope) Sixtus, Augustine did not do much more than reiterate the radical gratuity of grace, which he had, since 396, pointing to as the foundation of the salvation process. His reasoning guideline, thus, remained within the soteriological framework he had used in works such as Ad Simplicianum, De Spiritu et littera, etc.. The approach to the issue, similar to early ages of Augustine’s engagement with the letters of Paul, brought him to the delicate issue regarding the election and rejection of the patriarchs Jacob and Esau, discussed by Paul in Rom. 9. The Church Father 29 For a detailed analysis, see Ogliari, 2003. On the particular role played by the letter on the beginnings of the movement, see pages 28 – 41. 30 ep. 194, III, 7, CSEL 57, 181 – 182, l. 21: ea est enim, qua iustificatur impius, id est fit iustus qui prius fuerat impius. Et ideo percipiendae huius gratiae merita nulla praecedunt, quoniam meritis impii non gratia sed poena debetur nec ista esset gratia, si non daretur gratuita, sed debita redderetur.

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showed his deep conviction according to which the salvation process is fully shaped by the free gift of grace: election, predestination, call, justification, prayer, and good deeds will finally deserve for the faithful the crown of eternal life. They are simply all about grace, they are all result from divine grace; they are all part of the operation of a merciful God in the search for His elected, once lost children in Adam. This theological assertion was based on Augustine’s controversial teaching (which he argued to be almost axiomatic in Paul) according to which human beings have no merit at all before grace, since this latter is the source of all good merit in them. Hence the famous rhetorical question: what does God do when He rewards human beings with eternal life, on account of his merits (produced in a human being by grace) but crowning His own gift? In this salvation process, in the beginning one received mercy of faith, not on account of one’s faithfulness but that one might become faithful, in the same way one is crowned by God at the end with eternal life with mercy and compassion31. In light of Rom. 9:11 and following verses, Jacob fits in the number of those who are called and prepared to be crowned with the eternal joy. However, his brother Esau does not. Although they were of the same father, the same mother, same conception, “before they had yet been born or had done anything, good or bad, in order that God’s elective plan might continue” (Rom. 9:11), God loved one and hated the other. Why so? Augustine’s answer did not differ from the one he had produced for Simplicianus. He reiterated to Sixtus without the slightest of hesitations: apart from God’s grace which benefits some and does not benefit others, there is no distinction at all between the twins. God loved Jacob so that he might understand that he was of the same clay of Original Sin as his brother, with whom he shared a common origin, and accordingly the only detail which distinguishes him from his brother is grace, and grace alone (“ex illa massa originalis iniquitatis, ubi fratrem, cum quo habuit communem causam, uidet per iustitiam meruisse damnari, nonnisi per gratiam se potuisse discerni”)32. Since the call itself is grace, Jacob had no reason for glory unless in God. God elects or predestines, prepares the elect for the call, so he will answer positively to the same call, and assists the elect in order that he may find delight in good works. Thus, performing good works out of faith, which works through love deserves eternal life on account of it. All this can be encapsulated in one term – grace. No one, Augustine reiterated, even believes or prays if not stimulated by 31 ep. 194, V, 19, CSEL 57, 190, l. 12: Quod est ergo meritum hominis ante gratiam, quo merito percipiat gratiam, cum omne bonum meritum nostrum non in nobis faciat nisi gratia et, cum deus coronat merita nostra nihil aliud coronet quam munera sua? sicut enim ab initio fidei misericordiam consecuti sumus, non quia fidelis eramus, sed ut essemus, sic in fine, quod erit uita aeterna coronabit nos, sicut scriptum est in miseratione et misericordia”. 32 ep. 194, VIII, 34, CSEL 57, 206.

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grace. One prays asking for grace, and it is grace to acknowledge lack of grace and ask for it through prayer). This reasoning finds its basis in Augustine’s application of I Cor. 4:7 to the salvation process which he regarded in its entirety simply as divine gift. Faith itself is grace and belongs to the number of those good works in which one should not boast. Augustine’s understanding of salvation remained within the same soteriological framework he had adopted in the second half of 390s. So, the main problem, in my opinion, also remains the same: the salvation process consists in a merciful God searching for a justly doomed mankind, rather than humankind’s meritorious search for God (the second process would sound Pelagian to the mature Augustine). The entire structure of this very theological building, however, is shaken to its foundations when the mercy and grace of God are taken into consideration, since Augustine openly presumed that the salvation process for the lost mankind is selective. The only line of separation between the elect and the condemned is grace alone, i. e. salvation is an undeserved gift given to some and denied to others. Though none of the “common mass of perdition” deserves such mercy and grace, it benefits some and does not benefit to others. Is there any injustice here? – Augustine asked with Paul. Righteousness, Augustine recalled, is one attribute without which God Himself would not be God. So, His righteousness cannot be questioned. This being said, Augustine followed an already familiar way out for this tricky arbitrariness of the salvation process in a central theological concept of his own writings since the second half of 390’s – predestination. The attempt to answer the intriguing question regarding God’s equity when comes to salvation of some and the condemnation of others – when the entire massa is a massa perditionis, and deserves to be condemned, in my opinion, brings the Augustinian doctrine of predestination to an intimate connection with Original Sin. To grasp this connection is the key for understanding the entire Augustinian soteriology. It is hard to give a precise answer but one of these two things decided the course of Augustine’s theological development: 1) either the growing relevance assumed by Original Sin in his theological reasoning, which opened the gates to the doctrines of election and predestination, or 2) once he was inclined to base his discourse of salvation on theological realities such as election and predestination, Augustine saw a way out in his understanding of the doctrine of Original Sin. In either case the main purpose was served: whether Original Sin or election and predestination was his point of departure, Augustine managed to safeguard the salvation process as nothing but the expression of God’s gracious mercy. In other words, both Original Sin and election/predestination (the cornerstones of the Augustinian soteriology) were used by Augustine to defend human salvation, depends entirely on God’s gracious mercy and on it alone.

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There is an equation inherent in the Augustinian soteriology. He puts it as follows: since the same clay of damnation and offence is involved, there can be no acceptione of persons (a typical concept in Roman civil law), so that the saved may learn from the lost that the same punishment would have also have been justly his/her lot in case divine grace had failed to come in his/her rescue. If it is grace, it is obviously not awarded for any merit, but bestowed as a pure act of bounty33 ; that is, when all are justly condemned (the whole lump of clay is justly doomed to destruction, “universa ista massa merito damnata est”) justice awards the vessel of dishonour what it deserves, while grace bestows an undeserved honour, not for any privilege of merit, not through any inevitability of fate, not through any chance of stroke of fortune, but through “the depth of the riches of the wisdom and of knowledge of God”34. Augustine was deeply aware that all this does not suffice as a reasonable explanation for the selective process between two persons who deserved exactly the same lot. His difficulty in dealing with this question, in my opinion, had long ago found a theological basis and a name – election/predestination. What is predestination? To start with, Augustine did not hesitate to fuel this theological formulation with a strong sense of mystery. Predestination, he insisted, is beyond the grasp of human reason (although he himself seems, paradoxically, to know a lot about the issue). Making use of Eph. 2:9 – 10, Augustine defined predestination, basing himself on a close and dialectical relationship with grace. Predestination is the preparation of grace (“praedestinatio est gratiae praeparatio”), while grace is the donation itself (“gratia vero iam ipsa donatio”). This is the sole difference between these two theological realities35. So grace is the effect of predestination (“gratia vero est ipsius praedestinationis effectus”), since predestination is preparation of grace36. Thus, predestination is not confined to God’s foreknowledge of one’s destiny but it also includes God’s works of mercy/kindness/bounty through which the predestined are saved. What makes it more troublesome position is the fact that Augustine also mentions predestination to death, a detail that would lead to the discussion whether Augustine did or did not teach double predestination. Although I think it is

33 ep. 194, II, 4, CSEL 57, 178 – 179, l. 19: “atque ibi potius acceptionem nullam fieri personarum, ubi una eademque massa damnationis et offensionis inuoluit de non liberato discat quod etiam sibi supplicium conueniret, nisi gratia subueniret; si autem gratia, utique nullis meritis reddita, sed gratuita bonitate donata”. 34 ep. 194, II, 3, CSEL 57, 179, l. 18: “[…] ubi quia universa ista massa merito damnata est, contumeliam debitam reddit iustitia, honorem donat indebitum gratia non meriti praerogatiua, non fati necessitate, non temeritate fortunae sed altitudine divitiarum sapientiae et scientiae dei”. 35 praed. sanct. I, X, 19. 36 praed. sanct. I, X, 19.

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hardly possible to deny that Augustine’s soteriology admitted double predestination, such a discussion would be impossible to be developed here. This preparation for justifying and saving grace, it is clear in Augustine’s theological reasoning, benefits some and does not benefit others. This is a mystery. God has mercy on whom he wills, not through justice but through mercy and grace; and to whom he wills, He hardens the heart, not through injustice, but through the truth of retribution, i. e. by not imputing mercy. Nevertheless, mercy and truth have met each other (Psalms 84:11). Mercy does not hinder truth when he who deserves it is cast down, nor does truth hinder mercy when he who does not deserve is saved37. Why not rescue all from condemnation then or justly leave all to perish? God’s clemency, Augustine maintained, does not allow the condemnation of all, nor does His equity allows the rescue of all. How is a hardening of the heart deserved? It is a complicated question, Augustine admitted. However, it is because the whole clay of sin was doomed, that God does not harden by imparting malice to it, but simply by not imparting mercy. Those to whom He does not impart mercy are not worthy, nor do they deserve it (“Quaerimus enim meritum obdurationis et inuenimus. merito namque peccati uniuersa massa damnata est nec obdurat deus impertiendo malitiam sed non impertiendo misericordiam”)38. Rom. 9:15 and 18 are evoked in order to hold the mysterious dimension of the process; and 9:20 is the refrain used by Augustine to stress the outrageous impudence which would complain or question God’s mysterious but undeniably just judgement in, saving some and leaving others to condemnation. This last verse is the most convenient one since it served Augustine’s inability to provide a consistent explanation of Rom. 9:11 and following verses. The way Augustine dealt with these difficulties (as I have already mentioned) shaped his doctrine of predestination. Does all this mean the just have no merit at all? Augustine’s answer to this question shaped his mature ordo iustificationis: the just do have merit since they are just; what they do not have is any sort of previous merits to make them just. This is the reason why I have been using the term “human-rooted merit” to refer to the nature of merit which Augustine denied to exist in the salvation process. That there is merit, Augustine did not deny. What he made sure is that his readers 37 ep. 194, III, 6, CSEL 57, 180 – 181, l. 22: “[…]et quae sunt viae inuestigabiles, nisi de quibus in Psalmso cantitur : Uniuersae uiae domini misericordia et ueritas? misericordia igitur et ueritas eius investigabiles sunt, quoniam, cuius uult, miseretur non iustitia sed misericordia gratiae et, quem uult, obdurat non iniquitate sed ueritate uindictae. quae tamem misericordia et ueritas ita sibi occurrunt, quia scriptum est: Misericordia et ueritas occurrerunt sibi [Ps. 84, 11], ut nec misericordia impediat ueritatem, qua plecitur dignus, nec ueritas misericordiam, qua liberatur indignus […]”. 38 ep. 194, III, 14, CSEL 57, 187, l. 4.

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understood the place and the nature of the merit of the righteous person. Merit is the result of God’s operation, so it comes before any moral or ethical commitment from the human side. The just become so when they were justified, but Rom. 3:24, Augustine stressed, is peremptory in asserting that they are justified “freely by His grace” (“nullane igitur sunt merita iustorum? sunt plane, quia iusti sunt. sed ut iusti fierent, merita non fuerunt; iusti enim facti sunt, cum iustificati sunt, sed sicut dicit apostolus, iustificati gratis per gratiam ipsius”)39. It is grace that justifies the wicked. That is, he who was formerly wicked thereby becomes just. Therefore the reception of this grace is not preceded by any merit, because the wicked deserves punishment, not grace, and it would not be grace unless it is freely given40. As Scriptural references and basis for this radicalism of grace annihilating any merit of human source in the salvation process, Augustine evoked, among others, John 6:44 and 6:66. Call (vocatio) and the beginning of faith (initum fidei) are simply free gifts of grace. After all, no one comes to the Son unless the Father draws him/her. In short, in the epistle to Syxtus, Augustine insistently reiterates the very comprehensive notion of grace. During the entire controversy with the Pelagians he insistently endeavoured to refute what he took to be the Pelagian notion of grace – reduced to doctrine, law and Christ’s example. In the processus salvationis Augustine had adopted since Ad Simplicianum and Confessiones there were preparation of the one to be called; the justification which enables the elected to respond positively to the divine call, and the good works which will finally deserve eternal life. All are the result of the operation of divine grace. It is all about grace. To conclude this paragraph I want to stress that, as I will try to make it clear in the second part of the present study, the young Luther often quotes these Augustine’s assessments with full approval. This is hardly surprising! Luther approached the issue of human being and their salvation strictly within the same framework adopted by Augustine. The righteous perform good works and follow divine paths which will lead them to salvation, but all this come after divine grace make them righteous by faith, thus willing to grow in righteousness. It is precisely in this point that Luther constantly turned to Augustine’s anti-Pelagian insights to combat the application of the Aristotelian dijaios¼mg to the Christian discourse of salvation. In this particular point (as on the issue of the abilities of fallen human nature unassisted by grace), one can accurately say that the Lutheran Reformation was, in large extent, a recuperation of the old Augustinian paradigm (the term Augustinian applied only to Augustine himself), the only theological paradigm within the patristic and Scholastic traditions regarded by Luther as reliable enough argue for a genuinely theocentrical definition of sal39 ep. 194, III, 6, CSEL 57, 181, l. 9. 40 ep. 194, III, 7.

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vation. A paradigm according to which the intervention of God’s gracious mercy and the subsequent human moral and ethical growth were put in their proper place.

3.3

Natura vitiata and massa damnata: Original Sin and Augustinian soteriology

3.3.1 Necessitas peccandi: theological background Being one of the most influential Christian theologians to test in many theological and moral issues, Augustine’s shaping of the doctrine of free will still leads his students to take opposing sides against one another. The Church Father has been pointed out through the ages as both the great defender of the free will of choice, liberum arbitrium voluntatis – which is in fact a major issue in his written legacy – and a killer or denier of human freedom. While in chapter VI of his The theory of will in Classical Antiquity A. DIHLE, in highly praiseworthy words, refers to the Bishop of Hippo as the “inventor of our modern concept of will”41, claiming that he was the first to assert the independence of the will from the intellect, transcending thus the limits of ancient Philosophy and that he invented the idea of freedom of the will. Many others are highly critical in relation to Augustine’s doctrine of free will, especially when it comes to his approach to the relationship between divine grace and free will. The tone of criticism among students of Augustine may vary, but its target seems to have been the same since Augustine’s own time – his denial or annihilation of human free will. That was the main aim of Julian of Aeclanum’s criticism against Augustine’s doctrine of grace and human freedom, and it remains the same for many influential modern students of Augustine. J. RIST is peremptory in his argument according to which Augustine’s doctrine of human free will makes humans no more than marionettes of God. Stressing that the mature Augustine openly stated that humans are not free to turn their will to the good, but can be converted by God alone, implies that without God’s help they sin necessarily. And on the other hand, once divine grace is imparted to the 41 Dihle, 1982, 144. “Augustine”, Dihle writes here, “was, in fact, the inventor of our modern notion of will, which he conceived for the needs and purposes of his specific theology and in continuation of the attempts of Greek theologians, who developed their doctrine of the Trinity in terms of Neoplatonic ontology. He took the decisive step towards the concept of human will by reinterpreting a hermeneutical term as an anthropological one. This eventually led him to an adequate Philosophical description of what the Biblical tradition taught about man’s fall. But in doing so, he was greatly helped and tacitly guided by the Latin vocabulary of his time”.

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individual, his/her will unfailingly and irresistibly converts to the good. RIST concludes that Augustine’s doctrine of grace makes the will definitely unfree42. G. O’DALY maintains that Augustine’s notion of freedom is incoherent and unintelligible. “Augustine’s notion of freedom of the will”, he writes, “seems impossible: it remains a glorious and influential failure”43. A similar conclusion is drawn by E. STUMP who argues that Augustine’s notion of freedom is to be rejected since it cannot secure the agent’s responsibility for his deeds44. Despite the harsh tone of criticism I have just stressed, I think that any idea of necessity linked to Augustine’s theological ethics is a matter of dispute (at first it may even sound paradoxical) and, thus, it demands a careful explanation. It is, necessarily, a complex matter and, as any complex matter, it leads scholars against one another, since many and divergent proposals for a solution to the problem are brought up for discussion. The issue is so complex to the point that, for the sake of clarity, I prefer approach it with a few introductory considerations. Especially in his younger years, the bishop of Hippo revealed himself to be a fierce defender of human free will where he saw the very basis of moral act. Accordingly, any idea of necessitas here seems to be incompatible with the philosophical psychology within which human free will is treated in Augustine’s thought. He maintained to the end that the origin of sin is to be found in human free will. The bishop of Hippo elected the concept of free will as the most efficient weapon for the defence of God’s goodness and justice. After all, as he explained, for instance in De vera religione, denying free will is to deny any sort of meaning to religious living; without free will, human acts would occur by necessity and would be empty of any moral significance. All religious order and Christian law would largely empty. Sin is, then, intrinsically voluntary ; only what is voluntarily committed can be sinful (“nullo modo sit peccatum, si non sit uoluntarium”)45. The free choice of the will is the condition sine qua non for sin to take place46. He was peremptory in his claim according to which humans only, not God, are responsible for the presence of evils in the world, since they act by their own free decision. Denying free will would also, above all, imply the denial of human being’s responsibility for any of its actions. The determination in the struggle for the preservation of such responsibility, as E. RANNIKKO argues, is clear in Augustine’s fight against 42 Rist, 1969. 43 O’Daly, 2001, 97. For an overview on the author’s arguments on the issue, see pp. 85 – 97. 44 Stump, 2001. For more on the debate regarding the Augustinian doctrine of free will, namely whether the Church Father’s teachings, in fact, promote or deny human freedom, see Rowe 1964; Hopkins 1977 and Pang 1994. 45 uera. rel. 27. 46 Fort. XV-16, 20.

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determinism of any sort, laying special stress on terms such as voluntas libera, liberum arbitrium and liberum arbitrium voluntatis47. Augustine’s exegesis of Rom. 7:14sqq is one of the details to which his critics, since the Church Father’s own time, turn in order to argue that he, in fact, taught that Christians sin by necessity. In his recent doctoral thesis entitled Augustine and the functions of concupiscence Timo NISULA endeavours to demonstrate that this is not the case. In a detailed discussion on the Augustinian treatment of the relationship between the remaining concupiscence in the body of the justified Christian and the process of Christian renewal, NISULA argues that Rom. 7 was regarded by the anti-Pelagian Augustine as the very proof that Christians do not commit sin out of necessity since concupiscentia carnis in the renewed Christian is no more than a perfectly beatable force. It is in his notion of Christian renewal that Augustine turned to make his point. The Church Father’s main line of reasoning was that the effects of concupiscentia are not the same in a baptised or a justified person and in an unbeliever or unbaptised person in whom the process of Christian renewal is not present. The effects of concupiscentia diminish and are weakened as the process of justification goes ahead. Though concupiscentia remains in the flesh of all, it is strictly limited by baptism. “While Augustine thus obviously acknowledges many features in concupiscentia which might render it as being terrifying and indeed sinful, even diabolical force, he never lets the horizon of Christian renewal and baptism to slip from his eyes”48. Analysing the role of concupiscentia in the context of Christian renewal, NISULA shows how the Augustinian approach to concupiscentia is intimately connected with his understanding of divine grace and its effects, and argues for the importance of a radically theocentric view of grace which emerged from Ad Simplicianum and affected Augustine’s position on concupiscentia. To start with, in the context of Christian renewal, Augustine presents concupiscentia as “a fully resistible and weakened force of residual sin”. Aware of the fact that concupiscentia is part of problem for a Christian believer ; he also points to it as part of the solution. Augustine’s progressions on the reading of Rom. 7, NISULA argues, especially from 411 onwards, is intimately connected with ways of qualifying and restricting the effects of concupiscentia in the renewed Christian. Even before Ad Simplicianum, Augustine seems to have regarded concupiscentia carnis present in both person sub lege and sub gratia, but pointed out that what distinguishes the person sub gratia is the ability to never yield to evil desires. This ability is given by divine grace in the absence of which concupiscentia carnis becomes, in fact, an irresistible force. That is, over the person sub lege, if 47 Rannikko, 1997, 20. 48 Nisula, 2010, 286.

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there is no resistance at all, concupiscentia carnis will always prevail as the incontestable winner. The process of Christian renewal, however, NISULA explains, according to Augustine, makes all the difference. If in his writings of 390’s he still identified the ego of Rom. 7 with the person sub lege, in the heat of the debate with Pelagians he progressively applied it to the person sub gratia and to Paul himself. This, however, unlike Julian accused him, does not mean he regarded Paul or Christians as akratic persons, unable to oppose their evil desires49. In his confrontation with Julian, namely in nupt et conc., Augustine regarded concupiscentia carnis in the life of Christians as “a tamed and defeated enemy that can and should be checked and subdued in daily struggle. Even though concupiscentia thus has many qualities of sin, it is no longer, however, a proper sin in a renewed Christian”50. Concupiscentia is left there for the useful practice and the training of the body and continence. In other words, concupiscentia carnis represents the temptations of Christian life. It thus becomes “a sparring partner, and is part of God’s plan in Christian renewal”51. The presence of concupiscence in the flesh is more than a motive enough for Christians to turn to daily prayer and ask for forgiveness constantly. For Augustine, NISULA explains, Julian’s accusation according to which Augustine’s doctrine of concupiscentia implies that the apostles were polluted with passions, is a mistaken one and this has to do with the fact that the Italian bishop fails to understand “the qualitative difference between law and grace in relation to concupiscentia. While the law only commands, grace also assists Christians in their true struggle”52. NISULA’s conclusions on the relationship between the necessity of sin for Christians and the Augustinian reading of Rom. 7 is peremptory, as the following lines clearly show: “Augustine’s conviction is crystal clear : a baptised Christian is able and should control his or her evil desires and hold back their movements. Paul’s Romans 7 now works as an important source text for this conviction, and all debilitating notions in this text are cleared out by an interpretation that sweeps away the notions of impotence and a weak 49 50 51 52

Nisula, 2010, 256 – 318. Nisula, 2010, 286. Nisula, 2010, 274. Nisula, 2010, 291 – 292. It is on account of this same grace that Augustine’s ethical implications of his approach to concupiscentia carnis present in human bodies are not so strong as Julian maintains them to be. As Nisula explains, “To Augustine, the final verses of Romans 7 seem to affirm his reading. Paul’s heightening confidence in the grace of Christ confirms the identity of Paul as a renewed Christian in the entire context. In brief, he lives sub gratia. His inner mind thereby serves the Law of God, and his flesh still has concupiscentia. No divine judgement due to concupiscentia follows or should be feared, however, because the grace of Christ fortifies the Christian so that it is possible to no longer give consent to the old habits”. Nisula, 2010, 193.

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will. Therefore, Julian’s caricatures of Augustine’s position as representing apostles (and Christians) as weak characters, or baptism seen as an ineffective ritual, are inaccurate and wrong” […] “Augustine vehemently denies that he would teach concupiscentia to be a compulsive force in Christian life, and Christian would sin out of necessity. […] The resistibility of concupiscentia becomes thus one of the of the trade marks of Christian renewal. Augustine can therefore with full reason claim Julian’s picture of his views to be erroneous, at least when it comes to the possibilities of resisting and conquering temptations of concupscentia. On the contrary, concupiscentia should and can be conquered by God’s grace and love by the Holy Spirit, infused into the hearts of the faithful [c. Jul. V, 32]. A Christian undergoing the divine process of renewal is thus not an akratic, weak-willed person, but an enkratic person, whose will is strengthened by supernatural means to persist and conquer evil desires and bad thoughts. Therefore, Augustine also emphasises that, despite regular shortcomings in exerting this divinely received strong will, there can be no necessity of sinning in a Christian person. Julian’s conceptions are here gravely mistaken, Augustine claims, for a Christian person is not under any “necessity to commit crimes””53.

After recalling NISULA’s convincing arguments, one has to ask: does Augustine, in fact, deny any sort of necessity behind any human act, be it good or evil? My answer is that he definitely does not! And the explanation for this fact lies in a crucial detail: according to Augustine, in the absence of grace, concupiscentia carnis is an unbeatable force. This means that those who are not under the process of Christian renewal, set like any other human being who has inherited the sinful pathology of sin from Adam, i. e. concupiscence of the flesh, have no other option but to wish to sin. As a matter of fact, it seems clear to me that the Augustinian doctrine of predestination was intimately connected with his portrayal of a radically theocentric understanding of divine grace, upon which human salvation depends entirely. His use of the terms such as massa damnata and concupicentia carnis are crucial to understanding the rising of Augustine’s continuous emphasis on a theocentric vision of salvation. The first term, massa damnata, allowed him to claim that those who are saved are mercifully taken from a group of condemned. The second term, concupiscentia carnis, allowed him to teach that without divine grace there is no other way but to follow one’s sinful desires. It is in the basic elements of Augustine’s understanding of Christian soteriology that the necessity of sin finds its origin in Augustinian theology. Thus, as I will try to make clear, despite the fierce insistence on the free will of choice as the root of moral act, the fact remains that Augustine only endeavoured to deny a specific sort of necessity, namely absolute necessity, in his ethical theology. He openly admits a different sort of necessity, the necessity of moral condition. His theological ethics was profoundly determined by a strong idea of 53 Nisula, 2010, 296 – 298.

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necessitas and designed to serve and fit this very sense of necessitas, a necessitas, it is true, essentially of theological nature, thus only graspable by those who accept the depths of divine mysteries. Augustine’s treatment of human free will and its relation to either sinful or virtuous act, in my opinion cannot be grasped only by analysing the issue within Augustine’s own philosophical psychology. It is, above all, a theological matter. I am convinced that it was Augustine’s insights on the fall of human nature and, especially, his understanding of the dispensation54 of divine grace that provided the basis for his sense of necessity which ended up killing the very same human freedom he so eagerly claimed to preserve. Augustine’s reading of Rom. 7:14 – 25 left no room for doubt that he thought that even in the presence of divine grace the sinner would not be not totally free of sinful impulses. In the absence of divine grace, the sinner would have no other option but to wish, to turn to and remain in sin in which he, because divine grace did not operate in his/her heart, would take great delight. It is precisely this reasoning that makes of the Augustinian doctrine of grace a major basis for the theological determinism inherent in his theological ethics. Some scholars tend to forget or to neglect that the mature Augustine’s approach to human free will is, above all, a theological issue. It is in Augustine’s approach to particular theological issues that the basis of the essence of the Augustinian doctrine of free will is to be found. The idea of necessitas peccandi, for instance, becomes impossible to understand if one fails to grasp the intimate relationship between themes such as free will and predestination, divine foreknowledge, the arbitrary dispensation of divine grace, and the strong theological position Augustine took regarding Original Sin and its most heavy heritage to mankind – the concupiscence of the flesh. This last, a congenital and sinful pathology, is practically untameable, a proneness to sin we all carry within us. It is Augustine’s mature doctrine of salvation, namely his understanding of the dispensation of divine grace, that led him to adopt a sense of human freedom which is undeniably deterministic. Any accusation of determinism against Augustine demands explanation. It is important to notice that Augustine, both in his youth and maturity, insisted on the responsibility inherent in human free will. However, although he shielded himself in his recurrent claim according to which grace does not annihilate human free will but rather establishes it, I think it is fair to say that, for all 54 Though I am not sure the term “dispensation” is the appropriate one in this context, I am using it. Thus a few words of clarification may be needed. Since Augustine’s doctrine of grace places God as the dispensator of gifts with which he bestows human beings, I am using the word “dispensation” in order to underline the idea behind the Latin verb dispensare (in a sense of to distribute) and the word dispensatio referring to the task of an administrator or superintendent in a particular affair.

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practical purposes, this Augustinian assertion reveals itself incoherent and inapplicable and not enough to set his reasoning free from the chains of determinism. The Church Father does not admit it, but the practical results of his reasoning on the relationship between divine grace and human free will can only be the following: since humans are all born under sin and, on account of concupiscence, cling to sin only, unless they are assisted by divine grace, the absence of God’s grace (only the divine grace makes the sinner take delight in good and perform good deeds) necessarily lead the sinner to sin. Augustine’s harsh approach to the Adamic heritage along with his understanding of the dispensation of divine grace are, thus, the two great pillars upon which the necessitas peccandi is founded within the mature Augustine’s theology (and his reading on Rom. 7:14 – 25 leaves no room for doubts on this issue). Here are, then the two theological pillars of necessitas peccandi in Augustine – Adam’s heavy and sinful legacy to the mankind and the mysterious divine dispensation of grace. If the presence/absence of grace and the punishment of Adamic sin end up determining the moral orientation of human acts, it is fair to conclude that Augustine does admit some sort of necessity behind human actions, which despite this fact, he maintains, are always voluntary. Fact: Augustine does admit a necessity behind human actions, being it good or bad. What is pertinent is to precise which sort of necessity he admits i. e. which sort of necessity he maintained to be compatible with a voluntary act and which sort of necessity he argues to be incompatible with it. Marianne DJUTH can be very helpful in this contention. In general, the meanings that Augustine attributed to the term “necessity”, she argues, can be divided into four categories: 1) absolute necessity ; 2) necessity of moral condition; 3) necessity of consanguinity or social relationship; 4) necessity associated with various forms of constraint or lawlike activity such as the necessity of obligation, grammatical or metrical necessity, etc55. It will be helpful to focus on the two first forms of necessities which are the two most important for the issue at hands. Augustine, DJUTH explains, characterized absolute necessity as a form of necessity that excludes the voluntary in two fundamental ways: through the constraint imposed internally on a being by its nature or essence as created by God, and through the constraint exerted externally on a being by some coercive force, whether corporeal or incorporeal in nature. In either way the absolute necessity implies the absence of moral responsibility “because the motion incurred on the basis of the constraint applied is inevitable”. Hence the Church Father speaks of necessitas naturae, fixa et inuitabilis necessitas (immovable and unavoidable necessity), dura et dira necessitas (hard and dreadful necessity), 55 Djuth, 2000, 196 sqq.

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exitiosa necessitas (pernicious necessity) or necessitate compulsus (a necessity that compels)56. Against the Manichees Augustine vehemently denied that the absolute necessity is behind human actions. Though it is especially in the debate with the Pelagians that Augustine came to focus on the the punishment of Adamic sin to stress the necessity of moral condition, the traces of this sort of necessity are already found in Augustine’s confrontation with the Manichees, especially Fortunatus. It is true that Augustine continually fights Manichean determinism, but this does not mean in his debate with the Manichees that he excluded any sort of necessity behind moral actions. In his debate with the Manichees, approaching the relationship between the sinfulness that human nature inherits and the abilities of the free will, Augustine clearly admitted the necessity of sin on account of the bond between Adam and his descendants. M. ALFLATT has brilliantly studied the issue and provided convincing conclusions which I here follow57. ALFLATTargues that, already in the context of the Manichean controversy (namely in the debate with Fortunatus), Augustine, confronted with Biblical passages such as Gal. 5:7, Rom. 7:23 – 25 and Eph. 2:3, was forced to admit sin committed out of necessity58 ; a necessity which finds its roots in the presence of concupiscence in every man, on account of Original Sin and on the notion of solidarity attaching the entire mankind to the sin of Adam. So, in the debate with Fortunatus, he argues, Augustine had moved from the position of insisting that sin must always result from the deliberate act of will by a free agent who was able to avoid sin if he so willed, to that of admitting that all men sin of necessity. This necessity which weighs upon mankind Augustine believed to stem from the first sin of Adam. This is what unfolds the Augustinian idea of necessity of moral condition. This sort of necessity, according to Augustine – it is important to notice, does not exclude moral responsibility. In other words, it is compatible with voluntary act, it is a necessity that does not imply coercion. Consequently it is to be distinguished from the absolute necessity. The absolute necessity, Augustine maintained, can be seen, for instance in the movement of a dropped stone. The movement of the stone will necessarily respect the divine determination of the 56 Djuth, 2000, 197. “Sometimes, the author explains in the same page, Augustine’s adjectives convey the sense that this particular form of necessity that this particular form of necessity is morally reprehensible and consequently an inappropriate way for Christians to conceive the necessity inherent in creation. There are, therefore, both good and bad forms of absolute necessity. The natural necessity that governs the created order in lawlike fashion is indicative of God’s beneficent care of the universe. In this respect, absolute necessity is something good because the human will is capable of functioning in accordance with nature”. 57 Alflatt, 1974, 113 – 134 and 1975, 171 – 186. 58 Alflatt, 1975, 171.

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stone’s nature in the moment of creation. The stone’s motion, thus, is entirely dependent upon God. This is so because there is a total absence of voluntary activity. That is not the case with human nature which possesses the capacity to will as part of its created essence. At first, as it has been said, Augustine maintained that the mankind’s ability to move towards God is a constitutive part of human nature; humankind can, making use of his freedom of choice, decide to move towards or away from God. From Ad Simplicianus onwards he tended to retract this position and maintained that the very first step the individual may take towards God is itself a result of grace. Consequently, in the case of the human will, necessity is operative only on the level of divine determination59. What strikes one most is that, though he fiercely defended that libertas came under the captivity of sin, Augustine argued as energetically that the sense of responsibility is by no means suppressed here. It is, in fact, the limitations brought upon the will of the rational creature, now compromised by sin, that allowed Augustine to shape the theoretical contours of the necessity of moral condition. This ultimately, along with the dispensation of the divine grace, formed his great theological basis of necessitas peccandi. The necessity of moral condition, then, I repeat, is to be distinguished from the absolute necessity which would eliminate any sense of responsibility. Marianne DJUTH judges well when she writes that an explicit mention of that form of necessity “occurs as early as 392 in Contra Fortunatum when Augustine distinguishes the coercive effect that the principle of darkness has on the divine particles of goodness from the penal necessity that affects the will’s activity in the form of the necessity of carnal habit (necessitas consuetudinis)”60. The author goes on stressing the well-known fact (already discussed in 1, but important to be recalled here) that, from the 396 onwards Augustine “acknowledges the human will’s dependence on the divine grace to reorient it toward the love of divine goodness and thereby liberate it from the penal necessity of carnal concupiscence that weights its love in the opposite direction toward the temporal world pursued as an end in itself” […]. “The necessity of moral condition, therefore, encompasses both the penal necessity of carnal concupiscence that habituates the will’s activity to evil and the grace or liberty of choice (libertas arbitrii) that enables the will to adhere inseparably and steadfastly to divine goodness. As such, it differs from absolute necessity in that it pertains to the will’s moral exercise and to the two roots or affections in the will, namely charity and cupidity, which dispose the will’s activity either in a morally upright or morally perverse manner61. 59 Djuth, 2000, 198 – 199. 60 Djuth, 2000, 201. 61 Djuth, 2001, 201. In this study Djuth presents some elucidative passages that I find truly worthy reproducing here: “Though Augustine admits that the essence of human nature includes a natural capability, what he means by the possession of this capability is that the

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The ideal Biblical passage to understand the contours the idea of necessity of moral condition, then, would be Rom. 7:14 – 25. It is proverbial that one of the point of frictions between Augustine and Julian was precisely the portrayal of the baptised Christian. The reasons are well known. They could not agree on the practical applications of Rom. 7:14sqq. While Julian argues that the spiritual distress Paul mentions here is to be applied to the unbelieving Jews, Augustine explains that Paul was referring to himself, to his own inner struggle as devoted and committed Christian62. The passage, then, Augustine insisted, is to be regarded as the ideal description of the Christian believers’ daily life which is made of a continuous inner struggle on account of the presence of concupiscence of the flesh. According to Augustine, on account of concupiscence, inherited from Adam’s sin, the Christian believer is in a sort of state of civil war (civile bellum) and such a war continues for the rest of a believer’ earthly life. The guilt of concupiscence is forgiven in baptism, but the weakness it implies, the proneness to sin, the human will, in virtue of its goodness, remains open to the possibility of reception of one or the other of the two roots of charity and cupidity. Unlike Pelagius and Julian of Eclanum, Augustine insists that God, not the human will, is the ultimate source of the will’s righteousness. In doing so, he regards the human will as an instrument of divine action and its exercise as the means by which God communicates his goodness to the temporal world. Similarly, Adam’s transgression of the divine law implies the transmission of the will’s susceptibility to carnal concupiscence to his descendants because of the inherited nature of moral defects that predispose the will toward the love of the temporal world. In a perverse manner, then, Adam’s will mimics the divine will in using other human wills as the instruments of its actions, but instead of goodness it spreads the contagion of corruption to the world. / Because the human will is open or receptive to the defects of charity and cupidity in its operation, Augustine differentiates the necessity of moral condition from the necessity of nature., conceiving the former as a kind of second nature that disposes or habituates the will’s operation toward either morally acceptable or morally unacceptable acts without coercing in the performance of those acts by depriving it of voluntary activity. Augustine’s account of the wandering will in the Confessions functions as the paradigm of the fallen will that avails only for evil, that is, that inevitably chooses evil on account of its inability to resist the force of carnal habit. Christ’s will, on the other hand, constitutes the paradigm of the predestined will that remains steadfast in goodness on account of its unmitigated uprightness. / Unlike Pelagius and Julian of Eclanum, then, Augustine demarcates a middle region between the absolute necessity that governs human nature and the absolute autonomy that the Pelagians attribute to the will’s operation. This middle region in which the will’s operation functions in harmony with the necessity of its acquired nature or dispositions in the “space” in which the necessary is compatible with the voluntary. The will’s inability to control its dispositions, therefore, indicates that human beings no longer enjoy the full mastery over their actions that they once did prior to the fall. Though they continue to act as voluntary agents in the temporal world, their action also point to the hidden forces at work in the mysterious depths of both God and self. Because the human intellect is incapable of penetrating this mystery at present, the “text” of voluntary actions that occur in time must be read as part of the book of the creation, namely, as the repository of the divine that orders without coercion. Djuth, 2000, 202 – 204. 62 See, for instance, c. Jul. imp. I, 67

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pathology, remains. It is not terminated in the sacred font of baptism63. In other words, the guilt of concupiscence is no longer imputed as sin to the regenerated if they refuse to follow its impulses, but the sinfulness of concupiscence remains. To make it plain all one has to do is to pay attention to the relationship spiritflesh. The sinfulness remains precisely because there is a lack of harmony in this relationship; it is wrong for the flesh to have desires opposed to the spirit64. It is this inner war that led Augustine to continuously stress the need for grace in order that the believer may follow God’s paths. What Augustine believed is that divine grace is for the mankind the thin line between turning to sin and struggling to avoid it. Yes, without the assistance of divine grace, he maintained, humans would have no other option but to turn to sin. Hence it is perfectly accurate to conclude that what ultimately unfolds the idea of necessitas peccandi in Augustine’s thought is the dispensation of divine grace. The sinful desires inherited from Adam play a crucial role, but what ultimately decides is the presence or absence of divine grace. If divine grace is given to the sinner he/she struggles (like Paul) in order to follow God’s path; if not, he/she will necessarily want to remain in the sinful paths. This fact finds its explanation in the sinful moral condition in which sin always reigns without any sort of opposition unless grace intervenes. Any descendant of Adam according to Augustine, is born addicted (under the impulses of concupiscence of the flesh). One needs grace to overcome one’s self-destructive tendencies. Is this entire equation not enough to say there is, in fact, a coercion to sin here? In my opinion, a fair analysis on Augustine’s reasoning would conclude that, according to Augustine, it is not. He thinks so since the only thing the sinner’s will desires, unassisted by grace, is to turn to sin. Sinners are not forced to sin precisely because, outside God’s grace, they voluntarily will to sin and take delight in it. They are not free to avoid sin, but they still sin out of their own free will of choice. Not freely since the capacity to sin does not mean freedom, freedom is expressed precisely by the capacity to remain in God’s presence, i. e. to be obedient to God by avoiding sin. The same applies to the case of those assisted by God’s grace; they do not turn to virtue by any coercion. It is true that 63 c. Jul. II, III, 7, PL 44, col. 678: “christianorum est ista pugna fidelium, non infidelium iudaeorum. crede, si non pugnas; agnosce, si pugnas, et ista pugna rebellem quoque superbiam pelagiani erroris expugna. iam ne discernis, iam ne perspicis, iam ne resipiscis, et in baptismate fieri omnium remissionem peccatorum, et cum baptizatis quasi ciuile bellum interiorum remanere uitiorum? non enim talia sunt uitia, quae iam peccata dicenda sint, si ad illicita opera spiritum concupiscentia non trahat et concipiat pariat que peccatum. nec tamen extra nos sunt, quibus uincendis, cum in hoc certamine proficienter laboramus, instandum est; nostra sunt, passiones sunt, uitia sunt, frenanda, cohibenda, sananda sunt: sed dum curantur infesta sunt. et si nobis ad meliora proficientibus, magis magis que minuuntur 64 c. Jul. II, V, 12.

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without the assistance of grace they would never turn to virtue, but it is exactly what grace does to their wills that makes their acts free of necessity. What God’s grace does is to transform their will and makes it cling to God. So they love God’s path and thus, freely perform what God commands65. Personally I think that Augustine’s radical reading of Paul (especially during the struggle against the Pelagian anthropological optimism) led him to deny human free will. Some would disagree with this claim, so it is a matter of dispute. What is absolutely clear is that Augustine understood that though it is undeniable that humans have free will, such a free is, however, out of our range. The way this free will works is determined by something above human limitations – the divine disposition of grace. In either case, when under the impulses of concupiscentia carnis, a person sins, and when the righteous, under the influence of grace fights against sin, their individual actions are determined by a necessity, but they are not coerced. Ironically, according to Augustine’s reasoning, the willingness both to sin and to fight sin is produced by what the necessity of moral condition depends on, namely divine grace. The absence of grace commands/imposes sinful acts and the presence of grace imposes or commands struggling against sin. This, in short, defines the Augustinian understanding of necessity of moral condition: there is a necessity, since the penal sin of concupiscence and the presence/absence of God’s grace end up determining the moral orientation of human acts, but such necessity does not eliminate its voluntary nature. That is, there is no coercion here. When one sins or practices a virtuous act, one may speak of necessarily voluntary acts, but never of a coerced act. In the absence of grace, the individual’s will necessarily wishes to sin on account of his perverse nature. In the presence of grace, the individual’s reoriented will necessarily wants to remain in good66. In face of this reasoning I am forced to conclude that, 65 c. ep. Pel. I, III, 7; I, XVIII, 36. 66 In order to understand this complex and unclear relationship between divine grace and human freedom as Augustine puts it, it may be helpful to follow J. Brachtendorf ’s suggestion and have present the distinction commonly used in contemporary Philosophy, namely the distinction between a libertarian and a compatibilistic concept of freedom. Libertarianism finds its basis on the claim according to which freedom and determinism mutually exclude each other i. e. there can be freedom only when no necessity determines the course of an action, where the agent of an action has the alternative of choosing. Accordingly, an act is free only if its agent could have acted or decided otherwise. “Libertarians, the author writes, understand freedom as freedom of choice between two equally possible alternatives. This choice is made from a neutral standpoint, which is why freedom of choice is also called freedom of indifference”. Compatibilism defends, as the name suggests, that freedom and determinism do not exclude each other, freedom does not imply indeterminism, one and the same action or decision can be determined and free (Brachtendorf, 2007, 220sqq). I find Brachtendorf ’s methodology in bringing this basic distinction to the task of grasping Augustine’s doctrine of human freedom very opportune. These two approaches to human

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although Augustine himself and generations of Augustinian scholars turn to the Church Father’s doctrine of grace to deny any idea of determinism inherent to his ethical theology, it is precisely the doctrine of grace, namely its arbitrary dispensation by God that provides an undeniable deterministic orientation to Augustine’s discussion on human free will and freedom. No one can possibly deserve grace since God owes it to no one. After all, if it would be given on account of a debt, Augustine often stressed that it would not be grace. It is known that Augustine did not conceive human will as desiring or following a good path unless assisted by divine grace. The assistance of divine grace, Augustine maintains, is freely given and it is not in response to any human pre-desposition to good, none of any sort. If that would be the case, he argued, then the bestowal of grace would ultimately depend on human willing and not divine mercy. In his mercy God favours some and not others. Grace is, after all the transforming assistance which determines the individual’s moral orientation. If bestowed with grace, one struggles against sin; if not, one takes delight in it. These are some of the reasons, I believe, that justifies the accusations of determinism against Augustine. Grace, the great notion of Augustinian theology, is the very source of his deterministic approach on both human freedom and salvation. E. STUMP is absolutely right when she writes that unless Augustine is willing to accept that God’s giving of grace is responsive to something in human beings, even if that something is not good or worthy of merit, I don’t see how he can be saved from the imputation of theological determinism with all its infelicitous consequences67.

The accusations of determinism against Augustine were too serious. His opponents strategically threatened him with a shadow of his own past – Manichaeism. So Augustine made use of any theological or philosophical concept freedom is largely present throughout the debate between Julian and Augustine. If one would have to chose a label for the two bishops, it would be correct to label Augustine as a semicompatibilist and Julian as a libertarian. A clear passage of the Augustinian corpus where the combination between the necessary and libertarian dimension of the free act can be seen is the fifth book of De civitate Dei where Augustine argues, against Cicero, that divine foreknowledge is perfectly compatible with arbitrium voluntatis. Augustine himself refuses to admit that for an act or an event to take place as it has been foreknown by God implies necessity. God, he maintains, foresaw that this or this agent will voluntarily act in this or in that way. Augustine’s explanation, in my opinion, is not valid. The truth remains that if the individual does not act as God has foreknown, God’s foreknowledge fails. Since, this, according to Augustine’s own reasoning, cannot happen, God’s foreknowledge works as a sort of necessity. Augustine just refuses to accept that, under circumstances, the action cannot be totally free. For all this I firmly endorse Brachtendorf ’s argument according to which “in his intellectual development Augustine increasingly interprets freedom as conformity of the will with itself and thus leans more and more toward the compatibilistic notion of freedom without giving up completely, however, on libertarianism” (Brachtendorf, 2007, 222). 67 Stump, 2001, 142.

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available to repudiate the accusations. Predestination was one of them. His arguments on the relationship between free will and predestination ultimately came down to this: if God foreknew human actions, he also foreknew the free will of choice with which they would be performed. It is another attempt in his struggle to maintain that his teachings on divine grace and its effects upon the individual did not contradict nor annihilate human freedom. The arguments are simply not convincing. Augustine’s efforts were insufficient since he could not hide the obvious and inevitable conclusion to which his doctrine of grace leads: on account of its sinful nature inherited from Adam, mankind cannot but turn to sin; on account of the transformation of the grace of Christ, the elect, the ones called secundum propositum, cannot but wish to follow God’s path. In discussing the issue of necessitas peccandi in Augustine’s thought, it is obvious that one cannot avoid the Church Father’s discussion on the relationship between divine foreknowledge and human free will. The issue is far from being extensively discussed in the confrontation with Julian. It is a “localized” issue, discussed in detail only in book III De libero arbitrio and the book V of De civitate Dei and already abundantly studied68. This is not the place to provide a detailed account of Augustine’s position on the matter. For the present purpose, however, it is important to remind the reader of the main line of Augustine’s reasoning: he basically denied that not even God’s foreknowledge makes either sinful or virtuous action to be out out of any necessity, precisely because God foreknew that those who would perform either of those sort of acts would will to do so. Augustine, unlike Aristotle, believed in an omniscient and provident God, and unlike Cicero, he had not a slightest hesitation in maintaining the compatibility between divine foreknowledge and the existence of moral evil. For Augustine, the belief in the existence of God requires acknowledging his foreknowledge. This is why Augustine is particularly harsh on Cicero going to the point of saying that not even the supporters of astral fatality are so seriously mistaken, so to say, as he who, on account of an apertissima insania, simultaneously admits God’s existence while denying his foreknowledge69. Augustine tried to explain the compatibility between divine foreknowledge and the existence of moral evil by stressing the following: the fact that God foreknows our future sinful acts does not make them necessary. How is this to be understood? Is God not omniscient and doesn’t whatever He foreknows have to come pass? Besides, a foreknowledge that does not come to pass is not foreknowledge at all! Augustine’s line of argument is rather simple: it is true that God foreknows all that He causes, but He does not cause all that He foreknows. In this case, He foreknows our sins, He foreknows that humans will voluntarily sin, but 68 See, for instance, DeCelles, 1977; Reta, 1981; Craig, 1985, Kondoleon, 1987. 69 Reta, 1981, 33.

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He does not cause those sins70. His concern is to refute the inference according to which foreknowledge causes what is foreknown. If this inference would be correct, then God’s own acts would be out of necessity since He foreknows His own acts71. To understand this explanation of Augustine it is necessary to take into account his teachings on causality as he puts it in the De civitate Dei V, IX. Foreknowledge, Augustine explains, does not exclude free action, since among the created causes are included the free causes. Hence, according to Augustine, is understandable that God knows human’s future free actions. The same God who foreknows all the entire causes of things would certainly not fail to know human wills among them72. Here is the main line of Augustine’s thesis on the compatibility between divine foreknowledge and human free acts. Thus, foreknowledge, far from being incompatible with free will, actually serves to guarantee it. For since God foreknows our future acts of will these will come to pass as he foreknows them. He foreknows that these acts will be acts of our will and therefore within our power73.

The next question is: do all these arguments set the Augustinian reasoning on sin free from any sense of necessity? I think it does not. Two major details should be underlined here: first, much of the discussion both in Book II of lib. arb. and in the book V of civ. focuses on the pre-lapsarian condition of the first man (in lib. arb. Augustine is discussing the causes, not the consequences of Adam’s sin). In Book V of civ., Augustine’s discussion with Cicero is rather a philosophical debate in which the concept lying at the core of Augustine’s ethical theology – the concept of grace – does not seem to play its normal crucial role. The Augustinian doctrine of sin, I find is inspired by a strong sense of necessity and what is important to stress is that this sense of necessity is intentionally or unintentionally designed to serve the Church Father’s doctrine of salvation through the grace of Christ. Whatever scholars may say about Augustine’s approach on the relationship between sin and free will, one thing cannot be denied: according to Augustine, if grace is not present, one will have no other option than to desire, to wish to sin (which is sin per se) and bring the sinful wishes to concrete actions. Augustine may be right in claiming that grace does not deny human free will, 70 Reta, 1981, 38 – 40. 71 Craig, 1985, 49 – 50. 72 civ. V, IX, CSEL 40, 226, l. 5: “non est autem consequens, ut, si deo certus est omnium ordo causarum, ideo nihil sit in nostrae uoluntatis arbitrio. et ipsae quippe nostrae uoluntates in causarum ordine sunt, qui certus est deo eiusque praescientia continetur, quoniam et humanae uoluntates humanorum operum causae sunt; atque ita, qui omnes rerum causas praesciuit, profecto in eis causis etiam nostras uoluntates ignorare non potuit, quas nostrorum operum causas esse praesciuit”. 73 Craig, 1985, 52. see also Reta, 1981, 35

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but rather establishes it. However, if the presence/absence of grace is what ultimately determines the flourishing of either sin or virtue, then there is no way to deny that grace is the deterministic element of Augustine’s ethical theology74. Augustine struggles to inject willingness in the moral conduct of both the elect and the condemned, but every detail of his reasoning in this particular issue indicates that the dispensation of the divine grace ends up determining a necessary moral conduct from both elect and condemned/rejected. Moreover, the presence or absence of divine grace is what injects willingness, but the dispensation of divine grace does not depend in any way on humans. It depends on God’s attributes such as goodness (bonitas), justice (iustitia) and mercy (misericordia). Augustine argues that the divine foreknowledge cannot be pointed to, in the active sense, as causative of sin since only an evil will can bring about evil. God is good and it is pointless to blame Him for the evil in creation. It is evident, however, that the above-mentioned divine attributes, such as justice, mercy and goodness end up unfolding predestination and the criteria upon which predestination is unfolded are amply arbitrary : none deserves it, but some are predestined to salvation while others are not. Predestination is, then, a sort of an eternal lottery carried out by the arbitrary will of God. The predestined are the recipients of mercy : from the massa perditionis no one will ever attain union with God without God’s own prior salvific initiative75. The predestined enjoy God’s mercy. Augustine argues that it would be just even if God had decided to rescue no one from the massa perditionis. In this case, God would be only just, not merciful. While divine goodness is extended universally to every creature, and justice requires the punishment of every sin, the the divine mercy is not universally applied76. It is reserved for the predestined. God, not humans, is, then the ultimate cause of salvation. This becomes particularly clear in Augustine’s approach to the salvation and condemnation of little ones who have neither operative reason, nor free will or ability to acquire personal merits. It is to God’s mercy, goodness and justice that Augustine turns 74 Without grace, and being born under sin, the individual’s moral condition is predisposed to sin. Reading mature Augustine one is left with the impression that those who, following the impulses of concupiscence inherit from Adam and turn to sin, in fact will to do so, but because they are not bestowed with divine grace (they are the clay of dishonour), they have to want to. The same applies to those who are rescued from the condemnation mankind inherits from Adam. They wish to follow God’s paths. But, because they would not have such a wish unless divine grace had first transformed their wills (none is free to do good without the help of God), the intervention of divine grace ends up determining their choice. They will have to want to follow God’s path (though in the case of these rescued they are still in a struggle against sin). Thus, I think it is fair to say that the Original Sin in which all are bound to Adam, and the mysterious dispensation of divine grace are the two great bases of necessitas peccandi in Augustine. 75 Strand, 2001, 294 – 295. 76 Strand, 2001, 295.

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to explain why some are brought to salvation and other abandoned to eternal punishment. For Augustine, as it is known, attributes such as justice, goodness and mercy, when applied to God, simply mean God-essence. But in the way he applies the divine attributes in the salvation process, all this comes down to grace, especially the attribute of mercy. When God is merciful towards humans He is being gracious. It is God’s gracious mercy that ultimately decides the moral orientation of those predestined to salvation and of those excluded from it. This is to say that if God has mercy on an individual, the individual will turn to him and avoid sin. If He shows no mercy on an individual, then this latter has no other option but to wish to remain and, in fact, does remain in sin. Since this mercy is grace, I cannot but conclude that it is perfectly accurate to say that the necessitas peccandi in Augustine is shaped by the dispensation of the divine grace. If grace fails to be there, the occurrence of sin becomes a necessity. It may be, according to Augustine’s reasoning, a necessity of moral condition, which, as it has been said, does not exclude the sense of responsibility since the one who sins does it voluntarily. The truth, however, remains that, if not being given grace, the individual has no other option but to wish to sin77. The choice is a 77 In a brief study published in 1997 in the XXXIII volume of Studia Patristica, M. Lamberigts, approaching the criticisms (mainly those of Julian of Aeclanum) addressed to the Augustinian treatment of concupiscentia, recalls to his readers this fundamental detail of Augustine’s treatment of the relationship between Original Sin and human freedom: Augustine, Lamberigts rightly observes, maintained, even for fallen humanity, the “ever existing reality of human freedom. In Adam’s fall, humans lost the theological libertas boni, but not the liberum arbitrium. All humans, though with a compromised libertas, come to this world with liberum arbitrium. “This congenital, non-forfeitable and unchangeable will belongs to the very essence of human beings”. “Augustine, Lamberigts goes on to say, defended his own position on this point so often that it appears rather strange when one reads that the bishop of Hippo considered free will to have been completely lost due to the fall” (see Lamberigts, 1997, 154 – 155). It is unquestionably true that Augustine does not teach free will to be lost on account of Original Sin. To make this plain it would suffice to recall that the bishop of Hippo himself never gave up the idea that sin cannot occur unless through the use of free will. However, the way Augustine approaches free will in humans under grace and humans outside God’s grace is completely different. It has been said that for those outside grace, not being bestowed with the Spirit of love, their free will, according to Augustine, is definitely onesided. It only serves to sin. If for human sub gratia the impulses of concupiscentia even serve for them as challenge in the growth as believers, for those outside grace, they have no choice but to voluntarily follow the concupiscentia carnis. Once again, it is the gifts of grace, which includes the spirit of love for good, that draw the line between following virtue or sin. Those outside grace, do, in fact have free will, but, when it comes to the choice of good it is as if they did not, since their free will is useless for that. Their choice if it cannot be paradoxically called a “coerced choice”, it is, fair to say it is the only possible choice. Under such circumstance, one cannot but ask, does a choice really take place here? The choice may exist here and it even may be willingly made as any other, but this does not mean it is not intrinsically determined by an exterior force which controls it. In the case of virtue, this force is grace, in the case of a sinful act this force is the absence of grace, since it is grace alone which determines whether the individual struggles or not against concupiscence of the flesh, i. e. this strong trend to sin

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willing one, since it is what the individual, indeed, wants; but it is also the only and the necessary choice. Being sinful by birth (on account of Original Sin) if grace is not given to him, the individual is simply uni-directional i. e. only tends towards sin. Any different orientation on his will, according to Augustine’s reasoning, is nothing else but the intervention of divine grace. Augustine pointed the reality of divine grace as the great argument against accusations of determinism he faced. Some of his contemporary interpreters tend to agree with him. An accurate analysis of the relationship between Augustine’s understanding of divine dispensation of grace and his theological ethics would reveal that the notion of grace in Augustine, turns out paradoxically, to be the great source of the undeniable determinism inherent in his soteriological discourse as a whole.

3.3.2 Natura vitiata and free will. The loss of libertas It will be helpful now to focus on the relationship between the corruption of human nature on account of Original Sin and the Augustinian approach to the abilities of human free will to avoid sin. I have mentioned how strongly Augustine stresses the voluntary nature of moral evil. This emphasis has a specific goal which is to prove the justice of the punishments the sinful act brings upon humankind. The punishments of sin are visible in many ways. One of the ways Augustine focuses on is the degradation of human nature. He maintains that in the aftermath of Adam’s first sin (which is human nature’s sin) mankind started having a sort of second nature (secunda natura). The names for this secunda natura throughout Augustine’s writings are very heavy : natura corrupta, natura deprauata and natura uitiata are amongst the most recurrent ones. The importance Augustine ascribes to this secunda natura is crucial not only to understand his doctrine of grace and Original Sin, but also the contours of necessitas peccandi. Adam, Augustine insists, was created with full freedom of choice, he had no blocking force pending over his will. His sin, however, changed the condition of the entire humankind, i. e. when he sinned by his own will, he catapulted his entire descendants into the necessity of sin. Thus, there can be no doubt that it is the moral condition of the post-lapsarian humankind, that is one of the main ingredients of Augustine’s teaching on necessitas peccandi. What is important, and I will try to make it clear, is the fact Augustine is careful in his we all carry with us. Thus, I reiterate my opinion: Augustine’s doctrine of free will is ultimately obfuscated by a highly deterministic reality – the divine dispensation of grace. The Augustinian portrayal of the divine grace is the greatest source of his highly deterministic theological ethics. According to Augustine, human free is a reality, but a reality beyond human control. In practical terms, this is to say this “free will” is not free.

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approach to the sort of necessity under which sin occurs78. It is the features of this second nature that, ultimately, explains why disordered desires and ignorance come from ourselves and against ourselves as a perfectly retribution because of our disobedience, as Augustine clearly explains in De nuptiis et concupiscentia II, IX, 22. The wall of separation between Augustine and Julian rises right here. The heavy price of Adam’s sin which Augustine claims humans have to pay, is something which Julian rejects. It is, according to Julian, absurd to maintain that the sin of one man could infect the entire human race and imply such ontological impoverishment as Augustine maintained. Julian tends to follow the Pelagian notion of baptism and confront Augustine with the teaching that in baptism the whole person is cleansed. So the baptized persons do not have sinful children. More: the disagreement deepens even further from the fact that Julian argues that concupiscence is not sin since it existed as one of the original senses before the Fall79. The two bishops simply could not agree on this. BARCLIFT is totally right when observing that “everything in Julian’s Philosophy and specifically his argument against Augustine’s doctrine of original sin hangs on his understanding of the inherent goodness of nature”80. It was, in fact, the bonum naturae of the post-lapsarian condition of human being that was the main stone on the wall separating Augustine from Julian; it constitutes the very leitmotiv of the whole controversy between them. The profound divergences between two bishops on issues such as God’s creative activity, concupiscence, grace, human free will and its capabilities, the baptism of infants, etc., gravitate around their fundamental divergences regarding the post-lapsarian human nature81. In other words, it is the theological meaning/scope each one ascribes to the Adamic sin that ultimately determines their understanding of human nature. Like Pelagius, Julian tended to stress that human beings received from God the posse which is itself a grace. This detail is of crucial importance to understand central theological issues in Julian such as the nature of grace, the meaning and purpose of infant baptism and the nature and capabilities of human free will. The first grace, he maintained, is the grace of creation in which the most valuable gift of free will is included. Hence Julian’s lapidary statement in Ad Florum I, 78 on what human free will is and in what it consists: “libertas arbitrii, qua a deo 78 Augustine vehemently rejects linking absolute necessity to the sinful acts. But he clearly links the necessity of moral conditions to it. For a detailed study on the matter, namely the distinction between the two sort of necessities, see, Alflatt, 1974 and Djuth, 1993, 1999, and 2000. 79 , 1996, 99. 80 Barclift, 1991, 6. 81 Lamberigts, 1990, 373 ff.

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emancipatus homo est, in ammittendi peccati et abstinendi a peccato possibilitate consistit”82. The fact that the gift of free will is here defined as grace and, above all, intimately connected to the idea of emancipatio is, obviously, not a coincidence. The grace of abstaining from sin is provided to human beings at their very creation since they are created good and when they receive from God the discernment which allow them (when they reach the age of reason) to decide whether they follow the divine paths or not. What humans are naturally they are thanks to God, the Creator. The divine grace inherent in the creation itself is also the detail that led Julian to make a few points of clarification on the need of graceand the meaning and purpose of infant baptism. He often defended himself against Augustine’s accusation according to which his theology is an affront to divine grace. Divine grace, namely the grace of baptism, Julian stresses, is necessary to all ages (“nos igitur in tantum gratiam baptismatis omnibus utilem aetatibus confitemur, ut cunctos, qui illam non necessariam etiam paruulis putant, aeterno feriamus anathemate”)83. For Julian, however, this was not the point. According to the bishop of Aeclanum, among its many weak points, as he saw it, Augustine’s doctrine of grace ended up undermining the very grace of creation. It is true that the grace of baptism is endowed with amazing powers and many gifts; it radically transforms whoever it is provided with it84. But this, Julian argues, should not eclipse the grace inherent in the creation itself85. Christ who is the redeemer of those he has made, Julian explained, made them even better by renewing and adopting them. This is precisely what the grace of baptism is about. Infants are good, but baptism represents their “adoption as children of God, citizenship in the heavenly Jerusalem, sanctification, transformation into members of Christ and possession of the kingdom of heaven” (“adoptio filiorum dei, municipatus hierusalem caelestis, sanctificatio atque in 82 83 84 85

Ad Florum I, 78, CSEL 85/1, 93, l. 7. Ad Florum I, 53, CSEL 85/1, 48, l. 12. Ad Florum I, 53 It is perfectly clear that, unlike Augustine, Julian does not conceive nature and grace as two opposite or divergent realities. The main feature of Julian’s theology of creation is, as a matter of fact, a sort of identification or fusion between grace and nature. The first expression of grace is the goodness of the created nature. Thus, according to Julian, he who maintains that nature is evil is forced to deny grace. The two realities are so united to the point that, according to Julian, to praise nature is to acknowledge grace and to condemn nature is to deny grace: “[…] qui malam confirmat hominum naturam, gratiam negare compellitur, quod ita recurrit, ut, qui gratiam confirmat, hominum laudet naturam, cuius saluti eam intellegit fuisse prouisam. […] non adhaerere negationem gratiae laudi humanae naturae, quin immo haec quattuor ita esse coniuncta, ut alterum sine altero teneri nequeat, sed infamia naturae pariat negationem gratiae et laus gratiae pariat praedicationem naturae; ista enim in quamuis sibi partem reciprocari possunt”. Ad Florum. III, 188 – 189, CSEL 85/1, 491 – 493, l. 35.

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christi membra translatio et possessio regni caelorum mortalibus datur, qui aliquibus negandam putat, omnium bonorum exsecrationem meretur”)86. In other words: in baptism sinners are, in fact, transformed from evil to completely good (perfecte bonum), but infants who have no evil from their own will (it is never too much to remind the reader that Julian unlike Augustine, denied that infants share Adam’s sin) are only transformed from good to better, i. e. to the their very best (“ex bono fieri meliorem, id est optimum”)87, to use Julian’s own words. In infants, even unbpaptized ones, there is evident the grace of creation. On the relationship between Original Sin and human free will, in his confrontation with Augustine, Julian adopted a very persuasive strategy. He laid a special stress on a sharp definition of concepts and the mutual and dialectical relationship between them in order to refute his opponent. This is especially clear concerning the concepts of sin, free will, God’s righteousness and grace. Based on the relationship between these concepts, Julian inferred axiomatic statements among which the following one is to be emphasised: God’s is unquestionably just, thus His judgement necessarily implies human freedom88. Only freedom of choice eliminates the idea of necessity in light of which no one can possibly be either good or evil89. Moreover, like Pelagius, Julian was convinced that some fundamental teachings with which Augustine was shaping his anti-Pelagian campaign were simply in contradiction with the Church Father’s early teachings. The Italian prelate, was aware, for instance, that his own definition of sin was in perfect harmony with that which Augustine had adopted and stood for during his anti-Manichean struggles. Julian used this detail to exhaustion to maintain the absurdity of an inherited sin, i. e. the presence of Original Sin in the new-born infants and to deny the ethical and soteriological implications of Augustine’s doctrine of remaining concupiscence. What determined Julian’s approach to concupiscence was the idea of God as a good and just Creator. Having God as Creator, human beings are good. Only a Manichee teaches Original Sin since teaching Original Sin is nothing more than teaching the existence of a sin which does not occur through the use of free will and, above all, identifies sin with nature, condemning it, as an evil, the work of God. If nature proceeds from God, there can be no natural evil (“si natura per

86 87 88 89

Ad Florum I, 53, CSEL 85/1, 49, l. 1. See also III, 151. Ad Florum, I, 54. Ad Florum I, 82 Ad Florum I, 84, CSEL 85/1, 97, l. 1: “si ergo est, ut ratio prodidit, arbitrii libertas propulsatrix necessitatum, ut nemo sit uel bonus uel malus, cui non sit liberum esse contrarium, quemadmodum tu aut confessus es liberum arbitrium usurus tali testimonio, quod captiuis conuenit, aut tale testimonium subdidisti, postquam liberum fueras confessus arbitrium”?

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deum est, non potest in ea esse originale malum”)90. For Julian, no one is evil due to the origin. There is no natural evil since God cannot create guilty human beings. This would be an affront to God’s justice and love. Talking about male naturale is, thus, a profound impiety. The presence of sin in infants, Julian argued, would certainly hinder God’s justice and goodness. They are God’s creation. So are their souls. Every sin is situated on the level of the soul. If they have Original Sin, it is present in the soul, God’s creation. In other words, God’s goodness and justice exclude the preexistence of sin on the level of creation. God does not create guilty human beings (this is the great basis of Julian’s opposition to Augustine’s doctrine of Original Sin)91 since if this would be the case, the guilt would belong to no one else but God. Julian’s main line of defence in his argument on the relationship between Original Sin and and human free will can be said to come down to this rather basic principle: no will, no sin92. Julian had Augustine’s own theological past providing him with support in this. It is well known that Augustine’s opposition to the Manichean deterministic approach to sin, resulted in a remarkable emphasis on the capability of the human free will, in relation to which, the anti-Pelagian Augustine would reveal himself more reserved. Against Manichean determinism, Augustine had pointed out the free choice of will as the sine qua non condition for the occurrence of sin. Though he never said it explicitly, the practical outcome of his later emphasis on the fall of human nature suggests that he admits sin can take place, especially regarding the righteous ones, without the willing movement of human will. Though he continued to define sin as an act of will, a great difference is to be pointed out in Augustine’s mature approach on the relationship between sin and free will: he stressed the depraved, corrupt, misguided will on account of the lex peccati in human being resulting from the Adamic sin. It was Augustine’s denial of the deterministic status of sin, on the one hand, and the weakness of the human will, on the other hand, that Julian exploited to refute Original Sin. He made use of Augustine’s own definition of sin provided in De duabus animabus 11, 5, (where sin is defined as “the will to do or to keep that what justice forbids and from which one is free to hold back) to refute his doctrine of Original Sin. He points out that according to his opponent’s own definition of sin, Original Sin cannot exist93. Augustine’s definition of sin, Julian 90 c. Jul. III, 24, 56, PL 44, 731. 91 Lamberigts, 2008c, 248 – 249. 92 Ad Florum I, 60, CSEL 85/1, 57, l. 1: “nihil est peccati in homine, si nihil est propriae uoluntatis uel assensionis; hoc mihi hominum genus, quod uel leuiter sapit, sine dubitatione consentit. tu autem concedis nihil fuisse in paruulis propriae uoluntatis; non ego, sed ratio concludit: nihil igitur in eis esse peccati”. 93 Ad Florum I, 44, CSEL 85/1, 31 – 32, l. 5: “in eo igitur libro, cui titulus est uel de duabus

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maintained, agrees with several passages of the Scriptures. Julian regarded Augustine’s early definition of sin as perfect (“o lucens aurum in stercore. quid uerius, quid plenius dici a quoquam uelut orthodoxo potuisset? peccatum est, inquis, uoluntas ammittendi uel retinendi, quod iustitia uetat et unde liberum est abstinere”)94. In fact, the definition of sin here presented by Augustine is very suitable for Julian’s denial of Original Sin, at least, as taught by Augustine. It is obvious that what makes Julian stress the accuracy of the Augustinian definition of sin provided in duab. an. 11, 5 is the emphasis on the free will, the very ingredient the alleged Original Sin lacks. Sin lies in nothing but will and takes its genus or origin from its own desire. Its species is found in each of those who are called individuals. Sin is, then, nothing else than the will departing from the path on which it ought to stay and from which one is free not to turn aside. It arises from the desire for forbidden things, and it never exists except in the person who both has a bad will and could be without it95. The equation then is very easy : if there is no sin without will and there is no will where there is no full freedom, there is no freedom where there is no faculty of choice through reason. Then, it is obvious that sin cannot be found in little ones who do not have use of reason. So little ones do not have the faculty of choosing. They do not have will. All this is beyond discussion, Julian claims, there is no sin at all in the little ones96. animabus uel contra duas animas, ita loqueris: expecta, sine prius peccatum definiamus. peccatum est uoluntas ammittendi uel retinendi, quod iustitia uetat et unde liberum est abstinere. quamquam si liberum non est, nec uoluntas dici potest; sed malui grossius quam scrupulosius definire”. 94 Ad Florum I, 45, CSEL 85/1, 32, l. 17. See also Ad Florum I, 47, CSEL 85/1, 33, l. 10 and Julian’s argument in Ad Florum V, 28. Here he claims that Augustine’s definition of sin in duab. an. 11, 15 concurs with God’s equity since justice does not impute something as sin unless one is free to hold back. Something is said to be free only if it was placed in the possession of an emancipated will, without any unavoidable coercion from natural factors. Then, to the question where does sin come from, the very definition of sin is an answer : from the free will of one who commits it: “Non ergo imputat iustitia in peccatum nisi unde liberum est abstinere. Liberum autem dici non potest nisi quod sine aliquo inevitabili naturalium coactu in iure emancipatae constiterit voluntatis. Optime ergo est finitum aqtque plene: “Peccatum est voluntas faciendi quod iustitia vetat et unde liberum est abstinere”. His ergo partibus absolutis quaeratur, unde sit quod perturbantissime ante has definitiones fuerat inquisitum. Unde est ergo peccatum? Respondeo: de libera voluntate facientis”. Ad Florum V, 28, CSEL 85/2, 224, l. 17. 95 Ad Florum I, 47, CSEL 85/1, 33 – 34, l. 12: “hoc ergo peccatum, quod claruit nihil esse praeter uoluntatem, constat genus id est ipsam originem ab appetitu proprio suscepisse. […] est ergo peccatum, quia si non esset, nec tu sequereris errores; nihil est autem aliud praeter uoluntatem excedentem ab eo calle, cui debet insistere et unde liberum est non deflectere. fit autem de appetitu inconcessorum et nusquam est nisi in eo homine, qui et habuit uoluntatem malam et potuit non habere”. 96 Ad Florum I, 48, CSEL 85/1 36, l. 6: “ostende ergo haec duo in paruulis posse constare: si nullum est sine uoluntate peccatum, si nulla uoluntas, ubi non est explicata libertas, si non est libertas, ubi non est facultas per rationem electionis, quo monstro peccatum in infantibus

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Briefly, Julian is convinced that the Augustinian doctrine of Original Sin is incompatible with the Biblical doctrine of creation in which the entire creation is presented as being good. Adam’s first sin is a sin among others97; it did not change human nature. The original integrity of nature was not defiled by Adam’s sin. After all, Julian asks, what did Adam’s first sin have of special or extraordinary nature to the point that it could overthrow God’s own creation (“Quid ergo novum, quid ergo insperatum delinquente homine accidit, per quod Dei instituta corruerent”?)98. Julian’s tendency to minimize Adam’s first sin was considered by Augustine as outrageous. He simply could not accept it. Julian’s praiseworthy approach to the human nature in its both ante and post peccatum stages was, to Augustine’s eyes, a deliberate attack on God’s grace. Julian’s accusations against Augustine are of many kinds, but the Church Father was quick in his reactions. As for the statement according to which one cannot speak of an inherited sin since for sin of any sort to take place it must be through the use of free will, Augustine does not deny the definition of sin he himself had maintained against the Manichees; he just tries to make a point of clarification. The sin inherited from Adam does not belong to the definition of sin that he had provided in that treatise; such a definition of sin is not to be applied to the concept of sin in its fullness, which agglomerates three different situations – simpliciter peccatum i. e. sin, tout court, so to say ; sin as punishment of sin, and sin which is both sin and punishment of sin99. Though the content of the disputation in duab. an. provided no sign suggesting that Augustine had Original Sin in mind when he defined sin in 11, 5, the Church Father now insisted that the very same definition was to be elaborated having in mind Adam’s first sin only, since it is only applicable to the period when humans faced no contrary law, i. e. concupiscentia carnis. In other words: the sin that Adam’s descendants inherit does not belong to that kind of sin which consists in the will to do an evil from which one is free to hold back. Otherwise it would not be present in the infants without free will of choice. Adam’s first sin, that primal sin, Augustine insisted, is different for the fact inuenitur, qui rationis usum non habent, igitur nec eligendi facultatem ac per hoc nec uoluntatem atque his irrefutabiliter concessis nec aliquod omnino peccatum”? 97 c. Jul. imp. VI, 23, CSEL 85/2, 374, l. 12: “Admissa est praevaricatio una de ceteris, quas diversis temporibus peccantium studia perpetrarunt; num fuit amplius quam cum popolus Israhelis interdictis utebatur animalibus. Causa enim. Causa enim peccati haud in qualitate pomi erat, sed in transgressione mandati. Quid ergo tale fecit ut peccatum eius exisse supra aestimationem hominum crimineris?”. 98 c. Jul. imp. VI, 11, CSEL 85/2, 314, l. 30. 99 c. Jul. imp. I, 44, CSEL 85/1, 32, l. 12: “hic peccatum definitum est, quod tantummodo peccatum est, non quod etiam poena peccati; de hoc quippe agendum fuit, quando mali origo quaerebatur, quale commissum est a primo homine ante omne hominis malum”.

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that Adam sinned because he willed to sin. Original Sin, however, when it means the inherited sin present in Adam’s descendants, is something else. The infants contract it without will of their own, and it is on account of this sinful pathology that all are born with their human nature in a state of disorder, the ultimate explanation for the necessitas peccandi in this earthly life100. The primitive sin thus happened under very special circumstance, a circumstance that does not become repeated. So it is unknown to any of Adam’s progeny. Hence the already mentioned Augustinian distinction between (1) sin that is simply sin; (2) sin that is the penalty of sin; and (3) that sin which is both sin and punishment of sin (including also that sort of evil that one does not do but suffers). Adam’s sin is merely sin, but on account of his sin he passed into his descendant a sinful trend which is both sin and punishment of sin101. The inherited sin, then, also does not belong to that kind of sin that is merely punishment of sin. It belongs to a third kind in which there is sin which is itself also the punishment of sin. Thus a perfect example of sin as the will to do what justices forbids and one is free to hold back is what occurred for the first time with Adam since only Adam was truly free to hold back from that great sin he committed. Only the first couple enjoyed an unrestricted free will. Their descendants would have enjoyed the same kind of free will if Original Sin had not occurred102. The Apostle’s words in Rom. 7:14 – 25 do not apply to humans in the pre-lapsarian condition. In other words, one of most significant implications of Adam’s sin was the fact that it deeply compromised human libertas, that capacity of remaining in good. It opened an era where the rule of self is the one which tends to be imposed. This fact is of crucial importance since, regarding the

100 c. Jul. imp. V, 40, CSEL 85/2, 241, l. 41: “Qui enim propterea peccavit, quia voluit, potuit et nolle peccare, et ita homo creatus est, ut nolle posset et velle et quodlibet horum haberet in potestate. Sed aliud est originale peccatum, quod etsi trahunt sine propria voluntate nascentes, per voluntatem tamen primi hominis ipsa est origo vitiata, sicut alliud est etiam in maiore homine propter quod dicit: Non enim quod volo facio bonum, sed quod nolo malum hoc ago; nec tamen etiam ista necessitas insanabilis est ei cui dicitur : De necessitatibus meis erue me”. 101 c. Jul. imp. IV, 34 102 c. Jul. imp. I, 47, 1 – 2, CSEL 85/1, 34 – 35, l. 30: “ipse est adam, quem nostra illa definitio, quae tibi placuit, intuebatur, cum dicerem: peccatum est uoluntas retinendi uel consequendi, quod iustitia uetat et unde liberum est abstinere. adam quippe omnino, quando peccauit, nihil in se habebat mali, quo nolens urgeretur ad operandum malum et propter quod diceret: non quod uolo facio bonum, sed quod nolo malum hoc ago; ac per hoc id egit peccando, quod iustitia uetabat et unde liberum illi fuerat abstinere. nam ei qui dicit: quod nolo malum hoc ago, abstinere inde liberum non est. […] primi generis in adam sine ullo modo quaestionis occurrit. multa quippe sunt, quae agunt homines mala, a quibus eis liberum est abstinere; sed nulli tam liberum est quam illi fuit, qui deo suo, a quo erat conditus rectus, nullo prorsus uitio deprauatus adstabat”.

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relationship between sin and free will, what distinguishes Augustine’s reasoning from Julian is the notion of fall and its implications. In his confrontation with Julian, Augustine discussed more the corruption of human nature on account of Original Sin than almost any other issue. It is the corruption of the nature, not its integrity that Augustine is focused on. The corruption of human nature, as it has been said, immediately calls for the presence of a concept central to Augustine’s theology – order. In this case, absence of order in the will. Concupiscentia and libido were the two most current terms used by Augustine to approach the disorder in the will103. Concupiscentia is a key-term in Augustine’s debate with Julian on the condition of fallen humankind and Augustine’s emphasis on the non-sensual side of concupiscence is not to be neglected. Concupiscentia was, as Timo NISULA puts it, “unlike any other reoccurring emotion or temptation in that it signifies and points, with interpretable cognitive contents, to relationship of God and humanity in its ideal and fallen state. Due to its growing importance in mirroring divine retributive justice, concupiscentia had achieved a role as natural theological evidence; concupiscentia is theology carved in flesh, so to speak”104.

Concupiscentia is called sin for a twofold reason: it was produced by the guilt of the first couple and it tries to draw humans towards sin through its rebellion. For Augustine, the corruption of human nature is above all a moral disorder resulting from the condition mankind inherited from Adam. Adam’s descendants are born under the dominion of concupiscentia, i.e weakness and proneness to sin. Accordingly their heart will be deviated from God’s path under the influence of that mundana cupiditas fuelling that love of self that goes to the point of mistreating God105, making of it the very guidance for their behaviour. So, 103 Both expressions are not free from sexual connotation in Augustine. As Gerald Bonner explains, “when used to describe sexual desire […] the two words are virtually interchangeable” (Bonner, 1962, 304). But the meaning of none of them is confined to sexual lust. Augustine speaks of a sort of libido which hardly has to do with sexual desire, such as libido dominandi, the lust for power. He also speaks of many kinds of concupiscence, not only concupiscentia carnis, but some positive sort of concupiscence such as desire for wisdom. The positive sort of concupiscence he normally identifies with concupiscentia Spiritus. For a good discussion on the use of the terms concupiscentia and libido in Augustine, see Bonner, 1962. 104 Nisula, 2010, 107. 105 civ. XIV, 28. Augustine and Julian, it is evident, had a very different understanding of the nature of concupiscence. Augustine debated with Julian, always convinced that his Italian interlocutor overestimated and foolishly praised concupiscence, to which he often referred as Julian’s “prot¦g¦”. Julian had, in fact, a positive attitude towards concupiscence of the flesh and he presented to his readers several reasons why he assumed such an attitude: concupiscence, he argues, belongs to every human being’s nature and is God’s creation, hence unquestionably good. This detail is important since it brings the debaters to the crucial issue of Christology, namely the true nature of Christ. Julian even accuses Augustine

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corruption of human nature is essentially the installation of a moral disorder in human faculties, which defines the very contrary condition under which humankind was created. It is this moral disorder that defines homo incurvatus in se. Hence Augustine’s insistence upon the servitude of the will! It is this strong sense of disorder planted by sin in human nature that fuels one of the central meanings Augustine ascribes to the idea of necessitas peccandi – that of the postlapsarian human moral condition106. On account of the fall, on account of the great disorder initiated in the human body, the discordia spiritus carnis, humans are under slavery of sin and living in sin, or away from it is now much more complex than a simple act of human will. Augustine maintains that free will (the unconditional ability to rightly act), in fact, came under captivity when Adam’s misused it. Rom. 7:19 was constantly quoted by Augustine as the scriptural proof of this sad fact. In those words, Augustine insisted, it is clearly seen that free choice was damaged by its bad use, since, before that sin through which Adam made bad use of free choice, when he, in fact could, in the happiness of the paradise, with a great facility, stand in God’s presence by acting rightly, the words of Rom. 7:19 (and all those of Rom. 7:14 – 25) would never make any sense107. Here one is, once again, brought to the Augustinian endeavour to distinguish the absolute necessity and the necessity of moral condition and to his belief according to which, in the necessity of moral condition, the necessary and the voluntary are perfectly compatible. It is based on the distinction between necessity of moral condition and absolute necessity that Augustine struggled to of maintaining an Apollinarian view of Christ. Julian argues that if one denies Christ had concupiscentia carnis, then Christ cannot truly be regarded as a human, He has somewhat a nature which is not human and we are naturally handicapped. His own resurrection then can no longer be the guarantee for our own. More: if concupiscence is to be linked, as Augustine does, with necessitas peccandi, it implies Christ cannot be regarded as our ethical model. Concupiscence is also the necessary prerequisite for sexual intercourse, without it any intercourse would be impossible. No intercourse means no children and God’s command in order for humans to be fruitful and multiply would be seriously compromised. The condemnation of concupiscence means the condemnation of marriage and questions the very goodness of creation. Augustine, it is hardly necessary to say, vehemently opposed to these statements and his writings addressed against Julian is flooded with his reply against Julian’s positive attitude towards concupiscence. For a good survey, see Dewart, 1982 and Lamberigts, 2005, esp. 167sqq. 106 Marianne Djuth explains that the meanings Augustine ascribes to the term necessity can be divided in four categories: absolute necessity ; necessity of moral condition; necessity of consanguinity or social relationship and necessity associated with various forms of constraint or lawlike activity such as the necessity of obligation, grammatical or metrical necessity, etc. Djuth, 2000, 196 – 197. 107 c. Jul. imp. VI, 13, CSEL 85/2, 322, l. 15: “Non quod volo facio bonum, sed quod nolo malum hoc ago. In quibus verbis evidenter apparet liberum arbitrium malo suo usu esse vitiatum. Non enim ante peccatum, quo male usus est homo libero arbitrio, in illa paradisi felicitate et ad bene agendum magna facilitate constitutus posset hoc dicere”.

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convince Pelagians of the possibility of reconciliation between the necessary and the voluntary. Julian was well aware of Augustine’s early approach to the issue of sin and free will. Augustine’s attempt to state the conciliation between the voluntary and the necessary, Julian considered as new in even in the Church Father’s own theology. It was a sort of step back in his theological development. Augustine saw it the other way around. It was rather a progress in his theological reasoning. When it comes to the necessity of moral condition, it is important to stress that Augustine was careful to distinguish the attitudeof man under grace and man under the law. The first does not will sin but still commits it, the second, on the other hand, delights in sin108. It is in the relationship between concupiscence and will that the notion of involuntary sin finds its basis. In the case of humans under grace, concupiscence imposes itself, so to say, on those who do not want it, and thus proves to be nothing else than the punishment for that primitive disobedience (illius priscae inoboedentiae poenam)109. Concupiscence, still active in man under grace, though not itself sin stricto sensu, cannot only be said to “do” evil when it does conquer the will, but can also by force or deception overcome the will and cause man to sin. It is this activity of concupiscence, ALFLATT stresses, that can be called “involuntary sin”110. This involuntary sin is determined by the moral condition of the fallen human being whose libertas, the capacity of remaining in good, has been long compromised, ever since Adam committed his first transgression and inaugurated the era of self-love, replacing the love of God. The human being under grace struggles to avoid sin. He commits sin against his will, on account of his moral condition, but this, according to Augustine, does not eliminate his personal responsibility in the sinful act. Since he commits sin unwillingly and his intention is actually to keep God’s commands, i. e. to avoid sin, he continually asks for forgiveness. The mature Augustine, as it is known, does not understand virtus as a capability possessed only by few and which requires constant exercises, as, for instance, Cicero holds. For Augustine what defines a virtuous action are the motivation, goal, ultimately, the intention behind the act itself. No action is virtuous if its driving force happens to be anything but love. But this, love, Augustine insists, is given to the one who acts. Accordingly, virtus, as Augustine understand it, is a gift of God’s grace and 108 Alflatt, 1975, 174: “Augustine did not suggest, of course, that man under grace never resisted evil and never did good. Rather, he was recognising the fact pointed by Paul’s words that such a man would sometimes, on the one hand, fail to do the good he willed, and, on the other hand, do wrong despite willing not to do so. Even though man under grace willed to do good, somehow it was the the case that he could not remain entirely free from sin”. 109 Contra duas ep. Pel. I, XVII, 35 110 Alflatt, 1975, 177.

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powered by love that seeks the glory of God alone. What defines a virtuous act is one’s inner intention to live correctly rather than the visible external acts111. Augustine’s ethics is, then, as M. ALFLATT remarkably observes, to be linked with an ethics of intention. What differentiates the sin of a human being under grace and another who is outside grace is, ultimately, the intention. The first intends to avoid sin, but still sins, the second sins and takes delight in it. Both, however, are responsible for their sins. Augustine insisted in the connection between moral evil (sin), and free will, for he saw clearly that “to sever the connection would be to destroy the nerve of moral responsibility. It was to defend this same point that he also insisted that the sinfulness of an act was determined not by the consequences of that act but by the intention of the agent committing it […]”112. Accordingly a crucial issue to understand the notion of involuntary sin in Augustine is the solidarity that bonds the whole mankind to Adam. ALFLATT’s conclusions on this matter may be useful here: If the individual was to be held responsible – he writes – for the condition into which he was born, this notion of solidarity was essential to Augustine’s thought. Only on this basis could the sinful tendencies present in all men, and the original sin with which all men are born, both of which were for Augustine observable facts, be ascribed to the responsibility of the individual himself. Further, this idea, Augustine believed, clearly supported by the words of Paul in Romans 5, 12 […]. Thus Augustine could hold that not only did all men have a certain solidarity with Adam, but also shared in the responsibility for Adam’s sin. […] By virtue of his own sin in Adam the individual has contributed to his own diminished capability and thus remains fully responsible for the acts arising from that condition. The individual is never to be held responsible simply as an individual, but always as a member of the race existing in solidarity with Adam113.

3.3.3 The crucial role of Romans 7:14 – 25 Crucial to an understanding of Augustine’s approach to the necessitas pecandi, is his reading of Rom. 7:14 – 25, though the importance of Gal. 5:17 should not be neglected here. The notions of ignorantia and difficultas (the acratic feature of not having the powers to resist “lustful deeds”), very important to understanding the issue of necessitas peccandi in Augustine are forged by the Church 111 Johnson, 1975, 121 – 122. 112 Alflatt, 1975, 178. The author notes, however : “[…] Augustine’s ethic was an ethic of intention in a special sense. It can be called an ethic of intention in the proper sense only in the case of Adam, and in the case of a fully regenerate man restored to perfect knowledge and freedom (that is, to no-one in this life). For the rest, all men commit sins sometimes without any intention as an individual, the sinful nature of the act resting ultimately upon the intention of Adam”. p. 185 113 Alflatt1975, 180 – 181.

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Father in his reading of these passages114. Ignorance and difficulty, these barriers to our moral integrity before God and neighbours, or the inability for doing what one knows to be right, are perfectly integrated in the punitive nature of Original Sin. They have a clear origin – the primitive sin of Adam115. With all these Augustine is able to conclude that there is a significant qualitative difference between the human will in the pre and post-lapsarian conditions of humankind. Only in Adam and Eve (before they committed sin) was the will properly free, and therefore capable of making free choices between good and evil116. Without any surprise Augustine regards Rom. 7:14 – 25 as the ideal Biblical source on which to base. It is important to focus on Augustine’s exegesis of this passage in order to understand his approach to the necessitas peccandi. The words of Apostle Paul in these verses are certainly amongst the most polemical of the entire Pauline corpus. It is a controversial passage that has been used by influential theologians to support some of their central theological claims. There can be no doubt that this passage is the great scriptural basis for Augustine’s doctrine of concupiscence remaining in the justified sinner, a decisive detail of the Church Father’s anthropology. Without any surprise one notices that this very same passage is the one upon which Martin Luther relies the most to back his famous doctrine of simul iustus et peccator. Up to the confrontation with Julian, Augustine’s exegesis of Rom. 7:14 – 25 is, at least, shaky. I think there is no use going over an issue already so well discussed by others117. What is worthy stressing is that even at the end of his life Augustine still talked about a “probable” interpretation of those verses, namely in his debate ad intra ecclesia (this, if Julian is to be considered a Pelagian and Pelagianism considered an heretical movement outside the Church). Scholars have been debating the development of the Church Father’s reading of Rom. 7. Finding a consensus is difficult. Does Augustine take the verses as referring to Paul Himself ? If so, has he always adopted such interpretation? If not, since when did he start doing so? According to Augustine, is Paul talking of his former experience as a Jew (sub lege) or is he rather reporting the experiences of his 114 Nisula, 2010, 68 115 These hurdles on the way are then just punishments inflicted by God on humankind and are to be traced to Adam’s sin, which turns out to be mankind’s. As Nisula explains, “Augustine has effectively affirmed that Adam was responsible for the first voluntary sin and was the one who caused the punitive conditions of ignorantia, and difficultas for humankind. The person of Adam and his radically extended identity, touching all individual souls, therefore enables Augustine to suggest that our punishments (concupiscentia, ignorantia, difficultas) involve some kind of a personal commitment, although in a transferred sense, and can thus be called sins”. Nisula, 2010, 71. 116 Nisula, 2010, 70. 117 See, for instance, Berrouard, 1981 and Van Fleteren, 2001.

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Christian combat, i. e. as a person sub gratia? Does he think Paul is talking exclusively of himself or rather of himself as symbol of those committed to struggle against the lust of the flesh? One thing seems clear to me: Augustine’s approach to these issues changes almost constantly. Frederick VAN FLETEREN points the year 396 as the terminus post quem for Augustine’s change of mind on Romans 7 and the terminus ante quem as late as the year 421, namely in Contra duas epistulas Pelagianorum118. VAN FLETEREN’s analysis may be correct. Here is not, however, the right place to discuss this issue. What is important to my purpose here is to come to a precise understanding of the Augustinian interpretation of these Pauline verses by the time he entered the controversy with Julian. To start with, it must be said that in the confrontation with Julian, Augustine’s interpretation of Rom. 7 did not know any significant variation: Augustine was strongly convinced that Paul was talking of his own spiritual struggle as Christian, i. e. the Apostle was talking as man sub gratia and not sub lege as Augustine himself had admitted in his early writings. More, Paul’s words are not to be taken as referring to the Apostle’s experience alone, but rather of all Christians, since every and each Christian is engaged in the fight against the sinful impulses of concupiscentia carnis. Those words, according to Augustine, may be an auto-biographical report, but they certainly surpass it. Paul uses himself as a type of humanity, since all mankind is still under the punishment for sin and under grace the change is gradual. The sinful impulses are only progressively conquered and diminished, being the conclusion of this process only in the time of pace, when death is swallowed, where there will be no sinful desires119. What lead Augustine to these conclusions, in my opinion, is the idea of solidarity bonding Adam and his posterity. This idea is at the core of Augustine’s reading of Rom. 7:14 – 25, perhaps the most crucial of Biblical passages for Augustine’s teaching on the intimate relationship between Original Sin and the weakness of human will on account of the libertas lost in Adam’s sin. In the theological and moral implications of this solidarity between Adam and his descendants lay the main point of friction between Julian and Augustine. M. VERSCHOREN’s following statements are, thus, entirely justified: the essential difference between Augustine’s and Julian’s interpretation [of Romans 7:14 – 25], the author writes, lies in the fact that Augustine accepts the idea of original sin, whereas Julian explicitly denies it, […] Augustine works out his interpretation on two levels: the level of the individual and the entirety of the human race120

118 Van Fleteren, 2001, 96sqq. 119 Van Fleteren, 2001, 109 – 111. 120 Verschoren, 2004, 241.

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Unlike Julian, Augustine believed that Adam’s sin and its consequences are shared by all and, on account of it, a practically untameable proneness to sin resulted and is transmitted at the conception of each human being. Besides, nemo dat quod non habet. Augustine wonders how could Adam have generated children in better condition than his own. His descendants face the same limitations that he started to experience after having committed sin. An important limitation to be taken into account here is precisely the concupiscentia carnis to which Paul refers. Baptism carries with it the remission of all sins, but it does not eliminate the weakness brought upon human race on account of concupiscence, the remnants of the Adamic sin, against which the regenerated person, fights throughout this earthly life. In other words, baptism results in total purification since it washes away all sins but since it does not eliminate all infirmities at once a Christian’s earthly life has to be a progressive sanctification, i. e. a continuous struggle against the impulses of the fleshly lusts in order to walk according to the spirit121. This is why Augustine insists that, on one hand, we have been saved through baptism, but, this salvation, on the other hand, is not complete yet. The salvation of human beings takes place in baptism in a sense that through baptism whatever sin they have contracted from their parents or whatever sin they have committed before baptism are forgiven, but their salvation hereafter will be so great that they will not be able to sin at all. Here prevails a certain sense of Christian hope122. Hence, the Apostle’s words in Rom. 7:14 – 25 are to be understood in light of these theological insights; those words of the Apostle are, then to be understood as referring to the Christian present condition. Augustine’s portrayal of the Christian condition is, obviously, of utmost importance for understanding his teachings on free will and sin. An important detail for understanding the ethics of intention mentioned by M. ALFLATT is the Augustinian approach on the relationship between concupiscentia and sin. Augustine’s theological reasoning demonstrates he understands concupiscence not 121 c. ep. Pel. III, III, 5, CSEL 60, 490, l. 3: “baptismus igitur abluit quidem peccata omnia, prorsus omnia factorum, dictorum, cogitatorum, siue originalia siue addita siue quae ignoranter siue quae scienter admissa sunt; sed non aufert infirmitatem, cui regeneratus resistit, quando bonum agonem luctatur, consentit autem, quando sicut homo in aliquo delicto praeoccupatur […]”. See also C. Jul. III, XXVI, 61 – 62. 122 c. ep. Pel. III, III, 5, CSEL 60, 491, l. 13: “nam si a me quispiam quaesierit, utrum per baptismum salui facti fuerimus, negare non potero dicente apostolo: saluos nos fecit per lauacrum regenerationis et renouationis spiritus sancti. sed si quaesierit, utrum per idem lauacrum omni prorsus modo iam nos fecerit saluos, respondebo: non ita est. item quippe idem dicit apostolus: spe enim salui facti sumus. spes autem quae uidetur non est spes; quod enim uidet quis, quid et sperat? si autem quod non uidemus speramus, per patientiam expectamus. salus ergo hominis in baptismate facta est, quia dimissum est quod peccati a parentibus traxit uel quidquid etiam proprie ante baptismum ipse peccauit; salus uero eius tanta post erit, ut peccare omnino non possit”.

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only to be the vehicle of transmission of sin, the origin and result of sin (he refers to it as daughter and mother of sin), but also to be an undesired companion throughout the entire life of regenerated human beings, including the most faithful of Christians. Ultimately it is to this concupiscence, this law of sin (lex peccati) present in our members, that the law of justice (lex iustitiae) admonishes us not to obey (Rom. 6:12 – 13). The concupiscence of the flesh is transmitted through natural birth and it is the bond of sin to man’s posterity, unless they themselves loose it by regeneration. It is true that this concupiscence itself is no longer sin in the regenerated when they do not consent to its impulses to do illicit acts, but our members are not free from it. If one cannot accomplish what is written “thou shall not covet” (Ex. 20:17), it is, at least, accomplished “though shall not go after thy concupiscence” (Eccles. 18:30). Concupiscence is called sin in a certain manner of speaking, since it comes from sin and produces it if it triumphs. On account of its nature, concupiscence means an effective culpability in those generated for this life; but such culpability is absent in those regenerated through baptism123. As a matter of fact, when Augustine speaks of concupiscentia carnis as lex peccati he usually means a pre-disposition to sin installed within human beings. For an actual sin to take place, humans must still give their consent to this proneness to sin. “If the sinful longing is still referred to as sin, then this is only in a figurative sense: it is called sin because it originates from sin and longs to commit sin”124. When consent is denied to this inner tendency to sin it means the individual is moved by the concupiscence of the spirit and, when such is the case, there is no sin. Augustine does, in fact speak of concupiscentia carnis as an impulse with negative connotations, but in his confrontation with Julian he distanced himself from the idea that concupiscentia cannot be resisted. The resistance to the impulses of concupiscentia is a duty of the believers. The struggles against the movements of concupiscentia are even regarded as a basic condition for making progress as believers, a process in which grace plays a crucial role, since grace 123 nupt. et conc. I, XXIII, 25, CSEL, 237 – 238, l. 21: “[…] haec, inquam, concupiscentia, quae solo sacramento regenerationis expiatur, profecto peccati uinculum generatione traicit in posteros, nisi ab illo et ipsi regeneratione soluantur. nam ipsa quidem concupiscentia iam non est peccatum in regeneratis, quando illi ad inlicita opera non consentitur, atque ut ea perpetrent a regina mente membra non dantur, ut si non fit quod scriptum est: non concupiscas, fiat saltem quod alibi legitur : post concupiscentias tuas non eas. sed quia modo quodam loquendi peccatum uocatur, quod et peccato facta est et peccatum, si uicerit, facit, reatus eius ualet in generato, quem reatum christi gratia per remissionem omnium peccatorum in regenerato, si ad mala opera ei quodam modo iubenti non oboediat, ualere non sinit. sic autem uocatur peccatum, quia peccato facta est, cum iam in regeneratis non sit ipsa peccatum, sicut uocatur lingua locutio, quam facit lingua, et manus uocatur scriptura, quam facit manus; itemque sic uocatur peccatum, quia peccatum, si uincit, facit, sicut uocatur frigus pigrum, non quod a pigris fiat, sed quod pigros faciat”. 124 Lamberigts, 1997, 159.

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provides the spiritalis dilectatio which the believers need in order to oppose the longing of the concupiscentia carnis125. Augustine’s explanations of Rom. 7:14 – 25 is the ideal Biblical passage to understand his treatment of the relationship between sin and concupiscence, namely the sort of coercive force of concupiscence over faithful Christians causing them to sin. The passage is an ideal one because Augustine, the opponent of Julian, believes that the passage refers to one of these faithful Christians – the Apostle Paul himself. The “body of sin” Paul talks about is to be understood as the present Christian condition. Concupiscence is ever present and even when one manages to avoid consenting to it, there remain the shameful desires against which one must struggle. According to Augustine, it is precisely to these desires Paul is referring in Rom. 7:15 and 17 and he his speaking ex sua personae126. The presence and active role of concupiscence in the believers’ body, according to Augustine, has a profound ethical implication. The very presence of concupiscence is itself a true impediment to perfection. As Luther would later teach, Augustine is peremptory in asserting that the righteous person does good, but does not accomplish good because there is still that contrary desire in his/her flesh. The equation also works in relation to evil deeds. For the righteous person, even when he does evil, does not accomplish it, since he/she does not desire it. It is this fact that explains Augustine’s insistence on the distinction between facere (to do) and perficere (to accomplish). What Paul expresses in Rom. 7:18 is, for Augustine, a clear proof of such a distinction. It means that there is a perfect accomplishment of good when the evil desires are totally absent. In the same way there is a perfect accomplishment of evil when one gives full consent to the evil desires. One must recall here the element lying at the core of the Augustinian notion of virtue – order. In Augustine, briefly defined, virtue is rightly ordered love. An apparently good deed is not a virtuous act, for instance, if performed for wrong motives, i. e. motivated by a misguided love. On account of the constant assault of the fleshly lusts, Augustine seems to be arguing that virtue is truly a rare event. Not even acting like a virtuous person is suppose to act (which is possible in this earthly life) means to have virtue. According to Augustine, as Brett GAUL explains while people can occasionally perform virtuous actions, they can never perform them so consistently that they merit being called truly virtuous. In short, to say that someone is virtuous is just to say that he acted as a person who genuinely does have virtue would act. A parallel can be drawn with sin here. While no Christian would proclaim himself to be sinless, one can have sinless moments. That is, one cannot completely conquer 125 Lamberigts, 1997, 159 – 160. 126 nupt. et conc. I, XXVII, 30. See also Verschoren, 2004, 225.

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sin, but one can conquer sin at particular time. Similarly, one cannot completely conquer vice, but one can refrain from vice at a particular times. The point Augustine seems to be making is that even though we call people virtuous, we should not make that to mean that such people have developed a disposition to act in a certain way. On Augustine’s account, no such stable state is possible in this life [my stress]127.

It has been noticed that there is hardly any single word in English that could capture the meaning of the Latin word voluntas, as it occurs in Augustine’s writings. It can be translated as “will”, “desire”, “wish”, and “will is something which is expressed in human actions, but its relation to free decision is not very clear”128. All this has to do with the presence of concupiscence of the flesh in humans, a decisive data in Augustine’s psychology of action. To will, to do, and to accomplish are to be understood in light of a complex net of relationships. Both in the performance of evil and good deeds the presence of concupiscentia carnis is what ultimately defines the degree or the intrinsic nature, so to speak, of an action. Although Augustine insisted that concupiscence is present even when one does not obey to its impulses, he also remarked that neither is evil perfect, when one does not obey evil desires, nor is the good perfect as long as the evil desires of concupiscence remain in one’s body, even if it these evil desires are inoperative. It is the reason why the Apostle, in those verses of Rom. 7, does not say “to do” (facere) good is not present in him, but to “perfect” it/”accomplish” it (perficere). He does many good deeds in accordance with the Scriptures (thou shalt not go after your concupiscence) but he does not accomplish (thou shalt not covet). It is because we are slaves of this disease that we need grace to make progress in this life. Perfection is also asked from us, but we do not reach it in this life129. 127 Gaul, 2009, 240 – 241 128 Rannikko, 1997, 23. 129 nuptiis et conc. I, XXIX, 32, CSEL, 244, l. 1: “hoc ideo dictum est, quia tunc perficitur bonum, quando desideria mala nulla sunt, sicut tunc perficitur malum, quando malis desideriis oboeditur. quando autem sunt quidem, sed non eis oboeditur, nec malum perficitur, quia non eis oboeditur, nec bonum, quia sunt, sed fit ex aliqua parte bonum, quia concupiscentiae malae non consentitur, et ex aliqua parte remanet malum, quia uel concupiscitur. ideo ergo apostolus non ait facere bonum sibi non adiacere, sed perficere. multum enim boni facit, qui facit quod scriptum est: post concupiscentias tuas non eas, sed non perficit, quia non inplet quod scriptum est: non concupiscas. ad hoc ergo dixit lex: non concupisces, ut nos in hoc morbo inuenientes iacere medicinam gratiae quaereremus et in eo praecepto sciremus, et quo debeamus in hac mortalitate proficiendo conari et quo possit a nobis in illa inmortalitate beatissima perueniri; nisi enim quandoque perficiendum esset, nunquam iubendum esset”. Augustine does, however, admit a certain idea of a relative perfection within the limits of the present life, being the very acknowledgement of imperfection the main component of this relative perfection. Despite their love for righteousness, the saints are not perfect. With the assistance of God’s grace they struggle to

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Thus, in verse 15 the “illud facio” means concupisco. Making it plain: Paul manages not to follow the desires of concupiscence but fails to keep the rule “thou shalt not covet”. To do good (bonum facere) is understood by Augustine as the struggle in order to avoid giving one’s consent to evil desires; while to accomplish good (bonum perficere) is associated with a total absence of evil desires. To accomplish good is not for this life, but only possible when the body will be totally free from any opposing law to the mind, when the flesh will no longer offer resistance to the spirit, i. e. in the in pace stage. Julian, as it is well known, opposed to Augustine’s identification of the “I” of Rom. 7 with Paul and accuses him of teaching that Paul and other apostles were polluted by shameful passions. Augustine claims that the verses 14 – 25 are to be identified with Paul under grace. More: it applies to all faithful Christians since any of them is continually struggling spiritali dilectione cum carnis affectione sine consensione130. Augustine clearly reads most of the verses of Rom. 7:14 – 25 as showing the sinful impulses of concupiscence in mind. Since the faithful are under this coercive force, they cry for liberation. Accordingly, verse 25 refers to Paul’s own experience as a Christian. Such liberation finds its completion only when this body of death will be transformed into the body of life, allowing the elect a full and constant contemplation of the Creator. The liberation, however, Augustine explains, has its early stages in this life, but the total cure is future, since it will only take place in the resurrection. As M. VERSCHOREN correctly observes, it is “a classic example of “already … not yet””131. To understand Augustine’s claim according to which mankind lost freedom of choice (understood as the capacity for performing good when unassisted by grace) requires a question as starting point: what does Augustine understand by freedom? To which sort of freedom of will was he referring? Unlike Julian, Augustine did not understand free will strictly as the capacity of choosing between good and evil. If that would be the case, he stressed, then God would be said not to have free will since He cannot but remain in good132. Before sin Adam was free to remain in good, but, by sinning he jeopardized that freedom which remain in good, but they still have the need to continually ask for forgiveness. They are, in fact, the only ones who admit their imperfection. Since, however, there is a certain sense of perfection within the limits of this present life, it is part of this perfection to recognize one’s imperfection. As a result, the virtue which is now present in righteous persons can be said to be perfect in the sense that its perfection involves knowing in truth and confessing in humility its imperfection. For, this small righteousness is perfect by its own measure in accord with the present weakness when it knows what it lacks. In this sense one can call a perfect traveller one who is making good progress, though his/her aim is not achieved until he/she arrives. See c. ep. Pel. III, V, 19. See also c. Jul. III, 62XXVI, 62; VI 54, PL 44, col. 854 – 855; c. Jul. imp. VI, 9. 130 c. ep. Pel. I, XVII. 131 Verschoren, 2004, 230. 132 c. Jul. imp. I, 81.

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cannot be restored unless the Son (the true source of freedom) sets us free133. That is why it is in God that the highest expression of freedom is to be found. This “blessed necessity” under which God is (and under which, according to Augustine, the elect will be when set free from this body of death and live in full communion with God), is used by Augustine to define true freedom as the capacity of remaining in good, after all, of preserving order, the order in the will, according to which higher things are always preferred at the expense of the lower ones. Anything contrary to this is not actually a sign of true freedom. True human freedom is the capacity to remain in the contemplation of the Creator, i. e. to remain in good. Though evil is performed through the free will of choice, the performance of evil deeds does not constitute an expression of freedom, in fact it is much to the contrary. In short, true freedom is obedience to God. Of course humans possess free will, but such free will does not guarantee freedom or libertas, i. e. the capacity of remaining in good. This capacity was what Adam possessed originally and lost when he committed his first sin. Since his sin is ours (it is the sin of human nature) and we inherit his weakness, we also lost that libertas. So the fact that we have free will does not mean we are free. In other words, free will is enough for committing sin, but not for performing good. For this, grace is absolutely necessary since grace only fuels in human hearts the joy of performing what is good. Without grace humans tend to sin only. Writing about “Augustine on Free Will and Predestination”, John M. RIST provides a very plausible explanation on the issue: It is true that he [Augustine] would say that Adam was free and that we ourselves are free, but there is no reason to assume that we are free in the same sense as Adam before the Fall. Indeed we are free in a quite different sense. […] when Augustine says that our choices are free, he does not mean that we are autonomous beings, able to weigh up good and evil courses of action and decide upon the one or the other. Unless he is helped by God’s grace, fallen man’s freedom of choice is only freedom to sin. We are free and able to do evil on our own accord, but we are unable to choose the good freely. Of ourselves we are free from virtues, and free to do evil. Our free choice is sufficient for evil (liberum arbitrium ad malum sufficit). In short when Augustine says that fallen man is free and has free choices, he means that he is free from virtue ans slave of vice, free from one kind of love, that is, devoid of caritas, but the servant of its opposite, namely cupiditas. Man belongs to one of two camps and obeys one of the rulers. […] Since caritas, which brings the soul joy and love for the right, is the gift of God, the fallen soul, unless helped out its miseries, is a slave of and captive to evil. Hence we 133 c. Jul. imp. I, 82, CSEL 85/1, 96, l. 16: “homo quamdiu stetit in bona uoluntate liberi arbitrii, non opus habebat ea gratia qua leuaretur, cum surgere ipse non posset; nunc uero in ruina sua liber est iustitiae seruus que peccati nec potest seruus esse iustitiae et liber a dominante peccato, nisi eum filius liberauerit”.

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come to the familiar Augustinian paradox: fallen man has free choices, always of evil, but does not enjoy freedom (libertas). Freedom is obedience to God, the choice and performance of good works under the guidance of God’s grace. It is freedom from the necessity of sin. Thus we are brought to the view that, although our “wills” and our “choices” are free, in the sense that we alone are responsible for them, yet without the intervention of God we are bound to an evil we cannot escape134.

Augustine did not mean humankind lost the ability to desire every sort of good. There is, he explained, for instance, one good that one does not need grace for us to desire – happiness. The desire for happiness is associated with a sort of free choice unchangeably fixed in our minds. It is a concupiscentia naturalis. This, unlike libertas (understood as the unconditional ability to act rightly), was not lost. This is so true that even those who are unhappy because they lead bad lives, do, of course will to lead bad lives, but do not will to be unhappy, but happy135. Augustine emphasized the inability of free will, unassisted by grace, to perform good, mostly in response to Julian’s recurrent claims according to which there can be no sin without will, having in mind the denial of Original Sin and the doctrine concupiscentia carnis. Julian did not admit any restriction to human free will (either to perform good, nor to perform evil) which he saw as one of the greatest expression of grace and a sine qua non condition of God’s equity/ righteousness. Though Augustine struggled to provide Scriptural proofs regarding the compatibility between grace and free will (he endeavours to prove it, for instance, in De gratia et libero arbitrio)136, Julian maintained that the notion of grace as understood by the Church Father (e. g. in Contra duas epistulas

134 Rist, 1969, 423 – 424. 135 c. Jul. imp. VI, 26, CSEL 85/2, 392, l. 204: “Denique liberum arbitrium quod de hac re habemus, ita nobis naturaliter insitum est, ut nulla miseria nobis possit auferri, quod miseri esse nolumus et volumus esse beati. Usque adeo ut iam ipsi qui male vivendo sunt miseri, male vivere quidem velint, nolint tamem esse miseri sed beati. Hoc est liberum arbitrium in nostris mentibus immobiliter fixum, non quod bene agere volumus, nam id humana iniquitate potuimus amittere et gratia possumus divina recipere, sed liberum arbitrium, quod beati esse volumus et miseri nolumus, nec miseri possunt amittere nec beati. Beati quippe omnes esse volumus, quod ipsi Philosophi huius saeculi et Acadmici de rebus omnibus dubitantes teste patrono suo Tullio coacti sunt confiteri idque unum esse dixerunt, quod disputatione non egeat, quod nemo est qui non expetat. Hoc arbitrium liberum adiuvatur per dei gratiam, ut quod naturaliter volumus, hoc est beate vivere, bene vivendo habere possimus”. 136 In gr. et lib. arb. Augustine claimed that the law itself would be of no utility for man if there would be no free will to accomplish it and reach the promised rewards. They were given to man to avoid excuses of ignorance and such as is evident from John 15:22: “primum, quia ipsa diuina praecepta homini non prodessent, nisi haberet liberum uoluntatis arbitrium, quo ea faciens ad promissa praemia perueniret. ideo enim data sunt, ut homo excusationem de ignorantia non haberet […]”. gr. et lib. arb. I, II, 2, PL 44, col. 882. However, perhaps the most import claim of the entire work is the absolute need of the intervention of grace.

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Pelagianorum) was essentially a denial of free will (“in his omnibus uerbis tuis quae posui ita uideo gratiae nomen cum liberi arbitrii negatione consertum”)137. For Julian there could be no sinful act if not fully voluntary, a claim which is in harmony with Augustine’s early approach to will and sin. As a matter of fact, Julian’s refutation of Augustine’s doctrine of Original Sin was based on some other theological conceptual relationship which Augustine himself had endorsed and emphasized in his early writings: the relationship between free will and God’s righteousness. Augustine had stressed it would be unjust if God punishes man for sinning unless he was created with free will. Julian saw here an opportunity to deny Original Sin. The Scriptures emphasize free will and God’s own judgement would be unjust unless human free will is unimpaired (“sine cuius integritate aequitas ei proprii non potest constare iudicii”)138. Thus, the Italian bishop combined the definition of sin (the will to do that which justice forbids and from which one is free to hold back) and will (the act of the mind with nothing forcing it) to claim that there is no natural or Original Sin, since it is not voluntary139. Augustine’s answer to these teachings contained two noteworthy aspects: first the bishop of Hippo agreed that there can be no sin without the will. This fact, however, he stressed, does not imply the denial of Original Sin, since this would not have occurred unless through the exercise of Adam’s free will. It was also committed through the use of free will, not as a result of the personal free will of the one who is born, but as a result of Adam in whom we all originally existed when our common human nature sinned and was damaged by his evil will. Thus, from him all inherited Original Sin (“Per unius illius voluntatem malam omnes in eo peccaverunt, quando omnes ille unus fuerunt, de quo propterea singuli peccatum originale traxerunt”)140.

137 Ad Florum I, 94, CSEL 85/1, 108, l. 48. 138 Ad Florum I, 92. Julian was convinced that the free choice of the will is highly proclaimed throughout the Scripture and in order to deny any sort of necessity behind sinful act he quoted passages such as John 5:43; Mt 12:33; John 10:38, Is. 1:19 – 20 and especially Mt 23:37 as revealing the power of the human will. He emphasized that after the words of Mt 23:37 Jesus does not say “But I gathered you against your will, but rather “Your house will be left desolate for you” (Mat. 23:38) in order to show then that they are being justly punished for their evil action, but that they should not have recalled from what they intended by any necessity. 139 Ad Florum V, 43 140 nupt. et conc. II, V, 15, CSEL 42, 266 – 267, l. 24. This claim Augustine made aware, based on his knowledge of Ambrose’s treatment of the issue. Accordingly he quoted the Milanese prelate’s Expositio in Isaiam right after this assertion (as he does in c. ep. Pel. IV, 11, 29 and c. Jul. I, 42, 46. On the same issue, see also C. Jul. III, V, 11; c. Jul. imp. IV, 90, CSEL 85/2, 95 – 96, l. 51: “Dicimus autem et nos non posse esse sine libera voluntate peccatum; nec ideo tamen, ut dicis, nostrum dogma consumitur, cum asserimus esse originale peccatum, quia et ad

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The portrayal of Adam as the theological image of mankind is of crucial importance in understanding Augustine’s treatment of the relationship between free will and Original Sin. Original Sin not only explains why human libertas is highly compromised, but it also allowed Augustine, by using Adam as symbol of mankind, to maintain that it is a sin of ours and, like any other sin, committed through the use of free will. The only difference is that we committed such sin through our existence in Adam, it was in him and with him that we misused our free will to abandon the contemplation of God. Augustine’s belief in our existence in Adam was a strong one and served in his teaching according to which the entire mankind is bound to Adam. I once again turn to John RIST for help. One can hardly explain the issue better than he does when he writes that, according to Augustine We all existed in that one man (omnes fuimus in illo uno). The specific form by which we were to live had not yet been created, but our “nature” was present in him the seed from which we were to be born. It seems to be Augustine’s view that Adam’s semen, which was with his other parts, corrupted by sin, in some sense is the seed of the whole human race. In some sense our “nature” existed in that semen; hence we are in fact in Adam; hence the sin which Adam committed is our sin. All men who were born are thus born by the ordinary process of deposition of semen in the vagina are a tainted growth. Adam’s tainted seed is thus in a sense, the “nature” of every man, and every man who generates by sexual means thus produces more tainted offspring. The seed is not merely the bearer of weakness and potentiality of sin; it also is the bearer of actual sin. All seed is Adam; hence all those who grow from seed are Adams, and thus guilty of the original sin of Adam. Augustine is therefore in no doubt of our solidarity with Adam. We share in his sin; we share in his guilt and in the weakness which he has to endure in his fallen state. In a sense we are Adam141.

Secondly, regarding the performance of good, the will alone is not enough, since human nature is under a propensity for evil which it performs with greater easy, without any assistance. In other words, the will, per se is only “free” to perform evil, not good (and the term “free” it to placed between brackets, since, for Augustine, performing evil is never an expression of freedom, though always performed voluntarily). Thus, Augustine replied to Julian that free will, after Adam’s sin, came under servitude of sin. To deny this, he argued, is to oppose to God’s grace, rather than defend free will (“Contra cuius gratiam liberae voluntatis arbitrium, peccati ancillam voluntatem defenditis”)142. Augustine’s refutation of Julian focused on the free choice of the will to define sin, follows this reasoning: is it really up to the free will of the one who commits it hoc peccati genus ex libera voluntate perventum est, non eius propria qui nascitur, sed eius in quo omnes originaliter fuerunt, quando communem naturam mala voluntate vitiavit”. 141 Rist, 1969, 431. 142 c. Jul. imp. VI, 13, CSEL 85/2, 323, l. 53.

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where it is said “But if I do what I do not will, it is no longer I who do it, but the sin that dwells in me (Rom. 7:20)?” When one asks where sin comes from and provides Julian’s answers (from the free will of whom who commits it) such an answer is to be applied only to that sin which does not comprise punishment of sin, that is, Adam’s first sin. When human beings do what they do not will, and Paul cries out that it is sin, this, Augustine insisted, does not fit at all to Julian’s reply. How is one free to hold back, Augustine wondered, when one cries out “I do what I do not will”? Human being, Augustine argued, sinned in one way when it was free to hold back from sin; it now sins in another way after freedom has been lost when it needs the help of the deliverer. That former sin was only sin, but this present sin is also the punishment of sin143. One of the signs of punishment is the lack of harmony in the will of the believer on account of the active concupiscence in his/her flesh. Now the will of the believer is a divided will, as the apostolic words in Rom 7:14sqq clearly shows. Augustine himself could experience it. The book VIII of Confessiones reveals an Augustine divided between voluntates; though committed to abandon his vices and lead a life orientated by God, the Sumum Bonum. Such a commitment, however, was not an impediment for him to keep doing evil or willing evil144. The concept of sin as punishment is based essentially on the Augustinian approach to concupiscence as retribution for disobedience; inoboedentia retributa. Why would sinners be granted the capacity to make their fleshy impulses obedient to the spirit when they themselves did not obey to their Lord? Romans 1:24 sqq, where Paul speaks of God abandoning sinners to their “degrading passions”(with focus on homosexual desires), was often used by Augustine to illustrate how the punishment of sin can be itself sin145. This sense of punishment stretches itself to the the involuntary sin which each and every human being inherits from Adam. The justice of the punishment of an involuntary sin lies in the very fact that the primitive sin, i. e. that of our first parents, was committed voluntarily. 143 c. Jul. imp. V, 28, CSEL 85/2, 224 – 225, l. 26: “Itane vero de libera voluntate facientis est ubi dicitur : Si autem quod nolo ego hoc facio, iam non ego operor illud, sed quod habitat in me peccatum? Videsne, cum quaeris unde sit peccatum atque respondes: “De libera voluntate facientis”, illud te cogitare peccatum, quod non est etiam poena peccati, hoc autem, ubi facit homo quod non vult et tamem peccatum esse apostolus clamat, ad hanc tuam responsionem minime pertinere nec ad illam definitionem, quam commemorasti dicens peccatum id esse quod est “voluntas faciendi quod iustitia vetat et unde liberum est abstinere”? Quomodo enim liberum est abstinere ubi clamatur : Quod nolo hoc facio? Aliter ergo natura humana peccavit, quando ei liberum fuit abstinere a peccato, aliter nunc peccat perdita libertate, quando eget liberatoris auxilio; est illud tantummodo peccatum erat, hoc autem est etiam poena peccati”. 144 Byers, 2006, 180 – 181. 145 See, for instance, C. Jul. V, III, 8 – 13.

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Augustine still had to face Julian’s reasoning when the latter took the argument into a dialectical exercise, bringing up the concepts of “necessary” and “possible”. Whatever is natural in creatures is necessary. Without this distinction, sin is to be ascribed to God himself. Augustine, once again, turned to Romans 7:19 to argue that things are not as linear as Julian thought them to be. The speaker of Rom. 7:19 does evil out of necessity since he does not will it and yet does it (“necessitatem quippe malum agit qui non vult et agit”). The first man committed sin because he wanted to, but the speaker of Rom. 7:19 does evil by necessity, not by will (“Notum est quod primus homo voluntate malum egit non necessitate, sed iste qui dicit quod nolo malum hoc ago, necessitate se ostendit malum agere non voluntate […].”)146. What makes the words of Romans 7:19 extremely meaningful is the fact that, because of the punishment of sin, the righteous is no longer totally free to hold back. It is never too much to remember that the Augustinian doctrine of free will was developed from the basis of a theological discussion central to the Western Christian theological tradition – the debate on nature and grace. The guilt of concupiscentia carnis, the lex peccati, according to Augustine, as it has been said, is forgiven in baptism, but concupiscentia itself, with its operative capacities, remains (“concupiscentia remittatur in reatu, et maneat in actu”)147. The wound of sin remains in human nature. Augustine sees grace as the only remedy for the wounded nature. He claimed that when one comes to desire (except the desire for happiness) and perform good, human free will is no longer free. Gal. 5:17 and especially Rom. 7, are constantly used by him to refer to the lost freedom to avoid sin, as a conclusive proof of this fact148. It has been noticed that Augustine linked the possibility of sin in creation with the mutability of its nature. Even our first parents were not “formed” righteous or eternally happy (iustus beatusque) by themselves, since they were mutable creatures149. So it was possible for evil to arise in the work of God because it was made of nothing. Augustine understood that the words of Rom. 7 only find their meaning in the fact that Adam’s sin sowed the necessitas peccandi. It was Original Sin that drew the line between the posse non peccare and non posse non peccare. When the rational creature was first created, it was created so, that, if it did not will to sin, it would be pressed by no necessity to will to sin or to sin, even though it did not will to, that is unwillingly, so that it would not do the good that it willed, but would do the evil it did not will (Rom. 7:19). The sinner portrayed by Paul in Romans 7 is under a reality in which is already found not only that sin which is 146 147 148 149

c. Jul. Imp. V, 50, CSEL 85/2, 256, l. 25. C. Jul. II, III, 5. Vannest, 1975, 143 – 169, esp. 154Ssqq. Gn. litt. VIII, 10

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merely sin (simpliciter peccatum), but also that which is also the punishment of sin150. Accordingly Augustine’s doctrine of free will, cannot be dissociated from the notion of concupiscentia carnis, the lex paccati feeding the the neccessitas peccandi from which the fallen nature cannot escape. He is convinced that this necessity of sin can be proved by Paul’s words in Romans 7:19 (and the 7:14 – 25 altogether). Regarding the origin of this necessity Augustine did hesitate to answer that Catholic teachers had no doubt that it comes from concupiscence of the flesh, the law in the members which resists the law of the mind, and without which no human being is born. They see that even saints says the words of Romans 7:19, precisely because they see how great a good it is not even to desire with the flesh those things which they reject with the mind. In order to conclude that there is not only the voluntary and possible sin from which one is free to hold back, but also the necessary sin from which one is not free to hold back, Augustine stressed that this is not merely sin but also punishment of sin, identified with a second nature i. e. a sinful nature which arose on account of Original Sin151. All this has obviously to do with Julian and Augustine’s different approaches to the consequences of Adam’s fall. Unlike Julian, who applied the consequences 150 c. Jul. imp. V, 38, CSEL 85/2, 236, l. 55: ”Rationalis quippe creatura cum primum facta est, ita fact est, ut si peccare nollet, nulla necessitate urgeretur ut vellet, aut etiam non volens id est invita peccaret et non quod vellet faceret bonum, sed malum quod nollet hoc ageret, ubi iam non peccatum illud quod simpliciter peccatum dicitur, sed etiam poena peccati est”. Will is nothing but an uncoerced act of the mind (voluntas enim nihil est aliud quam motus animi cogente nullo”, Ad Florum V, 40), Julian argued in order to refute Original Sin. Augustine replied that on account of Adam who sinned, because he willed to sin, he could also have willed not to sin, and he was created so that he could both have willed and have not willed and so that he had either of these in his power. But Original Sin is something else. Though the newborn contract it without any will of their own, their very origin was still damaged by the will of the first human being. So too, in an adult human being that sin is something else on account of which the apostle says “For I do not do the good I will, but do the evil I do not will” (Rom. 7:15): “Qui enim propterea peccavit, quia voluit, potuit et nolle peccare, et ita homo creatus est, ut et nolle posset et velle et quodlibet horum haberet in potestate. Sed aliud est originale peccatum, quod etsi trahunt sine propria voluntate nascentes, per voluntatem tamem primi hominis ipsa est origo vitiata, sicut aliud est in maiore homine propter quod dicit: Non enim quod volo facio bonum, sed quod nolo malum hoc ago; nec tamem etiam ista necessitas insanabilis est ei cui dicitur : de necessitatibus meis erue me [Ps 25:17]”. c. Jul. imp. V, 40, CSEL 85/2, 241, l. 41. 151 c. Jul. imp. V, 59, CSEL 85/2, 270, l. 75: “Quoniam est, quod non vultis, non solum voluntarium atque possibile, unde liberum est abstinere, verum etiam necessarium peccatum, unde abstinere liberum non est, quod iam non solum peccatum sed etiam poena peccati est. Nec vultis attendere quod in unoquoque agitur per violentiam consuetudinis – quam quidam docti dixerunt secundam esse naturam –, hoc actum esse violeniam poenalem summi illius maximique peccati primi hominis in hominibus, qui erant in lumbis eius per eius exorturi concupiscentiam, cum propagaretur genus humanum quam concupiscentiam peccantium pudor operuit in regione lumborum”.

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of Adam’s sin only to Adam himself, Augustine claimed that one of the greatest consequences of the Adamic sin was the birth of homo inordinatus. Sin, being itself disorder, generates disorder in human being itself. The spirit, so far mastering an obedient flesh, faces a rebellious flesh which it cannot control totally. Augustine framed a theological equation which leaves no room for any sort of doubt that he understood that there have been two stages in human condition – before and after sin. Original Sin is thus the turning point contrasting with the ordered nature in which man was created: the rebellion of senses against reason, sin is the fruit of the rebellion of reason against God. It was after the first sin that man started to taste in his members another law, a law opposed to his spirit; he felt the evil of his disobedience when he tasted the disobedience of his own flesh in a fully deserved retribution. This is the opening of the eyes promised by the serpent. It was from that moment on that man started to feel what he had done and started to distinguish evil from good, not by avoiding evil, but by submitting to it. It would not be fair that his servant (that is, his body) obey him, when he himself did not obey his Creator152. It is precisely this disobedience that resulted in the confusion and shame our first parents experienced in the Garden. The original absence of the feeling of shame due to concupiscentia carnis, M. LAMBERIGTS rightly points out, has with Augustine, a clear theological connotation: the absence of sin153. The experience of confusion and shame”, the Belgian scholar goes on to explain, “is a consequence of human disobedience before the creator. The disobedience of the flesh reveals what it meant when a person no longer obeys God. The rebellion of the flesh or the desire that goes its own way, are indications, that after the fall, control over oneself was no longer free of difficulty, and it was precisely this lack of control which caused shame: the human person, as a rational being, knew that he was guilty of the loss of harmony in himself154.

There can be no doubt that the notion of Adamic sin is of crucial importance for understanding Augustine’s approach to the free will of fallen mankind. It is the sort of free will we enjoy now. Adam and Eve compromised the freedom of their entire descendants. Here is one of the main details of Augustine’s understanding 152 nupt. et conc. I, VI, 7, CSEL 42, 218, l. 13: “ibi homo primitus dei lege transgressa aliam legem repugnantem suae menti habere coepit in membris et inoboedientiae suae malum sensit, quando sibi dignissime retributam inoboedientiam suae carnis inuenit. talem quippe etiam serpens oculorum apertionem seducendo promiserat, ad aliquid uidelicet sciendum, quod melius nesciretur. tunc in se quippe sensit homo quod fecit, tunc a bono malum non carendo, sed perpetiendo discreuit. iniustum enim erat, ut obtemperaretur a seruo suo, id est a corpore suo ei qui non obtemperarat domino suo”. On the issue of retributed disobedience, especially for the chronology covering the Pelagian period, see NISULA, 2004, 122 – 128. 153 Lamberigts, 1997, 156. 154 Lamberigts, 1997, 156 – 157.

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of the gravity of Adam’s sin: our free will is not as free as the one Adam and Eve enjoyed. According to Augustine, as Timo NISULA explains, The original moral agency of Adam and Eve was free and genuinely voluntary, because the first human beings were able to will good, or to will to act according to God’s commandments. When their will turned to temporal goods, it immediately caused a permanent flaw in human moral capabilities, causing all human wills to be habitually bound with a weakness and proneness to act according to base and temporal desires. The consequence was, as it were, an amputation of the original, genuinely free will155.

Thus, Augustine insisted, that only Adam enjoyed that unconditional free will which he had in mind when he defined sin in Contra duabus animabus 11, 5 and which Julian fiercely claimed to be also applicable to the post-lapsariam human condition. Augustine’s position on the identity of the “I” of Romans 7 cannot be understood if one neglects to consider the comprehensiveness of the phenomenon sin. In this it is necessary to distinguish (1) sin, (2) the penalty of sin, (3) sin that is itself punishment of sin. The first is the case of sin as defined in duab. an. (doing what justice forbids, acts from which human beings are free to abstain). Since Adam’s entire posterity shares his sin and inherits the concupiscence of the flesh (disorder installed in human race, proneness to sin), the first situation is to be applied to Adam and Eve only. Augustine insisted that though there still evil actions of which human beings are free to abstain, no one enjoys the total freedom to abstain from sin as Adam since the first man was “undamaged”, that is, in the same state as that in which he was originally created. The penalty of sin (element 2) comprises all the torments sinners go through in this life, including death on account of sin. It is with the features of the third element in mind that Romans 7:19 should be read. The body of this death is essentially an expression of disorder caused by sin. This disorder in the member is at the same time sin and punishment of sin. The most serious expression of this punishment is, perhaps, concupiscentia carnis which Augustine depicted, to use T. NISULA’s words “as a psychological weakness due to the Fall”156. Accordingly, Augustine explained, this weakness is Adam’s very inheritance to the human race and it enslaves the will, leading to sin even when one does not want to. In fact Augustine saw a support for his reading on Rom. 7:14 – 25 in some other Pauline passages. For instance, in Contra Julianum III, 62 Augustine introduced a probably new element in his reading of the passage of Rom. with Gal. 5 where Paul seems to approach the same issue, namely the one found in Rom. 7:14 – 15 (being willing and not being able – Gal. 5:17c); the discordia spiritus carnis (v. 17a-b); following the paths of the spirit in order to avoid the 155 Nisula, 2010, 66. 156 Nisula, 2004, 127.

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works of the concupiscence of the flesh (v. 16), the issue of being led by the spirit (Gal. 5:18; cf. Rom. 7:20) as well as the exhortation not to obey the sinful desires (Rom. 6:12). This harmonizes perfectly with Gal. 5:16. Augustine’s opposition to Julian was very consistent. The latter claimed that Rom. 7:20 refers to someone still living under law and not under grace. According to the bishop of Hippo, Julian’s claim contradicts the Christian experience, including Paul’s own experience. Christian experience, Augustine often claimed, is shaped with struggle, combat (certamem), concepts that leads to the issues of temptation, prayer and the absolute need for grace. In this particular case, the bishop of Hippo stressed that after Adam’s sin, then, choice is no longer as free as it used to be before sin. A clear proof of this is the very fact we have need for prayer, especially the Lord’s prayer. J. LÖSSL is right in his argument according to which Mt 6:13 (the passage in which Jesus taught his disciples to pray to the heavenly Father and ask Him to lead them not into temptation) is, in Augustine’s anti-Pelagian works (especially in the debate with Julian), more and more related to his theology of grace157. Without any surprise, when this passage of the Gospel is approached in an inter-textual perspective, the spiritual distress narrated by the subject of Romans 7, especially 7:18 – 19, is immediately evoked. The prayer that the Lord Himself taught us makes it clear that the believers are in constant need for grace which liberates free will that is clearly insufficient when unassisted by divine grace. It would suffice to teach us the essence of the doctrine of grace: it leaves nothing to be glorified as good of our own. Augustine, LÖSSL explains, “understands Mt 6:13 as a prayer that functions as a gateway to gratuitous insight, a starting point of insight as grace, an intellectual starting point of salvation”158. The fact that we ask to be close to God and not go astray from Him is by itself a proof that it is God’s grace we beg. He who does not fall into temptation does not go astray from God. Not to go astray from God is something that surpasses our simple free will as it is now (quales nunc sunt). It was in man before the fall (“fuerat in homine antequam caderet”). The power of our free will in the eminence of its original condition is evident in the angels; though the devil fell in disobedience with his own free will, the angels remained firm in truth and deserved to reach the state they are now, in the certainty that they will not fall. As for men, after the fall, God wants them to be in His grace alone so that they should approach to Him and realize that it is only assisted by His grace that they do not go astray from Him159. Besides the first 157 Lössl, 1997, 169. 158 Lössl, 1997, 169. 159 persev. I, VII, 13, PL 45, col. 1001: “quae tamen libertas uoluntatis in illius primae conditionis praestantia quantum ualuerit, apparuit in angelis, qui, diabolo cum suis cadente, in

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part of the chapter (Rom. 7:1 – 13) Paul is speaking about living under law, not under grace. Accordingly, Augustine emphasised the past tense verbs in these verses, in contrast with the nunc which stands out so clearly, along with a number of present tense verbs in the second part of the same chapter (14 sqq.)160. This divergence with Julian, obviously had its origin in reading crucial passages concerning free will, such as Rom 7:14 – 25 or John 8:36. Augustine claimed that the fact that choice is no longer free is clear from the Paul’s dramatic cry in Rom. 7:15 and 19. Julian denied that such a passage is to be applied to the spiritual Paul. Besides, he sees in John 8:36 the corroboration of his claim. Here, Julian denied Augustine’s interpretation according to which Jesus refers to the liberation of the free will. The Lord’s words in John 8:36, insisted the bishop of Aeclanum, are rather a promise of pardon to the guilty who, as sinners, lost, not the freedom of their choice, but knowledge of what is righteous. The free choice remains complete after their sins as it was before it, since it is by the effort of the same free will that “many renounce hidden acts of shame and having cast aside the filth of sins they are adorned with the emblems of virtue”161. Augustine’s reply is one more proof that, in his confrontation with Julian, the African theologian reads Rom. 7 having in mind an old claim of his, namely that salvation only takes place through the grace of Christ. As a matter of fact it is precisely this Christocentric understanding of salvation that Augustine believed to be inherent to Paul’s message on Rom. 7. The goodness but also the insufficiency of the law for salvation is clearly set in the first part of the chapter. The consequences of Adam’s transgression, namely the disorder it brought upon the human race with the most direct effect such as the lost of libertas162 Adam enjoyed is expressed in verses 15, 18b (as well as in Gal. 5:17). The centrality of divine grace through Christ’s redemptive mission is what gives full sense to Paul’s words in Rom. 7:25. Augustine, as J. P. BURNS notices, Asserted the new interpretation of the seventh chapter of Romans, and argued ueritate steterunt, et ad securitatem perpetuam non cadendi, in qua nunc eos esse certissimi sumus, peruenire meruerunt. post casum autem hominis, nonnisi ad gratiam suam deus uoluit pertinere, ut homo accedat ad eum; neque nisi ad gratiam suam uoluit pertinere, ut homo non recedat ab eo”. 160 Verschoren, 2004, 233. 161 Ad Florum I, 91, CSEL 85/1, 104, l. 1: “hic ergo ubi dixit dominus: si uos filius liberauerit, uere liberi eritis, promisit indulgentiam reis, qui peccantes non arbitrii libertatem, sed conscientiam iustitiae perdiderunt. liberum autem arbitrium et post peccata tam plenum est, quam fuit ante peccata, siquidem ipsius opera fiat, ut abdicent plerique occulta dedecoris et flagitiorum obiectis sordibus uirtutum comantur insignibus”. 162 Notice, however, that Augustine, despite stressing the lost of the libertas in Adam, sees the intentional orientation towards the good (which is precisely what Paul’s dramatic cry reveals he possesses) as a sort of relative but very real expression of the same libertas, since if there would be no willing from the believer, they would not even have willed what is holy, righteous and good (“Si nulla eis esset, id quod sanctum et iustum et bonum est, nec velle potuissent”.c. Jul. imp. VI, 11).

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for the impotence of human nature in order to protect the position of Christ as sole mediator before God and the only source of salvation for humanity. If human being has the power to avoid sin and do good works which God must justly reward, Augustine reasoned, then Christ is not the only way to God and his coming was unnecessary. […] Augustine perceived that no Christian could deny the uniqueness of Christ as saviour and drew the conclusion that human beings are capable of good only through his grace163. Had Augustine lived in a era of digital technology (thinking, of course, within the same framework he did in fifth century) he would probably have found the following metaphor very suitable to depict the state of the fallen man as described in Rom. 7:14 – 25: after Adam’s sin, every human being come into this world with sin and prone to sin as a sort of a defect default. Sin is present in us by default, like an hardware device may bring a defect by default. To correct a defect default in a hardware device, say a computer, it is necessary to alter the operative system or install a specific software to solve the problem. Otherwise, no matter how good the hardware device may be, due to that defect default, its good performance will always be hindered. The defect default in this case is concupiscentia carnis, the proneness to sin humans inherit from Adam. The operative system is human nature. The solution for the problem is the grace of Christ, the new software installed or the alteration made in order to reconfigure the operative system so that the impact of the default defect can be minimized or overcome. In short, Paul’s message, according to Augustine, is the stress of human powerlessness simultaneously with the need for grace. The Church Father is convinced that, in the sequence of Adam’s fall, every and each human being is born under the necessitas peccandi to which Paul refers in Rom. 7, a heavy burden from which the human race will only be set free by the grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord (Rom. 7:25). Augustine’s intransigent insistence on the ruin of natural abilities of human beings on account of Original Sin was, then, driven by a soteriological concern – to stress that, ruined and lost in Adam, humanity has only one way out, Christ, the second Adam. This is one more prove that Original Sin, as taught by Augustine, is a theological construction aiming to serve the purpose of a specific soteriological claim – the salvation through the grace of Christ. All bleak anthropological claims held by Augustine in order to maintain the reality of Original Sin has what the Church Father considered absolutely necessary for the Christian faith – the awareness that Christ and his grace are the only source of and the only way to salvation.

163 Burns, 1979, 46 – 47.

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The doctrine of Original Sin, as presented by Augustine in his debate with Julian is an endless exercise of speculation on a couple of Biblical texts, a disconcerting approach to the human condition which managed to scandalize many of the Bishop of Hippo’s contemporaries. The issue of Original Sin, it cannot be denied accurately, is one of most transversal themes of the entire Augustinian corpus. It is true that it is the exclusivity of salvation through the grace of Christ that lies at the centre of Augustine’s soteriology, but I do not think it would be inaccurate to say that Original Sin and the exclusivity of salvation in Christ, as approached by Augustine, are theologically complementary to each other. A crucial detail for understanding this is Augustine’s theology of baptism, which lays special stress on Scriptural passages which he believed to reveal baptism’s true nature. Such is the case of Rom. 6:3 where Paul declares that whoever has been baptised is baptised in Christ’s death. For Augustine, the equation is quite simple: the declaration includes the little ones; they also die to sin when baptised. To be baptised in Christ means to die to sin. Christ died for sinners. If they have no sin it means Christ did not die for them and they do not need Christ, which, Augustine stressed, would be an outrageous opinion to hold. This, then, would be enough to prove they have sin164. Augustine’s doctrine of Original Sin is, thus, founded on the belief of Christ as sole mediator between humankind and God, and the figure of little ones is regarded by the Church Father as a safe ground for this claim165. Though based on theological presuppositions, Augustine’s denial of infants’ innocence is, however, not confined to the theoretical exegetical exercises only. It is rooted upon experiences and observations of daily life. As William HARMLESS recalls, Augustine the rhetor was also Augustine the pastor. As a pastor he faced “stark realities” such as dying children, and frightened mothers running to the church with their unbaptized dying babies. “He exegeted these realities”, the author explains, “with the same intensity that he exegeted the Biblical text”166. It

164 c. Jul. VI, III, 7; VI, V, 12 – 14. 165 J. P. Burns’ words maybe useful here. “The assertion of the uniqueness of Christ also served as the dogmatic foundation for Augustine’s doctrine of original sin. The rule of the Church and the fundamental belief of every Christian affirms that no person can enter life without belief in Christ and participation in his sacraments. Now a person can be justly excluded from eternal life and condemned to punishment only if he is guilty of some sin. Since an infant cannot be guilty of personal sin either in this life or in a previous existence, he must be said to inherit a sin from Adam whose guilt condemns him to eternal punishment unless he is liberated by the grace of Christ in baptism”. Burns, 1979, 47. 166 Harmless, 1997, 33. see also pp. 22 – 28

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is precisely in Augustine’s exegesis of these “texts” of daily experiences that the empirical contours of his doctrine of Original Sin unfolded. There can be no doubt that the concept of Original Sin determined Augustine’s world-view, particularly regarding the human condition. For instance, Original Sin is at the core of what can be called the Augustinian behavioural paedopsychology. His conclusions on the issue may provide some links even for contemporary debates among paedopsychologists167. Convinced that the present state of infants would not be the state of infants in case sin had not occurred, Augustine carefully observed infants’ behaviours and what he saw he considered being proof enough that they often behave motivated by the same feelings of mature adults. Intending to empirically prove the remnants of Original Sin in them, i. e. to maintain they are not innocent, Augustine picked up a crucial point: the dispute for food, and concludes that The only innocent feature in babies is the weakness of their frames; the minds of infants are far from innocent. I have watched and experience for myself the jealousy of a small child: he could not even speak, yet he glared with livid fury at his fellow-nursling. […] Is this to be regarded as innocence, this refusal to tolerate a rival for a richly abundant fountain of milk, at a time when the other child stands in greatest need of it and depends for its very life on this food alone?168

With the words just quoted Augustine intended to argue for a theological reality behind the absence of innocence in the little ones: they are conceived in sin. They inherit Adam’s sin. As far as the dark blank in my memory is concerned, – he writes in his Confessiones – that period of infancy is on a par with the time I spent in my mother’s womb. And if I was even conceived in iniquity, and with sin my mother nourished me in her womb, where, I beg you my God, where was I, your servant, ever innocent? Where, Lord, and when?169

Such was Augustine’s belief in the guilty of the newborn that, even when he evoked procreation as one of the three goods of marriage (along with fidelity and sacrament) he stressed that children should be loved not only for the mere fact they are born, but so that they are also reborn. After all, he pointed out; they are born for punishment, unless they are reborn for life170. Here the centrality of the sacrament of baptism in Christ is clearly evoked, a fact that makes plain that the 167 See, for instance, the discussion in Starnes 1975 which met its reply in Dombrowski, 1980. Daniel Dombrowski criticizes both Augustine’s view on children and Colin Starnes’ approval of the same view bringing to the discussion the genetic epistemology of the giant of paedopsychology, the Swiss psychologist and Philosopher Jean Piaget. 168 The Confessions I, 11, WSA I/1, 46. 169 I, 12, ibidem, p. 47. For a detailed study on Original Sin in Confessiones, see Rigby, 1987. 170 nupt. et conc. I, XVII 19.

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Augustinian doctrine of Original Sin is an insistence on the exclusivity of Christ’s redemptive sacrifice in the salvation process, which is nothing more nor less than the victory of life over death. There is an issue I consider of utmost importance for understanding the mature Augustine’s doctrine of Original Sin; an issue which deserves much more attention than has been ascribed to it – the relationship between human miseries and Original Sin. Augustine’s doctrine of Original Sin has been studied as if it is almost an exclusively exegetical question, a matter of disputation over the Biblical texts. Those who do not identify themselves with the doctrine do not cease searching for eventual mistakes the bishop of Hippo may have made in his interpretations of the sacred texts (such as the alleged mistake in the translation of Rom. 5:12). They suggest corrections and adjustments. Those who feel sympathy towards the Church Father’s teachings on the issue also peruse the texts, looking for links in order to provide an interpretation they find to be in harmony with the claim according to which mankind lost its original spiritual potentialities when the first sin was committed. It is true that the Augustinian doctrine of Original Sin is a matter of Biblical text disputation, but it is also true that, along with the exegetical exercises, the observations of the daily life, with special emphasis on the human condition and existence, played a crucial role in the Augustinian formulation of the doctrine of Original Sin. Caught in the wave of textual fetishism, one is tempted to ignore the fact that, especially during the time that Augustine faced the versatile Julian of Aeclanum, his theological formulation of Original Sin emphasised and relied on what the Church Father regarded as the empirical proof of the sin humankind inherited from Adam – human misery. The formulation of the doctrine of Original Sin in Augustine had a strong “empirical” rib and the empirical methodology was often used by the Church Father to corroborate the doctrine should not be neglected by whoever wants to grasp the doctrine in its wholeness. For an obvious reason and for practical purpose, Augustine tended to stress the suffering of the little ones to make his point. Infants’ post-lapsarian condition does, in fact, play a crucial role in Augustine’s belief in Original Sin. It must, however, be stressed that with the term miseria, applied to the postlapsarian human condition, Augustine meant always something more than simply human suffering. He meant all sort of physical and spiritual limitations that we now experience and our first parents the paradise did not. For Augustine, the present human existence is impregnated with Original Sin. There is a language of sin in us, clear remnants of Original Sin in us and these are easily seen in the miseria which affects us from the very first to the last moment of our lives. When it comes to providing proofs of the sin that the human race inherited from Adam, Augustine found human misery so eloquent to the point of his stressing

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that though Paul provided us with clear passages on Original Sin (such as Rom. 5:12 – 19 or I Cor. 15:22), if the same Apostle would have faced the need to prove this theological reality he would certainly have pointed to human misery as its evidence171. Thus Augustine’s writings against Julian are flooded with reactions against the praises of nature recurrent in the writings of the Italian bishop. It may not be inaccurate to say that one of the leitmotivs of Contra Julianum Opus Imperfectum is the stress on human misery, particularly the suffering of infants. Hence the recurrent use of Sir. 40:1 (where it is mentioned that there is a heavy yoke upon the children of Adam from the day they come into this world to the day they die), the main Biblical passage Augustine relied on to teach that the origin of human miseria finds its source/roots in the primitive sin172. It has been said that Augustine professed the faith in the total goodness and justice of God, the Creator. Is this heavy yoke upon the innocent infants just? Augustine does not hesitate in saying it is! Its justice, the Church Father stressed, is not hard to prove if one takes Original Sin into account. All it takes, according to Augustine, is to formulate this propaedeutical question: “Cur ergo nunc corpus corruptibile aggrauat animam, cur ergo grave iugum est super filios Adam a die exitus de ventre matris eorum”; How explain the fact that a good creation of a good God can go through such miseries? Or, in clearer words: what is the origin of the terrible punishments in infants if there is no Original Sin (“unde ergo in infantibus ista miserabilis poena, si nulla originalis est culpa?”)?173. Some are born deaf, others blind, other with slowness of mind. One sees physical and mental limitations of every sort in children. How can one possibly admit the presence of such evils in the image of God unless one accepts that when Adam abandoned God he passed a sinful nature to all his descendants? The reasons for the miseries of infants, then, Augustine stressed, are no other than the corruption of human nature on account of the Adamic sin174. 171 See, for instance, c. Jul. imp. I, 25, CSEL 85/1, 22, l. 11: “quid enim apertius quam quod ait apostolus peccatum in hunc mundum per unum hominem intrasse et per peccatum mortem et ita in omnes homines pertransisse? quod si probare idem cogeretur apostolus, ipsam generis humani miseriam testem daret, quae incipit a uagitibus paruulorum et usque ad decrepitorum gemitus peruenit. nullo enim modo sub cura omnipotentis et iusti eadem tam magna miseria naturae irrogaretur humanae, nisi in duobus hominibus tota de paradisi felicitate in hanc infelicitatem peccati merito pelleretur”. 172 Among other passages, see c. Jul. imp. I, 50; I, 55; II, 16; II, 18; II, 67; II, 74; II, 117; II, 236; VI, 20. 173 c. ep. Pel. II, IV, 8, CSEL 60, 468, l. 7. 174 C. Jul. III, IV, 10, PL 44, col. 707: “Iam vero quis ferat, quod ad ipsum spectat animum, imaginem Dei ”innocentiae”, sicut asseris ”dote locupletem”, fatuam nasci, si nulla ex parentibus mala merita in parvulos transeunt? An ita est quisquam vestrum fatuus, ut fatuitatem nullum malum putet; cum Scriptura dicat: Mortuum septem diebus, fatuum vero omnibus diebus esse lugendum? Quis autem nesciat, quos vulgo moriones vocant, natura ita

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Once again, it is to be noticed, the argumentation shaping the Augustinian doctrine of Original Sin has its starting point in a common belief with Julian – the goodness of the creation175. Augustine insistently claimed that his doctrine of Original Sin does not conflict with Christian belief in the goodness of creation. It rather concurs with it since, in case the creation were not good, Original Sin would make no sense, and it would not justify the priceless ransom paid with Saviour’s own life. Unless human nature was a great good, Christ would certainly not have become man for its sake. If that nature had not died by the great evil of sin, He would not have died for it, for He Himself would have come and remained without sin (“nisi natura humana magnum bonum esset, non pro illa homo fieret cum deus esset; nisi magno peccati malo mortua esset, non pro illa moreretur, cum sine peccato ipse veniset atque manisset”)176. Thus, according to Augustine, Original Sin was crucial in the very essence of Christian faith. The Christian message of salvation is, ultimately, about Christ overwhelming Adam; rebirth correcting the defects of birth; regeneration correcting the defects of generation, life and salvation’s triumph over death and condemnation. This is the theological conviction backing Augustine’s doctrine of Original Sin. However, despite of all these theological statements, Augustine was well aware of the complexity behind the assertion of Original Sin. Though convinced that it can be proved with the simple observation of human daily life, existence and condition, Augustine had no doubt of the mysterious dimension of the same sin. The nature of “the ancient sin”, he considered to be, more difficult than any other issue177. In De Nuptiis et Concupiscentia he admits that the presence of Original fatuos, ut quibusdam eorum pene sensus pecorum conferatur? Et non vultis fateri genus humanum ex initio quo deseruit Deum, trahere damnatae originis noxam his omnibus dignissimam poenis, nisi ubi parcit ratione dispositionis occultae inscrutabilis sapientia Conditoris. Qui nec ab ipsa universa massa perditionis abstinet sui operis bonum: ut ex malis vitiorum condat, licet cum malis, in quantum bona est, rationalem mortalemque naturam, cujus nemo esse potest conditor, praeter ipsum; et in generatione damnata, praebeat vasis misericordiae regenerationis auxilium”. See also C. Jul. III, VI, 13. Along with Sir. 40:1LXX, Augustine often quotes passages such as Psalms 144:4, Job 14:4 – 5LXX, the children exterminated in war as reported in Joshua 6:21 and 10:32; the threats of condemnation over Isaac in case he would not have been circumcised up to to eighth day, to emphasise the relationship between human misery and the accuracy of his doctrine of Original Sin. 175 Julian insisted, it is to be stressed, that children, being already good (boni) become better (meliores) through baptism (Ad Florum I, 54). He insisted in the necessity of baptising children on account of the positive content of the sacrament, namely the spiritual adoption of the children by God, incorporation in Christ’s Church and eternal life. Ad Florum V, 9. 176 c. Jul. imp. V, 23, CSEL 85/2, 211, l. 75. 177 mor. XII 40, CSEL 90, 45 – 46, l. 17: “[…] inter omnia quae in hac uita possidentur, corpus homini grauisimum est uinculum iustissimis dei legibus propter antiquum peccatum, quo nihil est ad praedicandum notius, nihil ad intelligendum secretius. Hoc ergo uinculum ne

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Sin even in children born from rebirth parents (baptised parents) is, in fact, strange, but he makes use of the image of wild and domesticated olive trees to claim that, as reason cannot explain why from the seed of domesticated and wild olive trees arise only wild ones, though there are big differences between wild and domesticated olive trees; in same way it cannot explain why both from the flesh of sinners and righteous persons are born only sinners, even though there is a big difference between a sinner and a righteous person178. The theological equation regarding Original Sin is complicated: the child is made a human being by God (a new sinner by his birth, and an old one by his guilt), captive by the deceiver and is in need of a Redeemer. The central question, Augustine stressed, is how the captivity of the child can be inherited even when he/she is conceived by parents who have been redeemed. The issue, he acknowledged, is no use to investigate by reason or to explain by words and, this fact makes those who do not have faith to refuse to believe this fundamental truth (“sed quaeritur quomodo trahi possit captiuitas prolis etiam de parentibus iam redemptis. et quia non facili ratione indagatur nec sermone explicatur, ab infidelibus non creditur […]”)179. These are some examples proving that Augustine is aware of the complexity of the problem. He never found the issue of Original Sin an easy one, particularly when it comes to its hereditary nature involving the little ones, he evokes the need of faith in order to grasp it. It is, ultimately, a matter of mystery. However, though evoking some sense of mystery regarding the theological truth of Original Sin, Augustine, almost paradoxically insisted on a sort of empirical demonstration of the same theological truth. It is precisely in this demonstration attempt that human misery gains relevance in Augustine’s theological formulation of Original Sin. His insistence on a practical demonstration of Original Sin found an explanation in the ferocity with which some of his opponents reacted to the doctrinal formulation. Julian was one of them. concutiatur atque uexetur, laboris et doloris, ne auferatur autem atque perimatur, mortis terrore animam quatit”. 178 Augustine finds, indeed, in the image of the seed of the wild and domesticated olive tree what he considers an ideal one to explain the transmission of Original Sin and its inherent guilt. Adam made mankind the wild olive tree. In an unbaptized child, concupiscentia, the lex peccati, is present in such a way that it is counted as sin, i. e. the reatus (guilt) is also present and makes the child deserve eternal punishment. This is the case even when the parents are baptised, that is, rebirth. The reason why that is so is the fact that, Augustine explains, the parents pass on to the child what they are as a result of their birth in the flesh, and not what they are as a result of their spiritual rebirth. Even though they are reborn, concupiscentia remains hidden there, just as in the case of the seed of the domesticated olive tree. So the child is born with such concupiscence and thus need the sacrament of regeneration in order that this guilt with which he or she is born is no longer counted and sin and worthy of eternal punishment. nupt. et conc. I, XXXII, 37. 179 nupt. et conc. I, XIX, 21, CSEL 42, 234, l. 20.

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Augustine’s argument on Original Sin never convinced the theologians associated with fifth-century Pelagianism. The notion of an inherited sin necessarily brings about other problems, including the use of free will and, above all, divine equity and justice. It has been said that, for Julian, the notion of an inherited sin was a ferocious attack against God’s equity. “iustus et sanctus dominus deus, et iterum: iustus dominus et iustitiam dilexit, aequitatem uidit uultus eius” would be well seen as Julian’s fighting motto against what he understood to be Augustine’s imputation of injustice to God by teaching Original Sin180. It is written in the Law “Filii non morientur pro patribus: unusquisque pro peccato suo morietur”. God, Julian insists, would certainly be unjust if He does what He commands humans not to do and this is, according to Julian, precisely what Augustine’s doctrine of Original Sin suggests181. Besides, an inherited sin, he argued, lacks the most important ingredient of a sinful act, which suffices to deny its very existence: free will. The newborn does not make use of free will. Reason and justice, Julian stressed, establish that no act is a sinful one unless there is a possibility of avoiding it. That is, the act must be freely committed. It is, then, on the ground of divine equity that, to Julian’s eyes, Augustine’s doctrine of Original Sin proves itself to be an outrageous fallacy. The newborns lack free will, so it is clear they do not have any sort of sin. Accordingly, the bishop of Aeclanum denied the existence of an inherited sin, basing himself in a sharp dialectical relationship among three important concepts: free will (which is required for sin to take place, and infants lack it), divine justice, and sin itself. God’s justice would punish no sin unless freely committed (if committed by any other mean but free will is actually not sin). Teaching Original Sin, Julian insists, is an outrageous denial of God’s equity (the very notion which sustains divinity, since God is so just to the point that if He is proved not to be just He would simply not be God), making of a just and loving God a nascentium persecutor, a teaching that a barbarian would hardly maintain182. 180 Ad Florum, I, 27. 181 Thonhard, 1967, 394. 182 Julian goes as far as saying that he does not ask excommunication for Augustine just because the Church was not in the hand of sound judges. By teaching Original Sin, Julian explained, Augustine portrayed God in a way that even barbarians would not dare. See c. Jul. imp. I, 48, CSEL 85/1, 38, l. 41: “[…] ipse sic iudicat, ipse est nascentium persecutor, ipse pro mala uoluntate aeternis ignibus paruulos tradit, quos nec bonam nec malam uoluntatem scit habere potuisse. post hanc ego sententiam tam immanem, tam sacrilegam, tam funestam, si sanis iudicibus uteremur, nihil praeter exsecrationem tui referre deberem. iusta enim et probabili grauitate indignum te disputatione censerem, qui eo usque a religione, ab eruditione, a communibus postremo sensibus aufugisses, ut, quod uix ulla barbaries, deum tuum criminosum putares”. Julian’s accusations against Augustine’s doctrine of Original Sin are often heavy. The Church Father’s doctrine, Julian implied, finds sympathetic a audience among uneducated people, soldiers, butchers, painters, etc. This accusation has

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To make this plain it would suffice to pay attention in the relationship between the three above-mentioned concepts: Justice, Julian claimed, is the attribute without which deity itself does not exist. Since God exists, so does justice and justice gives to each what is due. As for sin, Julian reminded his readers that Augustine’s own definition of sin as presented in De duabus animabus (where Augustine defined sin as the will to keep what justice forbids and from which one is free to hold back – definition which Julian entirely endorsed) is a clear proof that there is no Original Sin. More: sin cannot take place without will, since sin is nothing else than the will being led astray from the path it ought to follow and from which one is free not to turn aside. There can be, then, no doubt, that sin arises from the desires for forbidden things and never exists except in a person who has bad will but could be without it183. It is clear then, Julian stressed, that the little ones, who cannot make the use of reason in order to willingly choose a course of action, have no sin. Thus Augustine’s doctrine of Original Sin, Julian argued, based itself in three unacceptable theological assumptions: it maintained that sin is natural (naturale esse peccatum); it makes of a good God the creator, an implanter and spreader of evils; and it mixes something voluntary (which sin always is) with motivated some discussion on the role of popular beliefs in the controversy between the two bishops. Jean-Marie Salamito (2005) emphasises the issue arguing that there is, in fact, a debate between Julian and Augustine on the role of popular belief in theological controversies. E. Rebillard (2007) opposes to this thesis and claims that “a closer look at the context of the affirmations Salamito discusses reveals, however, that there is no such debate (Rebillard, 2007, 175). “As it is even more clearly proven, he concludes, by the reading of the Unfinished Book Against Julian, there is no real debate between Augustine and Julian on the role of the people in theological controversies. In the polemic between Augustine and Julian, popular belief is mainly a derogatory qualification of the beliefs of the opponent. No sociological conclusion should be drawn from their reciprocal accusations. When Augustine tries to use positively, to his own advantage, the beliefs of the people, he does not mean by people the populace or the multitude, but the universal people of God. The tone of Julian might sound more scornful, but Augustine does not make any thorough attempt to promote popular belief in theological controversies” (pp. 186 – 187). 183 See Ad Florum I, 47 – 48, CSEL 85/1, 33 – 36, l. 20: “nam si supra uires, inefficaci uoluntate peccatur; hoc ipsum fieri uel sola potuit uoluntate. qualitas autem ascribatur uitio, per quam ostenditur, quid amaritudinis uel dedecore conuehat uel dolore. est ergo peccatum, quia si non esset, nec tu sequereris errores; nihil est autem aliud praeter uoluntatem excedentem ab eo calle, cui debet insistere et unde liberum est non deflectere. fit autem de appetitu inconcessorum et nusquam est nisi in eo homine, qui et habuit uoluntatem malam et potuit non habere. […] omnibus itaque aulaeis reductis profer aliquando luce palam, per quod doceas naturale esse peccatum. certe nihil superius falso uel de diuinae laude iustitiae uel de culpae definitione collectum est. ostende ergo haec duo in paruulis posse constare: si nullum est sine uoluntate peccatum, si nulla uoluntas, ubi non est explicata libertas, si non est libertas, ubi non est facultas per rationem electionis, quo monstro peccatum in infantibus inuenitur, qui rationis usum non habent, igitur nec eligendi facultatem ac per hoc nec uoluntatem atque his irrefutabiliter concessis nec aliquod omnino peccatum”?

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seeds184. In the heat of the controversy, Julian claimed that the work of God is so good in the newborn that the natural features of its substance have no need of someone to correct them (“Dicimus itaque tam bonum esse opus dei in nascente, ut ea quae substantiae eius sunt naturalia opus emendatore non habeant”)185. Besides, Julian’s insistently refused to accept Augustine’s interpretation according to which Paul taught the transmission of Original Sin through birth. Julian argued that Paul teaches the transmission of sin through imitation. The teaching of inherited sin by Augustine, Julian claimed, was nothing more than the result of strong reminiscences of the Church Father’s Manichean background with influences of traducianism. Accordingly, during his altercation with Julian, Augustine was, more than ever at pains to maintain his teachings on Original Sin. To prove this great sin and how it justly involves the little ones was not an easy task. Augustine’s attitude in the controversy was more and more the attitude of one who his facing an opponent who refuses to accept the truth though it is right in front of his eyes. Augustine introduced human misery into the discussion to the that point of, relying on it, it would suffice to win the disputation. Relying on human miseries, Augustine was often passing this message to Julian: all the argument you may provide is refuted by a stronger one to which you are not paying attention – the human being’s own condition. It can be accurately said that this is the great conviction beyond Augustine’s assertion of Original Sin in the debate with Julian. As for the relationship between Original Sin and divine justice, Augustine insisted on the idea that human and divine justice should not be analysed from the same angle. God is just and humans can be just. When they are both just it does not mean they are just in the same way. A conclusive proof of this is the fact that God orders humans not to do what is unjust (like making the children pay for their ancestors’ sins), but does the very same thing Himself without being unjust. Such is the case of the King Amasias who received the divine command not to judge the children for the sin of their parents, but one find in the Scripture God Himself doing the very same thing He commands humans not to do. Being a man, the king only judges well by making sure children do not pay for their parents’ transgressions186. Original Sin, however, Augustine admits, is a special case. After all it is not only Adam’s sin but of all his descendants. The truth is that, in his debate with Pelagians, especially in his altercations with Julian regarding Original Sin, as THONNHARD explains, Augustine was forced 184 Ad Florum III, 161. For a good survey on Julian’s denial of Augustine’s teachings on the transmission of sin, see Scheppard, 1996. 185 Ad Florum III, 162. 186 c. Jul. imp. III, 33.

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to stress more the religious dimension of justice to counterbalance the Ciceronian/juridical sense of justice on display in Julian’s argument. Any analogy between the Creator and creature is to be excluded here; what is unjust for humans may not be for God. The very same Scripture reveals God stating what is just for human communities by ordering that children should not die for their parents’ sins (Deut. 24:16), yet states that God Himself punishes children for the sin of their parents (Deut. 5:9) and, according to Augustine, several Biblical events attest this. Such is the case of the Flood or the destruction of Sodom187. If one would still contest this, then Augustine turned to his last line of defence – the very human condition (with special emphasis on the miseries and sufferings of the little ones), in search of practical/empirical demonstrations of Original Sin. Having always been aware that Julian’s insistence on the unconditional innocence of the little ones had as its exposed weak point the fact that it does not take the miseries of infants into account, Augustine could easily frame against the Italian bishop the following theological construction: it is a given fact that there is no injustice in God, so He would never punish innocents. It is also a given fact that infants face sufferings. Since this suffering cannot be unjust, one is to conclude that they are not innocent188. They are human beings in whom the imago Dei would never have suffered the punishments of the diverse defects with which it is evident they are born and which they could suffer justly only if the sins of their parents came first. To deny this is to deny sound faith, Augustine claimed (De hominibus quaestio est, in quibus imago dei numquam diversorum vitiorum, cum quibus eos nasci videmus, poenas pateretur, quas pati non posset iniustas nisi peccatis gignentium praecedentibus, quod vos negantes et catholicam fidem deseritis […]”189. Unlike Julian’s claims, concerning the good of nature, Augustine shared the same belief as the bishop of Aeclanum. Augustine maintained that God created everything good and even a sinner, as God’s creation, is good. The divergence between the two bishops started on the admission of the effects of Adam’s sin in the order of creation and human nature. For Julian, Adam’s sin was nothing more than an individual sin which has no effect upon his descendants; for Augustine it involves the whole mankind, since we were one in Adam, i. e. the primitive sin was a sin of human nature. To explain the magnitude of Adam’s sin and its catastrophic consequences, Augustine drew a clear line between the pre and post-lapsarian condition of humankind and its integration in the order of creation. Before sin, Augustine taught, the harmony of creation was complete; the state of coaptatio was such 187 Thonhard, 1967, 396 – 397, along with c. Jul. imp. III, 12 188 Refoul¦, 1963c, 341. 189 c. Jul. imp. IV, 75, CSEL 85/2, 78, l. 49. see also c. ep. Pel. I, XXII, 40.

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that not even the least sign of death or suffering was to be found in that loco vitae where human and animals were placed by their creator. Animals would be submitted to humans with that mirabile mansuetudine; they would seek their food, not by killing one another, but by taking their nourishment in common with human beings as it is written in Gen. 1:29 – 30190. In the old age, why not believe they would be taken from paradise or leave when feeling death was imminent, so no death would be found in a place of life?191 It is not only human suffering per se, but any reality which may cause it (in its physical, spiritual or psychological dimension) such as war, exploitation ad hominen or slavery, or wars. Any sort of submission of one to another (including of woman by man) started on account of sin. Though such realities found some acceptable justification in the legal system moulding human societies, they would never be possible if humanity had persevered in innocence. Sin is, in fact, the great leitmotiv of human history contradicting the history of salvation. It is the individuals’ attitude towards sin that differs the earthly City from the heavenly City192. Sin, thus, it can be said, occupied in Augustine’s understanding of historical process a similar place occupied by the struggle between classes as taught by Karl Marx in 19th century. The perfect harmony preceding sin is a very comprehensive one. It also reaches the depths of human person. Adam and Eve where not only in harmony with their habitat (which represented no danger at all) but also with themselves. They were totally devoted to the Highest Good which is God and had no contrary law in their members opposed to their minds and could easily accomplish God’s commandments. Only by taking this fact into consideration is one able to grasp the real meaning of the term miseria employed by Augustine in the discussion on the relationship between the Adamic sin and the post-lapsarian human condition. Augustine uses the term miseria meaning more than simple physical sufferance or weakness of humankind. It comprehends every sort of limitations which the first couple did not experience before sin, but what all humanity started to 190 Sometimes, however, Augustine adopted a more realistic position. He admitted that thorns and thistles were present in paradise for the nourishment of the animals, but meant no threat at all for humans. Wild animals, sometimes he admitted, inflict injury in one another since they are each other’s nourishment. See Van Bavel, 1990, 11 – 12. 191 c. Jul. imp. III, 147, CSEL 85/1, 453 – 454, l. 9: “[…] si beatitudinem loci illius christiano cogitaretis affectu nec bestias ibi morituras fuisse crederetis sicut nec saeuituras, sed hominibus mirabili mansuetudine subditas nec pastum de alternis mortibus quaesituras, sed communia, sicut scriptum est, cum hominibus alimenta sumpturas. aut si istas ultima senecta dissolueret, ut sola ibi natura humana uitam possideret aeternam, cur non credamus, quod auferrentur de paradiso moriturae uel inde sensu imminentis mortis exirent, ne mors cuiquam uiuenti in loco uitae illius eueniret”? 192 civ. XIII, 14.

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experience after the first sin. It is precisely for this reason that Augustine’s approach to human misery gained a strong ethical tone, a fact that explains the centrality of the theme such as the relationship between concupiscencia and the abilities of human free will with a constant allusion to Romans 7. A clear example is the capacity to remain in good through the use of free will with which humankind was created. Adam and Eve were the only humans enjoying for a while an unrestricted free will; they only sinned because they wanted to. Unlike what started to happen after that first sin, they had no reason at all to groan like Paul does in Rom. 7:14 – 25. They possessed the body of that life, unlike us who live in the body of this death. So it is with the specific purpose of stressing human misery and the need for divine grace that Paul pronounces the words of verses 23 – 25, words that only make sense for the righteous living in the body of this death, since by no means such a sort of body could be found in paradise. Accordingly, our first parents, before sin, did not know the bitter taste of this battle that is wretched per se193. For Augustine, the greatest and foremost misery was, then, the disorder in the human will, a disorder fuelled by the lex peccati or concupiscence present in humankind. This explained Augustine’s constant reluctance in admitting the presence of concupiscence in paradise. In his debate with Julian regarding the presence of concupiscencia carnis in paradise, Augustine resisted to the idea according to which our first parents had experienced concupiscence before sinning. When he admits a possible presence of concupiscence in paradise, he only does it under the condition that a sharp distinction is to be made between carnal concupiscence (which is an inferior thing opposing to a superior one, thus breaking the established order of creation) and marital concupiscence (concupiscentia nuptiali). For Julian, concupiscence is not a consequence of the Fall. It existed as one of the original human senses before the Fall. Accordingly it is neither sin nor a deficiency of nature, but rather a quality. Hence he refers to it as naturalis and considered it perfectly controllable by the human spirit. Besides, according to Julian, concupiscentia carnis is the pre-eminent means willed by God without 193 nupt. et conc. II, 6, CSEL 42, 257 – 258, l. 24: “ut autem ad istam commemorationem humanae miseriae et diuinae gratiae ueniret apostolus, supra dixerat: uideo aliam legem in membris meis repugnantem legi mentis meae et captiuantem me in lege peccati, quae est in membris meis. post haec autem uerba exclamauit: miser ego homo, quis me liberabit de corpore mortis huius? gratia dei per iesum christum dominum nostrum. in corpore igitur mortis huius, quale in paradiso ante peccatum fuit, profecto non erat alia lex in membris nostris repugnans legi mentis nostrae, quia et quando nolumus et quando non consentimus nec ei membra nostra ut impleat quod appetit exhibemus, habitat tamen in eis et mentem resistentem repugnantem que sollicitat, ut ipse conflictus, etiamsi non sit damnabilis, quia non perficit iniquitatem, sit tamen miserabilis, quia non habet pacem”.

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which no successful procreation can take place. To condemn concupiscentia carnis, according to Julian is, then equivalent to condemning marriage194 Augustine was vehemently opposed to these teachings. Concupiscentia carnis, according to the Church Father, is definitely a post-Fall reality. The seed was created by God without lust, but through the Fall it came to be soiled by the Devil. Anyone who sees this sinful force present in the pre-lapsarian period is forced to admit that paradise was full of sin and suffering195. Augustine’s position on the matter is quite clear in Opus imperfectum IV 19 (as well as in De nuptiis et concupiscentia. II, 50 – 51) where, in opposition to Julian’s reading of I John 2:16 and following verses (in which Augustine claimed that Julian teaches the presence of carnal concupiscence in paradise), he held that the possibility of our first parents to have experienced the first (concupiscentia carnis) before sinning is definitely to be rejected. As for the second (concupiscentia nuptiali), it may have existed even before sin, but such a possibility may be maintained under the condition that this would not mean they had to struggle against it. Such concupiscence would not be the same sort as that which introduced the discordia spiritus vs carnis, but an obedient one, a sort of concupiscence totally subject to the spirit. Here there would have been no contrary desires between flesh and spirit; that is, such concupiscence would never have arisen unless the spirit 194 Lamberigts, 1997, 153. Here it is important to stress the highly divergent approach to concupiscence in Augustine and Julian’s theology. The basis of the entire divergence can be said to be the following: for Augustine concupiscence is the result of sin; for Julian it is just part of human physiology, a natural thing which was present in human beings and offers no room for condemnation. Julian’s understanding of concupiscence receives very favourable comments by some recent scholars, among them M. Lamberigts. The Belgian scholar’s reasons are very convincing. Discussing the theological, cultural and Philosophical background of Julian’s understanding of concupiscence, he stresses the undisputed fact according to which Julian understands concupiscence as part of creative activity and thus is far from seeing in concupiscence the problems his opponent Augustine does. Julian, Lamberigts argues, like many theologians of his day, was of the opinion that sexual intercourse with a view to procreation within the context of marriage was an answer to God’s command in Genesis 1:28. Julian regards concupiscence as a natural quality of human nature given by God to humans. It is present both in humans and animals. Apart from these theological arguments, Julian’s understanding of concupiscence is backed by Philosophical-cultural arguments. As Lamberigts explains, he does not see a problem in nakedness. The way nakedness is regarded varies with contexts (its meaning differs from place to place: in the bath is normally accepted but not in public meetings. For example; athletes are rather proud of nakedness, and it is, sometimes a matter of a civilizational background. Adam was not a superman but stood in the origins of a culture that had to develop itself. The first human beings where “primitive” beings. Julian’s vision on concupiscence is also strengthened by his wider knowledge of medicine of his time in comparison to Augustine’s. Lamberigts argues that Julian’s approach to sexuality is quite in line with ancient medical literature where voluptas was considered to be a condition sine qua non for successful conception. Lamberigts, 2008c. 195 Scheppard, 1996, 99 – 103.

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willed it196. What Augustine intended to preserve here is the integrity of the tranquilitas ordinis which rules the creation, that coaptatio I have already mentioned197. In sum, there was no sense of miseria here. It was order that reined in human beings198. 196 “[…]concupiscentiam carnis dixit apostolus Iohannes, non concupiscentiam nuptialem, quae posset in paradiso esse, etiam si nemo peccasset, in appetitu fecunditatis, non in puritu voluptatis aut certe spiritui semper subiacens, ut non nisi spiritu volente moveretur, numquam adversus spiritum concupiscens, ut et spiritus adversus eam concupiscere cogeretur. Absit enim ut loco tantae felicitatis et in hominibus illic tanta pace felicibus esset ulla discordia carnis et spiritus”. CSEL 85/2 IV, 19, 19, l. 13. In c. Jul. IV, XIII, 62 – 64 Augustine explains that he does not condemn everything concerning the genital organs since sexual arousal would exist in paradise even if sin had not occurred. Sexual arousal is to be distinguished from concupiscentia carnis. The sexual desire in itself is not to be condemned; what is to be condemned is the arousal on account of concupiscence which makes the flesh to have desires contrary to the spirit. For Augustine, the break of the order in man, that is, the rising of carnal concupiscence is, at once, sin, result and punishment of sins. It is part of that miseria, the grave iugum upon the children of Adam. The same rule does not apply to animals in which flesh is not opposed to spirit. This is how Augustine replies to Julian when he defends concupiscence by claiming it is also present in animals and that it is neither evil nor diabolical: […] fatere secundum Christianam fidei, Augustine writes , “etiam istam esse hominis poenam quod comparatus est pecoribus insensatis et similis factus est eis. Huic ergo ista miseria est, cum miseria pecora esse non possint; sic et carnis concupiscentia homini est poena, non bestiae in qua numquam caro adversus spiritum concupiscit”. c. Jul. imp. IV, 38, CSEL 85/2,. 39 – 40, l. 71. Concupiscence in the first man: the concupiscence of the flesh which causes the ejaculation of the carnal seeds either did not exist at all in Adam before sin or was damaged in him by the sin. For either without it the sexual organs were able to appropriately moved and the seed poured into the womb of his wife, or, if the concupiscence did not exist, or concupiscence was itself able to obey at the least sign from the will if it did exist (“Concupiscentia porro carnis per quam iactus carnalium seminum provocatur, aut nulla in Adam fuit ante peccatum aut in illo vitiata est per peccatum. Aut enim sine illa poterant et genitalia congruenter moveri et coniugis gremio semen infundi, si nulla tunc fuit, aut ad nutum voluntatis etiam ipsa servire, si fuit. Nunc aut si talis esset, nunquam caro contra spiritum concupisceret. Aut ergo ipsa vitium est, si nulla fuit ante peccatum, aut ipsa sine dubio est vitiata peccato, et ideo ex illa trahitur orignale peccatum”). c. Jul. imp. VI, 22, CSEL 85/2, 371, l. 106. see also c. ep. Pel. I, XVII, 34 – 35. Se also c. Jul. imp. I, 68sqq 197 It is to be noticed that the term concupiscentia itself does not always carry a negative or pejorative sense in Augustine’s writings. Concupiscentia per se carries the meaning of “desire”, even the good desire planted in the human soul to struggle against sinful desires. In contrast to the blameworthy concupiscentia carnis (applied to all sort of sensual pleasures, not only sexual), Augustine speaks about some laudable forms of concupiscentia, being among them, apart from concupiscentia nuptialis, concupiscentia sapientiae, concupiscentia naturalis and concupiscentia spiritualis. Cf. nupt. et conc. II, 10, 23; civ. XIV, 7; C. Jul. VI, 16, 50. See also Couenhoven, 2005, 372 – 372. 198 Concupiscentia as evil desire, i. e. a desire contrasting the right reason or the created order, according to Augustine is punishment and it only appeared after sin. Its punitive dimension is clearly held by Augustine, among may other places in c. Jul. imp. VI, 14, where he writes: “Nos autem dicimus tam beatum fuisse illum hominem ante peccatum, tamque liberae voluntatis, ut dei praeceptum magnis viribus mentis observans, resistentem sibi carnem nullo certamine pateretur, nec aliquid omnino ex aliqua cupiditate sentiret, quod nollet;

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Much different is the sad showone sees after sin; exactly the contrary of what the pre-lapsarian period was. The harmony and peace gave place to miseries of many sorts. Such miseries inflicted upon human race comprised physical and spiritual limitations. Original Sin brought immeasurable miseries upon the human race. Its magnitude is beyond our imagination. With Adam’s sin, human nature was wounded and subjected to a completely just punishment from which arose not only the corruptibility of the bodies subject to so many painful misfortunes, but also the slowness of the mind. Would all this be possible in paradise? Certainly not! Where did it come from? From nothing else but Original Sin, Augustine concluded199. It is in light of this sharp distinction between pre and post-lapsarian condition of the humankind that the application of human miseries to Augustinian doctrine of Original Sin must be understood. It is true that, for the sake of a soteriological discourse in which Christ and His grace are the only guarantee of salvation even for the newborns, the anti-Pelagian Augustine reveals a great easiness in finding Scriptural evidences to back his doctrine of Original Sin. However, the miseries brought upon the human race on account of Adamic sin broadens his exegetical horizon on this specific issue. A clear example can be seen in the claim according to which human miseries do not only express the punishment of sins, but makes of God a just judge when he punishes even those who are, as far as personal sins is concerned, innocents, which is the case of infants. These claims allowed Augustine to maintain that Scripture, on many occasions, witnesses God punishing innocent children on account of their parents’ sins. So, without any surprise, Old Testament passages such as the twelfth chapter of Leviticus (on the rituals of circumcision and the sacrifice of purification), Gen. 17:24ff (on the circumcision of Abraham and the members of his house), Ex. 20:5 (where God declares to punish children for the sin of their parents). Joshua 6:21 as well as 10:32 stressed the children slaughtered alongside their parents in Joshua’s bloody massacre perpetrated in the conquer of Jericho. They are, without any hesitation, linked by Augustine to the doctrine of Original Sin200. voluntatemque eius prius fuisse vitiatam venenosa persuasione serpentis, ut oriretur cupiditas quae sequeretur potius voluntatem, quam resisteret voluntati; perpetratoque peccato iam poena infirmatae menti etiam carnis concupiscentia repugnaret. Ac per hoc, nisi prius homo faceret peccando quod vellet, non pateretur concupiscendo quod nollet”. CSEL 85/2, 334, l. 278 199 c. Jul. imp. III, 154 200 c. Jul. imp. I, 4, CSEL 85/1, 8, l. 11: “[…] in eius remediis legitur, etiam cum paruulus natus fuerit, offerendum esse sacrificium pro peccato; in eius minis legitur interituram fuisse animam paruuli, si die non circumcideretur octauo; in eius ultionibus legitur iussos interimi etiam paruulos, quorum parentes ad iracundiam prouocauerunt deum, ut internitione bellica delerentur”.

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The Augustinian interpretation of these passages may deserve an implacable opposition of modern readers of the Scripture. Circumcision and the ceremony of purification, they would say, were nothing more than rituals of initiation which started among the paleo-Jewish communities. The fact that children where not spared in the wars is just part of the atrocities of war, especially among the tribes where the tribe itself is regarded as a sort of large family ; it has nothing to do with an alleged inherited sin. So Augustine’s arguments, some modern readers of the Scripture would find hardly convincing. However, it is very important to recall that Augustine’s doctrine of Original Sin, though with significant implications for many fields, such as Biblical exegesis, is above all (if not exclusively) a theological issue. The presence of sin in newborns who through their own will (a necessary condition for sin to take place) did not not perform either good or evil, is, according to Augustine, not only a proof that their suffering has an origin, i.e an inherited sin, but also is to be understood as part of the very mystery of God’s redemptive plan of action. It gives sense to the Pauline parallelism between Christ and Adam. Original Sin is to be understood in light of the mysteries of the grace of Christ, the essence of the Christian faith, a soteriological framework which requires that the injustice of the first man is imputed to little ones when they are born so that they are subject to punishment, just as the righteousness of the second man is imputed to little ones who are reborn so they may attain the kingdom of heaven, though they do not imitate either of them by their own will and action201.

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The case of suffering of infants

In his works against Julian, Augustine clarified the principles justifying his opinion on the miseries of infants. They are based on his doctrine of God, namely on the divine attributes such as justice and bounty202. Thus, the Church Father 201 c. Jul. imp. , I, 57, CSEL 85/1, 55, l. 39: “ipsa sunt enim christianae gratiae sacramenta abscondita sapientibus et prudentibus et reuelata paruulis. in quibus o si esses nec quasi magnus in tua uirtute confideres, profecto intellegeres sic imputari generatis paruulis iniustitiam primi hominis ad subeundum supplicium, quemadmodum imputatur paruulis regeneratis iustitia secundi hominis ad obtinendum regnum caelorum, quamuis uoluntate atque opere proprio nec illum in malo nec istum in bono reperiantur imitati”. Augustine admits that Julian is right when claiming that there can be no sin without free will. He, however, recalls that Adam committed that great sin using the free will with which he was created and we were all in him when he did it. So, in truth, little ones did not commit any sin out of their free will will, but Adam did and this mysterious monogenism which bonds the whole mankind to its progenitor Adam seems enough to Augustine to solve the problem of free will and its relationship with Original Sin. 202 Eborowicz, 1976, 415.

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had a theodical reason for his believe in Original Sin: it would simply be unjust for God to allow infants to suffer deformities, diseases, mistreatment, and death, unless they were already sinners203. This conviction would not only allow Augustine to reiterate what he understood to be the theological explanation behind the baptism of infants – to be remitted from an inborn sin, the Original Sin – but also to refute the above mentioned accusation coming from Julian, according to whom, by teaching Original Sin, Augustine was doing nothing less than to perpetrating an outrageous attack against the divine equity. This accusation is certainly one of the main reasons that, in his confrontation with Julian, Augustine more and more emphasised the suffering of infants as a result of punishment for their participation in Adam’s sin. Infants’ miseries are direct results of Original Sin204. It is precisely on human miseries, especially infants, that the Church Father relied upon in refuting Julian’s accusation. Under a just God, innocent infants would never be punished, so the justice of such suffering lies in the Original Sin with which they come into this world. Accordingly, along with scriptural evidences, the miseries of infants are the most evident proofs against those who deny Original Sin (“haeresim uestram in hac paruulorum miseria naufragare, quae sub deo iusto nulla esset, nisi eam natura humana primi peccati magnitudine uitiata et damnata meruisset”)205. Sir. 40:1, sometimes alongside Wisdom 9:1, is the passage on which Augustine relied to explain to Julian the justice of an inherited sin involving the little ones, a sin far too evident in their miseries. In argument, Augustine was peremptory in claiming that instead of maintaining that Original Sin is against God’s justice, one should remember that what would certainly be unjust is the suffering of the little ones if Original Sin is to be denied (“uos quod dicitis potius non potest ulla iustitiae ratione defendi, quia miseria generis humani, a qua nullum hominum ab exortu usque ad obitum uidemus alienum, non pertinet ad omnipotentis iustum iudicium, si non est originale peccatum”)206. Backing his argument with Sir. 40:1 Augustine saw no reason for so much evil that affected children from the very beginning of their lives if, in fact, they were without any sin and so innocent as Julian claims they are. Why, then, is there a 203 Couenhoven, 2005, 361. 204 The argument according to which the miseries of infants are the result of their culpability is present in Augustine’s discussion on infancy in his Confessiones. There, obviously, are some nuances in Augustine’s Confessiones for his debate with Pelagians and with Julian, in particular. But his basic line of reasoning did not change. W. Eborowicz argues that “La plus grand modification c’est l’omission, dans les ouvres pol¦miques, des p¦ch¦s enfantins qui sont soulign¦s dans les Confessions”. Eborowicz, 1976, 416. 205 c. Jul. imp. III, 109, CSEL 85/1, 430, l. 62. 206 c. Jul. imp. I, 3, CSEL 85/1, 7, l. 11.

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heavy yoke upon them from the day they come forth from the womb of their mother? Why is there such enormous corruption of the body that their souls are weighed down by it (Wisdom 9:15)? Augustine asked why is there such great dullness of the mind that their slowness is educated even by beatings? The conclusion is far too obvious, Augustine claimed: if human nature had remained in that good state in which it was created, it is undeniable that human beings in the paradise, Adam’s descendants, would come into this world free from any of of these miseries as well as others207. The suffering of infants is certainly one of the visible realities on which Augustine relied in order to maintain his claims regarding Original Sin. Besides, Original Sin is the only reality which can safeguard God’s equity in the grand scheme of things. The newly born, who are images of God, would not suffer such great penalties under the most just judgement and omnipotence of God (“iustissimo iudicio et omnipotentia dei”) if they did not contract the merit of the original and ancient sin (“si meritum non traherent originalis veterisque peccati”)208. Children have no sin of their own; any suffering is a consequence of sin. Though children have no sin of their own, no one can deny they are subject to the miseries of humanity and, on account of this fact, endure great sufferings. So they have a sin which is not their own, but which they inherited from their parents – this is the Original Sin, the only source of explanation for infants’ suffering. Regarding infants one cannot even say they are tested in virtue by the evils of suffering they endure. Augustine’s debate with Julian on Original Sin reveals that the Church Father is aware that his opponent focused on the good of the nature and ignored human 207 c. Jul. imp, I, 54, CSEL 85/1, 51, l. 20: “quare ergo graue iugum super eum a die exitus de uentre matris eius? cur tanta corruptibilitas corporis, ut hac aggrauetur anima eius? cur tanta mentis optunsio, ut etiam plagis erudiatur tarditas eius? […] numquid si nemo peccasset, si natura humana in qua condita est bonitate mansisset, etiam in paradiso ad istas homo miserias, ut alias taceam, nasceretur?” From the very beginning of the Pelagian controversy the issue of miseries of infants are present in Augustine’s arguments on Original Sin. The first of all the anti-Pleagian writings, De peccatorum meritis et remissione is a clear example of it. Here Augustine links the magnum ignorantia atque infirmitas malum of infants to Original Sin (I, XXXVI, 67). He formulates the questions where do the miseries of infants come from, providing the forthright answer according to which Original Sin is the only explanation. Adam was created in perfection since he was not generated by a corrupted flesh as happen to all descendants of his (“huic propositioni respondemus adam propterea non talem creatum, quia nullius parentis praecedente peccato non est creatus in carne peccati, nos ideo tales, quia illius praecedente peccato nati sumus in carne peccati”). I, XXXVII, 68, CSEL 60, 68, l. 21. 208 c. Jul. imp. VI, 17. see also c. Jul. II, I, 3: “Nec iniquus est Deus, cum peccatis sive originalibus sive propriis digna retribuit: magisque iniquus aut infirmus ostenditur, si jugum grave super filios Adam, a die, sicut scriptum est, nativitatis eorum usque in diem in sepulturae in matrem omnium [Sir. 40:1], sub quo jugo imago ejus atteritur, aut ipse nullo vel originale vel proprio praecendente peccato, aut quilibet alius ipso imponito invito”. PL 44, col. 673.

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miseries, which necessarily have an origin that does not derive from anything good. Augustine’s doctrine of Original Sin (without denying the goodness of creation as such, as Julian accused him) is, thus, rooted in what he considered to be the repercussions of the disturbances of the defects (vitium) of a fallen nature. This allowed him to stress the nature of human salvation209. It is the Pauline parallelism Adam-Christ once again in play. This can be clearly seen when the Church Father relied on the circumcision (sign of the future bath of regeneration) of the patriarch Isaac and the threats which would result if he had not received it. He had to receive such a sign because no one of this condemned generation in Adam is set free without being reborn in Christ. Those who deny the presence of sin in infants, according to Augustine, are infants’ true persecutors because what they actually do is to deny the Redeemer to these little ones, failing to understand that Christ is the only way to salvation, as even the ancient rite of circumcision showed it210. The Pelagian defence of infant’s innocence, according to Augustine, is not only a “useless praise” but, paradoxically, a “cruel defence”. In their zealous defence of Christ’s role as creator, they annihilate his role as Physician and Redeemer211. Children are born under condemnation. Why would an infant of eight days of age, he wondered, be condemned if he is not circumcised, unless he had contracted a sin from the origin? The condemnation, Augustine stressed, would not be unjust. God, being 209 c. Jul. III, III, 9, PL 44, col. 706: “omitto commemorare quae mala in hac ipsa transitoria uita pene omnes patiantur infantes, et quomodo explicetur quod dictum est, graue iugum super filios adam a die exitus de uentre matris eorum, usque in diem sepulturae in matrem omnium. quae utique mala sub iusto et omnipotente deo non irrogarentur eius imagini, quibus malis in uirtute exerceri infantilis aetas non potest dici, si nulla ex parentibus mala merita traherentur. haec autem mala paruulorum, non ea quae habere negantur a uobis, sed quae perpeti cernuntur ab omnibus nobis, tu praetermittis omnino, nec respicis: sed spatiaris tibi uir disertissimus, et exerces ingenium ac linguam tuam in laude naturae. natura ista in tantas et tam manifestas collapsa miserias, saluatorem, liberatorem, mundatorem, redemptorem christum habet necessarium; non iulianum, non coelestium, non pelagium laudatorem. quam quidem redimi non fatereris in paruulis, nisi quia hoc coelestius apud carthaginem gestis ecclesiasticis, ora christiana non sustinens, fassus est”. 210 Considering Julian’s accusation according to which Augustine’s doctrine of Original Sin does no more than present God as a persecutor of newborns, William Harmless’ analysis is quite clear and accurate: “‘Persecutor of new-born children”: A harsh epithet for For Augustine’s God, and by implication, for Augustine himself. There are some today who think it fits. Augustine’s doctrine of original sin does indeed seem forbidding, a ruthless logic – especially when shorn of its christological foundation, as it all too often is. What needs appreciation is that, for Augustine, it was just the opposite: the Pelagians were the persecutors of newborns; the Pelagians, in their defence of infant sinlessness, undermined the Gospel itself by removing Christ as the one mediator. And Augustine’s Christ, far from being persecutor of newborns, was the Great Physician whose potent medicine of baptism was the one best hope for rescuing infants from the infernal genetics of original sin”. Harmless, 1997, 7 – 8. 211 nat et. gr. XXI, 23

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good, can set someone free without good merits; but being just, God cannot condemn without any reason. This implies admitting that the condemnation of Isaac would be just on account of a bad merit, not on account of his own personal deeds, but on account of an inherited sin212. Julian argued that, unlike Augustine’s accusation of him, he did not deny grace. Divine grace, Julian stressed was revealed in Christ, the medicine for the little ones. Julian reiterated that little ones need grace in even greater amount (copiosiore ea indigere)213. Augustine, however, knew that Julian’s insistence on the goodness of nature, which Augustine himself maintained, led him to the argument according to which newborns need no emendation of their nature, had an exposed weak point. It did not take into account the miseries of the same infants. If, indeed there is no need of emendation, Augustine observed, how explain the clear evidences of physical disabilities visible in many newborns, for example, who are born with sealed mouth, sealed eyes, with slowness of mind, and many other physical inabilities which are unacceptable in paradise? Augustine had no doubt that such imperfections sprang from nothing else than the root of sin (“non pollulauerunt nisi de radice peccati”)214. From the spiritual and intellectual standpoint, Adam and Eve must have been the two most perfect of us all and in case they would not have sinned, they would begotten similar children, with no physical, spiritual or intellectual limitations such as those visible in today’s infants and children. Augustine picked children’s condition after sin to explain the contrast that he believed would be their condition if sin would not have taken place. This specific issue is so clear and recurrent in Augustine’s debate with Julian to the point that I doubt any detailed explanation I may provide can be as clear as Augustine’s own words, for instance, those recorded in Contra Julianum Opus imperfectus III, 198: But those little ones in paradise would not weep, nor would they be speechless or unable to use reason for a time; they would not be afflicted with diseases or be injured by 212 C. Jul. III, XVIII, 35, PL 44, cols. 720 – 721: “an uero nec sic tandem respicis, illud primitus in paradiso datum possibile ac facile fuisse praeceptum, quo contempto atque uiolato, omnes ex uno homine, tanquam in massa originis commune illud habere peccatum; et hinc esse iugum graue super filios adam, a die exitus de uentre matris eorum, usque in diem sepulturae in matrem omnium? et quoniam ex ista in adam generatione damnata nemo liberatur, nisi regeneretur in christo; propterea signum eiusdem regenerationis isaac nisi accepisset, perisset: nec immerito perisset, quia ex hac uita, quo per generationem damnatam damnatus intrauerat, sine signo regenerationis exisset. aut si non est ista causa, dic alteram. bonus est deus, iustus est deus: potest aliquos sine bonis meritis liberare, quia bonus est; non potest quemquam sine malis meritis damnare, quia iustus est. nullum meritum malum octo dierum infans de propriis peccatis habebat; quare damnaretur, nisi circumcideretur, si ex origine non trahebat”? 213 Ad Florum III, 146. see also III, 149 – 152 214 c. Jul. imp.. III, 162

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animals, killed by poison or wounded by any accident; they would not loose any sense or part of the body, nor would they be troubled by demons. When they grow into childhood, they would not be controlled by beatings or educated with labour, nor would any of them be born with so foolish and dull a mind that they would be corrected neither by labour nor by pain. Except for the size of their bodies on account of the capacity of their mothers’ womb, they would be born just as Adam was created. They would not now be such children as we see, they would not endure such sufferings if that great sin did not change human nature and condemn it to these miseries. They are therefore, not this way because of the condition of birth, but because of the infection of sin and the condition of its punishment215.

The association Augustine made between Original Sin and physical and spiritual imperfections, easily visible in little ones, promptly led him to the issue of the medicine of Christ. This issue is of crucial importance since it elucidates well the Christological tone of Augustine’s doctrine of Original Sin. Julian, according to Augustine, denied that little ones need the medicine of Christ in order to reach salvation, since he argued that they have no sin. This assertion clashed with the central message of Augustine’s doctrine of Original Sin: all are condemned in Adam and Christ alone is the source of salvation. Augustine’s opposition to this alleged position held by Julian was vehement and assumed an essentially Christological orientation, laying special emphasis on the very meaning of Christ’s death on the Cross. Augustine’s reasoning is well explained by William HARMLESS, who explicates it as follow: To say that infants are innocent would mean they are “godly”. That would mean that Christ did not die for them, for Christ died only for the ungodly. However, if Christ died for all, Christ died for infants; if Christ died only for the ungodly, then infants must somehow be ungodly. But infants cannot be ungodly the way most of us are ungodly : by committing sins, that is, sinful acts. Since infants cannot act, they cannot sin; and yet they must be sinners for Christ to save them. Therefore they must be original sinners, so to speak. The logic Augustine uses here is deductive, deducing original sin from Christ’s position as the one mediator of salvation216.

215 c. Jul. imp. III, 198, CSEL 85/1, 497 – 498, l. 13: “sed illi paruuli nec flerent in paradiso nec muti essent nec aliquando uti ratione non possent nec sine usu membrorum infirmi et inertes iacerent nec morbis affligerentur nec a bestiis laederentur nec uenenis necarentur nec aliquo casu uulnerarentur, uel ullo sensu aut ulla parte corporis priuarentur nec a daemonibus uexarentur nec surgentes in pueritiam domarentur uerberibus aut erudirentur laboribus nec ulli eorum tam uano et obtunso nascerentur ingenio, ut nec labore nec dolore ullo emendarentur, sed excepta propter incapaces uteros matrum sui corporis quantitate tales omnino, qualis adam factus est, gignerentur. nunc autem nec tales essent, quales uidemus, nec talia paterentur nisi peccato illo magno natura humana in has miserias mutata atque damnata. non ergo ita se habent conditione nascendi, sed contagione peccati et conditione supplicii”. See also V, 22. 216 Harmless, 1997, 19.

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With the final lines on this paragraph I give my full endorsement to HARMLESS’ most accurate conclusion according to which in the debate with the Pelagians Augustine gave the medicus image a new twist: Christ the Physician would become Christ the Pediatrician217. If one thinks for a while, one is easily led to the following conclusion: the way Augustine used miseria humana, laying emphasis on the suffering and miseries of the infants, is constructively disconcerting. It appeals to the very essence of one’s faith, especially for us who live in the era in which science seems to be assumed as the mighty answers-provider. If one professes faith in a Good God whose justice is part of His own essence, the human misery, especially the sufferings of infants leaves two options: either one has absolutely no clue about the modus operandi of the divine justice and, thus cannot grasp the reason why this Good Creator allows innocent infants to suffer ; or this divine justice is, in fact consistent with the principle according to which transgressions deserve punishment and one has to admit that these infants are, somehow, transgressors. If this is the case, something went terribly wrong in the beginning. This something may be, then, the intricate theological reality Augustine calls Original Sin. This persisting original trouble with a catastrophic snowball effect started in Adam. Augustine points to Christ as the solution. I must say that this, per se, does not contradict Christian faith.

3.6

Conclusions

Augustine’s debate with Julian on Original Sin clearly exposes that the concept of inherited sin is to be differentiated from what is today called the Augustinian doctrine of Original Sin, which is ultimately an agglomerate of doctrines. What is important for an understanding of Augustine’s doctrine of Original Sin is not to loose the following from one’s sight: human beings were created in the state of righteousness and absolutely free from sin. They, however, voluntarily committed sin, and. the responsibility for it clearly belongs to human beings. They are guilty. A transgression occurred, but it was, Augustine often stated against Julian, not any transgression, it was a transgression of human nature. So each and every human being coming into this world is born culpably misrelated to God. Since God is unquestionably just, His justice cannot go unserved. A transgression deserves punishment. Hence there is a human captivity from which only the Redeemer can set them free. No wonder Augustine insisted on the need of divine grace, the sole gateway to salvation. While Julian argued that Adam’s sin should not be regarded as a sin for which the entire human race is to be held responsible, Augustine maintained that the 217 Harmless, 1997, 17.

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first man’s sin brought condemnation upon the entire human race; it made of all a massa damnata, massa perditionis; it created a sort of a second nature, a natura vitiata due to the congenital and sinful pathology we all inherit from our first parents. The ideal portrayal of this natura vitiata, Augustine maintained, one finds depicted in the Pauline verses of Rom. 7:14 – 25. It is essentially here that Augustine looked for theological hints to argue that, on account of the lex peccati, i. e. concupiscentia carnis present even in the most faithful of Christians, human nature is curved upon itself. What rules in human beings after sin is the sense of self-satisfaction, egoism. After sin, the human will is corrupted and wishes for nothing but serving its own interests, thus turning away both from God and neighbour. Ruled by the love of self, it tends to do nothing but to sin. Then human free will is no longer truly free since freedom, according to Augustine is to act for the glory of God, that is, use free will for good purposes. The Augustinian doctrine of Original Sin is one of those doctrines that, when studied carefully, easily reveals that to study Augustine ends up to taking a trip towards the human existential drama. This is such that Augustine’s doctrine of Original Sin is also shaped by a constant radiography to the human condition and existence. In the sinful pathologies that were evident to him, he found more than enough reasons to consider Original Sin empirically provable and verifiable. Sir. 40:1 provides a motto for the argument: here the Scriptures clearly states that human existence, from the very beginning to its end, is a miserable one. Miseries are evil and God does not create evil. The ultimate source of such miseries – the lex peccati, the libido dominandi that leads to wars, slavery, and exploitation of the neighbours, all physical and psychological limitations that one now finds in human beings but was certainly not present in the paradise – is Original Sin. Though not being at the age of reason, not being able to make use of the free will of choice, infants are undeniably victims of evils of many kinds. Augustine saw here a safe ground in his search for empirical explanations regarding his doctrine of Original Sin. The miseries of infants is pointed out by Augustine to his opponent Julian, as an empirical, most credible and even tangible proof of Original Sin which is present in every and single human being coming to this world. On account of all these miseries, the condemnation in Adam, with its heavy ethical consequences, and the divine dispensation divine grace assume themselves as the two main basis of the necessitas peccandi as taught by Augustine. Because Adam, by leaving the contemplation of God, misled human nature, human beings, on account of the original sinful pathology inherited from the days of paradise, necessarily wishes to sin, unless divine grace intervenes and replace their sinful and selfish desires with the love of God. In other words, from Adam humanity inherited a nausea for the good and led astray from God. On account of Adam’s sin human beings come to this world as sinners for the simple

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fact that they are human beings. But there is a solution, at least for some of them. The solution, according to Augustine, is the grace of God manifested in Christ. Only divine grace can redirect humanity to its Creator and sow the desire for good which Christians perform in faith which works through love. This divine grace, however, according to Augustine, is reserved to the elect. The reprobated will keep behaving in accordance with their nausea for anything good and ultimately be condemned to the eternal punishment.

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4. Ante omne meritum est gratia: Grace, faith and merit in the Augustinian doctrine of justification (it is all about grace)

4.1

Reconciliation in Christ: Original Sin and the theological background of the Augustinian doctrine of justification

Original Sin, Augustine recognized in his debate with Julian, is a mystery (originalis secreta peccati). Yet, even if not possible to be investigated by reason or clearly explained through words, its truthfulness cannot be questioned. Though a mystery, it is a mystery that unfolds the very foundation of the Christian faith, unequivocally taught both by the Scriptures and by the leading authorities of the Church tradition, and proclaimed throughout the whole Church (“Sed etsinulla ratione indagetur, nullo sermone explicetur : verum tamen est quod antiquitus veraci fide catholica praedicatur et creditur per Ecclesiam totam”)1. He went even so far as to claim that it is a doctrine harmoniously taught by both Latin and Greek Fathers, his predecessors and contemporaries. The constant identification of the doctrine of Original Sin with the very foundation of Christian faith has a single purpose: to emphasise the restoration in Christ of what was lost in Adam, to stress the unyielding need of the grace of Christ for human salvation. Augustine came forward with the doctrine of Original Sin in a bitter and polemical context; he was fully convinced that its denial can only be maintained by those who do not understand the gravity of entrance of sin in the world through Adam and, thus, fail to evaluate the real dimension of the redemption through Christ (hence he insistently claimed that Pelagians were enemies of grace and reduced Christ’s cross to nothing). For Augustine the fight against Pelagian oriented understanding of salvation had to be be conducted through recentralization of Christ the Mediator in the discourse of salvation. The parallelism Adam-Christ and christocentrism defined the very essence of Augustine’s understanding of salvation.

1 C. Jul. VI, V, 11, PL 44, cols. 828 – 829.

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The insistence on the necessity of understanding salvation as a process of christocentrical nature is abundantly present in Augustine’s writings. This christocentrism is, almost always emphasised by Augustine on account of the Fall in Adam. The relationship between the fall of mankind in Adam and the redemption in Christ, Augustine maintains, is far too obvious: unless humankind had fallen in Adam, the Incarnation of Christ, the second Adam, would not be necessary. Combining both human and divine features, Christ is the ideal figure to mediate the relationship between God and fallen mankind. Apart from the mediator, who is God and Man, there is no way to redemption or salvation (Enchirideon 28, 108). Along with the role of mediator, Christ is liberator (f. et symb. II, 3; Jo. ev. tr. 41, 13), redemptor, mundator, roles which Augustine often stresses in order to contrast with those played by the Devil such as of desertor, interemptor, captivator and deceptor (Jo. Ev. tr. 79, 2). Christ is the second Adam. From the first Adam He inherited flesh only (i. e. human condition), not sin. So it is now the Immaculate’s role to restore the imago Dei lost in the first Adam. It is, thus, in the thematic relationship between the theology of creation, fall and redemption that Augustine refers to Christ as “hominis formator et reformator, creator et recreator, factor et refactor”(Idem 38, 8). Christ is the medicus humilis who heals the wounds of sin; His humility is the most effective antidote against the tumour of pride, the very origin of all sin (Idem Tr 25, 16; see also En. Ps. 118, 9, 2). Mankind’s wounds are in fact many and immense. Even greater is Christ’s medicine (sed amplior est medicina tua, conf. 10, 43, 69). The Christocentric dimension of Augustine’s doctrine of redemption is evident in his reference to Christ as sacerdos and sacrificium/holocaustum (c. Faust., 19, 7; civ. 10, 6, 20; div. qu. 6, 12). By making himself victim on the Cross, Christ provided mankind with the true Easter. As victim He guaranteed victory over sin and death. He is victim and victor, uictor et uictima (conf., 10, 43, 69). Augustine’s insistent reliance on divine grace as the sole source of human salvation is the most important argument for understanding his doctrine of Original Sin. This, it has to be accepted once and for all, should not be circumscribed by his interpretations of Rom 5:12, which, though an important passage in the Augustinian approach to the issue, the Church Father did not read isolated from the rest of the following verses (namely up to the 19th). Also, it is not even the most important one. Though constantly quoted in the discussion on the issue, it is not in Rom 5:12 that Augustine saw the most elucidative evidences of Original Sin2. This passage has the same importance as, for instance, Psalms 51:7 or several passages of the book of Job, not to mention many others. 2 Augustine himself was aware he and his Pelagian opponents, namely Julian were using different texts regarding Rom 5:12 (cf. c. Jul. Op. Imp. II, 63). Augustine’s text was an Old Latin version based on the Greek text which read ita in omnes homines pertransiit. Pelagius, it is

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Augustine even allowed some open interpretation of Rom. 5:123 and this, he was convinced, did not weaken his argument regarding Original Sin. The theological reality upon which Augustine’s doctrine of Original Sin was based was not, above all, the Fall and death in Adam, but the life and reconciliation in Christ4. It is the reconciliation in Christ inherent in the Pauline parallelism between Adam and Christ, the type and the anti-type that allowed Augustine to make use of the crucial passages such as Rom. 5:18 and I Cor. 15:22, maintaining Original Sin as a doctrine unequivocally taught in the Scriptures. The Pauline parallelism, Augustine was convinced, leads only to one conclusion: the human race’s sinfulness was contracted by Adam, in whom all were present when sin occurred, and righteousness is only found in the second Adam, the redeemer Jesus Christ. Among many other passages that can be used to make this plain is the following excerpt of Contra duas epistulas Pelagianorum IV, IV, 8: Why are Pelagians so reluctant about this?”, Augustine wondered, “If reconciliation in Christ is necessary to all humans, on all humans has passed sin through which we became enemies [of God] so that we have need of reconciliation. Such a reconciliation lays in the bath of regeneration and in Christ’s flesh and blood without which not even little ones can have life in themselves. In the same way that there was one man for death on account of sin, there is also one man for life on account of righteousness, because “as in Adam all died, so also in Christ all shall be made alive” [I Cor. 15:22] and “as through the sin of one man condemnation was brought upon all, so also through the righteousness of one man justification of life is brought upon all” [Rom. 5:18]. Who is there that has turned a deaf hear to these words of the Apostle with such hardiness of wicked impiety, as having heard them, to contend that death passed upon us through Adam

known was one of the earliest user of Vulgate. Julian’s text is also that of the Vulgate. See Harbert, 1989. What is important here is the fact their interpretations of the passage are crucial to understand their divergent views on human person. Thus B. Harbert writes: “The Pelagian anthropology had more in common with the outlook of the Greek Fathers, with their optimistic and positive view of human nature, then with the more pessimistic of the Latins. The textual history of Romans 5:12 shows that the Pelagian controversy was in part the product of a meeting, not only between Eastern and Western minds, but between Eastern and Western texts of Scriptures. […] How Western theology of original sin might have developed if Augustine had known the Vulgate is a fascinating subject of speculation”. Harbert, 1989, 263 – 264. 3 The term in quo pointing to Adam suggests this to possible interpretations: either Paul meant that all sinned in Adam, because when he sinned, all were in him; or that all sinned in that sin because it became universally the sin of all, which all would contract by being born (“aut enim in illo homine peccauerunt omnes ideo dictum est, quoniam quando ille peccauit, in illo erant omnes; aut in illo peccato peccauerunt omnes, quia generaliter omnium factum est, quod nascentes tracturi erant omnes; aut restat, ut dicant, quod in illa morte peccauerint omnes”). c. ep. Pel. IV, IV, 7, CSEL 60, 527, l. 19. 4 Di Palma, 2004, 119 – 120, Couenhoven, 2005, 362 – 363, along with nupt. et conc. II, XXVIII, 47.

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without sin, unless, indeed, they are opponents of the divine grace and enemies of the Cross of Christ?5

This single passage says multum in parvo. By stressing the sinful state in which all are born, Augustine was doing nothing more than stressing the Christocentric nature of the central message of the Christian faith. Augustine’s doctrine of Original Sin, then, cannot be understood unless in light of a Christologicallyoriented sense of his soteriology for the sake of which the African prelate fought during a large part of his career: concupiscence (the proneness to sin), the bond of Original Sin, is contracted by birth and removed only by rebirth (“concupiscentia… generatione trahitur originalis peccati uinculum sola regeneratione soluendum”)6 ; no one’s body is dead on account of sin unless through Adam and no one is set free from this death unless through Christ. The first human being sinned so greatly that, by that sin, the nature, not of the one human being, but of the whole human race, was changed for the worse (after all it was humanity that sinned in the Garden), and fell from the possibility of immortality (possibilitate immortalitatis) into the necessity of death (necessitatem mortis). The sin of the first man was so great that he begot a world of mortals (mortalium saeculum), but that righteousness of the second man is so great that he begot a world of immortals (immortalium saeculum). In the same way Augustine insisted on the sad solidarity involving humankind in the sin of Adam. He stressed a new solidarity which presents as the head or patriarch of the mankind not Adam, but Christ. Through his death and resurrection Christ sealed a new fate for mankind since He is the Redeemer, the New Adam, the gate for salvation, once lost in the old Adam7. Accordingly, in his confrontation with Julian, Augustine made a very recurrent complaint: by denying Original Sin, he claimed, his opponent nullified Christ’s redemptive mission when it comes to the salvation of the little ones, and denied the exclusivity of salvation through Christ. That is, he admitted the outrageous possibility of salvation apart from Christ8, although, regarding the 5 “quid tergiuersantur pelagiani? si omnibus necessaria est reconciliatio per christum, per omnes transiit peccatum, quo inimici fuimus, ut reconciliari opus haberemus. haec reconciliatio est in lauacro regenerationis et christi carne et sanguine, sine quo nec paruuli possunt habere uitam in semet ipsis. sicut enim fuit unus ad mortem propter peccatum, sic est unus ad uitam propter iustitiam, quia, sicut in adam omnes moriuntur, sic in christo omnes uiuificabuntur et: sicut per unius delictum in omnes homines ad condemnationem ita et per unius iustificationem in omnes homines ad iustificationem uitae. quis aduersus haec apostolica uerba tanta duritia nefandae inpietatis obsurduit, ut his auditis mortem sine peccato in nos per adam transisse contendat, nisi obpugnatores gratiae dei, inimici crucis christi […]”. c. ep. Pel. IV, IV, 8, CSEL 60, 529, l. 11. The translation follows in large extant that of WSA. 6 Cf. c. Jul. imp. II, 218 7 c. Jul. imp., VI, 7 along with Garc†a 1965, 34 – 35 8 c. Jul. imp. VI, 20, CSEL 85/2, 359, l. 60: “Dicit Iesus: Venit enim fillius hominis quaerere et

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little ones, Christ says “unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you will not have life in you” (John 6:54). It is in this passage, as a matter of fact, along with John 3:5, that Augustine saw the unequivocal proof that infants leaving this world unbaptised will have no life. Only this consideration would suffice to demonstrate the essential role the figure of the little ones played in the shaping of Augustine’s soteriological discourse and how intimately the Augustinian doctrine of Original Sin is linked to the Christian message of salvation. Augustine’s appeal to I Cor. 15:22 to back his arguments for Original Sin emphasised what is perhaps the underestimated detail of his doctrine of Original Sin, namely the Christological tone behind it. He is clear in his insistence on the Pauline parallelism Adam-Christ; the conviction that allows one to understand what the Augustinian doctrine of Original Sin is all about: the defence, stress and exaltation of the unconditional need of divine grace in the salvation of mankind, seriously wounded, in its whole, in Adam’s sin. G. Palma could not put it better when he writes that Dovendo, invece, esprimere nel suo tempo, in un contesto di vivace polemica, quanto la rivelazione aveva affermato, Agostino esalto il dono di la salvezza che viene da Cristo a fonte de una condizione umana fragile e necessitante di giustificazione, su cui À constretto a soffermarsi pi¾ di quanto abbia fatto l’apostolo a causa degli aversari, I quali non sembravano pienamente consci della gravit— della situazione umana e dell’immensit— del valore della condiscendenza divina. In fondo, anche per Agostino l’obiettivo principale À difendere il primato di Dio e della su grazia9.

From Adam we received a gift, that of sinfulness, that makes us the children of wrath, enemies of God, His commands and will. In Christ we receive the Spirit of grace which annihilates such enmity. Augustine’s view of regeneration and justification basis itself on this contrast between two different influences the believer lives with; it is the victory of grace over sin. The influence of Adam is carnalis concupiscentia which finds its nemesis in the occultissima gratia of Christ, reflecting the analogical way in which Augustine approached divine punishment for sin and divine grace to rescue humans from that sin10. The annihilation of the hostility towards God in our hearts, operated by the Spirit, is the justification of the sinner. This point is not to be underestimated in the ensemble of Augustinian theology. It is of crucial importance since it sheds some light on the relationship between justifying grace and the issue of deification. salvum facere quod perierat, et vos ei respondetis: Non opus est ut parvulos quaeras, quia non perierant, atque ita cum ab eis salvatoris inquisitionem repellitis, potestatem contra eos vulneratoris augetis. Dicit Iesus: Non est necessarius sanis medicus, sed male habentibus, non veni vocare iustos, sed peccatores, et vos ei dicitis: Non es ergo parvulis necessarius, quia nec voluntate sunt propria nec humana origine peccatores”. 9 Di Palma, 2004, 134. 10 Nisula, 2010, 87.

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Grace is a sort of a seed sown in the individual’s life which results in a radically new life. This means re-attachment to God, the flourishing of the human-divine friendship. Thus, grace is an illuminatio of divine origin guiding human intelligence and providing vigour to the human will. Only with this crucial assistance can humans meritoriously work toward the eternal happiness. Grace, thus, foments the the human-divine harmony. In other words it makes us similar to God. Thus, grace is what lies at the origin of a new parenthood, making us truly the children of God11. Grace is, then, ultimately the divine assistance which consists in turning the totus homo (the individual and its faculties) towards God. No wonder Augustine portrayed the beginning of the process of justification as taking place in nobis sine nobis. In other words, justification is God operating over human will in order to transform it, and this in no way neither determined by any sort of human effort or merit, nor does it require it. The Augustinian insistence on an anti-merit-oriented approach to the issue of justification is, as a matter of fact, clear in his claim according to which grace is crucial not only in the beginning of the justification process, but also for the entire process leading the elect to final salvation. Hence he spoke in gratia operativa (prevenient grace), the one initiating the justification process, and gratia cooperativa (subsequent grace), the sort of grace that ensures that the justified person will live accordingly, i. e. will remain in God’s path. Without gratia cooperativa, gratia operativa would simply be a waste of divine benefit. There is no point in being justified if one would not be assisted throughout one’s life with the gratia cooperativa. Even the justified person is not able to remain in God’s path relying on in his faculties alone. The fallen nature, though justified, i. e. made righteous, needs to be assisted. It is evident that by tracing justification back to a single origin, namely the divine grace from which all human meritorious acts (among them faith) flow, does not solve the problem. The fact that remains is one which Augustine could never satisfactorily solve: this wonderful divine assistance is not deserved by any (it is for this precise reason that is called grace) and it is given only to some, namely those elected. Every and each human being died in Adam, but only to a part of this mass of condemned is given the divine grace in order to reach salvation. Justice condemns some, an undeserved mercy rescue others who otherwise would share the same fate of their companions. This is the cornerstone of Augustinian doctrine of salvation which is, ultimately the Augustinian doctrine of predestination.

11 See Garc†a, 1965, 43 – 50

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Spiritum sanctum, qui datus nobis est: On the justifying grace in De Spiritu et littera

Augustine’s work known as De Spiritu et littera appeared at the dawn of the Pelagian crisis. It is the second major writing authored by the Church Father in a series of the many which he produced against Pelagius and his associates and it was addressed to the tribune Marcelinus, by the latest, in spring 413. So it is not within the chronological horizon of this study which intends to cover only the confrontation with Julian of Aeclanum, which started only in 418/419. Due to the extraordinary relevance of the treatise, where one finds discussed and defined crucial theological concepts under discussion between Augustine and Julian, namely on the nature of justifying grace, one can see the stunning role it exerted over young Luther’s reforming career, I think it important to make a few remarks on the work under consideration, though it cannot be but a telegraphic one. According to Augustine, apart from Christ the mediator between God and humans, every human being come to this world in a state of sin due to the law of propagation that bonds all to the ancestor Adam. Accordingly, all enter this world contaminated with sin and, thus, in the state of enmity with God and in need of justification. From the general mass of sinners some are justified and others not (it is an endless problem for the Augustinian scholars, but election and predestination are not my concern here). What does it mean to be justified? Augustine’s definition of justification, tout court, does not deviate from the common meaning of justification that one talks about in daily life. I do remember when I was at the basic and High school, whenever a student arrived late for the class, our teacher’s first question was “do you have any justification for the fact you are late?”. By giving the explanation on why he/she was late the student was trying to make a wrong-doing right or just. By accepting the explanation, the teacher ultimately saw in the student who arrived late, a transgressor who in this case, was exempt of any guilt, and considered righteous. Basically this is the Augustinian doctrine of justification. According to Augustine, to justify is to make a righteous out of an unrighteous person, a godly of an ungodly person (ex impio facit pium). This assertion is designed to serve a certain orientation of the justification process evident in Augustine’s writings, at least, since Ad Simplicianum: if justification is about making a righteous person out of an unrighteous one, it means that one has to be first justified in order to live righteously ; only the justified live righteously and not he who live righteously is justified. In short , it is the divine grace that triggers the justification process: quomodo enim potest iuste uiuere qui non fuerit iustificatus? quomodo nec sancte uiuere qui non fuerit sanctificatus, nec omnino uiuere qui non fuerit uiuificatus. iustificat autem

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gratia, ut iustificatus possit iuste uiuere. prima est igitur gratia, secunda opera bona12. In other words, especially from mid-390s onward the Augustinian understanding of justification was shaped under the firm conviction according to which God alone is the originator/initiator/author of justification. This is clear in two passages of Ad Simplicianum: I, II, 6 non tamem electio praecedit iustificationem sed electionem iustitifcatio (with which Augustine stressed that before one is chosen, one has to be distinguished from the rejected, i. e. one has to be made righteous in order to be chosen) and I, II, 22 non ut iustificatotum electio fiat ad uitam aeternam, sed ut eligantur qui iustificetur. Justification is not work of the justified but of He who justifies them so they could be chosen. Thus it is in God or in Christ, the Word, that the expression “made righteous” finds its meaning, since Christ alone is our righteousness. This is the great guideline of Augustine’s doctrine of justification and he remained faithful to it until he exhaled his last breath. For Augustine, justification cannot but be a theocentric operation. Its basis is by no means any sort of moral engagement which may spring from human free will. He does not annihilate human will here. What he stressed is that the righteousness (iustitia) with which one is justified is not of human but divine origin. Uoluntas quidem non est nisi tua, iustitia non est nisi Dei, he states in Serm. 169, 13. It is exactly here that lies the core of the Augustinian doctrine of justification: the will is human and the righteousness is divine. Justification is ultimately a dialectic between divine righteousness and human will. It is the divine intervention over human will planting in it the desire or the love of righteousness and consequently uproots from our hearts the love of sin. Hence the operation fuses with the gift of divine Spirit as he puts it in De spiritu et littera 28: spiritus dei, cuius dono iustificamur, quo fit in nobis ut non peccare delectet. To be justified means basically to be made righteous, to be regarded as righteous. In order to make this plain, Augustine stressed what he understood to be the real meaning of the genitive of “iustitia Dei” as mentioned by Paul in Rom. 3:21 – 24. The righteousness of God, Paul declares, has been revealed as first and foremost God’s. In the term iustitia Dei the genitive applies to God. The Apostle refers not to the righteousness by which God is Himself righteous, but with which He clothes human beings when he justifies a sinner (iustitia, inquit, dei manifestata est – non dixit: iustitia hominis uel iustitia propriae uoluntatis – iustitia dei, non qua deus iustus est, sed qua induit hominem, cum iustificat impium)13. In the same way, Augustine explained, Paul speaks of the righteousness of God 12 Simpl. I, II, 3, CCSL 44, 27, l. 89 13 spir. et litt. IX, 15, CSEL 60/I, p. 167, l. 5.

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“through the faith of Jesus Christ” (Rom. 3:22) meaning not the faith by which Christ Himself believes, but rather the faith through which we believe in Christ. Both this faith and righteousness are ours, but said to be God’s and Christ’s because they are given to us from God’s generosity14. In Rom. 3:24 Paul makes it clear that it is through the free gift of grace that one is justified. Thus, justification is a divine operation. It is the operative divine Spirit given to humans in order to inflame the love for God and his paths in human hearts. The Spirit that was given to us; here lies not only the core of Augustine’s doctrine of justifying grace, but also the key to understanding the Church Father’s doctrine of justification in its wholeness. The approach to the nature of Augustine’s doctrine of justification requires, for the sake of clarity, to start with what is unequivocal in his theological reasoning: as it has been said, according to Augustine, any good in human being, any whatsoever, including free will, the very will to believe, faith itself, etc., is to be identified with God’s gift (donum dei) which is grace. It is this very belief that embodied the Augustinian doctrine of justifying grace, identified with the communication of the the divine Spirit, which makes all the difference in human being’s relationship with God and his commandments. Without the presence of the Spirit, what God prohibits sounds far more delightful than what He commands to be done. It is the presence of the divine Spirit only that reverses the situation, namely by transforming human hearts in order to make them cling to what God commands instead of what he prohibits. Augustine’s concept of justifying grace can, then, be encapsulated in few words: it is no more nor less than the presence and the transforming operation of the Holy Spirit in human hearts, fuelling the desire for God and the love for his paths. This presence of the Spirit of love in human hearts is to be identified with the very law of faith (lex fidei) according to which one performs good deeds not out of fear of punishment, but out of love for righteousness15. Thus, without any surprise, Paul’s words in Rom. 5:5, Caritas Dei diffunditur in cordibus nostris, are the theological and exegetical starting point and basis for the Augustinian concept of justifying grace. There can be no doubt that this idea of pleasure in 14 spir. et litt. IX, 15, CSEL 60/I, 167, l. 13: “nam hinc sequitur et adiungit dicens: iustitia autem dei per fidem iesu christi, hoc est per fidem, qua creditur in christum. sicut autem ista fides christi dicta est non qua credit christus, sic illa iustitia dei non qua iustus est deus. utrumque enim nostrum est; sed ideo dei et christi dicitur, quod eius nobis largitate donatur”. 15 spir. et litt. XXIX, 51, CSEL 60/I, 208, l. 7: “sub quo timore anima laborans, quando concupiscentiam malam non uicerit nec timor ille quasi custos seuerus abscesserit, per fidem confugiat ad misericordiam dei, ut det quod iubet atque inspirata gratiae suauitate per spiritum sanctum faciat plus delectare quod praecipit quam delectat quod inpedit. ita multa multitudo dulcedinis eius, hoc est lex fidei, caritas eius conscripta in cordibus atque diffusa perficitur sperantibus in eum, ut anima sanata non timore poenae, sed amore iustitiae operetur bonum”.

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good and distaste for sin (to borrow A. SCHINDLER’s words “Gefallenfindes am Guten und Desinteresses am Sündigen”) defines the very nature (Wesen) of Augustine’s understanding of the justification of the sinner16. An ideal context for grasping Augustine’s definition of grace is his fierce opposition to the Pelagian approach to grace as he understood it. According to the Church Father, Pelagius and his followers’ understanding of grace was extremely dangerous for the sound Christian faith since their enthusiastic approach to free will, human nature and law, led them to present grace as what is its very opposite i. e. something given as due, not freely given. The divine grace according to the Pelagians, Augustine stressed, is to be identified with the gift of free will and the guidance of the Law through which God instructs humans on the path of righteousness. This, he says, is a reductionistic understanding of divine grace. Grace is not only more comprehensive, but also has its essence in something far more important, namely the communication of God’s Spirit, who stirs in a sinner’s heart a thirst of God, inflames his/her heart with the love for the commandments, and makes him/her to cling to the unchangeable Good, i. e. God, the creator. Augustine proves, then, to be very distant from Socratic intellectualism. The instructions of the law, to know what the law commands is not enough. To know the good does not imply the performance of the good. Fallen mankind needs the assistance of divine grace in order to fulfil the law. Both the commandments and their fulfilment belong to God who operates in human hearts through his Spirit. What allows this communication of the divine Spirit to be identified with grace itself is the fact that it is freely communicated, not as a response to a meritorious operation of the human free will, but rather on account of God’s love and mercy towards the sinner17. It thus becomes clear that Augustine insisted on the central role of love both in the fulfilment of the law and in the justification of the sinner. This is why, quoting Gal. 5:6 he spoke of faith which works through love (the Augustinian reading of 16 Schindler, 2008, 862. 17 spir. et litt. III, 5, CSEL 60/I, 157, l. 10: “nos autem dicimus humanam uoluntatem sic diuinitus adiuuari ad faciendam iustitiam, ut praeter quod creatus est homo cum libero arbitrio praeter que doctrinam qua ei praecipitur quemadmodum uiuere debeat accipiat spiritum sanctum, quo fiat in animo eius delectatio dilectio que summi illius atque incommutabilis boni, quod deus est, etiam nunc cum per fidem ambulatur, nondum per speciem, ut hac sibi uelut arra data gratuiti muneris inardescat inhaerere creatori atque inflammetur accedere ad participationem illius ueri luminis, ut ex illo ei bene sit, a quo habet ut sit. nam neque liberum arbitrium quicquam nisi ad peccandum ualet, si lateat ueritatis uia; et cum id quod agendum et quo nitendum est coeperit non latere, nisi etiam delectet et ametur, non agitur, non suscipitur, non bene uiuitur. ut autem diligatur, caritas dei diffunditur in cordibus nostris non per arbitrium liberum, quod surgit ex nobis, sed per spiritum sanctum, qui datus est nobis”.

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Gal. 5:6, I will explain at the appropriate moment, is often misunderstood, compromising the understanding of his entire doctrine of justification). The love in human hearts is the very presence of the Spirit and the love for commandments emanates directly from the same Spirit. This conviction is behind Augustine’s De spiritu et littera’s main thesis: apart from the life-giving Spirit, the whole Law, including the Decalogue, is the letter that kills. Accordingly, it is based on the definition of grace as the communication of Holy Spirit who sheds love upon human hearts that Augustine reads II Cor. 3:6 where Paul teaches that the letter kills and the Spirit gives life. To this passage, Augustine argued, there is no need for any allegorical reading. It means simply that without the life-giving Spirit, the Law only produces guilt, since it brings the knowledge of sin, not its avoidance; it increases sin rather than lessens it. Somehow the prohibitions of the law manage to increase evil desires. What Paul means, Augustine stated, is that the Law commands a good life and should be followed by Christians, but unless the Holy Spirit transforms human hearts, replacing evil desires by good desires, namely by shedding love upon hearts, then Law does nothing else than feed desire for sin18. There is only one way out: to take refuge through faith in God’s mercy so that He may give what He commands, by making, through the Spirit of grace, what he commands more delightful than the delight of what he forbids. Then the good deeds will be genuinely good, that is performed not out of fear of punishment but out of love of righteousness. In order to understand the Augustinian insistence on justification as a Godcentred process, one must trace the whole discussion back to the key-concept of the Augustinian soteriology : grace. Grace, Augustine insists, is a self-evident word. It is precisely because it is free and not due (something one deserves) that it is called grace. Gratis datur, propter quod et gratia nominatur, he observes in De gratia et natura IV, 4. A similar observation is found in In. Jo. Ev. tr. III, 9: Quid est gratia? Gratis data. Quid est gratis data? Donata, non reddita19. It is in 18 spir. et litt. IV, 6- V, 8. 19 In this passage of Jo. Ev. tr. Augustine is dealing with the Pauline expression gratiam pro gratia and his explanation is quite clear in two aspects: a) grace is called so for the simple fact that it is something freely given not deserved; b) justification comes through faith, one of the main expressions of grace. By the grace of faith, the individual is led to believe in Him who justifies the ungodly and, this faith is what makes one pleasant to God, and, on account of it, saved: “Quid est ergo, gratiam pro gratia? Fide promeremur Deum; et qui digni non eramus quibus peccata dimitterentur, ex eo quia tantum donum indigni accepimus, gratia vocatur. Quid est gratia? Gratis data. Quid est gratis data? Donata, non reddita. Si debebatur, merces reddita est, non gratia donata; si autem vere debebatur, bonus fuisti; si autem, ut verum est, malus fuisti credidisti autem in eum qui iustificat impium (quid est, qui iustificat impium? Ex impio facit pium), cogita quid per legem tibi imminere debebat, et quid per gratiam consecutus sis. Consecutus autem istam gratiam fidei, eris iustus ex fide, iustus enim ex fide

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the idea of radical gratuity inherent to the concept of grace that Augustine points to grace as the source of both human freedom and merit. Shielded by the intrinsic relationship between grace and gratuity, Augustine endeavours to refute the alleged Pelagian argument that grace is a response to a prevenient meritorious act. Grace is, then, according to Augustine, what sets justification as God’s exclusive work (even though Augustine insisted it does not take place without human will). God extends his mercy upon those who know Him and are up-right. However, He does extend His mercy to them not because they know Him or are up-right, but in order that they may know him and be up-righteous. According to Augustine, this is the very ordo justificationis with grace as its primal motor : grace is not response to any meritorious human act, but is what provokes the spring or the flourishing of meritorious human acts on a human’s part. Only this unconditional reliance upon divine grace keeps humans under God’s wings and avoids the paths of pride20. It is the spirit of humility inherent in the reliance upon the divine grace that allows Augustine to establish the main differences between the law of work and the law of faith: what the law of works commands in its threats, the law of faith obtains by its faith. Whether the Law of works says “you shall not desire”, the Law of faith acknowledges God’s gifts and turns to Him; worships Him in praise and thanksgiving. After all, the law is given as a reminder of what faith should do. It is given in order that when those who are not able to carry it out should know what to ask for. If they are able to do what is prescribed in the commandments they ought to know by whose gift they are able to do so. Accordingly, by the law of works God says “Do what I command” but by the law of faith we ask God “give what you command”. Then there can be no doubt human beings are justified not by the commandments of the Law which teach the paths of a good life, but through faith in Jesus Christ. It is not obtained through the law of works but through the law of faith, not by the letter, but by the Spirit, not by the merits of

vivit, et promereberis Deum vivendo ex fide, accipies praemium immortalitatem et vitam aeternam. Et illa gratia est. Nam pro quo merito accipis vitam aeternam? Pro gratia. Si enim fides gratia est, et vita aeterna quasi merces est fidei, videtur quidem Deus vitam aeternam tanquam debitam reddere (cui debitam? Fideli, quia promeruit illam per fidem), sed quia ipsa fides gratia est, et vita aeterna gratia est pro gratia”. Jo. Ev. tr. III, 9, BA 71, 226 – 228. 20 spir. et litt. VII, 11, CSEL 60/I, 162 – 163, l. 21: “Haec cogitatio sancta seruat filios hominum in protectione alarum dei sperantes, ut inibrientur ab ubertate domus eius et torrentem uoluptatis eius potent, quoniam ad ipsum est fons uitate et in lumine eius uidebimus lumem, qui praetendit misericordiam suam scientibus eum et iustitiam suam his qui recto sunt corde. neque enim quia sciunt, sed etiam ut sciant eum praetendit misericordiam suam; nec quia recti sunt corde, sed etiam ut recti sint corde praetendit iustitiam suam, qua iustificat impium. haec cogitatio non aufert in superbiam, quod uitium oritur, cum sibi quisque praefidit sequi sibi ad uiuendum caput facit”.

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works, but gratuitously by grace21 (it is important to remind the reader that the young Luther often quotes these Augustinian teachings with full approval). It is in justifying grace that the differences between the Old and New testaments are to be found. Previously the Law was written on the tablets of stone and struck fear in human hearts. Now it is written by God’s own finger, i. e. the Holy Spirit, in our hearts and as a gift of the Spirit one is endowed with delight in God’s law. Now to have God’s law in our hearts means the very presence of the Spirit of love, instead of fear of punishment22. The communication of divine Spirit is the communication of love. In the New Testament then, God’s Law is love poured out over human hearts so they may live from faith and perform good deeds through love. This love is the fulfilment of the law and the very goal of the commandments. In the former law fear is struck from without; the new law produces delight from within; in the old law one becomes a transgressor on account of the letter that kills; in the new law one becomes a lover on account of life-giving Spirit. Justifying grace, then, cannot be circumscribed to the external help of the commandments of righteousness. Its essence is theologically much deeper. Justifying grace is God’s internal assistance, pouring out love in human hearts by the Holy Spirit given to us (Rom. 5:5)23. How is, then, Paul’s declaration in Rom. 2:14 – 15 to be understood? Here the Apostle claims that gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature, do what belongs to the law, are law to themselves and revealed having the law written in their hearts. If the Gentiles have the law written in their hearts, how are the faithful of the New Testament to be distinguished from them? Are the Gentiles then better than the people of the Old Testament who received the law written in stone tablets? Is it accurate to consider that they anticipate the new people who received, through the New Testament, what nature gave to them? Augustine’s attempt to solve this problem is one more clear proof that he identified grace with the very communication of Spirit. The statement, Augus21 spir. et litt. XII, 22, 175 – 176, l. 21: “ac per hoc lege operum dicit deus: fac quod iubeo, lege fidei dicitur deo: da quod iubes. ideo enim iubet lex, ut admoneat quod faciat fides, id est ut cui iubetur, si nondum potest, sciat quid petat; si autem continuo potest et oboedienter facit, debet etiam scire quo donante possit. {…} his igitur consideratis pertractatis que pro uiribus, quas dominus donare dignatur, colligimus non iustificari hominem praeceptis bonae uitae nisi per fidem iesu christi, hoc est non lege operum, sed lege fidei, non littera, sed spiritu, non factorum meritis, sed gratuita gratia”. 22 spir. et litt. XIV, 23-XXV, 42 23 spir. et littt. XXV, 42, 196, l. 11: “cum igitur haec appareat distantia ueteris et noui testamenti, quod lex ibi in tabulis, hic in cordibus scribitur, ut quod ibi forinsecus terret, hic delectet intrinsecus, ibi que fiat praeuaricator per occidentem litteram, hic dilector per uiuificantem spiritum, non ideo dicendum est, quod deus adiuuet nos ad operandam iustitiam atque operetur in nobis et uelle et operari pro bona uoluntate, quia praeceptis iustitiae forinsecus insonat sensibus nostris, sed quia intrinsecus incrementum dat diffundendo caritatem in cordibus nostris per spiritum sanctum, qui datus est nobis”.

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tine explained, needs to be properly contextualized. One has to understand Paul’s words in Rom. 1:16 – 17 or 2:8 – 14 which precede the declaration according to which the Gentiles, by nature, do what belongs to the law. Read in light of the words of these two passages, Augustine maintained, one is led to conclude that the Apostle uses the term “Gentiles” to refer to those he calls “Greek” in these very same passages. In other words: Paul is speaking of Christians who embraced Christianity coming not from Judaism, but from paganism. If they have the law written in their hearts, he stressed, they certainly belong to the Gospel24. The fact that these Gentiles do by nature what belongs to the Law does not hinder grace, it rather reveals a nature healed by the Spirit of grace which operates with the purpose of restoring the lost imago Dei with which humans were created in their original/natural state; it is a proof that God has communicated to them the Spirit of love, the very fulfilment of the Law25. This is precisely why justification takes place apart from Law (it was not revealed apart from it). God bestows sinners with His righteousness through the Spirit of grace, without the help of the Law. Justification, however, Augustine explained, did not come without human will. The Law shows the weakness of the will, so grace may heal it in order that a sound will may fulfil the law without being subject to or in need of law26.

4.3

Does Augustine teach justification by faith?

Before turning to the question just formulated, I think it is important to stress that throughout the confrontation between Augustine and Julian, justification is clearly a marginal issue – this is, as a matter of fact, true regarding even the Augustinian corpus as a whole. Augustine never dedicated any specific work or chapter of a work to the issue of justification. There is no known letter or sermon in which he addressed the issue of justification in a precise and focused way. One 24 spir. et litt. XXVI, 43-XXVII, 47. 25 spir. et litt. XXVII, 47, CSEL 60/I, 201, l. 10. In the same treatise, Augustine admitted a different interpretation of Romans 2:14 – 15. The Church Father explained that the fact some Gentiles do by nature what belongs to the Law does not necessarily mean they are to be counted among the numbers of those justified by the grace of Christ. In fact many of them may belong to the group of unbelievers who do not worship the true God in truth and righteousness. This would become clear if one paid attention to the motives behind the apparently praiseworthy actions of theirs. Paul’s words can also be interpreted in the following way : the image of God impressed on the soul when it was created may have not been completely removed from the human soul, there may be still be some remaining in the soul allowing it to know or to remember some elements of the law, despite the godlessness of its present life. See De spiritu et litt. XXVII, 48-XXVIIIsqq 26 spir. et litt. IX, 15.

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would look in vain for a systematic account on justification in the lines recorded during such a long confrontation. The issue dominated the debate between Augustine and Julian was what triggered it in the first place: Original Sin, its ethical and soteriological implications; the relationship between Original Sin and marriage, intimately linked with the nature of concupiscence and the goodness of human nature27. Throughout the pages resulting from the confrontation with Pelagians, Augustine’s interpretation of justification is brought about in the context of issues such as grace, merit, the abilities of human free will or even election and predestination. What is crucial here is that, concerning the Augustinian doctrine of justification, there is, among some influential Augustinian scholars, a trend which is to be opposed. It is the trend which asserts that Augustine taught justification by love. What makes this trend even more dangerous is the fact it is often presented in order to deny that the Church Father ever taught justification by faith. That Augustine taught justification by faith is, for several reasons, denied or intentionally neglected. The doctrine of justification by faith alone became a source of trouble in the West at the dawn of the Reformation. It is proverbial that Augustine was considered as having overwhelming authority among some of the leading figures of Reformation, especially Martin Luther and John Calvin. Luther’s call for the reformation of doctrine of the Church was particularly in the fields of Christian soteriology and theological anthropology, as will be seen in the second part of the present study. This call would never have had the theological and doctrinal repercussions it had, without Augustine. Augustine’s influence over Luther’s reforming career is simply stunning. Accordingly, confessional concerns may be behind some both Roman Catholic and Lutheran scholars when dealing with the issue. Some theologians of the Roman Catholic background tend to stress that Luther simply misunderstood Augustine. The explanations they provided to corroborate their positions fall short from clear. Others of Lutheran background face Augustine’s remarkable influence over Luther with a specific concern: the founder of the Reformation did not depend on the authority of the Church Father and in order to stress this point, some go too far, minimizing the real influence of Augustine over Luther. One of the common ways to point out the fundamental differences between Augustine and Luther’s approach to the justification of the sinner has been to stress that while the Church Father taught justification by grace or even by love, the Reformer stood for justification by faith alone. So, it would not be accurate to ascribe to Augustine the doctrine of justification by faith. To corroborate this 27 See,for instance C. Jul. III, XXI, 42sqq where Augustine himself talked of these issues as the one lying at the core of the whole controversy with Julian.

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opinion some rely on the trickiest Augustinian expression taken from Gal. 5:6, “faith working through love” (fides quae per dilectionem operatur). What did Augustine mean when quoting this Pauline phrase? Alister McGRATH sees here few details that allow him to venture in the claim according to which justification by faith alone is definitely not taught by Augustine and if any idea of sola is to be attributed to Augustine’s doctrine of justification, such has to be that of justification through love alone (sola caritate iustificamur). Hence he writes: While Augustine occasionally appears to understand grace as an impersonal abstract force, there are many points at which he makes a clear connection between the concept of grace and the operation of the Holy Spirit. The regeneration is itself the work of the Holy Spirit. The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit, which is given to us in justification. […] The Holy Spirit enables humans to be inflamed with the love of God and the love of their neighbours – indeed, the Holy Spirit is love. Faith can exist without love, on the basis of Augustine’s strongly intellectualist concept of faith, but is of no value in the sight of God. God’s other gifts, such faith and hope, cannot bring us to God unless they are accompanied or preceded by love. The motif of amor Dei dominates Augustine’s theology of justification, just as that of sola fide would dominate that of of his later interpreters. Faith without love is of no value. […] Augustine tends to understand faith primarily as an adherence to the Word of God, which inevitably introduces a strongly intellectualist element into his concept of faith, thus necessitating its supplementation with caritas or dilectio if it is to justify humanity. Faith alone is merely assent to the the revealed truth, itself inadequate to justify. It is for this reason that it is unacceptable to summarise Augustine’s doctrine of justification as sola fides iustificamur – if any such summary is acceptable, it is sola caritate iustificamur. For Augustine, it is love, rather than faith, which is the power which brings about the conversion of people. Just as cupiditas is the root of all evil, so caritas is the root of all good. The personal union of individuals with Godhead, which forms the basis of their justification, is brought about by love, and not by faith28.

The quotation is very extensive, but necessary. From this passage it becomes evident that Augustine’s use of the expression “faith which works through love” is misunderstood even by some scholars bearing great responsibility due to their influence on the modern theological debate on Augustine. Such is the case of A. McGRATH. McGRATH’s analysis, it has to be said, is accurate in the following points: Augustine identified grace and the regeneration process with the work of the Holy Spirit; he often spoke of faith as the assent to the truth and stressed that faith without love is of no value. It is, however, by inquiring into Augustine’s understanding of the expression “faith which works through love” that one comes to realise a crucial mistake in the Oxford scholar’s conclusions. Augustine did not make any significant distinction between the Latin terms he used for love, which are amor, dilectio, and 28 McGrath, 2005, 45 – 46.

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caritas. It is a given fact that love plays a crucial role in Augustine’s discourse on salvation. It has been argued in point 1 that it is the order of love (ordo amoris/ caritatis) that constitutes the thin line between virtue and sin in Augustine’s theology. As a matter of fact Augustine maintained that every virtue is a form of love29. It is love that sets the pace in the paving of the road towards God and eternal life, as it is clear from Enchirirdon 31, 117 where, with I Cor. 13:12 in mind, he writes: Now, as for charity, which the apostle says is greater than the other two, that is faith and hope, the greater it is in a person, the better is that person in whom it is. For when we ask whether somebody is a good person, we are not asking what he believes or hopes for but what he loves. For one who rightly loves without doubt rightly believes and hopes, and one who does not love believes in vain, even if the things he believes are true; he hopes in vain, even if the things for which he hopes are those which, according to our teaching, belong to true happiness, unless he also believes and hopes that if he asks he may also be given the ability to love. For although he cannot hope without love, it may be that he does not love that without which he cannot reach that for which he hopes, for instance if he hoped for eternal life, and who does not love that? And did not love justice, without which nobody comes to eternal life. This is the faith of Christ, which the apostle commends to us, which works through love […]30.

Augustine is the theologian of love. He presented love as a sort of leitmotiv of Christian righteousness, as is clear from his concluding words in De natura et gratia: love begins, therefore, righteousness begins; advanced love is advanced righteousness; great love is great righteousness; perfect love is perfect righteousness,— but this love is out of a pure heart, and of a good conscience, and of faith unfeigned (caritas ergo inchoata inchoata iustitia est; caritas prouecta prouecta iustitia est; caritas magna magna iustitia est; caritas perfecta perfecta iustitia est, sed caritas de corde puro et conscientia bona et fide non ficta)31. It is, however, not an easy task to provide a fair interpretation regarding the place of faith and love in the justification of the sinner in Augustine’s theological legacy. The difficulty has essentially to do with two main facts. First, the Church Father insisted (quoting Rom. 14:23, along with Heb. 11:16) that whatever does not come from faith is sin. Secondly, throughout the Augustinian corpus one finds several clear and conclusive passages where the Church Father, quoting, for instance, Rom 1:17 used the adjectives iusti (righteous) and fideles (believer) as synonymous (and so does with injusti/unrighteous and infideles/unbelievers) and identified faith with iustitia. In Enarrationes in Psalmsos XXXII, II, 4, for instance he openly declared to his readers that one’s faith is one’s righteousness 29 Van Bavel, 1999, 509 – 510 30 ench. XXI, 117, translation, Harbert, 1999, 138. 31 nat. et gr. LXX, 84, CSEL 60, 298, I. 21.

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(Nondum quaero quid uivas, sed quaero quid credas. Responsurus es credere te in Christum. Non audisti Apostolum: Iustus ex fide uivit? Fides tua, iustitia tua)32 After these considerations, I do not see how one can deny that Augustine admitted justification by faith or, I would even dare to say by faith alone. The verb iustifico and the noun iustitia often occur in Augustine in an approach close to declaring justification by faith that would later be peculiar to the young Luther’s approach to justification. But why the insistence the faith which works through love? Is not faith alone enough to justify the sinner. According to Augustine, absolutely yes! What is the most important here is to explain which sort of faith Augustine identified with righteousness. It is not the faith identified with the simple intellectual adherence, the credere Deum (believe that God exists). This sort of faith even demons have. Justifying faith is something substantially different than the fides diabolica. It is credere in Deum, i. e. an unconditional adherence to God in humility and love for His paths. This is precisely why Augustine insisted on the expression “faith which works through love”. The focus here, in my opinion, is more faith than love. Augustine was talking of faith to which he linked a fundamental and essential feature 32 en. in Ps. XXXII, II, 4, CCSL 38, 249, l. 9: “Numquid hoc uos monemus, ut superbi sitis, et uobis aliquam perfectionem audeatis arrogare? Sed non iterum ab omni iustitia uos putare debetis exules fieri. Nolo enim uos interrogare de iustitia vestra; fortassis enim nemo uestrum mihi audeat respondere: Justus sum; sed interrogo uos de fide uestra. Sicut nemo uestrum audet dicere: Iustus sum; sic nemo audet dicere: Fidelis non sum. Nondum quaero quid uivas, sed quaero quid credas. Responsurus es credere te in Christum. Non audisti Apostolum: Iustus ex fide uivit? Fides tua, iustitia tua: quia utique si credis, caues; si autem caues, conaris; et conatum tuum nouit Deus, et uoluntatem tuam inspicit, et luctam cum carne considerat, et hortatur ut pugnes, et adiuuat ut uincas, et certantem exspectat, et deficientem subleuat, et uincentem coronat. Ergo: Exsultate iusti in Domino: hoc dixerim: Exsultate fideles in Domino, quia iustus ex fide uiuit”. See also Homily in John’s Gospel 3:9, where he inquires on the meaning of the expression grace for grace (John 1:16): Quid est ergo, gratiam pro gratia? Fide promeremur Deum; et qui digni non eramus quibus peccata dimitterentur, ex eo quia tantum donum indigni accepimus, gratia vocatur. Quid est gratia? Gratis data. Quid est gratis data? Donata, non reddita. Si debebatur, merces reddita est, non gratia donata; si autem vere debebatur, bonus fuisti: si autem, ut verum est, malus fuisti, credidisti autem in eum qui iustificat impium (quid est, qui iustificat impium? Ex impio facit pium); cogita quid per legem tibi imminere debebat, et quid per gratiam consecutus sis. Consecutus autem istam gratiam fidei, eris iustus ex fide. Iustus enim ex fide vivit; et promereberis Deum vivendo ex fide: cum promerueris Deum vivendo ex fide, accipies praemium immortalitatem, et vitam aeternam. Et illa gratia est. Nam pro quo merito accipis vitam aeternam? Pro gratia. Si enim fides gratia est, et vita aeterna quasi merces est fidei, videtur quidem Deus vitam aeternam tamquam debitam reddere (cui debitam? Fideli, quia promeruit illam per fidem); sed quia ipsa fides gratia est, et vita aeterna gratia est pro gratia”. Jo. ev. tr. 3:9, BA 71, 226 – 228. Here Augustine points to faith as the true source of righteousness. One can easily accuse him of endorsing Pelagian arguments when he admits that faith merits the believers righteousness and, finally eternal life. But the accusation would be meaningless since Augustine stated that this very faith which merits the believer’s eternal life (which is grace) is itself grace. Hence the Apostolic expression gratia pro gratia.

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without which it loses all its value – caritas/love. Galatians 5:6 was, for Augustine, a major Apostolic stand for the genuineness of faith (that to be genuine has to contain love). It is precisely what happened to the faith of demons, it lacked caritas. It is in this sense that Augustine almost always quotes Gal. 5:6. Love, as hope and humility, is a crucial component of faith, without which faith is not genuine, thus of no value. Hence the use of the term sola fide with a pejorative sense; meaning that some would want to perversely understand that they can rely on faith alone, and hope to attain salvation without abandoning their vices and setting out to change their lives trough the pursue of good works. This is exactly when faith is of no value, this is not a true faith. So Gal. 5:6 is the passage in which Augustine sees a major opportunity to discuss the nature of genuine faith. The passage, Augustine regarded as an ideal clarification on the nature of faith that receives justification, which is far different, for instance, from the mere credence by which even demons believe and tremble (James 2:19). The Augustinian interpretation of Gal. 5:6 then should not lead to the conclusion according to which he taught “we are justified sola caritate” (by love alone) as McGrath admits. In the expression “faith which works through love”, faith is the structure and love is a component of this structure. A crucial component without which faith would lose all its meaning, yes, but it is still a component, an ingredient. That apart from anything else, “we are justified by faith” is often found through the Augustinian corpus, but never “by love”. Accordingly, the receiving of justification through faith implies a very comprehensive process that in the Reformation theology will be basically understood to be sanctification. This is why Augustine insisted on notions such as love and hope. Without love and hope faith is inoperative. But without faith, love and hope would certainly be a misguided sort of love and hope. It is not a mere coincidence that Augustine, like Luther after him, approached justification as both an event and a process, the beginning of something which continually grows, making of justification a life-long process. This means that justification of the sinner is not to be confined to the moment God justifies the sinner, acknowledging him/her as righteous and shedding the love for His righteousness over him/her. It is, rather, a life-long process and such a process involves a continuous struggle against the fleshly lusts, i. e. progression towards righteousness. The event of justification Augustine sometimes identified with the receiving of baptism, the bath of rebirth, which remits all sins in us, but does not set us free from all evils, or the weakness of our nature)33. He stressed that this moment is to be distinguished from the perfection of righteousness which, though it cannot be attained in this life is the Christian’s life task to pursue. The perfection of righteousness takes place only when our bodies are renewed in 33 C. Jul. VI, XVI, 49 – 50.

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immortality. It is hardly necessary to say that all this progression takes place under the assistance of divine grace. As it has been said, Augustine portrayed the justified Christian as being in a continuous inner war. On account of the unusual way of His conception, Christ alone was conceived free from the stain of sin, free of concupiscence, the weakness, proneness to sin instilled in human beings. He is the one leading this healing process34. To maintain that Augustine taught justification by love, implying that love “supplements” faith in the processus iustificationis, is to misunderstand his 34 C. Jul. II, IV, 8, PL 44, cols. 678 – 679: “sed deus qui genuit filium sibi coaeternum, quod in principio uerbum erat, per quod creauit omne quod non erat, etiam ipsum creauit hominem sine uitio, non ex semine hominis per uirginem natum, in quo regenerat hominem generatum, sanat que uitiatum, a reatu statim, ab infirmitate paulatim. contra quam regeneratus, si iam ratione utitur, illo spectante atque adiuuante uelut in agone confligit: quia uirtus in infirmitate perficitur, dum contra hoc nostrum quod a iustitia deficit, illo nostro quod ad iustitiam proficit dimicatur ; ut uincente profectu totum surgat in melius, non uincente defectu totum uergat in peius”. Cf. Also IV, III, 29; See also, s. CLVIII, 4 – 5, PL 38, 864 – 865: “Proposueramus autem considerare de his quattuor rebus quid iam consecuti fuerimus, quid adhuc adipiscendum exspectemus. Praedestinati enim iam sumus et antequam essemus. Vocati sumus, quando Christiani facti sumus. Iam ergo et hoc habemus. Justificati, quid? Quid est: iustificati? Audemus dicere, iam hoc tertium habere nos? Et erit quisquam nostrum qui audeat dicere: Justus sum? Puto enim hoc esse: Justus sum, quod est, peccator non sum. Si audes hoc dicere, occurrit tibi Ioannes: Si dixerimus quia peccatum non habemus, nos ipsos decipimus, et veritas in nobis non est. Quid ergo? Nihil habemus de justitia? An habemus, sed non totum habemus? Hoc ergo quaeramus. Si enim aliquid habemus, et aliquid non habemus; crescat quod habemus, et implebitur quod non habemus. Ecce enim baptizati sunt homines, omnia illis peccata dimissa sunt, iustificati sunt a peccatis; negare non possumus: restat tamen lucta cum carne, restat lucta cum mundo, restat lucta cum diabolo. Qui autem luctatur, aliquando ferit, aliquando percutitur ; aliquando vincit, aliquando perimitur ; quomodo de stadio exeat attenditur. Nam si dixerimus quia peccatum non habemus, nos ipsos decipimus, et veritas in nobis non est. Item, si dixerimus quia iustitiae nihil habemus, adversum Dei dona mentimur. Si enim iustitiae nihil habemus, nec fidem habemus; si fidem non habemus, christiani non sumus. Si autem fidem habemus, iam aliquid habemus iustitiae. Ipsum aliquid, vis nosse quantum sit? Iustus ex fide vivit; iustus, inquam, ex fide vivit; quia credit quod non videt. Patres, arietes sancti, duces Apostoli, quando annuntiaverunt, non solum viderunt oculis, sed etiam manibus tractaverunt; et tamen Dominus servans nobis donum fidei, cuidam discipulorum suorum tractanti, palpanti, veritatem digitis inquirenti et invenienti, exclamanti: Dominus meus et Deus meus; ait ipse Dominus et Deus: Quia vidisti, credidisti. Et nos futuros intuens: Beati, inquit, qui non viderunt et crediderunt. Non vidimus, audivimus, et credidimus. Beati praedicti sumus, et de iustitia nihil habemus? Venit Dominus carnaliter ad Judaeos, et occisus est: non venit ad nos, et acceptus est. Populus quem non cognovi, servivit mihi, in obauditu auris oboedivit mihi. Nos sumus, et de justitia nihil habemus? Omnino habemus. Grati simus ex eo quod habemus: ut addatur quod non habemus, et non perdamus quod habemus. Ergo et hoc tertium iam agitur in nobis. Justificati sumus: sed ipsa iustitia, cum proficimus, crescit. Et quomodo crescit dicam, et vobiscum quodammodo conferam; ut unusquisque vestrum iam in ipsa justificatione constitutus, accepta scilicet remissione peccatorum per lavacrum regenerationis, accepto Spiritu Sancto, proficiens de die in diem, videat ubi sit, accedat, proficiat et crescat, donec consummetur, non ut finiatur, sed ut perficiatur”.

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doctrine of justification. What makes me believe that it is perfectly accurate to maintain that Augustine teaches justification by faith (and I am convinced that it was in his footsteps that Luther’s doctrine of justification was developed) is the fact that the Church Father’s understanding of justification was based on two key-concepts: grace and one of his main fruits, faith. It was since 396 that Augustine defined faith as grace (fides gratia est) and he constantly spoke of gratia fidei. Justification starts when the individual receives the grace of recognizing God as the only way to salvation. Being favoured with the grace of faith one recognises God as the only way to salvation, i. e. one believes God and, on account of this very faith, one is just and rewarded with eternal life35. This is what defines the justifying faith: the awareness that salvation comes only from God. No wonder that in Augustine’s understanding of faith (like Luther’s) there was an intrinsic relationship between the notions of faith and humility to the point they often seem to be interchangeable concepts. One of the central issues in Augustine’s opposition to the Pelagians is that to know what is good does not imply one is able to do it (he is far from Socratic intellectualism). To teach otherwise is presumptuous. Good is only performed in humility and humility is peculiar to the believers only, since there is humility in faith and faith belongs to the humble, not the proud (Sermones. 115, 2), and whatever does not come from faith is sin. The expression “faith which works through love” was regarded by Augustine as the ideal one to name the genuine faith that necessarily carries some essential components among which love assumes a central importance. One speaks of love, but one may also speak of humility as another of the central ingredient of genuine faith, the justifying faith. That it is in faith that Augustine saw the guarantee of justification is clear in his debate with Julian over Rom. 2:14 – 15 on the virtue of unbelievers, namely their continence and chastity which precisely because their virtues were not inspired or fed by faith, cannot be considered true virtue. Virtue cannot exist in someone who is not righteous and anyone who is truly righteous live from faith. In other words, no one is righteous without faith, an assertion which Augustine’s considered to be attested by Rom. 1:17 (sed absit ut sit in aliquo uera uirtus, nisi fuerit iustus. absit autem ut sit iustus uere, nisi uiuat ex fide: iustus enim ex fide uiuit)36. Regardless of how one may progress in virtue, if one lacks faith, that is humbly recognising Christ as one’s Redeemer, one is not righteous precisely because it is humility of faith that makes one righteous. If faith would not be necessary and righteousness would be attainable through moral and ethical progressions in the observances of the Law, that would imply that righteousness

35 See, for instance, Jo. Ev. tr. III, 9 36 C. Jul. IV, III, 17.

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comes through the abilities of human nature, will, and teaching. Then Christ would definitely have died in vain37. Thus Augustine, analysing the Ciceronian definition of virtue in (De inventione rhetorica II, 53) where virtue is understood to be the habit of the mind suitable to the limit of nature and reason, makes a fundamental observation: though the definition carries some sense of truth, the pagan philosophers did not know what was, in fact, suitable for setting mortal human beings free and making them happy. These, after all would not even wish to be immortal and happy on account of natural instincts, unless they could be such. But the supreme good of happiness and immortality cannot be bestowed upon human beings if not through Christ, by the crucified, since His death conquers death and heals human nature. Is this why the righteous live from faith38. It is the fact of living in faith that makes someone righteous to be so. Apart from faith, the virtues, which are always product of righteousness and do not produce righteousness, simply cannot be true virtues. More than paying attention to the phenomenology of actions, it is important to pay attention and wonder about the reasons behind them. They can have several purposes. If they are not performed in faith, if they intend to serve temporal advantages, they cannot be true virtues, but rather vices since they lack the right aim and motive which must be the glory of God39. 37 C. Jul. IV, III, 17, PL 44, cols. 745 – 746: “iustus ex fide uiuit. fides ex auditu, auditus autem per uerbum christi: finis legis christus ad iustitiam omni credenti. quomodo sunt uere iusti, quibus uilis est humilitas ueri iusti? quo enim propinquauerunt intelligentia, inde superbia recesserunt: quia cognoscentes deum, non sicut deum glorificauerunt, aut gratias egerunt; sed euanuerunt in cogitationibus suis, et obscuratum est insipiens cor eorum. dicentes enim se esse sapientes, stulti facti sunt. quomodo est in eis uera iustitia, in quibus non est uera sapientia? quam si eis tribuerimus, nihil erit causae cur non eos ad illud regnum peruenire dicamus, de quo scriptum est, concupiscentia sapientiae deducit ad regnum. ac per hoc christus gratis mortuus est, si homines sine fide christi ad fidem ueram, ad uirtutem ueram, ad iustitiam ueram, ad sapientiam ueram, quacumque re alia, quacumque ratione perueniunt. prorsus sicut de lege uerissime ait apostolus, si per legem iustitia, ergo christus gratis mortuus est: ita uerissime dicitur, si per naturam uoluntatem que iustitia, ergo christus gratis mortuus est”. 38 C. Jul. IV, III, 19, PL 44, col. 747: “non enim absurde uirtus definita est ab eis qui dixerunt, uirtus est animi habitus, naturae modo atque rationi consentaneus. uerum dixerunt, sed quid sit consentaneum liberandae ac beatificandae naturae mortalium nescierunt. neque enim omnes homines naturali instinctu immortales et beati esse uellemus, nisi esse possemus. sed hoc summum bonum praestari hominibus non potest, nisi per christum et hunc crucifixum, cuius morte mors uincitur, cuius uulneribus natura nostra sanatur.ideo iustus ex fide christi uiuit”. 39 C. Jul. IV, III, 21, PL 44, col. 749, l. 19: “proinde uirtutes quae carnalibus delectationibus, uel quibusque commodis et emolumentis temporalibus seruiunt, uerae prorsus esse non possunt. quae autem nulli rei seruire uolunt, nec ipsae uerae sunt. uerae quippe uirtutes deo seruiunt in hominibus, a quo donantur hominibus: deo seruiunt in angelis, a quo donantur et angelis. quidquid autem boni fit ab homine, et non propter hoc fit, propter quod fieri

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debere uera sapientia praecipit, etsi officio uideatur bonum, ipso non recto fine peccatum est”. When speaking about the “right end” (recto fine) of virtuous actions Augustine meant simply what is done in faith, what he often calls actions made with reference (retulerit) to God. Augustine’s statement according to which the virtues of the Pagans are vices is constantly misunderstood. J. Wetzelmistakenly asserts that Augustine’s discrediting of the pagan conception of virtue discredit all virtues (Wetzel 2004, 276). This is not a plausible conclusion on Augustine’s teaching on the matter. The point Augustine is trying to make is simply that a virtuous act is a rare event and it cannot happen apart from a genuine faith. Due to the controversy that Augustine’s approach to the virtues of the Pagans is involved, perhaps intending to bring the issue to a peaceful resolution, try to argue that Augustine did not openly teach that the virtues of pagans are, in fact vices (Irwin, 1999; Wetzel, 2004). But this is precisely what Augustine taught. No unbeliever can be virtuous because, though the good deeds he/she performs may seem good, they lack good aim and objective. Passages such as c. Jul. IV, III, 21 and civ. XIX, 25 leaves no room for doubt. Wetzel is mistaken when he writes that “Augustine would not, in his most imperious of moods, have claimed that no pagan can be virtuous, though the same author rightly acknowledges that, according to Augustine, paganism “lacks the conceptual resources – the right stories and glosses on these stories – to imagine what a virtue really is” (p. 272). There is, in fact, an evolution in Augustine’s approach to the issue, but this very evolution only corroborates that Augustine, specially in his mature ages, taught that the virtues of the pagans, performed without reference to God, i. e. out of faith, are vices (this radical position is clearly shaped in the context of Augustine’s altercations with Pelagians. To admit that pagans could be, at least, imperfectly virtuous is to admit that human being could be virtuous even without the assistance of the divine grace, one of the crucial points of friction between Augustine and Pelagians). In civ. V, 19 (the book Vof civ. was written around 415) Augustine admitted that unbelievers can have some sort of virtue, an imperfect virtue, not true virtue. Later, in civ. XIX, 25 (the book XIX was written around 426) he stated that the virtues of the pagans are vices. Augustine’s doctrine of virtue is founded in the concept of right end as he clearly stated in c. Jul. IV, III, 21. Virtues must be distinguished from vices, not by their functions, but by their ends. The function is that which it is to be done, the end is that for which is to be done. When one does something in which one does not seem to sin, yet does not do it because of that for which he ought to do, one is guilty of sinning. If one does not pay attention to this crucial detail one runs the risk of separating the ends from the functions and can be led to the unacceptable conclusion according to which the functions, apart from the ends, makes of an action a virtuous one (“noueris itaque, non officiis, sed finibus a uitiis discernendas esse uirtutes. officium est autem quod faciendum est: finis uero propter quod faciendum est. cum itaque facit homo aliquid ubi peccare non uidetur, si non propter hoc facit propter quod facere debet, peccare conuincitur. quae tu non attendens, fines ab officiis separasti, et uirtutes ueras officia sine finibus appellandas esse dixisti. ex quo te tanta absurditas sequitur, ut ueram cogaris appellare iustitiam, etiam cuius dominam reperis auaritiam”. PL 44, col. 749, l. 2). It has been argued in point 1 that Augustine defines a sinful act as an act motivated by a disordered love. This point is important for understanding what Augustine meant with the “right end” that unfolds the virtuous actions. Based on Rom. 14:23, where it is taught that everything that does not come from faith is sin, and Heb. 11:16, where Paul maintains that it is impossible to please God without faith, Augustine argued that what moves one to perform virtuous actions is the love for the glory of God, and this can only be done by a believer. This is the right end – to promote the glory of God. Apart from this end, any other end behind an action makes it sinful, a vice. How can pagans, being unbelievers be concerned with the promotion of the glory of God? They simply cannot. So whatever good they may do is vice. Not because the good they may do is evil itself, but because it lacks what unfolds a virtuous act i. e. the right end. “Although pagans can perform right actions, because they are pagans, they can never do

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In other words, some good actions can be performed by those who do not act well. Ultimately what determines whether the person acts well or not is the very purpose of the action. If it is anything apart from the glory of God, the act is not a virtuous act. As for the Gentiles of whom are said to do without the Law and by nature things prescribed by the Law, the explanation, Augustine argued, is that they believed in the Gospel coming from their Gentile world, not observing, for instance, the circumcision prescribed to the Jews by the Law. But it is not their natural abilities that explain why they did so. The truth is their nature was corrected by grace so they might believe. Accordingly, they do not serve as proof that even unbelievers have true virtues since they are, in fact, believers. If they would not have faith in Christ they certainly would not be righteous40. In fact, the good the unbelievers do belong not to them but rather to God who makes good use of bad persons. The sins, however, by which they do good things, belong to them since they perform such good not with a believing will but with an unbelieving will, i. e. foolish and harmful. Besides, McGrath’s argument according to which Augustine’s notion of faith is basically the assent to the truth is hardly arguable, is not totally correct. Augustine did, in fact, speak of faith as assent to the truth, but it is clear that his understanding of faith went far beyond it. He spoke of faith as the assent to the truth, but left enough clues that he was far from thinking faith exclusively as the assent to the truth. Augustine’s understanding of faith also implied what Luther would later insist much on: the abandonment of the self. For Augustine, to believe was to abandon oneself to the grace of Christ, to be humble enough to accept that one’s salvation depends on God’s grace and God’s grace alone. Êtienne GILSON could not be clearer when he writes that “prise en son essence, la foi augustinienne est simultan¦ment adh¦sion de l’esprit — la v¦rit¦ surnaturelle et humble abandon de l’homme tout entier — la gr–ce du Christ. Comment d’ailleurs les deux chose pourraient-elles se s¦parer? L’adh¦sion de l’esprit — l’autoritt¦ de Dieu suppose l’humilit¦, mais l’humilit¦ suppose — son tour une confiance en Dieu qui est elle mÞme un acte d’amour et de charit¦”41. Augustine, to recall J. BURNABY’s words, “is sure that no man can have a genuine belief in the Incarnation without at least the beginnings of that humble trust in God which Saint Paul meant by faith”42. Whether Augustine does or does not admit justification by love may be a them in the right way. The cognitional and volitional requirement are hurdles that pagans simply cannot clear. Given this, they cannot be virtuous. […] even if one regards them as intrinsically valuable, they are still vices because they are sought for an end other than eternal peace with God. Meeting this cognitional requirement is a necessary condition for exhibiting true virtue” Gaul, 2009, 245 – 246. 40 C. Jul. IV, III, 23sqq. 41 Gilson, 1982, 37. 42 Burnaby, 1947, 79 – 80.

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matter of dispute, but what I find absolutely certain is that he taught justification by faith. It is precisely the crucial importance of the belief in Christ’s redemptive mission for the sake of mankind that faith assumes its crucial role in Augustine’s understanding of justification. It was on account of this belief, Augustine maintained, that both the righteous of the Old Testament and those of the New are justified. In his struggle against the Pelagians, Augustine had always the impression that their portrayal of the history of salvation somehow managed to make Christ’s Incarnation, death and resurrection unnecessary, for instance, for the righteous of the Old Testament. The righteous of the Old Testament, like us, were saved in no other way than through belief in Christ’s redemptive sacrifice on the Cross. It was the same faith as had by the first Christians who were Christians before the ¦v¦nements. That is, on account of their belief that Christ would come to redeem mankind, the righteous of the Old Testament were Christians, not yet by name but de facto. Their faith was the same of the righteous of the New Testament who not only are Christians but also bears the name of Christians. To one and the other the sacrifice of the Cross meant the very same grace through which they believe Christ’s coming into this world, His suffering, death and resurrection took place as we believe it took place (eadem igitur fides est et in illis, qui nondum nomine, sed re ipsa fuerunt antea christiani, et in istis, qui non solum sunt, uerum etiam uocantur, et in utrisque eadem gratia per spiritum sanctum […]43. So it is faith and only faith that justifies sinners. It is certain that this faith does not justify if does not contain love, but justification comes through the grace of faith.

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The first great problem of the Augustinian doctrine of justification is the fact that it is part of a soteriological process which is not very clear and often evokes the sense of mystery to justify its inscrutable nature. Augustinian scholars are fairly aware that, on account of continuous hesitations, Augustine may not have provided clear details on some issues concerning his own positions on the Christian doctrine of salvation. Among these issues are two related concepts which cannot be neglected if one is to understand the Augustinian doctrine of salvation: election and predestination. Before being justified the individual is elected and predestined. Justification is just one of the stages in the grand scheme which is the salvation process as understood by Augustine. What makes Augustine’s soteriological discourse difficult to understand (or to accept) is that, although both concepts of election and predestination are central to his por43 c. ep. Pel. III, IV, 11, CSEL 60, 498, l. 6.

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trayal of the salvation process, he ultimately does not know, or at least did not provide a clear explanation on how election and predestination take place. What he knows is that no one who is predestined will fail to reach salvation. Before the creation of the world some are predestined and elected. They, however come to this world part of the same massa perditionis as any other sinner. From this massa in which everybody deserves condemnation, the elect and predestined are called to repentance. They are called secundum propositum Dei, they are justified and assisted so they may produce good works out of faith which works through love and reaches salvation. All this, Augustine claims, quoting Rom. 11:6 is free gift of divine grace. This reasoning brings us to what Augustine understood by grace. Grace, according to Augustine, is a special and divine assistance which shapes the contours of the entire process of salvation. The sole purpose of this divine assistance is to regenerate human nature and re-establish it as close as possible to its primitive dignity, to bring it back to the fullness of life it possessed before it fell in Adam, i. e. before sin. This assistance is, then, the necessary strength and ability to keep up with the challenge of avoiding sin by following God’s law and percepts. Grace, Augustine, believes not only erases sin (for instance in baptism) but also preserves one from the snares of sin in the future since it cures and communicates vigour to our will, making it truly efficient44. This assistance, it is hardly necessary to say, does not benefit every human beings, only those whom God has predestined to salvation. The rest of the massa perditionis was, however, not created by chance or with no purpose. One of its purposes is to serve the elect in their path to salvation45(the elect can, for instance, perform good deeds in favour of those who are not elected). No other criterion other than God’s hidden design is evoked here to explain all this process. Augustine only managed to make sure that some basic questions regarding his own understanding of Christian salvation do not go unanswered. As for the fundamental questions on how election and predestination take place or which criteria are behind them, Augustine simply evoked the sense of mystery. How explain, since all, without exception, deserve condemnation, that some are favoured with God’s mercy and called to salvation, and others, on account of divine justice, are condemned? Why does God draw some to Him and abandon others to their fate when all deserve the same lot? Why does He not transform the will of all those who are unwilling and thus save them? Augustine simply refused to provide an answer because, he said, the question is too profound. All he knew was that there is no injustice in God who does not condemn anyone who does not deserve condemnation; He is not unjust even when He 44 For a detailed analysis on the Augustinian concept of grace, see Garc†a 1965 45 c. Jul. V, IV, 14 – 18.

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saves some who not only do not deserve salvation but rather deserve condemnation since they belong to the same massa of condemned as those not rescued. More: in those He condemns He reveals that all deserve to be condemned so that those He sets free may be aware of what they deserve and learn the about the great evil, from which they have been set free and that the pardon bestowed on them is a grace of which they are unworthy46. In other words: in those God decides to condemn He shows His justice, in those He decides to save He shows His mercy, while none of this divine course of action is unjust47. Augustine is, however, concerned in clarifying some crucial points due to the accusations of his opponents, namely Julian. These are the following: a) The fact that there is no human-rooted merit in election, predestination, justification, in human salvation in general, does not imply these things take place under the criteria of fate (fatum). They are just determined by the inscrutable divine mercy. After all, predestination is the act through which God saw ab aeterno what He would accomplish in time48. This accomplishment takes place under two criteria only : mercy and justice. For, instance, in the case of infants, who have no will of their own, on account of our damaged origin (uitiata originis) some are baptised and saved because God is good; others die unbaptised and meet condemnation because God is just (a common example Augustine uses is the case of children of unbeliever prostitutes ending up baptised by some Christian parents, when many children of faithful Christian parents end up dead without baptism). This is, according to Augustine applicable also to adults. All deserve condemnation, but on account of God’s goodness, some are called to faith and saved, and others are not called, do not come to believe and thus meet condemnation on account of God’s justice. Thus, John RIST is right when arguing that “according to Augustine there are two groups among fallen humanity : the saved who ex46 c. Jul. IV, VIII, 45, PL 44, cols. 760 – 761: “ubi si dixeris mihi, cur ergo non conuertit omnium nolentium uoluntates? respondebo, cur non omnes morituros adoptat lauacro regenerationis infantes, quorum adhuc nullas, et ideo nec contrarias inuenit uoluntates? si hoc profundius esse perspicis, quam ut abs te ualeat inueniri; utrumque utrique nostrum profundum sit, cur et in maioribus et in minoribus deus uelit alteri et nolit alteri subuenire: dum tamen certum et immobile teneamus, non esse iniquitatem apud deum, qua quemquam sine malis meritis damnet; et esse bonitatem apud deum, qua multos sine bonis meritis liberet: demonstrans in eis quos damnat quid omnibus debeatur ; ut hinc discant quos liberat, quae sibi poena debita relaxetur, et quae indebita gratia condonetur”. 47 The modern reader easily tends to see in this different treatment for individuals who deserve the same punishment an unquestionable act of injustice. Augustine did not see it so and the reason is to be found in what he understands to be the status of a guilty individual. As John Rist rightly argues, for Augustine “as it was the case of ancient convicts, the guilty have no “rights” or standing at all, and cannot therefore be the objects of mistreatment”. Rist, 1994, 273. 48 persev. I, XVII, 47.

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emplify God’s mercy and the damned who exemplify God’s justice49. Why does God save only a small part in a group which deserves condemnation in its whole? Augustine refers to certain passages in Paul’s letter to the Romans to illustrate the inscrutability of God’s judgements and actions: the potter’s right over the clay he is moulding (Rom. 9:20 – 21) is among the most recurrent50. b) There can be no doubt that, according to Augustine, the justification of the sinner is to be regarded as a theocentric process determined by divine grace alone. If one wishes to talk about any sort of merit, one must be aware that such merits are of divine origin, not human. In fact this reasoning is evident in the already mentioned doctrine of initium fidei, which gains shape in De diversis quaestionibus ad Simplicianum. It is God who, through grace justifies sinners, making them to move from unwillingness to willingness, make them righteous out of unrighteousness. This process, it is hardly necessary to say, depends on God’s gracious mercy alone, thus preceded by no human merit whatsoever. It may be hard for some Augustinian scholars to admit but this is what Augustine taught: salvation depends exclusively on the divine will. Human beings, do, of course accept the gift of divine grace willingly, but this acceptance is, in a way dictated to them. Voluntas praeparatur a domino is the Biblical phrase Augustine recites repeatedly in order to make his point. Damaged in Adam’s sin, the human will is no longer able to desire or accomplish good, it has to be prepared beforehand. This is what God does with the elect, He prepares their hearts so they can accept this grace, follows his paths and reach eternal salvation. Regarding the damned God just abstain of doing such a thing; He even allows their hearts to be hardened. Under these circumstances the damned also seem to have no choice but the will to sin and follow the paths of condemnation. This is simply how Augustine understood the contours of salvation: it gravitates around the divine will, period. If God wishes one to be saved, one will be saved (one is prepared beforehand to accept salvation); if He does not, one will not be saved. Either grace is given to one when one is not prepared to receive it, or it is not given at all. These seems to be the two possible situations which the reprobate human being faces. In either case, what determines the outcome is the divine will. Augustine’s understanding of salvation was all about divine grace transforming the human will and orienting it for the purpose of the very same salvation God wishes to grant. This sense of transformation was, as a matter of fact, largely present in his understanding of justification. Augustine’s understanding 49 Rist, 1969, 439. “When God refuses to show mercy to those whom he declines to save, Rist rightly argues, he is acting justly, according to Augustine, because all men deserve condemnation as partakers in sin. Hence if all were condemned, God would be just, and if (as is the case) some are left unsaved, he is equally just”. Ibidem. 50 See, for instance, C. Jul. IV, VIII, 46; c. Jul. imp. I, 133 – 137; I, 141.

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of the justification process was very close to that of Luther. According to the Church Father, the righteousness of God that Paul talks about, namely in Rom. 1:17 is not the righteousness by which God Himself is righteous but the righteousness by which he declares a sinner righteous. Another crucial detail is similar in the Church Father and the Reformer : this declaration of righteousness is just a part of the justification process. The declaration of righteousness in both Augustine and Luther, is to be identified with a transformation of the sinner. Luther insisted on this in his famous doctrine of two kind of righteousness, which can be encapsulated as follows: the first kind the righteousness, through which God bestows His righteousness upon the sinner, and the second that is nothing more nor less than the ethical repercussions of the divine righteousness with which the sinner has been covered in his/her daily life. Thus Luther stresses, on account of the righteousness bestowed upon him/her, the justified sinner comes to a true ontological union with God and God’s very attributes such as righteousness, wisdom, etc. Thus there is a harmony between the God’s and sinner’s interests, between both God and the sinner’s will. Augustine, it is true, did not insist on the ontological communion between sinner and God, but his doctrine of justification points to something close to it. To explain this one must pay attention to the notions of faith and grace and their place and role in Augustine’s understanding of justification. As is well known, Augustine’s doctrine of justification (as Luther’s) carries a strong ethical sense; it emphasises the good works which justification implies. However, like Luther, Augustine tried to make sure that good works are placed in their proper place. Justification results in good works and not the other way around. How, then, is the justification process to be understood? It is clear now that the orientation of a sinner’s will operated by grace is a key aspect of the Augustinian doctrine of justification. According to Augustine, on account of Original Sin all human beings come into this world with a misguided will, with a strong propensity to sin. Thus they are enemies of God and His will i. e. unwilling to perform good. Before committing sin, Adam, created with every possibility of goodness (besides from being physically healthier, with a body and mind working in perfect harmony and possessing higher intellectual capabilities than ours) he enjoyed a genuine free will. God could have created him incapable of committing sin but chose not to do so. To say that Adam had all these faculties in his possession and still committed sin is to say he definitely sinned with full knowledge (sciens prudensque peccavit; see civ. XIV, 11 and Op. Imp. V, 1). He deserted good when he could have chosen not to. Adam with all the potentialities with which he was created could afford to take the initiative himself in doing good. Pride is the only explanation for the fact that he chose not to remain in the divine paths. Hence the special gravity that his sin carries! It is beyond any possible range

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of gravity the contemporary sinner can imagine. Among its consequences is death, and the general desertion of good by mankind. All mankind came under evils such as concupiscence, ignorance and difficulty, i. e. the inability to perform what one knows to be right. All this is explained by the fact, as I have stressed earlier, that Augustine believed we were all in Adam when he committed that great sin. It is this monogenism inherent in Augustine’s doctrine of Original Sin that determined his gloomy vision of mankind and his entire theological anthropology. This is of crucial importance for understanding his doctrine of justification. For Augustine, justification is ultimately the second Adam cleaning up the mess provoked by the first Adam in his pride. Hence the image of medicus humiliis, regenerator, and its equivalents become associated with Christ. One of the most serious consequences of Adam’s sin is the nausea or distaste for good planted in human nature. After his sin no one tends to do good, no one is willing to do good unless assisted by grace. Here one comes to the core of Augustine’s understanding of justification. For Augustine, justification is the process through which God makes of an unwilling sinner willing, and finding delight in doing good. God does it out His free mercy. This is why Augustine sees no reason to speak about any sort of coercion here. God does not force the sinner to abandon the sinful life, but just leads him/her to love righteousness. It is evident, Augustine insisted, that no one does evil or good by any necessity. What determines whether humans turn to good or evil is God’s assistance. In other words, if God abandons them, they turn toward evil in accord with their merits. If God helps them they are turned toward good without any merits. Humans are not good unless they wish to be so, but the assistance of God’s grace goes to this very point, namely, that one wills to be good. All this Augustine finds to be clear from passages such as Philip. 2:13 and Prov. 8:35 LXX551. Augustine insisted on this point because he understood that Pelagians or Julian understood grace to be given to Christians when these, out of their own good will, start good actions. Then they are helped in the action itself. Grace is then given as a reward of good will. If that would be the case, Augustine explained, then grace would be no longer grace. Paul’s life is a proof to the contrary. What did he merit when he was still Saul? Do we pray for those who persecute us so that they will receive grace as reward of their good actions? What about the 51 c. ep. Pel. I, XVIII, 36, CSEL 60/1, 453, l. 1: “ex hominibus non potuit esse peccator, nec ex dei potentia uel in malum uel in bonum inuitum aliquem cogi, sed deo deserente pro meritis ire in malum et deo adiuuante sine meritis conuerti ad bonum. non enim est homo bonus, si nolit, sed gratia dei etiam ad hoc adiuuatur ut uelit, quoniam non inaniter scriptum est: deus est enim qui operatur in uobis et uelle et operari pro bona uoluntate et: praeparatur uoluntas a domino”.

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statement in John 6:65? Like Paul, Augustine said, in his own time, many are the enemies of Christ drawn in to Christ. They are drawn in marvellous ways to willing by the one who knows how to work interiorly in the hearts of human beings. This is not to say that human beings believe unwillingly. That is impossible, but that they become people willing to believe from people who were unwilling52. It is precisely here that notions such as faith and grace assume their crucial role in the justification process. No one is forced to sin, but, though free for evil actions because the will takes delight in evil, it is not free for good actions until it is set free. No one can will something good unless helped by the one who cannot will evil, that is, by the grace of God through Christ. Since everything that does not come from faith is sin (Rom. 14:23), the will that withdraws from evil is the will of a believer, because the righteous live from faith (Hab. 2:4; Rom. 1:17). Fallen human free will, as it has been said, suffices for sinning only ; fallen humans have free choice but do not enjoy freedom, and freedom, is obedience to God, the choice and performance of good works under the guidance of God’s grace. This is freedom from the necessity of sin. Thus we are brought to the view that, although our “wills” and our “choices” are free, in the sense that we alone are responsible for them, yet without the intervention of God we are bound to an evil which we cannot escape53. To believe in Christ belongs to faith and faith to Augustine’s eyes is an expression of grace; it is itself grace. Augustine the opponent of Pelagians was, more than ever, convinced that the very will to believe is to be counted amongst divine gifts54. It is true that he admitted that faith is in our power, since faith is assent to the truth and assent is an act of will. No one believes unwillingly. As it has been said, anything good in humans Augustine identified with divine gift (I understand this to be one of the consequence of Augustine’s reading of I Cor. 4:7). The will to believe is a good will and any good emanates from God’s gift. Accordingly, the fact that one believes is God’s gift. Being the very free will through which one believes is God’s gift proves that humans would not even be 52 c. ep. Pel. I, XIX, 37, CSEL 60/1, 454, l. 16: “non enim ait duxerit, ut illic aliquo modo intellegamus praecedere uoluntatem. quis trahitur, si iam uolebat? et tamen nemo uenit, nisi uelit. trahitur ergo miris modis, ut uelit, ab illo, qui nouit intus in ipsis hominum cordibus operari, non ut homines, quod fieri non potest, nolentes credant, sed ut uolentes ex nolentibus fiant”. 53 Rist, 1969, 424. 54 praed. sanct. I, II, 3, PL 44, cols. 961 – 962: “Sed nunc eis respondendum esse video, qui divina testimonia, quae de hac re adhibuimus, ad hoc dicunt valere, ut noverimus ex nobis quidem nos habere ipsam fidem, sed incrimentum ejus ex Deo: tamquam fides non ab ipso donetur nobis, sed ad ipso tantum augeatur in nobis, eo merito, quo coepit a nobis. Non ergo receditur ab ea sententia, quam Pelagius ipse in episcopali iudicio Palestino sicut eadem Gesta testantur damnare compulsus est: “Gratiam Dei secundum merita nostra dari”.

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able to believe unless they had received such a will when they were created by God55. No one can believe in Him, that is, come to Him, unless this gift has been given to them. None can have righteous will unless they have received true grace without any preceding merits, that is, grace which has been gratuitously given from above56. A quick look into Augustine’s exegesis of Rom. 7: 14 – 25 is helpful in the attempt to understand his insistence on the orientation of the will and his understanding of a justified Christian. This transformation of the human will that is possible only in faith, through grace, is precisely what made Augustine sure of the identity of the Pauline “I” of Rom. 7:14 – 25. What makes clear that Paul’s words in these verses refer to himself and expound the situation of every Christian in general is the fact that it is not possible for a human being under the law to take delight in the good. This is to be attributed to grace alone; only grace provides human beings with such delight in good through which one also avoid consenting to evil, not on account of fear of punishment, but rather out of love of righteousness57. Why do some believe and others do not if the very will to believe is to be regarded as God’s gift? Augustine’s answer was that though God wishes all to be saved, this wish of His does not go to the point of violating human free will. Thus, those who do not believe end up acting against God’s will. The truth is that in the ensemble of Augustine’s thought it is clear that the Church Father maintained that God operates over the rational soul in order to lead it to believe (God, he maintained, produces in human beings the will to believe, thus his mercy anticipates us in every way) and unbelief come to unbelievers almost like a punishment itself. A clear proof of this is the fact that Augustine’s doctrine of election and predestination clearly admitted that some are made vessels of mercy since they are separated by God’s grace from those who are vessels of anger, and He makes 55 spir. et litt. XXXI, 53; XXXIII, 57 56 c. ep. Pel. I, III, 7, CSEL 60/1, 428 – 429, l. 24: “sed haec uoluntas, quae libera est in malis, quia delectatur malis, ideo libera in bonis non est, quia liberata non est. nec potest homo boni aliquid uelle, nisi adiuuetur ab eo, qui malum non potest uelle, hoc est gratia dei per iesum christum dominum nostrum; omne enim quod non est ex fide, peccatum est. ac per hoc bona uoluntas, quae se abstrahit a peccato, fidelis est, quia iustus ex fide uiuit, ad fidem autem pertinet credere in christum et nemo potest credere in eum, hoc est uenire ad eum, nisi fuerit illi datum. nemo igitur potest habere uoluntatem iustam, nisi nullis praecedentibus meritis acceperit ueram, hoc est gratuitam desuper gratiam”. 57 c. ep. Pel. I, X, 22, CSEL 60/1, 442 – 443, l. 21: “uisum autem aliquando etiam mihi fuerat hominem sub lege isto apostoli sermone describi. sed uim mihi postea ista uerba fecerunt, quod ait: nunc autem iam non ego operor illud. {…} quia non uideo quomodo diceret homo sub lege: condelector legi dei secundum interiorem hominem, cum ipsa delectatio boni, qua etiam non consentit ad malum non timore poenae, sed amore iustitiae – hoc est enim condelectari – non nisi gratiae deputanda sit”.

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others vessels of anger, in order to make known the riches of His glory towards the vessel of mercy (alios faciens tamquam uasa misericordiae, quos gratia discernat ab eis, qui uasa sunt irae, alios tamquam uasa irae, ut notas faciat diuitias gloriae suae in uasa misericordiae)58. In Contra duas epistulas Pelagianorum I, XXI, 39, dealing with the issue of righteousness of the patriarchs, Augustine accused Julian and the Pelagians of being the enemies of grace since they, he claimed, denied that the people of Old Testament were saved by the same grace of Jesus Christ. He accused Julian of following Pelagius in his division of salvation history according to which, prior to the law humans were saved by nature, then through the law, and finally through Christ. Teaching that would imply admitting that in the two first periods of the history of salvation Christ’s blood was not necessary, breaking thus with the Pauline statement according to which there is one God and mediator between God and human beings, the man Jesus Christ as stated in I Tim. 2:559. This passage of Contra duas ep. Pelagianorum is one of the many illustrating that the Augustinian doctrine of salvation is all about a christocentric notion of divine grace’s operation. It is, then, all about grace. These words would be the most brief and complete definition of Augustine’s doctrine of salvation. From the very outset of the controversy with Augustine, Pelagius’ main concern was to refute the Church Father’s doctrine of Original Sin. His purpose had a strong ethical concern. Hence he stressed that the nature itself was unaltered by Adam’s fall. Accordingly, there is no natural impediment to obeying God’s commandments. More than enough reasons, Pelagius and his associates thought, to deny the strong restrictions the Church Father was bringing upon human free will. Pelagius did not deny that all have sinned and are in need of grace for the forgiveness of sin. However, since nature is uncorrupted by sin, and creation itself is to be regarded as a strong expression of grace, there is nothing more that is necessary to resist sin than the natural faculties, with which humans are created. Regarding the task of avoiding sin, humankind has the free will of choice. So nature is necessarily free and to exalt man natural abilities, the naturae bonum, Pelagius stressed, is not denying grace, but rather acknowledging the bounty of the Creator. Pelagian naturalism, Augustine noticed, was peculiar to a man of great zeal, but it can only be held by those who, ignoring God’s righteousness, endeavour to 58 nutpt. et conc. II, XVI, 31, CSEL 42, 285, l. 14. 59 c. ep. Pel. I, XXI, 39, CSEL 60/1, 457, l. 5: “hoc uos non uultis, inimici huic gratiae, ut eadem gratia iesu christi salui facti credantur antiqui, sed distribuitis tempora secundum pelagium, in cuius libris hoc legitur, et ante legem dicitis saluos factos esse natura, deinde per legem, postremo per christum, quasi hominibus duorum superiorum temporum, ante legem scilicet et in lege, sanguis christi non fuerit necessarius, euacuantes quod dictum est: unus enim deus, unus et mediator dei et hominum homo christus iesus”.

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establish their own (Rom. 10:2 – 3); misunderstanding the very notion of justification. The righteousness of God which is the issue here, Paul defined when he says the end of the Law is Christ for the justification of all believers. God’s righteousness is then not founded on the percepts of the Law in order to instigate fear, but on the assistance of the grace of Christ. It is towards this very grace that law leads us. This is the very essence of Christianity and whoever understands this, understands why he or she is Christian, since if righteousness would come from human accomplishment, then Christ died in vain; if then Christ did not die in vain one is to remember of Gal. 2:21 and Rom. 4:5 and Mt 9:12 – 1360. Augustine, then, regarded Pelagius’ claims as teaching the condemnable selfsufficiency of human nature (in open contradiction with the Biblical passages such as I Cor. 2:12 – 3 and John 15:5)61, making of Christian soteriology a mere fraud62. By the time Augustine wrote De natura et gratia, the first period of the controversy was, so to say, reaching its apex. It was precisely at this moment that there lay an unprecedented emphasis on natura vitiata and Augustine stressed its radical differences regarding human nature in its integrity such as it was created, before sin. In his reaction to Pelagius’ De natura, through De natura et gratia, Augustine articulated the central principle of Augustinian soteriology : created without any sort of vices, human nature was deeply wounded by sin. It is ill (Natura quppe humana hominis primitus inculpata et sine ullo uitio creata est; natura uero ista hominis, qua unusquisque ex Adam nascitur, iam medico indiget, quia sana non est). and an appeal to Eph. 2:3 – 5 serves the purpose of the claim according to which only the grace of Christ can heal wounded nature (Si enim iam sumus in Christo noua creatura, tamem eramus natura filii irae sicut et ceteri; deus autem, qui diues est misericordia, propter multam dilectionem, qua dilexit nos, et cum essemus mortui delictis, conuiuificauit nos Christo, cuius gratia sumus salui facti)63. 60 nat. et gr. I, I, 1. 61 nat. et gr. 27, 31 and 62, 73. 62 nat. et gr. II, 2, CSEL 60/1, 234, l. 7: “ac per hoc natura humani generis ex illius unius praeuaricatoris carne procreata, si potest sibi sufficere ad inplendam legem perficiendam que iustitiam, de praemio debet esse secura, hoc est de uita aeterna, etiamsi in aliqua gente aut aliquo superiore tempore fides eam latuit sanguinis christi. non enim iniustus deus, qui iustos fraudet mercede iustitiae, si eis non est annuntiatum sacramentum diuinitatis et humanitatis christi, quod manifestatum est in carne. quomodo enim crederent quod non audierunt? aut quomodo audirent sine praedicante? […]” 63 nat. et gr. 3, 3, CSEL 60/1, 235, l. 8: “natura quippe hominis primitus inculpata et sine ullo uitio creata est; natura uero ista hominis, qua unusquisque ex adam nascitur, iam medico indiget, quia sana non est. omnia quidem bona, quae habet in formatione, uita, sensibus, mente, a summo deo habet creatore et artifice suo. uitium uero, quod ista naturalia bona contenebrat et infirmat, ut inluminatione et curatione opus habeat, non ab inculpabili artifice contractum est, sed ex originali peccato, quod commissum est libero arbitrio. ac per hoc natura poenalis ad uindictam iustissimam pertinet. si enim iam sumus in christo noua

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Against Pelagius’ attempt to identify grace with the natural gifts that God has endowed humankind; Augustine stressed the inabilities of the natura vitiata to demonstrate the clamorous error which would be to fuse gratia and natura. The corruption of Original Sin “darkens and weakens all those natural goods, so that there is a need for illumination and healing” by grace “given gratuitously and not for our merits”64. Augustine admits that before the fall humanity could merit eternal blessedness. He was very forthright in saying that post-lapsarian humanity cannot merit salvation. His great concern was that if it is to be believed that nature is unaffected by sin and there is no need for the supernatural assistance of grace, we will be seduced by the illusion of self-sufficiency65. From this, there is no room for any sort of doubt concerning the centrality of the Adamic sin in the shaping of the Augustinian soteriology. To understand the rúle of Original Sin within the Augustinian soteriological framework, namely in his debate with Julian, requires a careful procedure. One of the main point of friction was certainly the intimate connection between Original Sin and the abilities of human free will. He was accused by Julian of destroying human free will on account of the Adamic sin66. Here one must pay very close attention to the Augustinian explanation. It is true that one finds some peremptory assertions throughout Augustine’s writings linking Original Sin and the loss of human freedom. For instance, in Enchiridion 30 he declared that when Adam sinned “he destroyed both himself and his freedom”. In his debate with Julian Augustine gave the impression that he thought that all post-lapsarian human beings are spiritually dead and Christian morality is not at their range to be fulfilled unless divine grace is bestowed upon them. Human beings can do nothing by their own will, even to acquire faith, due to this spiritual death affecting their conditions, fact that leaves them to the “necessity of sin”. This theological equation brings Augustine’s readers to what is obvious in the Church Father’s theology : there is, in fact, an internal connection between Original Sin and the doctrine of grace. As a matter of fact, Augustine did not develop his doctrine of grace years before coming to teach Original Sin as A. SAGE argues. The doctrine of grace and the theological formulations on Original Sin were shaped in constant dialectics. Original Sin and the doctrine of grace lend support to each other. This is clear in Augustine’s writing since the apcreatura, tamen eramus natura filii irae sicut et ceteri; deus autem, qui diues est in misericordia, propter multam dilectionem, qua dilexit nos, et cum essemus mortui delictis, conuiuificauit nos christo, cuius gratia sumus salui facti”. 64 nat. et gr. 3, 3 and 4, 4. 65 nat. et gr. 17, 18. 66 “dicunt, inquit, illi manichei, quibus modo non communicamus, id est toti isti, cum quibus dissentimus, quia primi hominis peccato, id est adae, liberum arbitrium perierit et nemo iam potestatem habeat bene uiuendi, sed omnes in peccatum carnis suae necessitate cogantur”. Julian’s words as quoted by Augustine in c. ep. Pel. I, II, 4, CSEL 60/1, 425, l.11.

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pearance of Ad Simplicianum and Confessiones, namely in the issue of grace and free will67. It is true that, at first glance, it seems that Augustine developed the doctrine of Original Sin and only then became endeavoured to prove the same doctrine when faced with opposition. One of reasons that may make this argument seem accurate is the fact that passages such as Rom. 5:12 hardly occurs in foundational works when it comes to Augustine’s doctrine of Original Sin such as Ad Simplicianum. Being aware of all this I still maintain that it by taking a closer look into works such as Ad Simplicianum that one comes to realize that the Augustinian doctrines of Original Sin and grace tend to grow within the Augustinian corpus as two interrelated issues. Besides, it is my sincere belief that the importance of Rom. 5:12 in the shaping of Augustine’s doctrine of Original Sin is often overestimated. Rom. 5:12, I insist, should not be regarded as the passage on which Augustine relied the most to maintain his theological and exegetical claims regarding Original Sin. If one passage deserves such prominence in Augustine’s doctrine of Original Sin it would be I Cor. 15:22 (regarding the Pauline parallelism Adam-Christ) not Rom. 5:12 Since it is a fact that Augustine did admit that humankind lost its freedom in Adam, what is crucial for understanding this tricky matter is to pose a rather propaedeutical: what did Augustine understand by freedom as far as the present state of a human being is concerned? Or what sort of freedom does he claim to be 67 Sage tends to argue that, in order to back his doctrine of grace, Augustine developed the doctrine of Original Sin. Augustine’s doctrine of Original Sin is not more than a derivative one. It is a product of theological debate inherent to the Pelagian controversy (See Sage, 1967 and 1969). The opinion of this great Augustinian scholar, however, does not go unchallenged, and understandably so. It seems evident to me that the Augustinian doctrine of Original Sin precedes the “official” beginning of the Pelagian controversy by more than a decade. As I have argued, in Ad Simplicianum and Confessiones one finds the main line of the doctrine, works in which one finds the basis of Augustine’s mature anthropology and soteriology. Thus Original Sin is not a derivative, but rather a foundational doctrine, which, along with the doctrine of grace, shaped the Augustinian conception of mankind and its salvation. Crucial to understanding this claim, I have argued, is not to loose from one’s sight, the parallelism Adam-Christ. Paul Rigby is right when he writes that “Augustine originally believed and explicitly taught the doctrine of original sin, not because he was in the midst of a theological debate, but because it was his fundamental experience of man’s fallen human condition as interpreted in the light of scripture. Original sin, for Augustine, was an immediate foundational experience of faith, drawn out of scripture in the same way as his doctrine of grace. Together, these two doctrines – of original sin and of grace – founded Augustine’s anthropology and soteriology. In the doctrine of original sin, Augustine taught that mankind since Adam is always and everywhere subject to inherited concupiscence and sin. This doctrine founds Augustine’s doctrine of grace and salvation. Similarly, the absolute gratuity and necessity of grace for salvation reveals the depths of man’s sin. Augustine’s anthropology is founded upon the mutually illuminating scriptural revelation of original sin and grace in his soteriology. They are two sides of the same truth in Augustine’s mature thought – as much in its genesis and development in Ad Simplicianum and the Confessions as in its antiPelagian formulation”. Rigby, 1987, 11.

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lost in Adam’s transgression? Augustine made it clear that he did not think that free choice (liberum arbitrium) was removed from human race by the Adamic sin. It was freedom (libertas) that, indeed, perished through sin. But it was that freedom which existed in paradise and which consisted in having fullness of righteousness, with immortality. It is on account of Adam’s sin that humankind needs grace, the prelude to the liberation mentioned in John 8:36. To be free in Augustine’s anti-Pelagian struggle meant to live good righteous lives. It is the very capacity to remain in good, and not a mere capacity of choosing between good and evil. Behind this claim is the assertion according to which God who cannot chose evil then would not be free, a statement found also in the Anselmian doctrine of free will. The decision for evil, according to Augustine, is done through free will but it is not an expression of true freedom. Humans are free to commit sin, but committing sin does not mean to be free. In other words, to have the freedom of choice, does not mean to have a free will, i. e. a will pure from any evil desire. So it is far from being true that freedom of choice perished in the sinner. All people sin by free choice, especially those who delight in the sin they commit. It is in light of this that Rom. 6:20 is to be understood. They could not have been slaves of sin except by another freedom; they are free from righteousness only by the choice of the will, but they do not become free from sin except by the grace of the saviour. Paul says they were “free”, not “set free” of righteousness; he did not say they were “free” from sin, for fear that they should attribute this to themselves. Rather, he preferred to say, exercising the utmost care, that they were set free, in perfect harmony with the Lord’s statement in John 8:36. Human beings do not lead good lives unless they become children of God; it is erroneous to ascribe to free choice the power of leading a good life. This power is given only through the grace of Jesus Christ our Lord, as the Gospel also states in John 1:1268. After all this, what must be stressed is what I find of utmost importance for understanding the Augustinian doctrine of free will and grace: Augustine’s claim is basically that free will is enough to lead a bad life, but not to lead a good life. This last is a task only possible through God’s grace and through God’s grace 68 c. ep. Pel. I, II, 5, CSEL 60/1, 425 – 426, l. 24: “quis autem nostrum dicat, quod primi hominis peccato perierit liberum arbitrium de genere humano? libertas quidem periit per peccatum, sed illa, quae in paradiso fuit, habendi plenam cum inmortalitate iustitiam. propter quod natura humana diuina indiget gratia dicente domino: si uos filius liberauerit, tunc uere liberi eritis, utique liberi ad bene iuste que uiuendum. nam liberum arbitrium usque adeo in peccatore non periit, ut per ipsum peccent maxime omnes, qui cum delectatione peccant et amore peccati et hoc eis placet quod eos libet. […] ecce ostenduntur etiam peccato minime potuisse nisi alia libertate seruire. liberi ergo a iustitia non sunt nisi arbitrio uoluntatis; liberi autem a peccato non fiunt nisi gratia saluatoris. […] liberos dixit iustitiae, non liberatos, a peccato autem non liberos, ne sibi hoc tribuerent, sed uigilantissime maluit dicere liberatos referens hoc ad illam domini sententiam: si uos filius liberauerit, tunc uere liberi eritis”.

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alone. To be justified is to be humbled by God’s grace to the point of unconditionally accepting this truth. This is the humility of faith which works through love. This is the grace of faith that justifies. This is why justification comes by faith through grace. In order to refute Augustine’s positions, one may argue that believers receive help in order to get the power to become children of God, but to deserve such a power, they have received Christ through their free will, without any assistant of grace. For Augustine, this would be a ferocious attack against grace since it would mean to admitting that grace is, after all, deserved by the believer69. In his argument Augustine evoked Biblical passages such as John 1:12, Philip. 1:28 – 29, Eph. 6:23 and especially John 6:44 (Nemo potest uenire ad me, nisi Pater, qui misit me, traxerit eum) to explain that it is heretical to ascribe to human free will even the first step towards God, i. e., the very act of believing. Augustine denounces such a claim as the Pelagian strategy to destroy grace. The verb uenire of John 6:44 refers itself to the very act of believing. “Uenire ad me” here means nothing more nor less then “believe in me”. Accordingly, though humans have free will for what is evil, such free will, Augustine claimed, would not be free for what is good if it had not been set free by the Deliverer. The capacity of believing in God, then, cannot come from the free will, but rather from grace which operates over the same free will, setting it free for good things. This is the core of Augustinian doctrine of justification. Justification of the sinner is about God re-orienting a sinner’s own will towards Him. This is the essence of the doctrine of initium fidei: the power by which those who believe in God become His children is itself a gift, that is grace, since the very fact they believe in Him is a gracious gift70. Of utmost importance to understand the quarrel between Julian and Augustine regarding grace and free will and their role in justification is to take into consideration not only the very concept of grace itself, but also how they understood the basic statement according to which God is just. Julian, it has been said, applied the Ciceronian definition of iustitia to divine equity. For him divine 69 c. ep. Pel. I, III, 6. Even the fact that Pelagius, at the episcopal assembly of Diospolis, denied that he taught that grace can be merited, and condemned those who hold such a teaching, did not convince Augustine. The Church Father saw in the heresiarch’s gesture a simple strategy to avoid condemnation. Augustine based himself on what he considered a fact: soon after the same assembly, Pelagius wrote Pro libero arbitrio and taught the very doctrine he condemned at Diospolis. The strategy was successful, since he managed to deceive the judges, Augustine stressed in several passages of gest. Pel. as he did in this very passage of c. ep. Pel. 70 c. ep. Pel. I, III, 6, CSEL 60/1, 428, l. 11: “[…]datur ergo potestas, ut filii dei fiant qui credunt in eum, cum hoc ipsum datur, ut credant in eum. quae potestas nisi detur a deo, nulla esse potest ex libero arbitrio, quia nec liberum in bono erit, quod liberator non liberauerit, sed in malo liberum habet arbitrium, cui delectationem malitiae uel occultus uel manifestus deceptor inseuit uel sibi ipse persuasit”.

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justice “means giving each his due without fraud or favour, irrespective of who he is”71. God, then rewards those who deserve grace with justification. For Julian, the Augustinian teaching on grace was an outrageous intrusion of the pagan notion of fate (fatum)72. Julian placed grace on the good creative act of the Creator and the continuous benefits with which He bestows His creatures, including capacities of discerning between good and evil and freely choosing between them. Augustine understood grace in a different way. To start with he denied the application of the Ciceronian definition of justice to the divine affairs with humans (he often presented the case of the parable of the Labourers in the Vineyard to illustrate the different nature of divine justice). The bestowal of grace depends on God’s arbitrary decision and it is not caused by any other thing, namely human engagement in spiritual and moral progress (i. e. it is not merited). This arbitrary dimension of the salvation process started and concluded by God seems to be the result of Augustine’s reading of Rom 9:15 – 1673. Justification, Augustine explained, takes place without any previous human merit and, even so, there is no partiality because it is operated by grace (non intellegentes in iustificandis impiis sicut propterea merita non sunt, quia dei gratia est, ita propterea non esse fatum, quia dei gratia est, ita propterea non esse acceptionem personarum, quia dei gratia est?)74. Grace is the inner spiritual assistance God provides to those he predestined, and it is a very comprehensive concept: predestination, election, call, justification, sanctification, and final perseverance are all theological concepts encompassed in his notion of grace. Grace is operative and cooperative. It is true that humankind was created with abilities and privileges, especially those inherent in reason and free will (most of those privileges were damaged by Original Sin), but grace is not to be fused with such privileges. God operates by grace and turns the homo inordinatus (with his disordered will tending to lower things, incurvatus in se) towards him. This is justification. Will is what defines one’s moral standing. According to Augustine, on account of Original Sin, human will is corrupted, i. e., became bad, making all of us bad. Humans are unable to move from evil will to good will. It is the other way around. Grace and only grace operates over evil will, setting free a bad person, i. e. making him/her able to will and consent to good actions, as well as finding joy in the same actions. A crucial point for understanding this issue is to recall that Augustine, unlike his Pelagians contemporaries or, later the Me71 72 73 74

McGrath, 1983, 316 See Augustine’s defence against such accusation, for instance, in c. ep. Pel. II, VII, 13sqq. c. ep. Pel. II, V, 10sqq. c. ep. Pel. II, VI, 12, CSEL 60/1, 472, l. 14.

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diaeval theologians under influence of Aristotle, did not consider a world-view in which ontological and operational integrity was assigned to the realm of created nature. His world-view is influenced by the Neoplatonic theory of emanation, according to which being, power, and even operation are continuously communicated from the highest to the lower levels of a hierarchically ordered universe. Applying this emanationist scheme to Christian faith, it was easy for Augustine to conclude that angelic and human spirits are created from nothing but are empowered and guided by divine influence75. It is also within the following scheme that his doctrine of gratia operativa and cooperativa becomes intelligible. Justification in its declarative stage or dimension, and its first impacts, so to say, is not enough for salvation. Justification is also regeneration and continuous assistance. It is a life-long process which goes on taking place under the action of divine grace. Grace continues to be present by cooperating with the justified, so that he/she can persevere to the end and earn final salvation. What is and how does grace operates? Justification cannot take place without a re-orientation of the depraved human will: to the predestined God’s grace manifests itself in a first stage as God’s call, then in God’s touch of the heart, which is God’s operation over human will to make it willing to accept the call (gratia operativa). Then the good deeds come along, but the predestined shall persevere in the paths of God on account of gratia cooperativa which is God’s assistance over human will in each moment of the life of the predestined, making sure that he/she will be driven by an ordered love. They will prefer greater goods rather than inferior ones. This is the gift of perseverance given to the elected76. This brief scheme suffices to show how central is the Augustinian doctrine of Original Sin to his soteriology. In Augustine’s theology Original Sin is part of a soteriological discourse, rather than an exclusive pessimistic emphasis on the general condemnation. It is only in light of a salvation-process exclusively depending on God’s active mercy and grace that Augustine’s doctrine of justification and salvation can be understood. To start with, faith, from which one begins and to which there is referred whatever one does temperately, justly and piously, cannot be attributed to the free choice of our will, since though one freely chooses to believe, the will behind this choice is “prepared by the Lord”; that is, faith is a free gift. It is given to us by the mercy of God who sovereignly acts over the human will and prepares

75 Burns, 1999, 391 – 392. 76 This is the main argument with which Augustine will explain the doctrine of initium fidei to the Massilians and the African monks of Adrumentum in praed. sanct. and persev. The monks’ concern with Augustine’s radicalism of grace is clear in their question: if it is all about grace why then should an action be called morally good?

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it for the act of believing. So the very first step towards God, which is to believe, is itself a gift, not merited. Then comes the prayer. One may claim that one decides to prayer and then God answers the prayers, so the initiative would have its origin in the supplicant. Augustine would deny this based on his reading of Prov. 8:35, voluntas praparatur a Domino, which led him to link Original Sin and the need redemptive grace on account of the miserable present state of the humankind. The very raison d’Þtre of prayer, according to the Church, lies here: the Church makes her supplications not only for the faithful so that they persevere in their piety and do not fall away in their belief, but also for the unbelievers so that they may believe. For since the time Adam committed that great sin through human free choice and condemned the whole human race altogether, any human being set free from this common condemnation is set free only by God’s grace and mercy, and whatever the law commands is carried out only with the help, inspiration, and gift of him who commands77. Then, one may ask: why were the commandments given even after this total fall in Adam? Augustine used his traditional explanation (later extensively used by Luther) according to which the true goal of the law is to break the pride of those who think salvation comes through human merit. This fits well in God’s plan of salvation through grace, a hard lesson on humility to the wretched humankind. Adam transgressed against the law he received and corrupted himself. Because he could not heal himself, the wisdom of God judged that even afterwards, Adam’s descendants, though corrupted should receive a law by which they would be corrected, but a law which would make them realize that they are evil and can not correct themselves, even after receiving the Law. Since sins did not cease because of the Law, pride would be broken and crushed. They would seek the help of grace with humble heart, and be brought to life by the Spirit, after having been slain by the letter. The Law given to Moses is not evidence of free will. If it was Paul’s words in Rom. 7:15 would make no sense at all, since Paul knew the Law. Paul’s words in Rom. 7:15 is rather evidence of a will that needed to be set free (liberandae), since in the new law it is written: if the Son sets you free, then you will be truly free (John 8:36)78. Accordingly, Original Sin is also not to be dissociated from predestination. 77 c. Jul imp. VI, 41, CSEL 85/2 461, l. 87: “Unde sancta ecclesia per ora supplicantium sacerdotum non solum pro fidelibus, ut in eo quod credunt perseverante pietate non deficiant, verum etiam pro infidelibus orat ut credant. Ex quo enim per humanum liberum arbitrium “Adam commisit illud grande peccatum et omne genus humanum in commune damnavit [Chrysostom, ad Olympiadem 3, 3, PG 52, 574], ab hac commune damnatione homines quicumque liberantur, nonisi divina gratia et misericordia liberantur ; et quicquid lex dei iubet, nonisi eo qui iubet adiuvante, inspirante, donante completur […]”. 78 c. Jul. imp. VI, 15

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The will of human beings destroyed the good which could not be restored by human will, but can be restored by the will of God, when the most just, most powerful, and merciful God will judge that it should be restored and to whom it should not be restored (hominis voluntas perdidit bonum, quod reddi non posset hominis voluntate, sed dei, quando reddendum et quibus reddendum iustissimus potentissimus et misericordissimus iudicabit)79. There can be no exception of persons (aceptio personarum) here, because the condemnation in Adam is general. All deserved the same punishment. But, Augustine recalled, when one has two debtors and decides to forgive the debt of one of them while requiring the payment from the other, one is being graceful with the first but not cheating anyone. This is how Augustine explained that justification is all about grace. One Scriptural reference which denies God’s partiality in justification and the salvation process is the parable of the Labourers in the Vineyard and the intricate case of the election of Jacob and rejection of Esau80. So, in what does the righteousness in this present life consist? Augustine explained: after the contamination of the first sin, our righteousness consists in being justified through faith being at peace with God, which means we declare war on the concupiscence of the flesh which constantly attacks. By the help of God himself, the spirit of him who is at peace with God, fights back. The righteousness, then, of this life does not mean that we have no defects, but that we diminish our defects by not consenting to them and living in temperance, justice, and piety by resisting them. To have no defect which we should resist belongs to the next life which is the reward of acting well in the present life81.

4.5

Conclusions

Augustine’s doctrines of justification and justifying grace share the common goal which is to understand the salvation process, a divine-oriented process, which stresses the centrality of God’s gracious mercy through Jesus Christ. This is the design that ultimately shapes the entire process of salvation. If the gracious divine mercy is present, the gates to salvation are opened; if not condemnation is a certainty. In Adam humanity became a massa perditionis, each and every 79 c. Jul. imp. VI, 20, CSEL 85/2, 360, l. 94. 80 C. duas ep. Pel. II, VII, 13 – 16 81 c. Jul. imp. VI, 8, CSEL 85/2, 306, l. 58: “Nunc ergo nostra iustitia est, ut iustificati per fidem pacem habeamus ad deum [Rom. 5:1], contra carnis vero concupiscentiam nos oppugnantem per ipsius dei auxilium repugnante spiritu dimicemus. Non est ergo huius vitae iustitia vitium non habere, sed vitia non eis consentiendo minuere eisque resistendo temperanter et iuste et pie vivere, nullum autem cui resistamus habere vitium posterioris est vitae, quae bene gestae praesentis […]”.

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human being is lost in Adam. None can possibly claim the right to salvation since we all share the responsibility of the fall of human nature in Adam. God’s gracious mercy, however, does not allow that all be condemned. While a deserved punishment is brought upon some, an undeserved mercy rescues others. This is what makes of the Augustinian doctrine of Original Sin a crucial ingredient of his soteriology. Augustine identifies justification of the sinner it with the moment one receives baptism and receives divine life. In baptism the enmity with God is eliminated, and the operative Spirit of love redirects the will of the sinner, leading him/her to follow the divine paths. It is God who, out of mercy, does all this, not any moral engagement. Justification, being an annihilation of enmity between the sinner and God, but entirely operated by God through his Spirit of love, according to Augustine, finds its base in the Spiritum sanctum, qui datus nobis est. This is why justification occurs through faith. Faith, Augustine sometimes defined as the assent to the truth. This, however, is not to be regarded as the full definition he provided for faith. The credere in Deum implies something more than a mere intellectual assent to the truth; it rather requires a radical abandonment of the self, which implies an unconditional love for God. This is why Augustine emphasises the Pauline expression “faith which works through love” in order to state the nature of genuine faith, the justifying faith. This does not imply that one is justified by love alone, but that love is a crucial ingredient of faith through which one is justified. Love is not the only ingredient of the justifying faith. Humility (as well as hope) is another one. According to Augustine there can be no true faith without true humility and vice-versa. This is so to the point that in his writing he often speaks of humilitas fidei and often uses the terms humilitas and fides as intrinsically interrelated concepts. After all, for Augustine, faith is a sort of state of spirit in which the sinner decides to accept that his/her salvation depends not on his/her moral/ethical engagement, but rather on God’s gracious mercy which comes to rescue of the sinner. Hence the crucial importance of humility! To admit any sort of human-rooted merit in the process of justification is to give a distorted picture of the process of justification. The righteous, obviously, have merit. Augustine does not deny it. What he did is to make sure that the nature or the origin of such a merit is correctly understood, namely that it is divine, not human. The divine assistance, Augustine openly admitted, comes to some and not to all. It comes to those who are called secundum propositum. Here Augustine’s position seems to deserve severe criticism. But it may be acceptable within the framework that he understood human salvation, namely its selective nature: all deserve condemnation, but not all are condemned. If those who are condemned deserve it in the first place on account of Original Sin, for those who are not condemned one finds only one possible explanation – the intervention of

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God’s gracious mercy. If one admits any other way through which they attain salvation, according to Augustine, one necessarily nullifies the Cross of Christ. Looking into the Augustinian doctrine of grace, especially as he approached it in his confrontation with Julian, it is hard to deny that the Church Father presented a polemical account of Christian understanding of salvation. Polemical because Augustine’s notion of grace and the way it works points to an undeniably deterministic account of salvation. The fact is that, according to Augustine, humans do not even decide whether they want or not to be in God’s path. By the time they will make such a decision (which is necessarily a predetermined decision), a previous decision has already been made in God’s eternal decree of predestination. If that divine decision is for condemnation there is nothing that a human can do in order change the course of things. That human being will necessarily desire to go astray from God and then meet condemnation. The same applies in case of a favourable decision on God’s part. An elect and predestined human being will necessarily choose divine paths and reach salvation. In practical terms there is nothing that humans can do to decide either for salvation or for condemnation. All they do is to lead a live in harmony with a beforehand divine decree. If that decree is for salvation they will lead a good life, if the decree had set them as reprobated, they will lead a bad life. For the sake of an entirely graceful salvation Augustine did not hesitate to depict human nature as being totally corrupted and ended up sacrificing human free will, which he so eagerly claims to defend. It is entirely fair to say that, though Augustine never admitted it, his doctrine of salvation implies that human beings do not have free will but only an appearance of free will, a free will which, for all practical purposes, lies beyond human range and control. Looking into Augustine’s theological anthropology and his soteriological framework and especially the relationship between them, it becomes very hard not to admit that the opposition he faced in the person of Julian of Aeclanum, namely regarding doctrines such as free will and predestination makes some sense. The fact is that the issue is, indeed, polemical and it may be inaccurate to look to Augustine as the incontestable winner of the disputation. Julian’s points were certainly as pertinent as those of Augustine.

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Part II: Understanding the rising of a Reformer. Young Luther’s use and reading of Augustine

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1. Augustine in the context of Luther’s call for reformation of the doctrine of the Church

1.1

The root of the problem: facientibus quod in se est Deus non denegat gratiam

The nature of human salvation was at the core of Augustine’s debate with Pelagians. Although Augustine came down to the late Mediaeval period as the guarantor of orthodoxy, the fact remains that his approach to the salvation process was far from being received consensually among Mediaeval theologians. His definition of the salvation process as depending exclusively on God’s eternal decree of predestination left no room for human initiative. Many Mediaeval theologians considered his definition radical. They looked upon Augustine’s soteriology with reluctance and even a certain degree of suspicion. This fact may explain why Pelagianism remained one of the biggest shadows over the Mediaeval Church and amongst the gravest accusations which a Mediaeval theologian could face. It may also explain why the charge of Pelagianism is, throughout history, intimately connected with the emphasis on the autonomy of the human free will and the simple acknowledgement of human initiative in the salvation process. As Aim¦ Solignac puts it: L’apport sp¦cifique du “p¦lagianisme” est d’avoir mis en relief l’autonomie et la libert¦ de l’homme, non pas en opposant l’homme — Dieu, mais en reconnaissant ces privilÀges comme dons de Dieu dans sons geste cr¦ateur. Ce par se trait surtout que le p¦lagianisme est entr¦ dans le histoire au point que dans la suite, on taxera facilement de “p¦lagiens” les th¦ologiens et philosophe qui chercheront — maintenir l’autonomie et la libert¦ de l’homme, sans pourtant nier sa d¦pendance vis-—-vis de Dieu: il en fut ainsi pour les humanistes de la Renaissance, pour le j¦suite Molina et ses disciple dans la c¦lÀbre querelle de auxiliis1.

To understand the appearance, the application and all the polemic involving the phrase facientibus quod in se est Deus non denegat gratiam one must take into 1 Solignac, 1985, 2935.

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consideration the different and even divergent approaches to human salvation since Augustine’s death. The origin of the problem is basically the following: in debating human salvation, theologians do not agree regarding the relationship between divine purpose and human will. The issue has a deep historical background in the Church’s tradition. It necessarily revives one of the most constant threats and shadows concerning the doctrine of the Christian Church on salvation – Pelagianism. The case of Luther’s accusations against the Nominalist theologians is a good example. The Reformer regarded the Nominalist approach to human salvation as imprudently optimistic. Such an approach, according to Luther, led to a revival of the Pelagian heresy which he regarded as an ever present threat to the Church2. It was precisely in the heat of the Pelagian crisis, in the time of Augustine, that the relationship between divine purpose and human will in the salvation process became a troubling issue. Whether Augustine died victorious or not over his Pelagian opponents is a matter of dispute. What is clear is that the nature of human salvation was not a settled issue by the time the Bishop of Hippo died. Augustine’s influence over Mediaeval Christianity, as is known, is simply immeasurable. This, however, does not imply the absence of antipathy towards some of the Church Father’s main theological insights. In the specific case of human salvation, I think it is fair to say that, though Augustine became a reference figure on the development of the debate in the Western Mediaeval Church, some influential Mediaeval theologians showed reluctance in following his radicalism regarding grace. It is true that no Ancient or Medieval theologian wanted to bear the label of “Pelagian”. The fact, however, remains that some among them were not so hostile towards Pelagianism as Augustine was. This explains the effort of some theologians to present a sort of middle ground between Pelagians and Augustine. It has been said in the first part of this study that Augustine’s radicalism of grace was a break with the patristic account of salvation and that both Augustine and the Pelagians were “heterodox” in relation to the tradition of the Fathers. Concerning the particular issue of divine purpose and human salvation, one can accurately say that, from the patristic period up to the the late Mediaeval and early modern period, the theologians’ conclusions are deeply divergent. Their positions oscillate between the ideals of determinism by outer forces and the autonomy of the individual. In the footsteps of Saint Augustine, generations of theologians maintained the necessity of divine grace being freely given to men for the work of salvation. According to Augustine, as it has been said, the infusion of grace sows in human beings a supernatural form of love without which no human endeavour can lead 2 WA 5, 485, l. 1.

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to salvation. More: the predestining choice of God is what ultimately decides the outcome of the whole process. Even if human works are sanctified by grace, no human effort will bring anybody to salvation without their being predestined to it. Augustine’s doctrine of predestination did not convince some influential theologians of early Scholasticism. One of the answers for this fact may lay in the overwhelming influence of Aristotle. The interpretation of Aristotle and the application of his ethics to Christian understanding of salvation did not fit with the arbitrary action of the divine election inherent in the Augustinian doctrine of predestination. From the time of Anselm of Canterbury onwards, a rationalizing trend on the approach to human salvation began to place more and more stress on the participation of the free will in the winning of God’s favour. The process gained momentum with the influx of Aristotelian ideas in the twelfth century. It brought a certain spirit of Greek humanism, present, for instance, in the intricate theory of “infused grace”, explored to exhaustion by Mediaeval scholars. More or less openly, these scholars questioned Augustinian soteriology, stressing the natural disposition to good in human being. They were, however, perfectly aware of the danger inherent in the adoption of this position. Thus, they skilfully struggled for a compromise that would avoid what they understood to be the core of the Pelagian heresy, namely the portrayal of a human being as capable of obtaining his salvation by natural forces. They equally avoided the Augustinian radicalism of grace in the shaping of salvation. In other words: at the same time they put emphasis on the conception of a divine infusion of grace, they also stressed human cooperation. Moral conduct creates a natural disposition of the will – they called it habitus in imitation of Aristotle – which prepares it for grace. To make the infusion possible, however, another stage must be passed. This is effected by a special grace, which is freely given (gratia gratis data) and creates a second habitus. With the disposition thus acquired, it is, then, in human power to mobilize the will and do its best to achieve salvation (faciens quod in se est). The good works thus performed have a certain merit in God’s eyes. They are agreeable to Him (merita de congruo), but they are not sufficient for salvation. This requires the infusion of supernatural grace (gratia gratum faciens), which justifies man before God and makes his works truly meritorious for salvation. (merita de condigno)3. 3 The subtle adjustment between the will and grace was attacked by Duns Scotus, one of those responsible for a more robust conception of the power of human will. He belittled the “freely given grace” and thus automatically enforced the importance of the disposition acquired by man through his own natural powers. Ockham followed Scotus in rejecting the intermediate stage. The Ockhamist theologian Gabriel Biel (the last great systematizer of the modernist theology and one of young Luther’s main targets), stressed the importance of the natural

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In my opinion, it is in this constant attempt to avoid the charge of Pelagianism, without excluding human initiative in the salvation process, that the confusing series of terminology such as meritus and de condigno and the crucial phrase facientibus quod in se est Deus non denegat gratiam finds its way into the Nominalist theology. More important yet, is not to forget that the phrase facientibus quod in se est non denegat gratiam, in the context of the Nominalist theology, is intimately related to the issue of human natural capabilities and the shaping of human salvation in short, human beings and their salvation. The goal and the implications of the use of this phrase in the context of human salvation is, obviously, beyond the scope of the present study. Here, I shall limit myself to give a brief account on the divergent opinion held by scholars, namely the interesting debate between Alister McGrath and Heiko Augustinus Oberman. Then I shall recall and summarily explain what I think is of utmost importance: for the purpose of this study, more important than taking a position regarding an eventual relationship between the use of the phrase facientibus quod in se est Deus non denegat gratiam and an alleged Pelagianism inherent in the Nominalist soteriology, is to take into consideration that for Luther the issue here was crystal clear. He did not have the slightest hesitation in considering that the phrase facientibus quod in se est Deus non denegat gratiam points to nothing but a Pelagian understanding of salvation. According to Luther, the phrase implies that grace comes after a human moral engagement (in giving one’s best) to which divine grace, then, follows. It is, thus, clear that here the themes of grace and merit are unavoidable since they are the very leitmotiv of the debate. Luther’s understanding of the salvation process was based upon two main pillars. These are not new. They are basically the old Augustinian emphasis on the loss of the natural capabilities of human beings and the radical gratuity of salvation. According to Luther, speaking of facere quod in se est was simply ascribing to human beings a role in the salvation process which they do not and cannot play. Luther was thoroughly Augustinian in this sense: God alone starts and concludes the process of salvation. This is not a shared task. According to Luther, the reasoning basis of facientibus in quod in se est was nothing but a open denial of this truth. It implies that the start of salvation is ultimately to be ascribed to humans and not to God. This is to maintain that grace is given to those who have earn it. According to Luther, these claims do not fall short of Pelagianism. To maintain that salvation starts with human initiative or cooperation is outrageous and dangerous for sound faith. It suggests that one is being inspired by the old powers. In Dictata super psalterium Luther shows how familiar he was with the issue. It was in this context that Luther broke with the system. Luther knew and openly tried to refute the Ockhamist doctrine of free will. The Reformer placed emphasis on the corruption of human will, which, he argued, is polluted and ever inclined to evil (WA 4, 262; WA 2, 401).

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Aristotelian understanding of justice (diwaios¼g) applied to the pºkir or by the Ciceronian understanding of iustitia as reddens unicuique quod suum est. Like Augustine before him, Luther regarded any attempt to apply this pagan understanding of justice to the Christian doctrine of salvation as a serious threat for the evangelical righteousness, that righteousness of faith through which Christians are justified. The main target of young Luther’s criticism is Gabriel Biel, the last great representative of the Nominalist school. I now focus my attention on Biel. Biel’s understanding of human salvation is extremely difficult to judge. His approach to the nature of human salvation is paradoxical. He was forthright in teaching that God’s grace alone makes an act meritorious, not any other cause4. Grace, he stressed, is freely given5. Predestination and reprobation, he maintained, find their origin in God’s eternal will, not in the individual. No one causes his/her predestination or reprobation; these are uncaused divine acts, hence completely strange to an individual’s interventions of any sort6. I think it is safe to argue that if confronted with these statements Luther would easily give his endorsement to all of them. The picture of Biel’s understanding of justification and the salvation process is, however, not concluded yet. Despite the fact that he insisted that predestination and reprobation are not caused by interventions of any sort on individuals part, Biel spoke of a pactum between God and human beings in respect of which God promises to reward with grace those who do their very best (quod in se est). In order to understand the issue of facientibus quod in se est and its correlation with justification of the sinner as approached by Biel, one must not lose 4 “Quia actum esse meritorium dependet ex sola Dei gratiosa voluntate eum libere ad praemiandum acceptante et non ex quaecumque causa creata”. Grace is what makes meritorious (quod sine gratia nullus actus potest esse meritorius. ‘Gratia’dico non formaliter voluntatem vel animam informante, quae creatura est, sed sine gratia increata (quae est gratiosa Dei voluntas) libere et misericorditer actum tamquam meritorium acceptante. Et haec est ratio formalis meriti et nula alia. […] Ad actum esse meritorium requiritur integritas omnium circumstantiarum, et praesertim ut omnia divina volita impleantur ; sed ad hoc non sufficit homo ex suis naturalibus; ergo”. Col. Lib. I, dist.17, qu. 2, b, p. 425 – 426 5 “Deus adest omnibus obicem non ponentibus offerens gratiam, nec alicui adulto (rationis usum habenti et quod in se est facienti) subtrahit necessaria ad salutem. Vult enim “omnes homines salvos fieri et ad cognitionem veritatis pervenire [1 Tim 2:4]. Nonnulos ex sua liberalitate Deus gratia praevenit, non expectans bonum liberi arbitrii usum, ut patet de sanctificatis in utero et Paulo miraculose converso. Servit huic parabola vineae, Mt. 2: “Amice, no facio tibi iniuriam. Tolle quod tuum est. Vollo autem et huic dare sicut tibi. Annon licet mihi quod volo facere?”, Col. I, dist. 41, art. 3, dub. 3, p. 733. 6 “Illo modo manifestum est quod, cum praedestinatio et reprobatio sit divina voluntas, quae illi vult dare vitam aeternam, isti poenam perpetuam, quae voluntas nihil aliud est quam Deus ipse, nulla est causa ex parte creaturae ipsius praedestinationis neque reprobationis, cum ipsa sit aterna et incausata. Et hoc est, quod alii dicunt quod praedestinationis effective ut actus divinus nulla est causa”. Col. Lib. I, Dist. 41, q. un., art. 1. notabile 2, p. 729

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sight of the way iustitia itself is here defined. The concept of pactum assumes a crucial importance. It is the basis of the entire theological framework within which justification takes place. It is, as a matter of fact, around the sense of the divine faithfulness towards this pactum that Biel’s understanding of justification revolves. God is omnipotent and His absolute power places Him above any obligation. This pactum, however, Biel argued, is settled within God’s “ordained order”. It is a pact out of divine mercy and generosity. It is true that God is not under any obligation to humans de potentia sua absoluta, but He chooses to submit Himself to a binding pact with humans de potentia sua ordinata by which He bestows grace upon him who does his best (quod in se est)7. Does it mean that Biel taught that those who do their best deserve salvation? No! God, in His mercy and liberality decided to enter into a pact with human beings by which He is prepared to ascribe a much higher value to human works than they are inherently worth. Those who do their best (quod in se est) have achieved nothing of a great inherent value, but God accords it a much greater ascribed value within the terms of the pactum, so that justification is merited de congruo8. In the task of understanding this claim, a close look at Biel’s definition of meritum de congruo may be helpful. Meritum de congruo contrasts with meritum de condigno. Something is merited de congruo when the reward is much greater than the action for which one is rewarded; when the reward is essentially an act of its giver’s generosity (aliquid retribuendum non ex debito iustitiae, sed ex sola acceptantis liberalitate)9. This is precisely what allows one to understand the relationship between the doing of quod in se est and the reward of grace in the Bielian soteriology : the one who does his best does not merit justifying grace by it. Out of mercy and generosity, and being faithful to the pact established with humans, (this pact is itself an expression of God’s mercy and generosity) God, in the light of the same pactum, ascribes the doing quod in se est a much greater value than its intrinsic value. In other words: He considers it worthy of the bestowal of grace. God is righteous and, according to Biel, the basis of such a righteousness is God’s own faithfulness to His promises. De facto, no one merits to receive divine grace and eternal life. God, however, decided to enter into a “covenant” or a 7 McGrath, 1982, 71 8 McGrath, 1983, 52. 9 Col. dist. 27, q. un. Art. 1, not. 3, pp. 512: “Meritum de congruo est actus libere elicitus, acceptatus ad aliquid retribuendum non ex debito iustitiae, sed ex sola acceptantis liberalitate. Et hoc meritum non coexigit aequalitatem dignitatis cum retributo neque in operante nec in opere nec in retribuente. Potest enim praemians aliquid retribuere operanti intuitu alicuius actus, alias non daturus, non tamem tamquam digno in se nec ratione operis condigni sed ex sua liberalitate etiam ei, qui inimicus est”.

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contract (pactum) with human beings by virtue of which He promised to give eternal life to any who meets the requirement of doing his/her best (facere quod in se est)10. It is within this framework that the righteousness of God, then, is understood as God’s faithfulness to His promises, to his “ordained order”. What is of utmost importance for our discussion, namely Luther’s attitude towards the phrase facientibus quod in se est Deus non denegat gratiam and its theological implications, is to consider some crucial details. First, Luther seems not to value the fact that Biel’s covenant theology, within which justification is approached, that the pactum itself is an expression of God’s mercy. What the Reformer emphasized and vehemently criticized is the fact that God is put under a sort of obligation of rewarding with grace him who does quod in se est. This, according to Luther, obliterates the Christian sense of salvation which is a gift of divine grace and mercy. The second point has to do with what Biel seems to include within the range of the human ability to do quod in se est – to love God above all things. In my opinion, the idea that facere quod in se est includes loving God as the highest good by natural powers is, in Luther’s eyes, one of the most (if not the most) condemnable teaching in Biel. It may have been the last straw. Such a teaching Luther may have regarded as not worthy of much discussion, but rather of immediate condemnation. The idea that to love God as the highest good lays within the scope of the natural abilities of human beings (ex puris naturalibus) may have been the detail that rushed Luther to charge Biel of Pelagianism. He seems not to care that Biel’s covenant theology states that the pactum itself is an expression of divine mercy and that the reward of grace is not merited de condigno, but de congruo. All Luther sees is a scheme of justification (of salvation in general) where an individual who does his/her best is rewarded with grace. I think it is accurate to say that facing a “formally Pelagian statement”, Luther showed little interest in the theological context (and content) in which it was discussed and, thus, failed to fully grasp its meaning. But it may also be accurate to say that Luther’s attitude towards the facere quod in se est and the covenant theology in light of which Biel discussed it was simply motivated by the fact that the Reformer looked at the entire scheme simply as a manoeuvre to mask the Aristotelian/Ciceronian/Pelagian inspiration which he judged to be inherent in the Bielian soteriology. For Luther, the Bielian understanding of the righteousness of God came down to the very sense of iustitia Dei against which he was openly rebelling in his Lectures on Romans (to a certain extent, also in his Dictata super psalterium), namely that iustitia by which God is just and punishes sinners. To teach that those who do quod in se est will be rewarded with grace is, according to Luther, 10 McGrath, 1982, 71

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the same as teaching that God’s justice consists in the fact that He is just and punishes sinners and rewards the righteous. In other words: those who do their best are rewarded, and those who do not do their best are punished. This sense of righteousness applied to the justification of the sinner, Luther insisted, bringing about the old Aristotelian statement according to which one becomes righteous by doing righteous deeds. All this, he claimed, also finds inspiration in the Ciceronian definition of iustitia as reddens unicuique quod suum est. Alister McGrath puts it well when writes God, in his mercy, has entered into a covenant with mankind in which he imposed a voluntary self-limitation upon his own actions. In effect, the “righteousness of God” is now defined in terms of God’s faithfulness to the ordained order. The existence of this pactum is of considerable importance, as it allows the direct application of the Aristotelian or Ciceronian understandings of iustitia as reddens unicuique quod suum est in a theological context. The Aristotelian and Ciceronian concepts of justice are based upon the notion of a contracting community, such as the po/lis or res publica, which established the iuris consensus. The interpretation of iustitia as reddens unicuique quod suum est presupposes agreement concerning what each individual is entitled to. The postulation of a pactum between God and man provides the theological equivalent of the iuris concensus. Under the terms of the “covenant”, God is obliged by a necessitas coactionis to bestow grace upon the viator who does quod in se est. Failure on the part of God to honour this pactum would result in iniustitia […] This “righteousness of God” is therefore manifested in God’s being faithful to his promise of mercy, in that he has promised eternal life to those who do quod in se est. The divine righteousness must be complemented by a righteousness on the part of the viator, which Biel defines thus: ubera hed due sunt partes iustitie, declinare scilicet a malo et facere bonum. Thus iustitia Dei can be defined as divine equity within the context of the pactum, in that God is obliged to determine whether the viator has met the conditions which he has imposed upon his bestowal of grace11.

This portrayal of the Bielian understanding of the righteousness of God and its correlation to human salvation is of utmost importance for understanding Luther’s criticisms of the Nominalist soteriology in general, and towards Gabriel Biel’s in particular. The young Luther, the commentator of the epistle to Romans, 11 McGrath, 1982, 71 – 72. See also McGrath, 1983a, 53: “The existence of the pactum, McGRATH writes, may be regarded as functioning as the iuris consensus which is fundamental both to the Aristotelian and Cicernonian interpretation of iustitia. Under the terms of the pactum, God is obliged, albeit by a necessitas coactionis, to reard with grace the man who does quod in se est. Therefore God can be said reward the viator with grace as a matter of justice, in that he gives him his due under the term of the covenant. The concept of iustitia as reddens unicuique quod suum est is ideally suited to such a covenant theology as that employed by Biel. Those who quod in se est are rewarded with grace; those who do not are punished. In both cases it is iustitia that determines what reward man shall have; however Biel emphasises that the pactum itself is the consequence of divine mercy, so justification arises from both mercy and justice”.

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clearly regarded the Nominalist soteriology as Pelagian. He pointed to the theological implications of the axiom facientibus quod in se est Deus non denegat gratiam as evidence for supporting his accusation. For Luther, any attempt to apply the Aristotelian or Ciceronian understanding of iustitia to the matter of justification and salvation of sinners was completely unacceptable. This application may be suitable for the matter of iustitia hominis, but not for that of iustitia Dei. Luther regarded the contours of covenant theology as Biel understood it, regarding the matter of salvation, as dangerous; it empties of its meaning the entire evangelical theology. In the footsteps of Augustine, Luther understood justification and the salvation of the sinner to be based on the radical gratuity of grace. It is not God meeting humans half-way ; it is rather God starting and accomplishing the process. To teach otherwise is to distort evangelical theology and ascribe to human beings a role they cannot possibly play in their own salvation. In short, these applications of Aristotelian and Ciceronian definitions of iustitia to the justification of the sinner is dangerous. It necessarily leads to the conclusion that justification is based on merit. If God rewards humans with salvation in aequitate, that is, without distinction of persons, giving to each what one is entitled, then there must be some quality about the justified sinner permitting God to justify him both in equity and justice12. If it is true that evidence that Luther’s opposition to this theology of justification can already be found in Dictata Super psalterium, it is also true that it is in the Lectures on Romans that he systematically and in great length refuted the theological implications of facere quod in se est for what he considered the genuine Christian doctrine of justification. Luther’s charge of Pelagianism against Biel, however, divides theologians. I now summarily expose the example of the divergent positions of Alister McGrath and Heiko Oberman. Luther’s criticism, in relation to Biel’s understanding of salvation just outlined, seems to be much in line with Heiko Oberman’s reading of Biel’s approach to human abilities ex puris naturalibus and its relationship with the salvation process. According to Oberman, “Biel has a high regard for man’s natural capacities even outside the state of grace. If man really does his very best, he can love God more than anything else”13. Sin has not made it impossible for man to act rightly without the aid of grace, which is to say the will is still able to obey the dictamen rationis. Reason or knowledge, not good will, is the root and foundation of of all virtues14. Oberman’s argument seems to indicate that Biel, in order to avoid the charge of Pelagianism, does not teach that human beings can reach salvation using the 12 McGrath, 1982, 74. 13 Oberman, 2000, 161. 14 Oberman, 2000, 164 – 165.

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natural abilities with which they are created. Biel struggles to reconcile human initiative and God’s eternal decree in the shaping of human salvation. The Nominalist theological tradition provided him with an important tool to accomplish his task: the distinction between two sorts of merits: meritum de congruo and meritum de condigno. Thus, Oberman explains While Biel affirms in no uncertain terms that at least an important part of merit is the good disposition, the natural understructure, he can find the gratuity of God’s gift expressed in the fact that man’s salvation is primarily due to God’s acceptance. The gratuitous character of God’s remuneration is therefore based neither on the activity of the habit of grace nor on the presence of the habit of grace, but on God’s eternal decree according to which He has decided to accept every act which is performed in a state of grace as a meritum de condigno15.

Meritum de congruo forms the link between the supreme achievement of natural man – facere quod in se est – and the infusion of the habit of grace, parallel thus to the meritum de condigno which in the second stage links the habit of grace to the divine acceptance. Biel defines this semi-merit in contrast with the full merit de condigno. This semi-merit also results from a spontaneous act and also has to be accepted as worthy of its reward. This, however, does not imply the condignity between reward and the act, neither in the act and in the actor nor in the remunerator. The simple fact that such an act is accepted at all is due not to justice but to generosity on God’s part. The infusion of grace (which follows the facere quod in se est) is then granted to the sinner when he does his very best, not on grounds of a previous pact, but on ground of God’s generosity16. God’s granting of the acceptance and the granting of the infusion of grace, according to Biel, Oberman explains, “corresponding to the meritum de condigno and de congruo, are similar in the respect to the “necessity” with which they take place and in the origin of this “necessity”. They differ in respect to the conditions they are given. In neither is there a necessitas coactionis. God’s opera ad extra are contingent. “But just as God’s acceptation occurs with necessity within the context of his eternal decree, so of necessity God rewards with the robe of infused grace those who do their very best17. According to Oberman , here lies what Biel considered to be the core of Christian religion, the essence of the Biblical message: the reward de congruo is unwarranted and rests only on God’s goodness and mercy. “But because of his mutability we can take this unmerited benevolence for a rule, an eternal decree, a law of grace, in an exact parallel to God’s free decision to reward those who posses the habit of grace with 15 Oberman, 2000, 170. 16 Oberman, 2000, 171. 17 Oberman, 2000, 172 – 173.

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eternal bliss”18. “Indeed, Oberman explains, “Biel tries hard to contrast God’s rewards de condigno and de congruo as one of legal commitment and one of free initiative: non ex debito iusticie sed ex sua libertate”19. After all these considerations, Oberman portrays Biel’s doctrine of justification, presenting its several features. Among these I highlight the ones that directly collide with the strongly Augustinian-oriented soteriological discourse of the young Luther : a) that God owes the infusion of grace to his own immutable decision, based on His compassion, to reward those who do their very best: qui faciunt quod in se est. This is a law of mercy which does not contradict the present order of justice but rather establishes it; b) the sinner cannot promote himself from a state of sin to a state of grace. The state of grace implies or requires infusion of grace which is a divine gift. The sinner, however, “can reach the demarcation line where sin and grace meet because when he removes the lock on the closed door of his heart, that is, assent to sin, and loves God for his sake, he does what he is able to do. This demarcation line is the status in puris naturalibus”20 ; c) after the fall, man is still able to detest sin and seek refuge with God with his own powers, without the help of any form of grace (my emphasis). d) Oberman concludes that Biel’s doctrine of justification, seen from different vantage points, it is at once sola gratia and sola operibus. It stands as sola gratia because if God had not decided to adorn man’s good works with created and uncreated grace, man would never be saved. It stands for sola operibus because man not only has to produce the framework or substance of this adornment, but God by the two laws of grace is committed, even obliged to add to this framework, infused grace and final acceptation. Once man has done his very best, the other two parts follow automatically. More important than this observation per se is to notice that Oberman is convinced that Biel’s emphasis falls on the “justification by works” and maintains that it is “evident that Biel’s doctrine of justification is essentially Pelagian”.21 Convinced of this, Oberman also interprets Biel’s doctrine of predestination and concludes that since the Nominalist theologian taught an essentially Pelagian doctrine of justification in his theology, “absolute predestination is not only superfluous but would even be obstructive”.22 Oberman ’s interpretation collides with that of Alister McGrath. According to McGrath, Luther’s charges of Pelagianism against Biel are “practically impos18 19 20 21 22

Oberman, 2000, 173. Oberman, 2000, 173. Oberman, 2000, 175. Oberman, 2000, 177. Oberman, 2000, 196

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sible to sustain, particularly when his understanding of predestination is considered”.23 The charges of Pelagianism against Biel, McGrath explains, have their origin in the fact that his opponents fail to understand the theological framework within which the phrase facere quod in se est is used by Biel. Oberman ’s accusations are, then, according, to McGrath, misguided. It is to the nature of nominalists’ doctrine of predestination that McGrath turns to make his point. Claiming that any discussion of the “nominalist” doctrine of justification must begin with considerations on the teachings of Duns Scotus on the matter, McGrath argues that the charges of Pelagianism or Semi-Pelagianism against Scotus have proved to be “hopelessly inaccurate”.24 “Scotus’ doctrine of justification, McGrath proceeds, is actually strongly antiPelagian, and is linked to a doctrine of absolute predestination which makes any charge of Pelagianism faintly ridiculous”.25 The Scholastic theologians before Scotus, he explains, inferred the gratuity of predestination from the gratuity of grace. For Scotus, however, “the volition to the end must precede the volition of the means to that end”. Hence the election of a soul to glory must precede the foreknowledge of his merits. Since the very fact that predestination is an act of will, not of intellect, foreknowledge is effectively excluded as a cause of the divine predestination. Oberman ’s discussion of Biel’s doctrine of predestination is “somewhat confused”, McGrath claims, by his introduction of the later categories of predestination post praevisa merita and ante praevisa merita. As with Ockham, predestination has a specifically future reference. If someone receives eternal life, he may be said to be predestined at that moment. If he is predestined at that instant, he will always have been predestined. However, the statement “Peter is predestined” cannot be verified until that moment at which eternal life is bestowed or denied.26

23 24 25 26

McGrath, 1983a, 52. McGrath, 1981, 107 – 108. McGrath, 1981, 108. “The processus iustificationis is such, McGrath argues, that eternal life preceded by merit in terms of its logical analysis, but follows it in its execution in time. However, the fact that eternal life is preceded by merit in time does not mean that merit can in any way be considered a cause of predestination. This distinction between the logical and the chronological aspects of Scotus’ doctrine of predestination has been the cause of much confusion. Thus Oberman concludes that Ockham taught predestination post praevisa merita”. This fact, McGrath argues, misled Oberman in his interpretation of both Ockham and Biel. Ockham is prepared to discuss causality only in terms of the priority of propositions. The following causal sequence of propositions is given as an illustration (Iste perseverit finaliter, ergo praedestinabitur): This man will persevere; therefore he will be predestined. Ockham envisages two modes of predestination: a general praedestinatio cum praevisis meritis, and a distinct praedestinatio ex gratia speciali, both possible de potentia dei ordinata. Biel’s

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McGrath insists that Oberman ’s conclusions are to to be corrected, since for Biel eternal life cannot be merited de congruo, but only de condigno, by the viator in possession of a habit of grace. McGrath, once again, turns to the theological implications of the pactum to stress that there is a fundamental difference between a natural act, considered in itself, and its acceptance by God as meritorious, worthy of eternal life. The only way in which a natural act can be converted to condign merit is on the basis of a covenant between God and man by which God has contracted to accept a purely natural act as meritorious. Underlying Biel’s doctrine of merit is the pactum by which the contracted value of a natural act far exceeds its intrinsic value. Quod substantiam actus it has negligible value; however, on account of the covenant with God, he is prepared to accept the same as worthy of eternal life. Further, merit de condigno presupposes that the agent is acceptus Deo, which in turn presupposes the ordained will of God, as de potentia sua absoluta God could accept anything as meritorious. Whilst God is not obliged to any man de potentia absoluta, he chose to enter into a contract with man de potentia ordinata, by which God could bestow eternal life on man by divine acceptation. However, – and this is the essential point – this divine acceptation need not be based on anything inherent in man. Merit is itself a consequence of the divine acceptation, rather than the human act which is accepted. The ratio meriti lies outside of man in the extrinsic denomination of the acceptatio divina. Applying this important observation on Biel’s doctrine of merit to his teaching on predestination, we find that in both modes of predestination (i. e. cum praevisis meritis and ex gratia speciali) the ratio praedestinationis lies outside man himself. If man is elected apart from merit (i. e. praedestinatio ex gratia speciali), it is evident that the ratio praedestinationis lies outside him. However, even the case of the man who predestined cum praevisis meritis, it must be stressed that the grounds of merit -which in turn may be considered the ratio praedestinationis – lie outside of man, in the extrinsic denomination of the divine acceptation. Predestination cum praevisis meritis is itself predestination ex speciali gratia mediated through the secondary cause of merit. The two types of predestination are essentially the same, except that one proceeds directly, whilst the other proceeds through secondary causes. […] in both cases, the ultimate grounds of predestination lie outside of man, in the divine acceptation27. doctrine of predestination is similar, and evidently based on that of Ockham. McGrath, 1981, 108 – 109. 27 McGrath, 1981, 110 – 111. Another point of McGrath’s criticism is the interpretation of the Nominalist use of the dialectic between the two powers of God, to argue that here the criticism is misguided as well. McGrath starts by arguing that the distinction between the absolute and ordained powers of God had its origins in early Scholasticism, with Peter Damien and Anselm of Canterbury, and is generally encountered in discussions of the divine freedom and explains that they used the dialectic between the two powers of God for several purposes, of which the most important is the attack on the necessity of the infused habit of grace or charity in justification. It must be emphasised that there is no question of rejecting the de facto necessity of such an infused habit in justification. Within the framework of God’s absolute power, it is stressed that the habit of grace is not the only way by which God may have chosen to justify men. While the absolute necessity of such an intermediate is rejected, and the contingency of the created order repeatedly demonstrated, the Nominalist writers

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The pactum between God and men does not involve “negotiations” with man. As for the value of the human works, they have a negligible intrinsic value by God’s absolute standards. In light of this unusual pact, however, God ascribes to the same acts a much greater contracted value, just as kings may issue a small lead coin with negligible inherent value, but with a considerably greater contracted value. Just so human acts, though in themselves incapable of purchasing eternal life, have a contracted value adequate for this purpose. It is this theological reasoning that leads McGrath to conclude that the “nominalists” are able to avoid exalting human works to Pelagian proportions (by insisting that their bonitas intrinseca is negligible) whilst allowing them to merit eternal life (by insisting that their value impositus is much greater), by the terms of the covenant. The charge of Pelagianism is deflected by pointing to the utterly gratuitous character of the underlying covenant itself, and by insisting that man’s works cannot merit grace de condigno28.

As we have just seen, the charge of Pelagianism against the Nominalists, especially Gabriel Biel, is a matter of dispute. Both its assertion and its denial may be sustainable, depending on the perspective and the ability of the arguers. It would not be be honest to try to offer a solution for this problem in the present study. What is absolutely crucial here is to emphasize that Luther, the reader of Paul was deeply convinced of the Pelagian inspiration of the phrase facientibus quod in se est Deus non denegat gratiam and its application by the Nominalist theologians in the discussion of Christian soteriology. According to Luther, the application of this phrase in the discussion of Christian doctrine of justification and salvation was nothing but a manoeuvre to portray salvation as a process and a fruit of human-divine cooperation. In the footsteps of Augustine, Luther revealed himself inflexible toward any sort of human-rooted merit in the process of salvation. He was vehemently opposed to the use of terms such as meritum de condigno and de congruo, or ante praevisa merita and their equivalents, by insisting with a radical intransigence and even violence, on the denial of any sort of human-rooted merit in the emphasise cause the reliability of the created order as it now stands. McGrath, 1981, 111. Does the existence of a pact imply that Biel taught that God is under the necessity of rewarding those who do their best? By the terms of the covenant between God and and man, God is unable not to give his grace to those who do quod in se est, as to fail to give grace under such circumstances would be to abrogate the covenant altogether. But does God do it by necessity? Biel distinguished two types of necessities: God is not bound by any absolute necessity to give grace, however there is a neccesitas coactionis as a consequence of the divine decision, to enter into a pactum with man. This opum ad extra is itself radically contingent, but within its context, God is obliged, by his own decision to reward those who do their best with the gift of grace. Both the antecedent and the consequent propositions are radically contingent, yet the one follows the other by necessity. McGrath, 1981, 115. 28 McGrath, 1981, 115.

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salvation process. Luther’s line of defence was faith. The introduction of terms such as merito de congruo and de condigno in the discourse of salvation, Luther argued, aimed at nothing but to ascribing to human beings a role which is not theirs in the salvation process. This means to overturn the central message of Christian religion, namely that human salvation is a free gift of God involving no human merit whatsoever. Here lay the origin of Luther’s collision with Nominalist theology. It is not without reason that he regarded his own break with the Nominalist theology as a reaction against the Pelagian trend which he understood to be peculiar to Nominalism. The Reformer sees in Nominalist soteriology a strong remnant of Pelagianism. He accused theologians such as Ockham and Biel of reducing the matter of sin and righteousness of God to a discussion of good works alone. They, Luther claimed, approach the matter following the Aristotelian statements, since the Greek philosopher approached the matter of righteousness based on good works. They failed to understand that the righteousness the Scripture talks about is different from the legalistic righteousness of lawyers and philosophers. Righteousness in the Scripture bases itself on imputation and non-imputation only. With their teaching of infused grace and by arguing the expulsion of sins, they promoted self-righteousness instead of humility among believers and revealed themselves Pelagians29. Luther’s early Pauline commentaries reveal that he adopted crucial elements of the Augustinian anthropology and soteriology (the term “Augustinian” is here applied only to Augustine himself). Among these elements one can name the total fall of human nature on account of Original Sin, and the disorder which followed it, as well as the radical gratuity of grace shaping a salvation process 29 WA 56, 276, l. 3: “Hanc igitur intelligentiam de peccato habuerunt omnes sancti sicut prophetauit David Psalmso 31. Ideo omnes se confessi sunt peccatores ut patet in libris b. Augustini. Vbi nostri theologi peccatum ad sola opera deflexerunt Et ea solum inceperunt docere, quibus opera caueantur, Non, quomodo per gemitum humiliter gratiam sanantem querant et se peccatores agnoscant. Ideo necessario superbos faciunt, et qui dimissis operibus ad extra iam se Iustos perfecte putent, Nihil solliciti sint et concupiscentiis bellum indicere per Iuge suspirium ad Dominum. Vnde et tanta nunc in Ecclesia Est recidiuatio post confessiones. Quia Iustificandos se nesciunt, Sed Iustificatos se esse confidunt ac ita per securitatem suam sine omni labore diaboli prosternuntur. Hoc certe est ex operibus Iustitiam statuere. Et licet gratiam Dei implorent, non tamen recte, Sed tantummodo pro opere peccati dimittendo. Verum Qui sunt Christi, spiritum Chi habent et agunt recte, etiamsi non intelligunt, quod nos modo diximus; faciunt enim, antequam intellexerint, immo ex vita magis quam ex doctrina intelligunt”. Regarding the quotations from the complete critical edition of Luther’s works (Weimar 1883-, known as Wimarer Ausgabe), the references or citations are made according to volume (in given cases one must add half-volume and section), page and line. Here the line indicated will be that at which the text in question begins. So whenever this would apply, the reader should understand the mentioned line and following (“sqq”).

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which finds its roots in no human cause, but depends exclusively on God’s bounty and mercy. All this allowed Luther to frame a different ordo iustificationis than the one he understood to be the Nominalistic soteriological approach. The Lectures on Romans plays a key-role in this crucial moment of Luther’s theological development. To prove this it would be enough to delineate a summary of Luther’s treatment of theological implications in the doctrine of facientibus quod in se est Deus non denegat gratiam in the Lectures on Romans. The young Luther’s own approach to the phrase facientibus quod in se est Deus non denegat gratiam knew a decisive development. In Dictata super Psalterium the Reformer was not so intransigent in relation to the implication of this phrase as he came to be in Lectures on Romans. There can no doubt that, by the time Luther had his first public confrontation with the ecclesiastical authorities of the time, he already had well consolidated the soteriological framework which set the tone of his entire theology – a process of justification and salvation for which no human merit contributes. It is true that Luther never had been optimistic regarding human nature, but like some other influential theologians before him, such as saint Augustine or Thomas Aquinas, seems to have grown pessimistic with regard to human capabilities. In the case of Augustine the ever increasing dose of pessimism regarding human nature determined his rupture with an earlier enthusiasm in relation to classical Philosophy. This came to be decisive in his future confrontation with Pelagians. In Luther’s case, the radical pessimism in the course of Dictata, but specially in Lectures in Romans, came to reveal of utmost importance in divorce from the Nominalist theology in which he was schooled. The hostility with which Luther approached the theological statement facientibus quod in se est deus non denegat gratiam in his Lectures on Romans contrasts with a certain tolerance (or even acceptance) towards the same principle in his earlier writings. Heiko Oberman has studied the issue and concluded that Luther’s rejection of the doctrine of facere quod in se est was contained in two main steps: first came the rejection of the rational implication, then followed the rejection of the theological or even soteriological (to be more precise) implications of the doctrine. The first step, having taken place already around 1509 – 1510, had to do with the rational implications of the doctrine, that is, the discussion on the relationship between reason and revelation leading to the position held by the English Dominican Robert Holcot, but also by Ockham and Biel. According to Luther, these theologians maintained that when one does what is in one, that is one’s best, in search for God, one acquires all information necessary for salvation. The rejection of this “Pelagianism” of reason (as the Dutch scholar called it) Oberman maintains, is evident in Luther’s claim theologia est celum … homo autem terra.

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Oberman continues, if by the end of 1509 Luther had broken with the Nominalistic tradition regarding the relation between faith and reason, a clear rupture with the theological implication of the doctrine of the facientibus quod in se est, i. e. regarding the relation between will and grace, would have to wait until 1515 – 1516. It is precisely here, in my opinion, that the extensive appropriation of Augustine’s soteriological and anthropological insights, largely evident in Luther’s Lectures on Romans, plays a crucial role. This precisely why this theological commentary is a true landmark in the rising of Luther’s theology. In it is drawn, once and for all, the line of demarcation and rupture with the doctrine (or his understanding of it) of his former teachers, and the recentiores doctores of the Nominalist school. As Oberman notes, making use of Luther’s treatment of Psalms 131:1, in Dictata super Psalterium, the Reformer still shows some sort of approval towards the theological implication of the doctrine of facientibus quod in se est30. This seems quite in line with the fact that in some passages of Dictata super psalterium, namely in the commentary of Psalms 9.9, Luther shows himself sympathetic to the Ciceronian definition of iustitia as reddens unicuique quod suum est31. The author rightly points out that, compared with the exposition on Rom. 14:1 (WA 56, 502 – 503) the treatment of the Psalms gives us a glimpse of Luther’s full transition. The passage dates most likely from summer 1515. Again, Luther discussed only that part of the doctrine which applies to the relation between will and grace and kept silent in relation to intellect and revelation. Here are found all the elements of the usual Nominalistic argumentation, such as that man’s disposition is not meritorious de condigno, but de congruo, due to God’s merciful commitment32. Soon after (the time between the exposition on Psalms 131: 1 and Rom. 14:1 is as short as half year, according to Oberman ’s calculations)33 Luther provided a totally revised position on the issue, condemning unconditionally the theological implication of the doctrine of the facientibus quod in se est as one which

30 The passage Oberman relies on to make such a claim can be read in WA 4, 262, l. 4: “Hinc recte dicunt Doctores, quod homini facienti quod in se est, deus infallibiliter dat gratiam, et licet non de condigno sese possit ad gratiam preparare, quia est incomparabilis, tamem bene de congruo propter promissionem istam dei et pactum misericordie. Sic pro adventu futuro promisit „ut iuste et sobrie et pie vivamus in hoc saeculo expectantes beatam spem [Tit. 2:12 f]. Quia quantumvis sancte vixerimus, vix est dispositio et praeparatio ad futuram gloriam, que revelabitur in nobis, adeo ut Apostolus dicat: ‘Non sunt condigne passiones huius tempore etc’ [Rom. 8:18] Sed bene congrue. Ideo omnia tribuit gratis et ex promissione tantum misericordie sue, licet ad hoc nos velit esse paratos quantum in nobis est”. 31 WA 55/1, 70, l. 9 and WA 55/2, 108, 109. 32 Oberman, 1962, 337 – 338. 33 Oberman, 1962, 338.

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almost overturned the Church34. To understand the rising of the theology which shaped Luther’s reforming programme requires the identification of the line of theological thought with which Luther was dealing, as well as the identification of the central theological realm within which the same reforming programme came to gain its doctrinal consistency. Evidences from the sources suggest that the young Luther’s target is the Nominalist theology, with particular attention to Gabriel Biel. The theological realm, is without a doubt, Christian soteriology, namely the issue of man and his salvation. At the centre of Luther’s conflict and break with the “traditional theology” is the idea of God’s justice. It is, however, very difficult to locate the moment of turn in Luther’s understanding of iustitia Dei. Luther’s own account in his autobiographical note of 1545 is not clear on this particular moment and his famous tower experience, in which he allegedly came to grasp the a new interpretation of Rom. 1:17, is also chronologically not clear enough. I think that the moment of his turning point has to be related to the writing which gives evidence of this new idea. This writing is, in my opinion, is the Lectures on Romans. It may be possible to argue that even before concluding his first Lectures on Psalms, Luther had already realised that the conception of iustitia Dei was not what he had thought it to be, but meant the justification which grace achieves in the sinner making him just before God. However, as FIFE explains, the Dictata super psalterium reveals a Luther standing on the “traditional theology”35. It is, indeed, surprising that throughout the first three Pauline commentaries (Romans, Galatians, and Hebrew) in which Luther’s break with the Nominalist theology is only too evident, that though his sense of criticism of Scholastic theology was growing bold, he does not quote the most influential of Mediaeval schoolmen – Thomas Aquinas. Luther focused himself on Augustine’s antiPelagian writings, and always had in mind the theological insights of Nominalist theologians such as William of Ockham and Gabriel Biel, though he also mentioned others such as Gregory of Rimini and Pierre d’Ailly. It seems that among the four theologians, it was Gabriel Biel to whom Luther dedicated most of his attention. Biel’s Summary of the Sentences, based directly on Ockham’s commentary, was a systematic and definitive presentation of Nominalist theology

34 WA 56, 502 – 503, l. 30: “Quin semper cogitant: Quis scit, si gratia Dei hec mecum faciat? Quis det mihi scire, quod bona intentio mea ex Deo sit? Quomodo scio, quod id, quod feci meum, seu quod in me est, Deo placeat? Hii sciunt, quod homo ex se nihil potest facere. Ideo absurdissima est et Pelagiano errori vehementer patrona Sententia Vsitata, Qua dicitur : ‘Facienti, quod in se est, Infallibiliter Deus infundit gratiam’, Intelligendo per ‘facere, quod in se est’, aliquid facere Vel posse. Inde enim tota Ecclesia pene subuersa est, Videlicet huius verbi fiducia”. 35 FIFE, 1957, 197Sqq.

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and, in Erfurt, Luther was far from developing a sarcastic comment on Biel’s theology.36 The focus on Biel, the last great representative of the Nominalist school (in which Luther himself received his early exegetical training) becomes obvious if one takes into consideration the central problem leading Luther to break with his teachers of theology. Luther as a commentator on Pauline letters, vehemently condemned the teaching he identified with certain Nominalist circles according to which humans can, by their own abilities (ex viribus suis), love God above all things and fulfil the commandments according to substance of the acts (secundum substantiam facti) but not according to the intention of the law-giver, since they are not in a state of grace. Here the Reformer’s opposition, gained, as usual, an insulting tone. The assertion, he claimed, is held only by “pig-theologians” who, in their madness, misunderstand and mistreat grace, ignoring the fact that the sinner is at war with himself and the sin dwelling in him is only forgiven in hope37.

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A decisive work: Lectures on Romans (1515 – 1516). Augustine and Luther’s theological reforming programme in context

A week before his 32nd birthday, Luther began, on November 3rd 1515, to give his second full series of lectures, the Lectures on Romans (the first was on Psalms). He concluded this Pauline commentary on September 7th 1516. Luther was, by then, a young theologian who, like many others of his time, lectured on the Bible at universities (in his case, at the University of Wittenberg). He was far from coming to a prominent figure at this time. The Lectures on Romans, however, are to be regarded as a work which oc36 FIFE, 1957, 156 37 WA 56, 274 – 275, l. 8: “Ita mecum pugnaui, Nesciens, Quod remissio quidem vera sit, Sed tamen non sit ablatio peccati nisi in spe i. e. auferenda et data gratia, que auferre incipit, vt non Imputetur ammodo pro peccato. Quocirca mera deliria sunt, que dicuntur, Quod homo ex viribus suis possit Deum diligere super omnia Et facere opera precepti secundum substantiam facti, Sed non ad Intentionem precipientis, quia non in gratia. O stulti, O Sawtheologen! Sic ergo gratia non fuerat necessaria nisi per nouam exactionem vltra legem. Siquidem lex impletur ex nostris viribus, Vt dicunt, ergo non necessaria gratia pro impletione legis, Sed solum pro impletione noue super legem exactionis a Deo imposite?. Quis ferat has sacrilegas opiniones? Cum Apostolus dicat, quod ‘lex iram operatur’ Et ‘infirmatur per carnem’ et prorsus sine gratia non impleri potest. Et poterant stultissime sue huius sententie moneri, pudere et penitere Vel ipsa saltem propria experientia. Quia, Velint nolint, sentiunt prauas in seipsis concupiscentias. Hic ergo dico: Hui! Nunc, queso, satagite! Estote viri! Ex totis viribus vestris facite, Vt non sint iste? concupiscentie in vobis”.

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cupied a central place in the context of young Luther’s theological breakthrough. Its crucial role on Luther’s career as a reformer is beyond doubt. When discussing Luther’s considerable progress in Lectures on Romans in relation to the Dictata super psalterium, G. RUPP expresses it by writing that one can “almost hear him growing in the night, so plain is the growth in maturity, independence and coherence in few months”38. It may, however, be accepted that the framework of Luther’s religious thought was already defined in Dictata super psalterium and, as Erich VOGELSANG argues in this work, namely in Luther’s exegesis of Psalms 71 (72), 2 one finds the first sign of the Reformer’s new understanding of iustitia Dei39. What is, however, important here is to state that it is in the Lectures on Romans that one finds a further and substantial development of the Reformer’s main line of reasoning regarding what he claimed to be a new concept of iustitia Dei, namely faith in Christ. It is my sincere belief that Luther’s reading of Rom. 1:17 in his Lectures on Romans (scholia) a more detailed discussion on the problem of iustitia Dei than any other account he may have provided earlier. Luther’s exegesis of this passage and other such as Rom. 3:4sqq (scholia) makes it clear that in Lectures on Romans the Reformer had already defined the crucial concept of justification as belief in the Word of God, a framework he never abandoned. All this makes the Lectures on Romans a work in which the pillars of Luther’s reforming programme were more clearly defined than any other work he produced before40. 38 Rupp, 1951, 40. It is never too much to recall that, by pointing to Luther’s Lectures on Romans as a work that represented a defining moment in the maturation of his reformation theology, I do not deny the presence of reforming insights in his works preceding this major Pauline commentary. Conclusive studies such as Hamm 2010 (see esp. pp. 1 – 89) have demonstrated that the roots of Luther’s reformation theology can be traced back to the Erfurt period of the Reformer’s life. My thesis consists only in stressing two major points: a) that the Lectures on Romans were a major landmark on the development of Luther’s reformation theology ; and b) that it was the remarkable familiarity with Augustine’s anti-Pelagian writings and insights, and the way Luther exploited and applied them, that made the Lectures on Romans the foundational work of Lutheran reformation theology. I think one does not exaggerate by saying that a careful analysis of Luther’s Lectures on Romans and how his theological insights (especially regarding human beings and their salvation) are inspired by Augustine’s antiPelagian insights, would lead to the conclusion that Luther’s call for reformation of the doctrine was, at least for a while (during the period he produced his first Pauline commentaries) an open attempt to recuperate Augustine. This meant to recuperate him not from oblivion, since he was never forgotten, but recuperate his genuine soteriological and anthropological insights. Augustine suited Luther well in his purpose of reinstating the Pauline understanding of human salvation, a line Luther considered totally abandoned by Mediaeval theologians. Paul and Scriptures come first, but, in the tradition of the Church, the reliance upon Augustine, Luther thought, was the best way to recover a theocentric line of theology lacking in the theological debate of his own time. 39 Vogelsang, 1929. 40 It is mostly based on the theological insights present in Lectures on Romans that some theologians claims (perhaps rightly) that it is not possible to accurately argue for a sharp

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The basic development that Luther underwent becomes clear and irrefutable when the two writings are compared in light of the young Luther’s approach to issues such as: a) the Biblical hermeneutics – in the Lectures on Romans, Luther is no longer bound to the fourfold scholastic exegetical methodology known as quadripartita. In light of this methodology there were four possible interpretation of Scripture: literal or historical; allegorical or figurative; tropological or moral; and anagogical or eschatological; b) justification of the sinner. In his Lectures on Romans, Luther was, more than ever, focused on Augustine’s anti-Pelagian insights. In the specific issue of justification of the sinner, Luther was far from being indifferent to the polemical Augustinian doctrine of non-imputation of sin on account of grace and mercy which comes from the justifying God. He liked it and exploited it to exhaustion. The immediate consequence of this was Luther’s unconditional rejection of any sort of human merit in justification. It is true that Luther denied human merit in justification already in the Dictata super psalterium. The way he did it in his Lectures on Romans was, however, absolutely unprecedented in his literary career. Regarding the issue of justification (treated in detail by Luther, for the first time in Lectures on Romans), the great novelty lays on Luther’s approach to the very concept of iustitia Dei. In the Lectures on Romans, more than ever, Luther insisted on the definition of iustitia Dei as externa et aliena iustitia, a iustitia that resides exta nos et in Christo (this, as I hope to demonstrate, does not mean Luther’s doctrine of justification excludes the inner transformation of the justified sinner). c) The role of faith and humility as well as the relationship between them, along with the crucial distinction between Law and Gospel, which occurs with clarity for first time in Lectures on Romans. It is practically impossible to understand Luther’s doctrine of justification without taking into account his insight on humility. In Lectures on Romans and the subsequent Pauline commentaries authored by the young Luther, humility and faith are practically interchangeable concepts. It is no wonder that the Reformer often speaks about humilitas fidei in his approach to justification. As I will explain in due course, antithesis between the young Augustinian reader of Paul and his later reformation theology. For a good survey see Saarnivaara, 1951, Cranz, 1959, and Bornkamm, 1961 and 1962. Bornkamm vehemently opposes the position maintained in Prenter 1961 according to which only in 1518 Luther came to define the notion of iustitia Dei of his reformation theology. Bornkamm (1961 and 1962) sees the argument as absolutely unattainable. He is clear in his position according to which there is no source material to support the idea that only by 1518 did Luther come to learn and understand the iustitia Dei with which he made his stand as a reformer. Bornkamm argues that this would not even be historically possible. Luther’s concept of iustitia Dei as presented in his reformation struggle, Bornkamm rightly argues, coincides with the period during which he wrote the Lectures on Romans.

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Luther’s doctrine of justification by faith can accurately be called justification by humility. In other words, his understanding of the imputation of righteousness can be traced back to humility. d) his opposition to scholastic theology (with its emphasis on the Nominalist). What concerned the young Luther in the theology of his closer predecessors was the absence of a christological tone. As he saw it, their theology did not lay any special stress on per Christum and propter Christum. Accordingly, in Lectures on Romans one finds a new orientation and broader range of his criticism towards any sort of attempt to apply classical ethics to Christian doctrine, especially regarding the doctrine of justification. It is hardly necessary to say that here the point of departure is Luther’s intransigent criticism towards the use of Aristotelian ethics and anthropology in the scrutiny of Christian soteriology ;and e) from Dictata to the Lectures on Romans the young Luther’s theological development knew a substantial difference concerning the use of one of the Reformer’s main sources after Scriptures – the writings of Augustine of Hippo. The emphasis on the mystical ideas of the Church Father gave place in Luther’s thought to an extensive, crucial and decisive use of his anti-Pelagian teachings. Despite the clear development Luther had experienced during the years he produced these two works, what is normally regarded as his theological rupture in relation to the Nominalist theology is a very complex issue. In the attempt to understand the process, the point of departure must be a careful treatment of the main works produced by the Reformer during the early years of his pastoral activity and academic assignment at the University of Wittenberg (this does not imply the denial of reforming insights in Luther’s works previous to this period). It was in this context that Luther decisively entered into the collision route with the theology of the recentiores doctores. As any reform attempt, this process could not be put forward if not through the choice of a “new” paradigm. The “new” here, must be pointed out, does not mean “never seen before”, but the rejection of the present paradigm. Only when one is aware of this fact can one properly understand the contours and the nature of Luther’s reforming programme. It is only in this perspective that his interpretation and use of Augustine’s anti-Pelagian writings become intelligible. Luther was not the first one in his time who realised the crying need for the reform of the Church. He was just the one who managed (favoured by the particular context of Germany at the time) to provoke a necessary theological/ doctrinal, religious and social storm that shook the Church to its foundations. He was, from the outset, aware of the decisive influence the universities exerted in the shaping of the doctrine of the Church. He despised the orientation of theological debates held at the universities. He even declared that at the uni-

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versities of his time one often found learned theologians but unlearned Christians. For Luther, most of the theological misguidance originated from the dry debates among theologians at the universities. Above the authority of the Bible itself, Luther claimed, these theologians put human teachings. With human teachings Luther often meant those of Aristotle, and Aristotle, he pointed out, was a man to whom revelation was totally strange41. All this led Luther to believe that an important part of the reformation of doctrine could be accomplished with a substantial revision/modification of the curricula of the universities of his time. The first step, he suggested, would consist in decreasing or even annihilating the Aristotelian influence. This would purge the teaching of Theology from the harmful influence of the repugnant Scholastic theology. Most of the teachings of Scholastic theologians, Luther insisted, were outrageous because they taught theological issues based on philosophical postulates. Crucial to understanding all this is to take into consideration that though the University of Wittenberg came down in history as the first protestant university, it was not founded as a protestant university. By the time of its foundation, in 1502, it was just another European university founded within the typical standards of the time. This means its policies and curricular organization followed those of Mediaeval universities, which implied admission of a strong presence of Aristotle in the shaping of its curricula. It was, however, precisely by the time Luther started teaching at Wittenberg that a “new group of ideas”, to use Ernest G. SCHWIEBERT’s words, start to impose a new orientation there. This invasion of a new group of ideas is crucial not only to understanding the years to come in the history of the University of Wittenberg, but also the entire Lutheran Reformation. This is the true incident/situation that should be considered when studying the origins of Lutheran reformation. SCHWIEBERT puts it well when he writes that “‘the Tower discovery’ was but one incident and the Ninety-five Thesis but an historical accident in the larger panorama which was unfolding42. Only in light of this change in the panorama can one understand Luther’s crucial decision to side with Augustine and declare war to Scholastic reading and application or use of Aristotle for the purpose of Biblical exegesis. 41 Rationis Latomianae confutatio WA 8, 127, l. 27: “[…] cum Apostolo: “Videte ne quis vos decipiat per Philosophiam et inanem fallaciam (hanc ego scholasticam Theologiam interpretor fortiter et cum fiducia) secundum traditiones hominum, secundum elementa huius mundi (haec sunt iura bullarum et quiquid ultra scripturas statutum est in Ecclesia) et non secundum Christum. Clarum est hic solum Christum doceri et audiri velle Paulum. Quam vero Academiae legant Biblia, quis non videt? Confer legentes, scribentes super sententias, super Philosophiam, cum iis, qui super Biblia scripserunt aut ea docent (cum illa potissima omnium florere et regnare debuerint), et videbis, quo loco verbum dei Academiae habeant»”. 42 Schwiebert, 1958, 1970. See also Pani 2005, 115 – 134.

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Numerous are the source evidences to support the claim that in response to the overwhelming influence of Aristotle43 and the speculative theology of Scholastic doctors, Luther engaged himself in a struggle to bring about the colossal figure of saint Augustine of Hippo. One of the most known and quoted passages of Luther’s writings on this matter is a letter dated from May 18th 1517 (thus, before the opening of hostilities with Rome) and sent to John Lang in which the Reformer seems to enjoy the fruit of his labour in promoting the Augustinian line of exegesis against the Aristotelian influence. Our theology and St. Augustine”, he writes, “are progressing well, and with God’s help rule at our University. Aristotle is gradually falling from his throne, and his final doom is only a matter of time. It is amazing how the lectures on the Sentences are disdained. Indeed no one can expect to have any students if he does not want to teach this theology, that is, lecture on the Bible or on St. Augustine or another teacher of ecclesiastical eminence44.

This passage is of crucial importance. Luther seemed, by this time, to have found the basis of his theological paradigm and intimately connected Augustine’s theology with it. For this to become clear, one has to do no more than to ask: what do Aristotle and Augustine (or another teacher of ecclesiastical eminence) represent here? Luther’s predilection for the epistles to the Romans and Galatians is well known. The fact that he turned his attention to these two Pauline letters in the early days of his reforming activity was not a mere coincidence. He was perfectly aware that the finest theological material he needed to oppose what he understood to be the teaching of the recentiores doctores are in those pieces of the Pauline corpus. On these intimately-related grounds Luther’s theological system (having the doctrine of justification in its core) was based – soteriology and theological anthropology. Augustine, from the outset, assumed an extremely important role. Scholastic theology, as criticized by Luther, failed to ascribe both to human beings and God their proper role in the process of salvation. The roles, according to Luther, were inverted. In Augustine’s anti-Pelagian writings, Luther recovered the “pessimistic” traces of the theological anthropology he needed to oppose 43 For a detailed study on young Luther and his use and attitude towards Aristotle, see Dieter, 2001. 44 LW 48, 42. Luther faced with special concern the position and treatment of Philosophy in the mediaeval universities and those of his own time, not only on account of their affirmation in the curricula, but also and especially because he considered it was in them that one searched for solutions/answers for many theological problems/controversies, as the exegetical works of many mediaeval scholars can attest. They, Luther pointed out in his Rationis Latomianae confutatio (1521), inquire Philosophers’ work, Peter Lombard’s Sentences, and after all this, the Scripture, when it should be the first and foremost, or even the only tool. See WA 8, 127, l. 27.

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what he considered a far too optimistic approach to the fallen human nature as taught by the Scholastics. The fight against this Scholastic trend, Luther stressed, was urgent since to give endorsement to its Pelagian/Aristotelian oriented understanding of salvation would be the end of the Christian notion of salvation45. It is important, then, to take the Lectures on Romans as an example to explain what has just been said. Luther’s discovery of “righteousness of God” as fides Christi resulted in the decisive alteration not only in his exposition of Romans 1:17 but also in the Reformer’s reading of the entire Scripture. It may be possible to argue that this was already visible by the time he wrote his Lectures on Psalms. Would this imply that when he came to engage himself with the Lectures on Romans he was already in possession of the new interpretation of the “righteousness of God”? Here I follow Alister McGrath’s explanations. In the beginning of his exposition on the Psalms, McGrath argues, Luther employed the Ciceronian definition of iustitia as reddens unicuique quod suum est “and predicated such an understanding of iustitia analogically to God”. During the course of the same exposition, namely in his commentary on the Psalms 70 and 71, the Oxford scholar explains, the Reformer had realised the dangerous theological implications of such procedures and adopted the righteousness of God as fides Christi46. The contours of this development, and the precise moment in which the key alterations occurred, are complex and far beyond the scope of the present study. Here I prefer to emphasize what is certain, namely that there can be no doubt that it is in the Lectures on Romans this new approach to iustitia Dei became clear, firm, and gained its systematic consistence. Luther’s Lectures on Romans is particularly clear in the following aspect: the Reformer understood the recentiores doctores’ approach to the justification of the sinner to be inspired in a sort of adaptation of classical ethics. Here Luther’s criticism placed a particular emphasis upon the teaching of Aristotle according to which righteousness follows action and finds its origin in it. When criticizing this assessment, Luther often had in mind certain passages of Nichomachean 45 A clear example of Luther’s despising for the late-Mediaeval approach on man is the reformer’s reading of the word “men” in several passages of the Scriptures. For instance, commenting on Gal. 1:10, Luther insisted that “men” here means “those according to their first birth in/from Adam”, since they are only “men”, apart from the communion with Christ in faith. Scripture, he stressed, ascribes a very negative connotation to the term “man”. It does not venture in the metaphysical approach of the term as many theologians do and, so, see, unlike Scripture, only what is praiseworthy. Scripture approaches the man theologically and portrays him as it is in the eyes of God. This is why the righteous are not called “men”, but gods, since they are not alienated from truth. Thus Luther opposed those who having “learned from the tree of Porphyry and from the teachings of Aristotle and many other Philosophers”, praise, boast and love the rational man. Cf. WA 2, 464. 46 McGrath, 1982, 74.

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Ethics such as III, 7, but above all the statement in II, 1 “we become just by performing just acts”. What is the consequence of the application of this Aristotelian teaching for Christian soteriology? Luther was quick and clear in answering that the abusive use of Aristotle led the the Scholastic theologians (and all those whose doctrine of justification he opposed) to shape a theology in which the theological ethics is obfuscated by a philosophical ethics. While the theological ethics teaches that only a justified person, i. e. he who is united to Christ through faith, performs good works, the philosophical ethics teaches that it is by performing good works that one becomes righteous47. The interference of this different notion of righteousness obfuscated the righteousness of God (which precedes works), and the young Luther understood it to have had a fatal implication: it nullifies faith which is exclusively responsible for the justification of sinner. This, in Luther’s view, was precisely what Scholastic theologians were doing in their application of the classical ethics to the Christian notion of justification. This, Luther considered, was the very distinctive feature of the Scholastic theology. Thus, the fight against this unbearable trend became his lifetime’s task48. The inspiration in Aristotelian ethics, Luther explained, results only in the promotion of self-righteousness, in line with Jews and Gentiles’ way of thinking. It maintains, out of pride, that one becomes righteous by doing works of righteousness. Paul, Luther pointed out, taught the very contrary, that is, that only he who has been made righteous perform works of righteousness. The denial of this sort of “Aristotelian ethics-oriented soteriology”, as a matter of fact, Luther identified with the very purpose of Paul’s letter to the Romans49. In 47 WA 2, 492, l. 17: “Apostolus constanter negat impleri legem per opera, sed per solam fidem. Quia impletio legis est iusticia, sed haec non est operum, immo fidei, ideo per opera legis non potest intelligere ea, quibus satisfit legi. Quid ergo? Regula Apostoli est haec: Non opera implent legem, sed impletio legis facit opera. Non iusta faciendo iustus fit, sed factus iustus facit iusta. Prior est iusticia plenitudoque legis, antequam fiant opera, cum haec ex illa fluant”. 48 For instance, as late as 1535 it is possible to find several references to the line of distinction between the very nature of this two sort of ethics shaping the two different type of righteousness. The parable of the tree and fruit is often used for this purpose. The justifying faith which brings Christ into a real union with the believer, is what transforms the tree, making it a “new tree”, capable of bearing good fruit: “Thus he is a true doer of the Law who receives the the Holy Spirit through faith in Christ and then begins to love God and to do good to his neighbour. Hence „to do» includes faith at the same time. Faith takes the doer himself and makes him into a tree, and his deeds becomes fruit. First there must be a tree, then the fruit. For apples do not make tree, a but a tree makes apples. So faith first makes the person, who afterwards performs works. To keep the Law without faith, therefore, is to make apples without tree, out of wood or mud, which is not make apples but to make mere fantasies. But once the tree has been planted, that is once there is a person or doer who comes into being through faith in Christ, then the works follows”. LW 26, 255. 49 WA 56, 3 – 4, l. 1: “Summa et intentio Apostoli in ista Epistola est omnem Iustitiam et

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the letter to the Romans, he pointed out, Paul was so persistent in the appeal against the self-righteousness that it may weary the reader’s attention (“Deinde ad Romanos ipsa questio pene sola versatur tam pugnaciter, tam multipliciter, vt fatiget quidem legentis intentionem”)50. This fatigue, however, would be a salutary and profitable one. There are many for whom it suffices if one possesses virtue and knowledge not in order to make an impression or to please the others, but to possess the qualities in one’s innermost heart (ex animo et medullis). This dangerous trend Luther identified with the teachings of Gentiles, Jews and philosophers. Such teachings are outrageous. Paul, Luther stated, was referring to these people when he said in Rom. 1:22 “Claiming to be wise, they become fools…”. Against the same teachings, Luther reminded his readers, that Paul declares that “It depends not upon man’s will or exertion, but upon God’s mercy” (Rom. 9:16). What the Apostle taught, Luther stressed, is the very contrary (Cum hic potius contrarium fieri doceatur) and, thus the Church magisterium should focus its attention on the struggle against self-righteousness. Luther’s concern was to state the external source of the righteousness with which the sinner is justified; to emphasise the extraneam Iustitiam against the domesticam. Though aware that the Gospel itself invites the testimony of virtue (namely Mt 5:14 – 15), for the sake of our justification, any remnant of iustitia propria is to be extirpated. Our redemption takes place not based on our own, but external righteousness; not through the one which has its origin here on earth but that one the comes from heaven. It is fundamental that one is convinced that the true righteousness is the one that comes completely from the outside and is foreign51. It is the only way a sinner can come to union with Christ. The true Christian empties him/herself of everything he /she calls his/her own so that both in honour and dishonour the sinner may remain the same. This means that the justified sinner remains always aware that the honour bestowed upon him/her has been given not to us but to Christ, whose righteousness and gifts are shining sapientiam propriam destruere et peccata atque insipientiam que non erant (i. e. propter talem Iustitiam non esse putabantur a nobis), rursum statuere, augere et magnificare (i. e. facere, vt agnoscantur adhuc? stare et multa et magna esse) ac sic demum pro illis jvere destruendis Christum et Iustitiam eius nobis necessarios esse. Et hoc facit vsque ad c. 12.; ab hoc autem vsque ad finem docet, que et qualia operari debeamus ex ipsa Iustitia Christi accepta. Quia Coram Deo non ita res se habet, Vt quis agendo Iusta fiat Iustus, (vt stulti Iudei, Gentes et omnes Iustitiarii superbe confidunt), Sed existendo Iustus facit Iusta, Sicut scriptum est: ‘Respexit Dominus ad Abel et ad munera eius’, non prius ad munera”. See also. Ebeling, 1970, 150 – 158. 50 WA 56, 157, l. 9. 51 WA 56, 158, l. 10: “Deus enim nos non per domesticam, Sed per extraneam Iustitiam et sapientiam vult saluare, Non que veniat et nascatur ex nobis, Sed que aliunde veniat in nos, Non que in terra nostra oritur, Sed que de celo venit. Igitur omnino Externa et aliena Iustitia oportet erudiri. Quare primum oportet propriam et domesticam euelli”.

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in us; the justified sinner is aware that the dishonour inflicted upon us is inflicted both upon him and Christ. It is hardly necessary to point out that for such an acknowledgement the sinner needs grace. The truth is, Luther explained, even though a person with all his/her natural gifts may be wise, righteous and good in human eyes, God will not, on that account, look upon him/her as such, especially if he/she regards him/herself as such. Hence it is important to be empty of oneself and wait for God’s naked mercy (nudam misericordiam) to recognise one as righteous52. All this, of course, brings about the central theme of the rúle of humility in Luther’s understanding of justification. This issue shall be addressed in due course. All this brings me to a detail of crucial importance when coming to the unmeasurable importance of the figure of Augustine of Hippo in shaping young Luther’s reforming programme. According to Luther, the recentiores doctores’ approach to human salvation was anthropocentric; the Scholastic doctrine of salvation in general he regarded as a very serious threat to Christian faith: true remnants of Pelagianism in the Church of his time. It was precisely in the struggle against a theological paradigm which Luther identified with Pelagianism that it became evident that, long before the indulgences crisis in late 1517, “Augustin war für Luther Lanze und Shild, sowohl in der literarischen Polemik als auch in kirchenrechtlichen Konlfikt”53. Time and again Luther, the commentator of Paul, included the fight against the remnants of Pelagianism inherent in the theology of the recentiores doctores among the greatest concerns of his theological reflection. As he regarded Scholastic theology, it did little more than promote a dangerous spirituality leading people to rely, for instance, on things like observation of the precepts. This concern is present, for instance, in the words with which he opens his commentary on Rom. 14, where he called attention to the gravity of the consequences of such Pelagian oriented theology. Though he acknowledged that there were no Pelagians by profession in his own time, many were ignorantly Pelagian in their way of thinking. They taught that one must place doing, before grace, through free will, what is in one’s own power, in order to receive grace. 52 WA 56, 159, l. 4: “Sed omnino Christianus verus ita debet nihil proprium habere, ita omnibus exutus esse, vt per gloriam et ignobilitatem idem sit Sciens, Quod gloria sibi exhibita non sibi, Sed Christo exhibetur, cuius Iustitia et dona in ipso lucent, Et ignominia sibi irrogata et sibi et Christo irrogatur. Sed multis opus est (seclusa speciali gratia) ad hanc perfectionem experimentis. Siue enim quis ex naturalibus siue ex spiritualibus donis sit coram hominibus Sapiens, Iustus et bonus, Non ideo coram Deo talis reputatur, maxime j si j et ipse se talem reputat. Idcirco in istis omnibus sic oportet se habere in humilitate, quasi adhuc nihil habeat, et nudam misericordiam Dei expectare eum pro Iusto et sapiente reputantis. Quod tunc facit Deus, Si ipse humilis fuerit et non preuenerit Deum Iustificando seipsum et reputando, quod aliquid 53 Grane, 1975, 25.

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They did not hesitate in teaching that because one forms a good intention, one has infallibly obtained the infused grace of God. Accordingly they assured people to be completely secure, completelycertain that the good works one performs please God and thus they should have no more fear or concerns about imploring the grace of God54. The point Luther was trying to make here is that many of his contemporaries maintained the old Pelagian claim according to which God gives grace to him who proves worthy. In other words, according to Luther, the common assumption (present in the minds of Christians of all time) according to which God looks with favour upon those who have done their best to obey his Law, and that He rewards good deeds and punishes evil deeds, demands careful attention when it comes to the issue of justification and is not to be taken for granted. Luther was fully aware that Augustine vehemently opposed the teaching according to which God’s grace is a reaction/response to a meritorious act. Luther sided with Augustine and found in him a powerful ally in his opposition to the Nominalist doctrine of facere quod in se est which the Reformer considered an extremely dangerous doctrine. According to Luther, it was a doctrine which promotes pride and self-righteousness instead of humility. In Luther’s writings, as will become clear, humility fuses with the very notion of faith. The humility of faith is the only path to the divine favours. The saints (who are necessarily humble) rely on God’s grace alone55. I now proceed with a summary analysis of Luther’s purpose in his use of Augustine.

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Both in the early and late years of his career Luther acknowledged the importance of Augustine’s anti-Pelagian writings in the consolidation of the 54 WA 56, 502, l. 14: “Huius autem erroris tota substantia est Pelagiana opinio. Nam etsi nunc Nulli sunt Pelagiani professione et titulo, plurimi tamen sunt re vera et opinione, licet ignoranter, Vt sunt, Qui nisi Libertati arbitrii tribuant facere, quod in se est, ante gratiam, putant sese cogi a Deo ad peccatum et necessario peccare. Quod cum sit Impiissimum sentire, putant secure et audacter, Quod cum bonam intentionem forment, infallibiliter Dei gratiam obtinuerint infusam. Deinde incedunt securissimi, certi Videlicet, Quod opera bona, que faciunt, Deo placeant, Nihil timoris amplius habentes et sollicitudinis super gratia imploranda. Non enim timent, Quod eo ipso forte male agant, Sed certi sunt, quod bene agant. Isa. 44. Quare? Quia non intelligunt, Quod Deus Impios etiam in bonis operibus sinit peccare”. 55 WA 56, 503, l. 18: “Sancti solliciti sunt pro gratia Dei semper Inuocanda. Non confidunt in bonam intentionem aut vniuersam diligentiam suam, Sed semper adhuc sese malum agere timent. Quo timore humiliati gratiam querunt et gemunt, Qua humilitate et Deum sibi propitium faciunt”.

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theological insights with which he built his reforming programme. In the heat of theological debate that marked the beginning of open conflicts that catapulted Luther to the collision route with Rome, the Reformer did not show the slightest hesitation in evoking Augustine’s authority for the sake of his own teachings. A good example to which one can point is the Heidelberg disputation (April 26th 1518). There Luther openly claimed that his interpretations were in harmony with the teachings of saint Paul and those of his most trustworthy interpreter Saint Augustine56. In 1545, the year before he died, Luther added to his vast written legacy a short text which may be regarded as the finest of his own accounts relating to his much debated theological “breakthrough”, and intimately connected with the “discovery” of iustitia Dei. It is a sort of autobiographical note, a reflection upon his early career as theologian in Wittenberg. The text was written to be the preface of the first volume of the edition of his Latin works and then be published at that German city in the same year. A summary analysis of an excerpt of this text may be useful here. Luther went back to a moment he considered of crucial importance in his theological development. He was probably referring to the year 1519. He mentioned the known difficulty of his early age, namely the inner struggle on account of the meaning of iustitia Dei as it occurs in the first chapter of the Epistle to the Romans. The term “iustitia Dei”, the Reformer stressed, was for him the synonym of heavy burden, inner revolt. All this led him to hate the same expression. By pointing out the raison d’Þtre of such a hatred, Luther provided his readers with an important detail for grasping the nature of his theological “breakthrough”. Luther claimed to have fed a strong hatred towards the notion of iustitia Dei, “since following the use and customs of all doctors”, he had been taught to understand it “philosophically, in the sense of the formal or active righteousness (as they put it) by which God is righteous, and punishes unrighteous sinners”57. Luther basically claimed he learned to hate a certain notion of God’s right56 WA 1, 353, l. 1: “Diffidentes nobis ipsis prorsus iuxta illud spiritus consilium „ne innitaris prudentiae tuae», humiliter offerimus onmium, qui adesse voluerint, iuditio haec Theologica paradoxa, ut vel sic appareat, bene an male elicita sint ex divo Paulo, vase et organo Christi electissimo, deinde et ex S. Augustino, interprete eiusdem fidelissimo”. 57 WA 54, 185, l. 12: “Interim eo anno iam redieram ad Psalterium denuo interpretandum fretus eo, quod exercitatior essem, postquam S. Pauli Epistolas ad Romanos, ad Galatas, et eam, quae est ad Ebraeos, tractassem in scholis. Miro certe ardore captus fueram cognoscendi Pauli in epistola ad Rom., sed obstiterat hactenus non frigidus circum praecordia sanguis, sed unicum vocabulum, [Rom. 1, 17] quod est Cap. 1: Iustitia Dei revelatur in illo. Oderam enim vocabulum istud ‘Iustitia Dei’, quod usu et consuetudine omnium doctorum doctus eram Philosophice intelligere de iustitia (ut vocant) formali seu activa, qua Deus est iustus, et peccatores iniustosque punit”.

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eousness, i. e. the one he came to discover was wrongly defined; the one he was determined to refute. Then he proceeded by giving a dramatic account on the way this wrong perception of iustitia Dei came to disturb his own relationship with God58. He also reported not only the way he came to realize how different is the accurate meaning the term iustitia Dei carries in Scriptures, but also how Rom. 1:17, namely the expression Iustus ex fide vivit, helped him to understand this mira et noua definitio iustitia. In Rom. 1:17 Paul is not talking of that righteousness by which God himself is righteous, but the one by which he makes the sinner righteous through faith. Paul is referring to that righteousness that is God’s gift to the sinner He justifies; Paul means that evangelical righteousness, the iustitia Dei passiva God, in His mercy, bestows upon sinner59. Finally, Luther declared that his discovery of the concept of God’s righteousness was solidly based on divine mercy and was made with Augustine’s help. He pointed to Augustine’s De Spiritu et littera one of his main sources of inspiration in the

58 WA 54, 185 – 186, l. 21: “Ego autem, qui me, utcunque irreprehensibilis monachus vivebam, sentirem coram Deo esse peccatorem inquietissimae conscientiae, nec mea satisfactione placatum confidere possem, non amabam, imo odiebam iustum et punientem peccatores Deum, tacitaque si non blasphemia, certe ingenti murmuratione indignabar Deo, dicens: quasi vero non satis sit, miseros peccatores et aeternaliter perditos peccato originali omni genere calamitatis oppressos esse per legem decalogi, nisi Deus per euangelium dolorem dolori adderet, et etiam per euangelium nobis iustitiam et iram suam intentaret. Furebam ita saeva et perturbata conscientia, pulsabam tamen importunus eo loco Paulum, ardentissime sitiens scire, quid S. Paulus vellet”. James E. Biechler argues that this inner trouble affecting Luther was provoked by his conflict with the moral implications of a widespread ethos inherent of the Nominalist theology, mainly that of Gabriel Biel, leading the faithful to strive, doing quod in se est (basically what he/she can) in order to deserve God’s grace: “Biel’s own doctrine of justification, clearly Pelagian as it was, apparently provoked little or no preLutheran opposition. His general orthodoxy was of a high degree and his influence as a theologian was widespread. We are on safe historical ground in accepting Biel’s theology as an example of the via moderna at its best. Thus it would also safe to assume that the practical implications of this doctrine would find their way into the hearts and lives of the faithful. Little wonder, then, that pious Christians strove “to do all in their power” to achieve righteousness before God. And Luther himself was not untouched by this moral optimism. The depth of his despair and the intensity of his frustration are indices of the strong grip in which the facere quod in se est held the fervent young Augustinian. Once the grip was released the reaction was could almost be predicted”. See Biechler, 1970, 125 – 126. 59 WA 54, 186, l. 3: “Donec miserente Deo meditabundus dies et noctes connexionem verborum attenderem, nempe: Iustitia Dei revelatur in illo, sicut scriptum est: Iustus ex fide vivit, ibi iustitiam Dei coepi intelligere eam, qua iustus dono Dei vivit, nempe ex fide, et esse hanc sententiam, revelari per euangelium iustitiam Dei, scilicet passivam, qua nos Deus misericors iustificat per fidem, sicut scriptum est: Iustus ex fide vivit. Hic me prorsus renatum esse sensi, et apertis portis in ipsam paradisum intrasse. Ibi continuo alia mihi facies totius scripturae apparuit. Discurrebam deinde per scripturas, ut habebat memoria, et colligebam etiam in aliis vocabulis analogiam, ut opus Dei, id est, quod operatur in nobis Deus, virtus Dei, qua nos potentes facit, sapientia Dei, qua nos sapientes facit, fortitudo Dei, salus Dei, gloria Dei”.

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discovery of the new meaning of iustitia Dei60. It was, then, Augustine’s authority that ensured the Reformer that Rom. 1:17 could be accurately read in the way he himself was doing. Luther then claimed that it was with this new conviction that he started working on his second commentary on Psalms, i. e. Operationes super Psalterium (1519) – “Istis cogitationibus armatior factus coepi Psalterium secundo interpretari”. One may ask: is this notion of righteousness of God not found in Luther’s writings produced before 1519? Certainly! Why, then, is the year of 1519 pointed here as a landmark? The text was written by an old man and recalls an episode that occurred during his youth. Luther seems, however, to have given a vivid account of his early days as a Reformer. A. McGrath is probably correct when he argues that there are no reasons to cast doubts upon the accuracy of this autobiographical fragment61. Some fundamental questions become, however, unavoidable. The eo anno Luther referred to is the year of 1519. It seems that the old Luther, did not connect his theological “breakthrough” with the doctrine of iustitia Dei he developed in Lectures on Romans. Luther seems to have explained his theological “breakthrough”, intimately linked to his discovery of mira et nova deffinitio iustitiae, as a sudden happening, a sort of flash of insight into the real and true meaning of iustitia Dei62. McGrath argues that Luther’s theological “breakthrough” became evident at some point during the year 1515. He explains that the Reformer, conceived the interpretation of Scripture “as “public”, rather than a “private” event, so that it is unlikely that he would incorporate accounts of his own personal doubts and anxieties into the substance of his lectures”63. Despite Luther’s claims in his autobiographical note, Alister McGrath maintains, the Reformer’s theological breakthrough took place long before 1519. The Oxford scholar argues as follows: The passage [of the autobiographical note] bristles with difficulties, particularly the possibility that Luther, in his old age, may have contracted the time scale during which his reflections upon the meaning of iustitia Dei took place, so that insight which accumulated over a number of years are presented as if they occurred in a devastating moment of illumination. It is quite possible that Luther may have unconsciously modelled his account of his own theological breakthrough upon that of St. Augustine, as it is recounted in the eighth book of the African bishop’s Confessions. Luther frequently refers to this passage in the course of Dictata, indicating that he is aware of its significance in this respect64. 60 61 62 63 64

WA 54, 186, l. 16sqq. McGrath, 1985, 98. Ibidem Ibidem. Ibidem.

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It is the visible and substantial changes in the approach to iustitia Dei in the course of time covered by Dictata and, above all, the Lectures on Romans that makes me give my endorsement to McGrath’s explanations. Perhaps Luther referred here to the year 1519 as the time he himself regarded the process of his “breakthrough” to have reached its fullness65. After all, his theological breakthrough can only be understood if regarded as a process. A complex process, indeed! This being said, it is important to proceed with a summary consideration in order to explain the reasons Luther turned to the anti-Pelagian Augustine to support his theological teachings. Concerning the doctrine of justification, it is important to notice that in the Lectures on Romans Augustine’s De spiritu et littera is extensively used by Luther. The Reformer made use of this work of Augustine to stress what can be called the declarative dimension of justification, namely the issue of divine imputation/declaration of righteousness. When Paul declared that the righteousness of God has been revealed, the righteousness that the Apostle had in mind is not that righteousness by which God himself is righteous but the one we are made/declared righteous by Him. It is to De spiritu et littera XI, 28 and also book IX that Luther turned to back this particular assertion66. Luther was aware of the central importance the doctrine of justification assumed in the context of his own early theological career, in his theological breakthrough and his whole reforming programme. What is important is to notice that even in his old age Luther mentioned Augustine as reference and authority. Luther admitted that Augustine played an important role is his own rupture with the theological and doctrinal standards of his time. Curiously enough (but by no means a surprise) is the fact that Luther mentioned De spiritu et littera as an important piece of the whole puzzle. De spiritu et littera was a key treatise in the Augustinian Biblical exegesis, one of the most important of Augustine’s anti-Pelagian writings. It is important now to outline a few considerations regarding the theological and exegetical contours of De spiritu et littera. It was the Pauline statement in II Cor. 3:6 (according to which the letter kills but the spirit gives life) that inspired the entire work. Luther, it is to be remembered, regarded the theology of his own time as responsible for the promotion of a misguided spirituality leading to the promotion of self-righteousness. Luther accused most Scholastic theologians and his contemporaries of promoting reliance upon the precepts of the Law. 65 See Saarnivaara, 1951, 105sqq. 66 WA 56, 172, l. 3: “Et hic iterum ‘Iustitia Dei’ non ea debet accipi, qua ipse Iustus est in seipso, Sed qua nos ex ipso Iustificamur, quod fit per fidem euangelii. Vnde b. Augustinus c. XI. de spi. et lit.: ‘Ideo Iustitia Dei dicitur, quod impertiendo eam Iustos facit. Sicut Domini est salus, qua saluos facit.’ Et eadem dicit c. 9. Eiusdem”.

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This, he constantly observed, means to ignore the essence of the Gospel’s message, and made of Jesus another Moses. It is evident that Luther was well aware of the usefulness of the theological content of De spiritu et littera for his own reforming programme. This fact is evident in his Lectures on Romans. It was not a mere coincidence that it is the work he used the most in this Pauline commentary. I have no doubt that this work of Augustine played a role almost as essentially as Paul’s letter to the Romans in Luther’s discovery regarding the proper definition for the term iustitia Dei. It was rather a rediscovery! Luther’s understanding of iustitia Dei as referred to in Rom. 1:17 or 3:21 is rigorously Augustinian and is explicitly present in De spiritu et littera: non qua Deus est iustus, sed qua induit hominem cum iustificat impium67. More: if Luther’s doctrine of justification by faith alone (the central issue of Lectures on Romans) was, in fact, inspired in Augustine (I believe it was) it was, I dare to say it, taken from De spiritu et littera68. More important than pointing out Luther’s reference to Augustine in the shaping of his reforming programme is to pay attention to “which Augustine” he involved in the process. There can be no doubt that it was the anti-Pelagian Augustine he used to back his theological/doctrinal/exegetical teachings. What is also important is to understand the purpose and in which circumstances the Church Father was used by the Reformer. First of all, it is important to stress that Luther’s extensive use of Augustine was, per se, nothing extraordinary. Augustine’s works knew a large propagation through the Basel edition of 1506. The Reformation itself occurred in a period in which the Fathers came to be regarded as “the true representative of Christian wisdom at the expense of scholasticism”, i. e. were appointed and used by the reformers (and humanists) as a via to counterbalance Scholasticism69. More: the mere extensive use and quotation of Augustine’s works does not make one an “Augustinian”, especially in the late-Mediaeval and Reformation contexts. E. L. SAAK notices well that the term “Augustinianism” has assumed such a wide variety of definitions that in and of itself it does not say much about the actual adherence to the teachings of St. Au67 WA 56, 36, l. 12 and spiritu et litt. IX, 15 . 68 See WA 56, 157. 69 Grane, 1994, 31ssq. Leif Grane explains the Patristic favouritism within the humanist circles as follow: “Erasmus as well as other humanists found interpretations of Holy Scripture in the Church fathers which where both close to the text and directed toward the conditions of man, thus being much more to the point than was barren intellectualism (as they thought) and subtle speculation of the scholasticism. The fathers were far better ; they were closer to Scripture in time and also interpreted it, instead of just using it within a system built on the principles alien to the Bible. In method as well as in content, the fathers were superior to the scholastic doctors, or so the humanists thought. […] The fathers became the true representative of Christian wisdom at the expense of scholasticism”. Idem, 31 – 32.

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gustine. The definitional quagmire resulting from attempts to determine the legitimate uses of the adjective “Augustinian”, SAAK goes on explaining, is exemplified in the historiographical debates surrounding Augustine’s influence on the emergence of Reformation theology, and on the theology of Martin Luther in particular70.

All this, however, neither minimizes the importance of Luther’s use of Augustine nor denies the remarkable influences the Church Father exerted upon the Reformer. A careful reading of Luther’s theological production from 1515 onwards would leave no room for doubt that the Reformer was attentive not only to the edition of Augustine’s corpus of 1506, but also to the use and interpretation of the Church Father by his contemporaries. The Disputation against Scholastic Theology (1517) and the Heidelberg disputation (1518) are the clear proofs of this fact. Moreover, evidences in the sources show that Luther’s theological development in the early years, especially from 1515 onwards, was deeply connected with his progression in the study of the anti-Pelagian Augustine. The Lectures on Romans (1515/1516) can, once again, be pointed out as an eloquent witness of this fact. This Pauline commentary, more than any other preceding it, gave an extraordinary impulse to the shaping of Luther’s reforming programme. It contains a series of doctrinal/theological/exegetical claims that lie at the core of Luther’s soteriology. The Commentary addressed issues that constituted the starting point of Luther’s theological “breakthrough” in relation to a theological tradition against which he showed a determined effort to uproot from the ecclesiastical and academic atmosphere surrounding him. Though in writings such as Dictata super psalterium (1514/1515) Augustine was already largely used, the Lectures on Romans provided the first systematic evidence that, in order to shape his reforming plan, the young Luther had already chosen the anti-Pelagian Augustine as his walking stick for the troubled road he was about to travel. The Lectures on Romans reveals a Luther surrendered to Augustine whom he regarded as the great authority after Scripture, der “Säule“ der Kirche” to paraphrase A. HAMEL71. The young Luther definitely claimed Augustine to have been his reference among the ranks of theologians. In the Reformation context, this was, however, hardly new. Augustine’s influence over Mediaeval and Reformation theology was already a proverbial fact at the time. Opponents use the same Augustine to make different points on the same doctrinal issue (one can cite here as examples the discussions of Luther vs Erasmus or Luther vs Latomus, etc)72. In the case of Luther, the contact with 70 Saak, 1999, 109. 71 Hamel, (vol. 1) 1934, 12. 72 The leading Historians of doctrine tend to agree regarding the immeasurable influence of Augustine over the western theological tradition. Reflecting over the endless (and central) debate in the West concerning nature and grace, namely the unsettled issue whether it is human initiative or predestination which ultimately decides human salvation, J. Pelikan

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Augustine was a matter of necessity. Apart from having been an Augustinian friar, he was an Augustinian friar living in a moment in which a particular interest was taken in his patron’s works. As any other student of theology of his time, Luther’s early career had to go through a sort of stage in which a commentary on Peter Lombard’s Sentences, the dogmatic handbook of the time, was compulsory. As Sententiarius, the contact with the Church Father (at least an undirected one) was unavoidable, since Augustine was largely used by Lombard73. More: the time Luther was taking his first steps in his career as theologian coincided with a glorious moment of Augustine’s scholarship. The Church Father’s works new a large spread during late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. The Basel edition, the first of Augustine’s Opera Omnia, on which Johannes Amerbach had been working since 1490, reached its completion in 1506. It was a “monumental achievement” to which both Luther and the other reformers could not afford to be indifferent74. If one assumes that Luther’s conflict with Rome was provoked by the winds of change (to use the words of the Prime Minister Harold McMillan) in western theology, one may accurately say the writes: “Much of Western theology since Orange has oscillated between these two poles, and we shall have to write its history (to paraphrase Whithead’s epigram about Plato) as „a series of footnotes» to Augustine”. Cf. J. Pelikan, (Vol. 1), 1971, 330. Luther, as any other influential mediaeval and Reformation theologian, not only could not escape from Augustine’s shadow, but also had a certain interest in emphasizing his alleged reliance on the Church Father’s teachings. The prelate of Hippo is “the theologian” (as from 13th century onwards Aristotle is “the Philosopher”) of the Middle Ages. Though a highly controversial figure, and most criticized even by many of his own contemporaries, Augustine passed through the centuries following his physical disappearance as a colossal character, often regarded as the face or synonym of orthodoxy, a trend that gained momentum in controversial atmospheres of the Mediaeval and Reformation periods. An example can be provided here, regarding preLutheran theologians. Anselm of Canterbury, even when maintaining some contrary teachings to those of Augustine, did not hesitate to identify the Bishop of Hippo with the very warrant for orthodoxy. The archbishop of Canterbury asked his readers to read Augustine before judging his own writings. “Potui invenire me eam dixisse, quod non Catholicorum Patrum, et maxime beati Augustini, scriptis cohaereat. Quapropter, si cui videbitur quod in eodem opusculo aliquid protulerim, quod aut nimis novum sit, aut a veritate dissentiat, rogo ne statim me aut praesumptorem novitatum, aut falsitatis assertorem exclamet; sed prius libros praefati doctoris Augustini De Trinitate diligenter perspiciat deinde secundum eos opusculum meum dijudicet”. Anselm of Canterbury, Monologium, praefatio, PL 158, pp. 143 – 144. See also Von Campenhausen, 1986, 151. 73 Bougerol, 2001, 115 – 133. It is to be recalled that Luther held some magisterial work either at Wittenberg or at Erfurt since he concluded his master’s degree in 1505. However, his teaching career gained momentum when he focused on theology. By 1508 he started lecturing on Aristotle, and, 1509, on the Bible at the University of Wittenberg, replacing Stauptitz. His teaching on the Bible started with the Lectures on Psalms (from 1513 – 1515). After these he started lecturing on Romans (1515 – 1516). Luther’s lectures on Romans, Galatians and Hebrews contain the essence of young Luther’s whole reforming programme. 74 Saak, 2001, 367sqq. For a good discussion on the direct access to Augustine’s work in the Reformation context, especially in Luther’s Wittenberg, see Pani, 2005, 77 – 134.

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winds blowing in the academic context of the Reformation had a strong Augustinian aroma. It is fair to say that Augustine was in “fashion” during the 16th century. He was the theologian some (though deep down, “scholastics” in their modus cogitandi) would turn to in order to oppose what they considered deviations or deformations of the undesired “Scholastic” theology. No wonder even some incidents preceding 1517, involving future leading figures of the Reformation, were related to Augustine’s theology and authority. The most known example is perhaps the case of Andreas von Karlstadt’s call for debate (curiously enough by posting a thesis in public, on April 26th 1517) on the Augustinian doctrine of grace75. Thus, it is a given fact that Luther’s claim regarding the alleged reliance of his theology upon that of Augustine was nothing extraordinary. It was a general trend in the theological disputations of the time. It has been noticed that Luther’s contact with Augustine’s theology took place, the latest, in autumn 150976. What is absolutely certain is that, by the time Luther wrote his first commentary on the Psalms (Dictata super psalterium), in 1514/1515, he had read, memorized and reflected on many of Augustine’s works. In this writing, the reformer quotes the bishop of Hippo over two-hundred times. In his Lectures on Romans, Galatians and Hebrews (though with less frequency in this last one), references to Augustine occur like a refrain. It was in these Pauline commentaries that Luther gave a specific orientation to his use of Augustine. Without surprise he laid emphasis on the anti-Pelagian writings of the Church Father. All I have said so far in this sub-chapter is, then, enough to maintain the following assertion: Luther did not know Augustine through the tradition of his monastic Order; he had a direct access to the Church Father’s written legacy. This was also not new. Many other theologians of his time had direct access to Augustine’s works. What made a difference was Luther’s willingness to accept the radicalism inherent in Augustine’s theological anthropology and soteriological discourse. Since Augustine’s own lifetime, his radical claims according to which salvation is ultimately a process depending exclusively on divine grace, inspired opposition, denial and reluctance. This trend was maintained throughout the Middle Ages as is visible in Thomistic and Nominalist traditions. It was predictable that the day someone managed to attract attention by admitting that Augustine’s insights were not only some assertions valuable in light of his controversy with Pelagians, but rather were fundamental for the re-establishment of sound faith, there would be trouble. That trouble came when Luther did precisely this, when he publicly assumed that the re-establishment of 75 For a detailed treatment of the issue, see BARGE, 1968, 75sqq. 76 Hamel, 1534, 5sqq, Oberman, 1982, 167 – 171.

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the sound faith requires approaching human beings and their salvation within the framework that Augustine (after Paul) did. There are a few questions that demand answers here: 1) Why such a focus? 2) Why now in the commentary on Paul’s letters and not before in many other writings authored by Luther? And 3) Why was itAugustine and not any other Church Father? As for the question number 1, fortunately Luther himself helped his students in the search for an answer. He focused on the anti-Pelagian Augustine because, to his eyes, the finest of the Church Father’s theology was produced in the heat of the Pelagian controversies. Luther was aware that it was in the debate with Pelagians that he would find the theologian Augustine that he needed for his own purposes. It was in the campaign against Pelagians, Luther stressed, that the Church Father revealed himself a great and a faithful defender of grace (“Augustinus ex contentione cum Pelagianis magnus est factus et fidelis gratiae assertor”)77. He went even to the point of claiming that Augustine wrote nothing accurate about faith except in his struggle against Pelagians (“Augustinus nihil acriter de fide scribit, nisi cum contra Pelagianos pugnat”)78. Thus, Luther’s reliance on the anti-Pelagian writings can, by no means, constitute a surprise. These statements should not be neglected. What did Luther mean by saying that Augustine wrote nothing accurate except in his struggle against Pelagians? It seems to me that what Luther meant is that it was during the debate with the Pelagians that Augustine came to present the salvation process as a totally divine oriented process. Of crucial importance, it must be understood that all these details have to do with what has been said in the point 2 of the first part of this work. In 2.3, I explained how Augustine’s radical understanding of divine grace, namely concerning the issue of initium fidei, put him on a collision route with the tradition of the Fathers. Luther was definitely not indifferent to this crucial point. He was fully aware that his favourite Augustine was not born for theology in 386. His favourite Augustine was shaping himself around the second half of 390s. In other words, the Augustine that Luther adopted was not the presbyter Augustine, it was the bishop Augustine. It was not a mere coincidence that Luther noticed with approval the fundamental change I just mentioned, i. e. the fact that, from 396 onwards, Augustine had embraced the radicalism of grace by teaching the beginning of faith, initium fidei, as grace itself. In his theological development, Augustine ascribed a higher and higher theological scope to the fall of humankind. He progressively started reading Romans 7:14 – 25 as referring to the

77 WATR 1, 18, l. 12, n8 51 78 WATR 4, 56, l. 3, n8 3984

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Christian combat and came to identify the “I” of those verses to the very best of Christians, to Paul himself. This crucial aspect of Augustine’s theological development did not escape Luther’s attention. Luther not only made clear that he followed Augustine’s late reading on Romans 7:14sqq but also revealed to have been aware of the Church Father’s correction of his early reading of the same passage. In his Lectures on Romans Luther quotes Augustine’s Contra duas epistulas Pelagianorum, I, 10, 17 and Contra Julianum 5, 13 – 14 evoking Augustine’s authority regarding this passage. He extensively quoted Retractationum I, 23 where the bishop of Hippo mentioned his change of opinion on Romans 7:14sqq79. Thus the answer to question number one is revealed. Why in the Lectures on Romans and not before? Luther was well aware that the Pelagian controversies which brought Augustine into an unmatchable prominence were essentially about interpretation of the Pauline corpus, namely the epistle to the Romans. He also knew that Augustine’s theological claims inherent in his reading of crucial passages of the epistle to the Romans were the ones he needed to oppose the “Pelagians” of his own time. There can be no doubt that Luther, as Augustine, before him, came to prominence as a theologian at the expense of a radical reading of the Pauline corpus. The epistles to the Romans, Galatians and Hebrews can be said to have been the three main Scriptural documents upon which Luther’s reforming insights were forged. But while young Luther’s reforming programme found its foundation upon the Reformer’s exegesis of Paul’s letters, the very same programme is not totally intelligible if dissociated from the wave of Patristic commentaries on Pauline epistles in the years preceding the Reformation. The invention of the press and the request for the edition of Pauline epistles are good indications for this matter. In the years preceding the Protestant Reformation, dozens of Pauline epistles were edited, many of which contained commentaries by ancient ecclesiastic writers, among whom Augustine clearly leads the way. Luther’s Wittenberg was certainly not indifferent to this wave80. 79 WA 56, 339sqq. 80 Pani, 1983, 15 – 17, 2005, 15 – 76 and 2010. As the Pelagian controversy rose as the result of divergent readings on the Pauline corpus, it may not be inaccurate to say it was also upon the divergences on the reading of Paul that the Lutheran Reformation was unfolded. Luther, obviously needed a patristic reference and was perfectly aware that no one would fit better to his intent than the anti-Pelagian Augustine. This reinforced interest in the Pauline corpus in the years preceding the Protestant Reformation had solid motivations. Here I make use of Giancarlo PANI’s arguments to make them plain. To the question why so much attention was paid to the Pauline epistles, Pani reminds his readers that “the Church was experiencing the passage from the Middle Ages to Modern Era and was forced to meet the challenges issuing from the high standards of the new humanistic, Philological and historical scholarship. The historical-critical method used by Humanists for classical texts was then applied to the Holly

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Why in Paul’s letter to the Romans? First, in my opinion, Luther was aware of the new contours of his own theology emerging from his Pauline commentaries, namely the epistle to the Romans. He was aware of entering a collision route with the mainstream theology of his time. In late Middle Ages, novelty had a high probability of being considered heretical. Which is the best way to avoid such an accusation than to endeavour to prove that his positions were not only not heretical but also stemmed from the teachings of a renowned authority of the Church tradition such as Augustine? The first authority, it is true, was Paul. But Luther was certainly aware that to prove that Augustine’s reading of Paul endorsed his own theological views would be a good achievement in his direct confrontation with his opponents. It was for this reason that the Church Father “À non solo il pi¾ citato, ma l’unico a cui si richiami in modo regolare e continuato. Agostino À dunque, per Lutero, in forza di una qualche connaturalit—, l’interprete pi¾ autorevole di Paulo, nonch¦ il maestro e la guida nel difficile confronto col testo paolino”81. One can still claim that Augustine is not the sole authority of the Church’s tradition. There were many others. This brings me to a second reason for Luther’s remarkable reliance upon Augustine’s anti-Pelagian writings in his Lectures on Romans. More than having been aware of the great asset that Augustine’s authority represented, Luther was aware that the radicalism of the Augustinian doctrine of salvation is more solid and evident in the Augustine’s commentaries on Pauline passages. Luther was familiar with Augustine’s exegesis of the Epistle to the Romans, especially chapters 5, 7 and 9. As for the seventh chapter of the Pauline epistle, Luther was aware that the standard Western reading of that chapter was that which Augustine proposed in his early years as theologian. Luther was also aware that the Church Father, moved by the radicalism of grace inherent in the doctrine of initium fidei, made a break with this standard interpretation. Luther knew that it was during the Pelagian controversy that such new interpretation became one of the greatest distinctive of Augustinian theology. The answer to the third question is now also clear : why Augustine and not any other Church Father? Because, for Luther, only Augustine was positively radical on the matter of human salvation; only he was courageous enough to accept and teach that human salvation, from its beginning to its completion, has one and only one Scriptures. […] The attention paid to the patristic commentaries on Pauline Epistles arose from the humanist emphasis on the return to the sources: research was focused on the oldest authors, closest to the the origins. Even though there is not yet a full historical understanding of them, Paul’s epistles begin to be considered as among the oldest documents of the Christian tradition, together with the writings of the apostles and evangelists. It is exactly this return to the sources that stimulates the research into and the publication of the many writers in antiquity who had commented on the Pauline Epistles”. Pani, 2010, 380. 81 Pani, 1989, 285.

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architect – God, who in His gracious mercy came in rescue of sinful mankind. The Augustinian teaching on the initium fidei was undoubtedly a break with the patristic standard approach on human salvation. This fact is crucial for understanding Luther’s reliance upon Augustine’s later works to the detriment of his early ones as well as those of the other Church Fathers. Among many other theological issues, one may take one which is increasingly acknowledged by Luther’s scholars as a crucial ingredient of the Reformer’s doctrine of justification – the participation in divine nature. This participation, to Luther’s eyes, is grace and is in no way due to human efforts. Augustine is the best authority to rely on here. Augustine’s definition of grace as participation in divine nature follows the basic reasoning of the Greek Fathers, except (and here lies the crucial distinction which Luther appreciated so much) for the fact that Augustine understood this grace to be a non-reciprocal transformation of the elect. Participation in the divine life, according to Augustine, is not a free act of cooperation with God, it is not a process in which God must initiate and humans respond. At the core of Augustine’s soteriology are Original Sin and predestination. The capacity for humans to respond to God’s initiative was lost in Adam and salvation now is for the predestined. Participation in the divine life, then, is a process initiated and brought to its completion by God. God, Augustine insisted, both gives grace and moves us irresistibly to accept it. As Patricia WILSONKASTNER observes, comparing with the Greek Fathers’ understanding, in Augustine, “while the basic definition of participation remained the same, some important components of the way it was achieved, and thus what it was, were substantially modified”82. It seems to me that the answer to all three questions must be preceded by the answer to a rather central one: what did drew the young Luther to the antiPelagian Augustine? One may easily feel tempted to argue that Luther used only the “Augustine” with whom he was familiar. I firmly believe that was not the case. Luther’s extensive use of Augustine’s anti-Pelagian writings was also motivated by historical reasons. It is largely known that, from the theological standpoint, what is today know as “Augustinian” (the term referring only to Augustine himself) was matured and systematized in the heat of the altercations with Pelagians. This fact can be explained with two main reasons. First, as Augustine’s modern biographers agree, the most skilled opponents the Church Father found himself engaged with in debate were the theologians he himself (and the western theological tradition) associated with the Pelagian movement. The finest and most influential of Augustine’s theological teachings were consolidated during the Pelagian controversies83. 82 Wilson-Kastner, 1976, 149. 83 Bonner, 2002, 352 – 393 and Brown, 2000, 340 – 399.

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Augustine stepped for the first time into the international stage of theological debate through the first work of his episcopacy – De diversis quaestionibus ad Simplicianum (396/397) This writing is of crucial importance since it defined the theological framework within which Augustine worked for the rest of his literary career, especially in the debate with Pelagians. Although his Confessiones also had some international impact, between 396/397 and 410 Augustine is a theologian of “local” or “regional” range, focused on pastoral and spiritual needs of his fellows brothers and parishioners84. It was the outbreak of the Pelagian crisis in 410 that brought the Church Father into the international realm. The zeal and theological genius with which he committed himself in the controversy brought him great authority within the western theological tradition. If Augustine’s career as apologist would resume in his confrontations with the Manicheans and the African bishops who formed the partem Donati in the so-called Donatist controversy, Augustine’s reputation would hardly have crossed the North-African borders. His authority as Church Father would have been far from reaching the level it did throughout the Middle Ages, during the Reformation and even into contemporary theology. G. BONNER is right when he stresses that the Pelagian controversy, with the discussion of the nature of Grace and of Predestination to which it gave rise, is, apart form the literary interest of the Confessions and of the City of God, the aspect of St. Augustine’s life and thought which has most impressed posterity” remarking that “the very title accorded to him, “the Doctor of Grace” proclaims it85.

The second reason has to do with what can be called a certain thematic harmony between the Pelagian crisis and Luther’s theological claims against his opponents. Luther regarded the theological teachings of his opponents as a disguised form of Pelagianism. The key issues in young Luther’s reforming programme were related to justification, the fallen human nature on account of Original Sin, human free will and its capabilities. These themes enlightens his doctrine of justification by faith. The anti-Pelagian writings of Augustine constituted a true locus classicus when it came to the treatment of all these themes. Luther, commentator on the letter to the Romans, left a clear impression that he had discovered in Augustine’s approach to these issues a sort of theological identity and paradigm which fit the theological paradigm he was looking for in order to stand 84 This does not imply to deny the presence of theological insights in Augustine pre-Pelagian crisis with which Luther identified himself. Confessiones and Ad Simplicianum would contradict any argument in this sense. Augustine’s radical teachings on grace preceded his confrontation with the Pelagians. It is know, from Augustine’s own accounts, that his approach to salvation in this Confessiones, namely the statement Da quod iubes, et iube quod uis was disapproved by Pelagius. 85 Bonner, 2002, 312.

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against another one he was already judging repulsive – the “Nominalist” theology. It is a temptation to try to argue that Luther’s use of Augustine was undermined by a limited knowledge of the Church Father’s theology, that he may have used only the Augustine with which he was familiar. There certainly were some limitations in his knowledge of Augustine, but it is important to point out that the evidence from the sources suggests that the young Luther had a very broad knowledge of Augustine’s theology. He had direct access to all of main writings of Augustine and it is accurate to say that he was aware of some details of Augustine’s exegetical and spiritual development. He knew and quoted Augustine’s Retractationum extensively. He even knew the approximated moment his favourite Augustine was rising; some precise details regarding the turning point on the theological development of the African Church Father. This turning point was the very reason for Luther’s predilection for the mature Augustine’s theology, especially its soteriological and anthropological claims. What is equally important is to remember that one of the bases of Luther’s mira et noua definitio iustitia is the contrasts between iustitia hominis and iustitia Dei, the denial of any sort of analogy between them. For Luther, the Aristotelian motto according to which one becomes righteous by performing work of righteousness and the Ciceronian definition of justice as reddens unicuique suum est were simply not Gospel. They were valuable for iustitia hominis, not for iustitia Dei. Yet, according to Luther, it was precisely those teachings of the Pagan Philosophy, alien to Gospel, that inspired the recentiores doctores’ understanding of justification in particular and the way they understood Christian soteriology in general. According to Luther, this was why they ventured into an intricate discourse of merit and adopted Pelagian teachings. This, Luther considered unacceptable. Alister McGrath is right when writing that “it is possible to argue that the entire Reformation, and all it stood for, is the consequence of one man’s dissatisfaction with the analogical predication of human ideas of righteousness to God”86. To this statement it may added that Luther was aware he had no better and safer way of showing his dissatisfaction than relying on the anti-Pelagian Augustine.

1.4

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By the time Luther began his career as a Reformer he was largely familiar not only with Augustine’s writings, but also with those of some prominent theologians of the Augustinian order such as Gregory of Rimini, Bartholomeus von 86 McGrath, 1982, 76.

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Usingen or Johannes Staupitz, (the young Luther’s spiritual director). Thus he was familiar with the main themes of the Augustinian tradition such as Original Sin, the unconditional need for grace, and the decisive authority of the Scriptures87. To grasp the young Luther’s use and reading of Augustine one must, first of all, take into consideration that, by the time Luther wrote his Lectures on Romans, he firmly and unconditionally shared with Augustine the following beliefs: a) the true conversion, the conversion of the heart takes place only under divine grace’s operation. Human nature tends only to evil and when unassisted by grace, human beings are unable to do good; they despise the Law which guides towards good and prohibits evil. By themselves they simply cannot find any joy in God’s commandments. Unless helped by grace, human beings remain captive to evil lusts and opposed to the Law. Our desires are intrinsically evil regardless how many good works we may produce externally. After all, such good works are only good to human eyes. They are produced not out of love and humility but rather out of fear of punishment or out of self-love or love for worldly things. The praise of divine Law is, by no means, peculiar to the old man88 ; b) human salvation depends not on any human spiritual effort and progress but on the arbitrary mercy and grace of God89. At a certain point of his en87 Olivier, 1996, 33. 88 WA 56, 206 – 207, l. 29: “Natura enim, vt supra dixi, prona ad malum, infirma ad bonum, potius legem ad bonum cogentem et malum prohibentem abominatur, quam diligat, ideo ex seipsa non habet voluntatem in lege, Sed displicentiam tantum. Ac sic semper manet in cupiditate mala contra legem, plena concupiscentiis, quantumlibet foris timore pene? coacta Vel amore temporalium allecta operetur, Nisi desuper Iuuetur. Non enim Est Vox nature? aut veteris hominis: ‘Legem autem tuam dilexi, in quos autem odio habui.’ Vel illud: ‘Quam dulcia faucibus meis eloquia tua, super mel ori meo.’ Et illud: ‘Desiderabilia super aurum et lapidem preciosum, multum dulciora super mel et fauum.’ Sed noui et spiritualis hominis, vt sequitur : ‘Etenim seruus tuus dilexit, custodit ea”. See De spiritu et littera VIII, 13 which Luther quotes and follows. 89 Luther’s emphasis on this teaching reaches a certain radical dimension in his reading of some Pauline passages as it is the case of Romans 1:24sqq. Dealing with these passages, the Reformer explained that God’s arbitrariness goes to the point that, though He does not order any one to perform evil deeds, He, in a way, wishes evil. He abandons some so that they are unable to resist evil prohibited in God’s own commandments. The facts turns out to be the will of His good pleasure (voluntas Dei est). God does not will sin though He wills it to be done. He wills to submit man to what He Himself hates the most with the purpose of revealing to humankind how great is the wrath hanging over its head (WA 56, 180). The arbitrariness becomes clear when Luther admits that God permits people to sin and yet shows mercy towards some and forgives him/her, while He hardens the heart of the others and condemns him/her. By the same token He allows some people to do good deeds and lead a good life, and yet He rejects and casts out a person and takes in another person and crowns him: “Cuius ratio est occultum Iudicium eius et quia vnus bona aliqua simul facit, alius non vel minus, Ita vt obstruatur os temeritatis, ne quis statim definiat regulam Deo, secundum quam Deus

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gagement with Augustine’s anti-Pelagian insights, Luther had a purpose: to use Augustine’s main theological teachings to consolidate his own theological identity. He knew that the theology of the mature Augustine would provide him with the finest of tools to build his critical discourse against the late-Mediaeval theology, namely towards the Nominalist tradition. Such a criticism, as time went on, tended to have the entire Scholastic theology as target. It is on this point that the modern scholars should be attentive. There is a certain trend in Luther’s criticism towards Mediaeval theology to consider it as an ensemble. Here, perhaps, lies one of the most striking of Luther’s mistakes. I come now to the core of the discussion itself. Augustine’s anti-Pelagian treatises did not exert any remarkable influence over Luther’s Biblical exegesis before late1514. At least not on key-issues which would later be the centre of the polemic with his opponents. It was in the Lectures on Romans that Luther’s use of Augustine’s anti-Pelagian treatises reached previously unknown heights with considerable exegetical consequences. De spiritu et littera is by far the most quoted, following works such as Contra Julianum, De pecatorum meritis et de baptismo parvulorum, Expositio quarundam propositionumex epistola ad Romanos (the only non anti-Pelagian work extensively used by Luther here). Contra duas epistulas Pelagianorum and De nuptiis et concupiscentia are also constantly quoted90. It is of crucial importance to pay attention on to occasions and with what purposes they were quoted. The issue is of such great importance that, for the sake of clarity, the approach to it requires, at the beginning, a few introductory statements. Luther’s reading and use of Augustine cannot be understood unless in light of what ultimately inspired his entire theology : the way he regarded the theological anthropology and the soteriology of the late-Mediaeval theologians. To Luther’s eyes, the way many of late-Mediaeval theologians understood salvation was nothing short of reckless. It promoted only pride and self righteousness. The theology of the recentiores doctores, he claimed, simply overvalued mankind’s role in its own salvation. Consequently it misplaced Christ in the context of Christian soteriology, by making salvation (a God’s exclusive work) dependent on human moral or ethical progress. This claim clearly echoed Augustine’s constant accusation against Pelagians according to which their reliance on the abilities of fallen human nature does nothing more than reduce to nothing the Cross of Christ. quodlibet peccatum puniat aut bonum premiet. Ideoque permittit similiter quosdam peccare et tamen huic miseretur et ignoscit, illum indurat et damnat. Similiter quosdam bene agere et viuere et tamen hunc reprobat et proiicit, illum vero suscipit et coronat”. WA 56, 186, l. 12. 90 For a survey on Luther’s use of anti-Pelagian writings in Lectures on Romans, see Pani, 1989 which has the advantage of providing the reader with a table of quotations from Augustine throughout the entire work (pages 275 – 278).

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What brought the young Luther to the anti-Pelagian Augustine was related mainly to these two realities: the first is Augustine’s radical approach to mankind’s Fall, and the unconditional reliance upon grace. These were the cornerstones of Augustine’s theology, having made the African Church Father a special figure within the patristic tradition. Although defined before the Pelagian controversies, it was in the heat of the same controversies that Augustine’s doctrine of grace came to gain systematic contours. Secondly, intimately related with the first reason, is the fact that Luther regarded the “Nominalist” theology (in which he himself was reared) as a speculative system, having as its most dangerous feature the absence of a christocentric-oriented soteriology. Luther’s main battle front was the justification of the sinner, a decisive stage in the process of salvation. The Reformer was convinced that there was a trend among the Nominalist theologians to deny to faith (God’s free gift) its full role in salvation. According to Luther, they implied that some part of the operation would depend on human moral and spiritual engagement. For Luther, this was to minimize Christ’s redemptive mission. Only through faith, an unconditional abandonment of the self and adherence to God’s mercy, can human beings find salvation. Salvation is in its wholeness exclusively operated by God. Against the recentiores doctores (with this expression Luther means some of his teachers and the Nominalist theologians) stood the Scriptures and the antiqui patres (Luther tended to have in mind Augustine and, at times, Ambrose , when he used such an expression). Accordingly, the young Luther’s use of Augustine basically had a clear purpose: to fight the monstrosa Theologia, cuius caput est Aristoteles et pedes Christus (“monstrous theology which has Aristotle as its head and Christ as its feet”)91. In other words, the purpose was to demonstrate, through a renowned authority of the Church’s theological tradition, that the proper place had been ascribed to Christ and His redemptive sacrifice in opposition to the prominent role he was convinced the recentiores doctores ascribed to humankind in the salvation process. No better support could be found anywhere else than in writings Augustine produced in his struggle against the Pelagians. Luther was convinced of this fact. It is in this perspective that Luther’s reforming programme, at least in its embryonic stage, cannot be dissociated from Augustine’s anti-Pelagian struggle. One would not be going too far in saying that, in certain extant, Luther’s early reforming programme consisted in an attempt to recuperate the Augustinian line of Biblical exegesis against that of his own time, namely the line followed by the recentiores doctores. 91 WA 2, 562, l. 1. On Luther’s siding with Augustine against the overwhelming Aristotelian influence he considered to have infected the Scholastic theology and the theology of his own time, see a short but very interesting discussion in Oberman, 1982, 167 – 177.

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What is, however, the central question is this: to clarify whether Luther’s accusations against the recentiores doctores were sustainable or not. It is not my intention to scrutinize Luther’s accusation of Pelagianism against the Nominalist theologians. The accuracy of the accusations are, of course a matter of dispute (in 1.1 of the second part of this work I outlined the divergent views of H. A. Oberman and A. McGrath). My aim here is just to identify and contextualize the problem. An important detail for understanding Luther’s approach to Nominalist theology in general, and the charge of Pelagianism against it, in particular, is certainly the Reformer’s attitude towards the “Nominalist” (at least Luther considered it so) statement facientibus quod in se est Deus non denegat gratiam. Time and again he disapproved this statement stressing it to be an outrageous attack against God’s grace and an impudent insinuation which would imply the destruction of the very meaning of the Christian doctrine of justification. Within the “Nominalist” theology, the statement was used in the discussion on meritum de congruo and de condigno, and on the question of whether humankind can or not perform good actions ex puris naturalibus. The young Luther, the commentator of Paul (especially Lectures on Romans) regarded the theological statement facientibus quod in se est Deus non denegat gratiam as a clear remnant of Pelagianism, and, consequently, a threat for the Christian soteriological discourse. What is most pertinent for the present work is the fact that it was mainly to Augustine’s anti-Pelagian teachings (with emphasis on the humility recommended to the fallen human being that by itself does nothing but to sin) that the young Luther turned to support his accusations. He clearly saw in Augustine’s anti-Pelagian struggle a sort of refutation ante literam of the Nominalist soteriology92. Luther’s familiarity with the Scholastic theological tradition may not have been very deep. It was, however, enough for him to realise that among some of late scholastic theological currents there was a certain anthropological optimism. Such an anthropological optimism was associated with the nobility of creation, highly emphasised by the Franciscan tradition, namely Scotism and Ockhamist Nominalism. The truth is that Luther tended to identify such an optimism with Pelagianism. Besides, he also knew that such anthropological optimism faced the fierce opposition of some theologians connected with the Augustinian tradition, especially Gregory of Rimini. Gregory of Rimini stressed the corruption of fallen human nature and its inability to perform any natural good by itself. This is the line of reasoning Luther followed and his use of anti-

92 WA 56, 502 – 503.

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Pelagian Augustine’s thought cannot be understood without taking this crucial fact into consideration93. Complaints against the Pelagian trend of theology of his own time is recurrent in young Luther. One of the most striking is found in Operationes in Psalmsos (1519 – 1521). What is worse, he stressed in this work, the fact that there was a new form of Pelagianism; the one he was fighting. It was worse than any other because it was not declared. It was a Pelagianism disguised as an orthodox doctrine. The Reformer regarded Pelagianism as the most dangerous and pernicious of heresies (“Inter omnes autem gladios impiorum maximum et nocentissimum meo iuditio merito pelagianam impietatem censebimus) and the source of all sort of idolatries (hic error fons est universae idolatriae”). Not surprisingly, he identified it with the very human tendency to state human righteousness (iustitia hominis) to the detriment of that of faith (iustitia fidei). Augustine, Luther pointed out, fought Pelagians as declared heretics. He himself was fighting the very same heretical trend in men protected by the the Church, under the skin of orthodox theologians. So Pelagianism, Luther stressed, is a timeless threat to Christian faith. It preceded the coming of Christ, Paul, Pelagius himself, and Augustine. Augustine was not the first adversary of Pelagianism; he was just one of them. The heresy was fought since the time of the Old Testament; Christ Himself and Paul also did their share in this struggle. Luther held, however, that the heresy had never been of such concern as it was in his own time. After Augustine’s death the heresy rose; it not only did not find opposition, but also was openly allowed to rule within the Roman Church and universities. Nothing can be more dangerous! It remained in the Church, Luther claimed (“pelagianos error vere omnium saeculorum error est, saepius opressus quidem, sed nunquam extinctus”)94. 93 See, for instance, Luther’s declaration in Resolutiones Lutheranae super propositionibus suis Lipsiae disputatis of 1519: “Certum est enim, Modernos (quos vocant) cum Schotistis et Thomistis in hac re (id est libero arbitrio et gratia) consentire excepto uno Gregorio Ariminense, quem omnes damnant, qui et ipse eos Pelagianis deteriores esse et recte efficaciter convincit. Is enim solus inter scholasticos contra omnes scholasticos recentiores cum Carlostadio, id est Augustino et Apostolo Paulo, consentit. Nam Pelagiani, etsi sine gratia opus bonum fieri posse asseruerint, non tamem sine gratia coelum obtineri dixerunt. Idem certe dicunt Scholastici, dum sine gratia opus bonum, sed non meritorium fieri [which would be meritum de congruo] fieri docent. Deinde super Pelagianos addunt, hominem habere dictamen naturale rectae rationis, cui se possit naturaliter conformare voluntas, ubi Pelagiani hominem adiuvari per legem dei dixerunt”. WA 2, 394 – 395, l. 31. 94 WA 5, 485, l. 1: “Inter omnes autem gladios impiorum maximum et nocentissimum meo iuditio merito pelagianam impietatem censebimus. Nan in hanc, ut videmus potissimum aestutat hic Psalmsus, immo tota scriptura. Quid enim prophetae, quid apostoli potius agunt, quam quod pro iustitia fidei contra iustitiam hominum pugnant? Unde pelagianos error vere omnium saeculorum error est, saepius opressus quidem, sed nunquam extinctus. Caeteri omnes temporum spacio extincti sunt hunc vero prophetae percusserunt, percussit

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Whether Luther did or did not have a clear perception of Pelagianism such as it is, is not my concern here. The most important issue here is the fact that he was convinced that he was fighting Pelagian trends he claimed to be peculiar to the theology of the recentiores doctores. This fact decisively served the German Reformer’s reliance upon the anti-Pelagian Augustine. Unlike modern Augustine’s scholars, Luther belonged the large generations of theologians whose the only standpoint of Pelagian controversy they could possibly have was decisively influenced by the account provided by the nemesis of the Pelagians, first among them Augustine. At the core of Luther’s theology lies the emphasis on the total fall of humankind whose salvation depends totally on God’s mercy and grace. This assertion explains his strong reliance upon the mature Augustine. For Luther, as for many other theologians, Pelagianism had the troubling shadoweffect leading him to connect the slightest sign of anthropological optimism, namely human freedom and autonomy, to Pelagianism. This happened even when dependence upon God was not denied. It was with this obsessive quasi mania of Fall in all senses that Luther entered the discussion with the Scholastic and Nominalist theologians. When one comes to the implications of this sort of anti-Pelagian obsession driving Luther’s theological production, one thing becomes clear : the vehemence with which Luther condemned the theological implications of facientibus quod in se est Deus non denegat gratiam in the Disputatio conta Scholasticam theologiam. From this stemmed the theological convictions which shaped his Lectures on Romans. Luther’s attitude towards the theological implications of the phrase facere quod in se est in earlier writings was not so harsh and hostile as it was in Lectures on Romans. A question, then, rises here: why such a change in Lectures on Romans? This transformation in the Reformer’s attitude may have been caused by many factors but it is hardly possible to deny that the transformation itself, as a whole, was intrinsically connected with Luther’s increasing familiarity with Augustine’s anti-Pelagian insights. The very fact that this important shift was brought about in a Pauline commentary and especially based on Augustine’s anthropological and soteriological insights, is definitely not a mere coincidence. One must ask: what was behind Luther’s rejection of the theological imeum Christus et Paulus, nihilominus semper iuxta serpsit, donec Pelagius natus caput eius erexit et libere eum tueri coepit, ubi rursus deus nobis misertus Augustinum suscitavit, qui eum ad tempus percuteret. Sed post Augustinum ressurgens tandem praevaluit, non modo nemine contrastante, sed etiam Romana Ecclesia imperante et cogente, universitatibus palam docentibus, Episcopis, principibus et toto orbe imitantibus tanquam rem optimam et christianissimam. Nam quod aliqui adversus eum mutire coeperunt Parrhisiis et alibi nihil promotum videmus. Denique hic error fons est universae idolatriae, semper alia et alia facie, pro alio et alio saeculo procedens. Qui enim fuerunt idolatrae, qui non arbitarentur, suis se studiis et viribus deo palcere? Et quid aliud agit Pelagianus error”?

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plications of facientibus quod in se est Deus non denegat gratiam? Whether Luther understood or not the explanations behind the statement is a matter of dispute which I do not intend to feed here. What is perfectly clear is that there can be no doubt that the main goal in denying such a statement was the opposition to what Luther considered the Pelagian background of the soteriology of the recentiores doctores. In other words, Luther’s main concern was to refute the teaching according to which the sinner can prepare himself for grace, which would imply that the sinner can ultimately deserve grace. If one thinks for a while, in light of Luther’s main theological claims, it is perfectly understandable. The assessment according to which a sinner can prepare him/herself for grace would be the very denial of Luther’s doctrine of justification; human initiative as the origin of human salvation was simply unacceptable for Luther as a commentator on Paul. No wonder the fight against this teaching became the very leitmotiv of Luther’s lifetime theological engagement. Accordingly, J. BIECHLER is right when he stresses that, for instance, De servo arbitrio may not be studied as a simple Lutheran reply to the Christian humanism represented in Erasmus, but rather “as his most serious statement of opposition to Nominalist theology and in particular to Gabriel Biel’s doctrine of liberum arbitrium”. “The magnitude and vehemence of his reaction in the De servo arbitrio, BIECHLER maintains, must be attributed at least in a significant degree to the “pelagianizing” which its author saw so widespread in the schools and experienced so keenly in his own life95. No other theologian would suit Luther better in the struggle against the teaching suggesting that human beings play an active role in their own salvation than Augustine, the nemesis of Pelagians. By the time Luther wrote his Lectures on Romans he already saw in Augustine’s anti-Pelagian teachings the greatest support, after Scripture, for his doctrines such as the remaining concupiscentia (he interpreted peccatum manens as concupiscentia invencibilis) and the exclusive role of God in the process of justification. Luther understood that he was in perfect harmony with Augustine’s teaching that God’s righteousness is that by which He justifies sinners. In the writings of the Church Father he also found the radical teaching on the Fall and the absence of any sort of merit (neither de congruo nor de condigno as it was put among the schoolmen). Thus it is fair to say that the radicalism of grace, the very leitmotiv of Augustine’s anti-Pelagian struggle, made Luther see an important point of convergence between his own theology and that of Augustine. Besides, Luther claimed that he and Augustine, by teaching that human righteousness belongs first and foremost to God, had a common goal/task in mind: to fight the presumptuousness of self-righteousness. This common goal, in Luther’s eyes, is based on the fact that, in the footsteps of 95 Biechler, 1970, 127.

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the Church Father, he was developing a theology in which human salvation is portrayed as God’s operation, and God’s operation alone. In fact, it is my sincere conviction that, by looking into this particular point, it is accurate to maintain that Augustine’s doctrine of justification by grace and Luther’s doctrine of justification by faith are compatible, at least more compatible than commonly thought among some modern scholars. Both Augustine and Luther aimed to define human salvation as God’s exclusive work. Besides, for Augustine, faith is itself grace and there is no source evidence that the young Luther would deny this conclusion, much to the contrary. According to Luther, there is nothing good in human beings which is deserved, especially not faith. Like Augustine, Luther regarded faith as a free divine gift. All this being said, it may be useful to recall a fact here: Augustine is strongly present in Luther’s discussion regarding Original Sin and justification because the development of the Church Father’s theology represents a defining moment in the history of the development of Christian dogma. As in many other theological and moral issues, regarding Original Sin and justification, the name of Augustine is fused with the origins of these doctrines. Origins are always important to consider! If one takes into consideration the very development of doctrine of justification and Original Sin (this latter is determinant for the shaping of both Augustine and Luther’s theological anthropology) it is hardly possible to drop Augustine from the discussion. Sin, human nature, grace, justification, and regeneration are some of the main issues which reveal a strong presence of Augustine in Luther’s reforming trend. Augustine plays a prominent part in the Ancient Church concerning both the doctrines of Original Sin and justification (intimately linked with both Christian anthropology and soteriology). The outstanding position of the Church Father is well defined in the most complete study on the history of the Christian doctrine of justification, Iustitia Dei: a History of Christian Doctrine of justification, by A. McGrath, which recently was published in a third edition. In this book McGrath concludes that “for the first 350 years of the history of the church, its teaching on justification was inchoate and ill-defined […] Augustine’s doctrine of justification is the first discussion of the matter of major significance to emerge from the twilight of the western theological tradition, establishing the framework within which the future discussion of justification of humankind before God would be conducted”96. As for the doctrine of Original Sin, it practically is fused with Augustine’s name. Augustine is regarded by Luther as a sort of figure representing the refoundation of Pauline theology, misunderstood (as Luther sees it) by many of the Church Father’s predecessors and contemporaries. For Luther, Augustine rep96 McGrath, 2005, 38 – 39.

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resented a line of theology abandoned by the Church as the centuries passed by. It was easy then to see in him an ally in the struggle against the “heterodox”. This is precisely what the young Luther did. He turned to Augustine and saw in him an ally in a fight against a common enemy, the enemies of faith and God’s grace. It is with this conviction that Luther vehemently refused the formula facientibus quod in se est Deus non denegat gratiam, which he ascribes to the recentiores doctores, namely the Nominalists. The denial of this formula, Luther claimed, was in harmony with the Augustinian theology. The opposition to the same formula was in line with the opposition to the alleged Pelagian formula according to which God’s grace is to be deserved. Following Augustine’s opposition to Pelagians on this issue, there is also a denial of the alleged Scholastic claim that one becomes righteous by performing what is right. This statement Luther regarded as a direct misapplication of the Aristotelian formula of justice (Nicomachean Ethics II). Luther believed that the anti-Pelagian treatises of Augustine would suffice, besides Scripture, to refute such an erroneous claims. The errors of Pelagians, Scholastic/Nominalists were of the same nature: to misplace Christ and overemphasise human being’s role in the process of salvation. Hence I wholeheartedly endorse Henri STROHL’s observation when he writes that “Augustine with his doctrine opposes to the pagan Philosophy and to Pelagius. Luther, in his turn, opposes the pelagianizing theology of the Ockhamist school and to Erasmus, admirer of pagan antiquity. The enemy is the same97. Reflecting upon the young Luther’s reception of Augustine, Manfred Schulze goes as far as saying that “without the anti-Pelagian Augustine there would have been no emergence of that Pauline theology in Wittenberg which was even more alien to the scholastic tradition than the theology of Augustine, which in any case was already disconcerting enough. Direct access to the sources brought a new quality into the interpretation of Augustine, and, with Augustine, a new quality into the interpretation of Paul”98.

I sincerely believe that it was Augustine’s anti-Pelagian teachings that started to plant the seeds of doubt in Luther’s mind and helped him to give a new orientation to his Biblical exegesis (mainly regarding the Pauline corpus). Consequently, he 97 Strohl, 1962, 181. “Saint Augustin, et Luther, Strohl writes, ramÀnent le salut entiÀrement — la gr–ce de Dieu. Tous deux peuvent employer la formule selon laquelle il faut enttendre par justice: la justice par laquelle Dieu nous rend justes. Il n’ont cru ni l’un ni l’autre — la vertu des paens, — la facult¦ de l’homme p¦cheur de se pr¦parer — recevoir la gr–ce, d’acqu¦rir un m¦rit quelconque. Saint Augustin oppose sa doctrine — la Philosophie paenne et — P¦lage, Luther la sienne — la th¦ologie p¦lagianisante de l’¦cole occamiste et — Erasme, admirateur de l’antiquit¦ paenne. L’adversaire est le mÞme”. Ibidem. This thesis is reinforced in Pelikan, 1985, 139sqq. 98 Schulze, 2001, 578.

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endeavoured to break free from the Nominalist theology, a theological matrix that not only sounded theologically absurd to him but also could not satisfy his spiritual quest. It is possible to argue accurately that the ground of Christian soteriology and anthropology, the main wall between Luther and the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries theologians, seems to have been precisely the main ground of encounter between the young Luther and the anti-Pelagian Augustine. I am, however, aware of the complexity of the issues involved and of the need of further and detailed studies in order to state any conclusion on this matter. It must be said that even within the ground of Christian soteriology and anthropology not everything is of agreement between the two theologians. Nevertheless, one thing seems clear to me: Luther’s theological breakthrough cannot be dissociated from his progressive, deep and enthusiastic encounter with Augustine’s anti-Pelagian writings. Though I have strong reasons to believe that their greatest agreement lies in these two fields, I am mindful that it would be reductive to label the young Luther’s approach to justification as a mere reproduction of Augustine’s mature theology. The autobiographical fragment quoted above emphasises this very idea. Augustine comes as a confirmation for Luther. In exegetical activity, the very essence of Luther’s methodology is the primacy of the Word and the Fathers (mainly Augustine) come as confirmation99. I do, however, still think it is accurate to say that Luther’s soteriology and theological anthropology was forged under the orientation of the anti-Pelagian Augustine. I am also aware that the central question in a comparative study between the Church Father and the Reformer would not be to demonstrate whether the last accepted or rejected or in to what extent used the former. The central question would rather be how Augustine was interpreted/understood and used. I think it is accurate to associate Luther’s theological breakthrough with what he believed was a new and most accurate interpretation of Augustine and the application of his anthropological and soteriological teachings to the Pauline exegesis. Thus, the centrality of Augustine’s anti-Pelagian writings in young Luther’s reforming programme is perfectly understandable. In Lectures on Romans, Augustine is directly quoted, at least, 124 times and a large percentage of these quotations comes from the anti-Pelagian writings. The most quoted is De spiritu et littera, at least 26 times. Contra Julianum and De pecatorum meritis et de baptismo parvulorum, are also amongst the most quoted. The Lectures on Romans can be said to represent the beginning of a new stage of Luther’s reception of Augustine. In Dictata super psalterium Luther made an extensive use of Augustine’s Enarrationes in Psalmsos and he is quite focused on Augustine’s mystical ideas. In Lectures on Romans the Church Father’s anti-Pe99 Cadier, 1958, 360.

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lagian ideas took an undeniable precedence over any other. Giancarlo PANI explains this fact as follows: Agostino, he writes, era stato maestro di esegesi per Lutero gi— nei Dictata super psalterium […] Ma si trattava di una consonanza spirituale in via di formazione e di approfundimento. Agostino era menzionato accanto ad altri Padri; e spesso ci si limitava a dirne il nome, senza riportare il testo, o ricordare l’opera. E’ chiaro che non gli era ancora attribuito il peso che poi acquiester— quando Lutero intraprender— il commento alla Lettera ai Romani. Si À vero chi il reformatore far— referimento ad Agostino lungo l’intera sua vita, nel commento alla Lettera ai Romani la dipendeza diviene rilevantissima e praticamente exclusiva: ma concerne sopratuto gli scriti ultimi, quelli della controversia pelagiana (con l’eccezione della Expositio di cui si À parlato100.

Let us not ignore the fact that the very mira et nova definitio iustitiae Luther claimed to have discovered was nothing else but a strong and grave accusation against a theological current which he strongly associated with remnants of Pelagianism in the Church of his time. This is the core and the starting point for understanding Luther’s approximation to Augustine. Hence the accuracy of M. Schulze ’s observation according to which, Luther, commentator of Paul “made the struggle against Pelagius the central concern of any theology that seeks to be called Christian” and recognized in Pelagianism “the vital question for the church”101. To understand Schulze ’s observation it would be important to take into account the way Luther himself did conceive his own theological “breakthrough”, the rising of his theology in declared opposition to that of the recentiores doctores. Not only in the heat of controversy, but also in his retrospective analysis of the process shaping his reforming programme and career, Luther attributed a special role to Augustine by pointing out a strong connection between his own theological “breakthrough” and an increasing familiarity with Augustine’s anti-Pelagian writings. Further proofs can be found, for instance throughout his early correspondence. In a letter addressed to George Spalatin, dated October 19th 1516, Luther showed himself concerned with the Erasmian interpretation of Paul. At stake was the Dutch humanist’s approach to justification. The fact is not to be ignored that Luther concluded that the misreading he pointed out in his Dutch contemporary could be avoided with a careful reading of some of Augustine’s anti-Pelagian writings. Or, better, they were caused by the absence of knowledge of Augustine’s anti-Pelagian teachings, or by a misreading of the same writings. Here is an excerpt of the letter which eloquently speaks on the matter: What disturbs me about Erasmus, that the most learned man, my Spalatin, [he says] is the following: in explaining the Apostle [Paul], he understands the righteousness which 100 Pani, 1989, 274. 101 Schulze, 2001, 580.

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originates in “works” or in “the Law” or “own righteousness” (the Apostle calls it that) as referring to those ceremonial and figurative observances [of the Old Testament]. Moreover he does not clearly state that in Romans chapter 5, the Apostle is speaking of original sin, although he admits that there is such thing. Had Erasmus studied the books Augustine wrote against the Pelagians (especially the treatises On the Letter and the Spirit, On Merits and Forgiveness of Sinners, Against the Two Letters of the Pelagians, and Against Julian, almost all of which can be found in the eight volumes of his works), and he recognized that nothing in Augustine is of his own wisdom but is rather that of the most outstanding Fathers, such as Cyprian, [Gregory of] Nazianzus, Rheticus, Irenaeus, Hilary, Olympius, Innocent and Ambrose [it is to be mentioned that Augustine came to quote the Greek Fathers mainly in his confrontation with Julian], then perhaps he would not only correctly understand the Apostle, but he would also hold Augustine in higher esteem than he has so far done. […]. I definitely do not hesitate to disagree with Erasmus on this point, because in Bible exegesis I esteem Jerome in comparison to Augustine as little as Erasmus himself in all things prefers Jerome to Augustine. Devotion to my Order does not compel me to approve of the blessed Augustine; before I had stumbled upon his books I had no regard for him in the least102.

In short, and to conclude this section, it must be said that it is understandable that the Reformer had turned to the leading Church Father when it came to the struggle against Pelagianism. For Luther, Augustine was more than a simple patron of the Order to which he belonged. Since his early years as commentator on Scripture, Luther saw in Augustine not only a paradigm of converted man in humility (on account of his insistence in the weakness of human abilities)103, but also has a sort of prototype of good exegete104.

102 LW 48, p. 24 103 WA 3, pp. 26 – 27; 49; 169; 549, etc. 104 Hamel, 1934, 14ff; Pani, 1983, 19 – 24 and Ellingsen, 2011, 16 ff.

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2. Original Sin and justification in Luther’s early Pauline commentaries. Interpretation and use of Augustine’s anti-Pelagian theology

2.1

Preliminary remarks

What is crucial for understanding Luther’s doctrine of justification is to not lose sight not only of his notion of fallen mankind (for which his doctrine of Original Sin provides a good help), but also the fact that his doctrine of justification cannot be dissociated from his own spiritual journeys and quests. Berndt HAMM is right when he argues that the young Luther’s reforming theology developed on a twofold basis: in an interaction between personal spiritual struggles and concern for Biblical texts1. To neglect the existential background of Luther’s doctrine of justification is not only running the risk of failing to understand his doctrine of justification, but also it is to deprive oneself of a tool without which his doctrine of justification cannot be grasped. “Not since Augustine”, writes the historian of Christian doctrine Jaroslav PELIKAN, “had the spiritual odyssey of one man and the spiritual exigency of Western Christendom coincided as they did now”2. Heiko OBERMAN’s assessment according to which Luther rose as a successful Reformer by transforming the abstract question of a just God into an existential quest (Lebensfrage) that concerned the whole human being, comprising thought and action, soul and body, love and suffering is a very accurate one3. Luther’s early Pauline commentaries would suffice to bear witness 1 Hamm, 2010, 61. “Deutlich ist auch, dass diese theologische Neuorientierung in den folgenden Jahren bis in das Jahr 1520 hinein weitere wichtige Schübe erfährt und dass bei dieser reformatorischen Gesamtentwicklung dir Interaktion zwischen der persönlichen Anfechtungssituation und einer intensiven Beschäftigung mit der Auslesung biblischer Texte von wesentlicher Bedeutung war”. 2 Pelikan, 1985, 127. 3 Oberman, 1982, 159. It may a be a temptation to argue that Luther’s access to Augustine was mediated by the tradition of the Augustinian order of which the Reformer was member. What is important to state here is that it may have been so in the first years of Luther’s contact with Augustine, but as the years passed by, Luther’s access to Augustine becomes more and more direct. This process gained a considerable momentum due to two main reasons: the first had to do with Luther’s own spiritual distress in his quest for a merciful God who justifies the

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to the Dutch scholar’s conclusion. Hence I will turn to these writings, especially to the Reformer’s Lectures on Romans. It has already been stressed that Luther’s Lectures on Romans (1515 – 1516) appeared at a very crucial moment of his theological development. These Lectures constituted a landmark in Luther’s much debated theological “breakthrough”. Such a breakthrough was more the result of a process rather than a sudden event4. It is never excessive to recall that the young Luther’s reforming sinner through the gift of faith. The second reason had to do with Luther’s engagement in academic activity which gave him a clear idea of what sort of anthropological and soteriological insights were predominant in theological debates. For Luther there was no doubt that the true justice of the merciful God was being misunderstood; His justice was being interpreted not in light of divine Word revealed in the Scriptures but in light human justice. Augustine was then a considerable help for Luther : in Augustine’s spiritual life, Luther found a prototype of the converted Christian who resembled the conversion experience of saint Paul, the paradigm of all converted Christian man. In Augustine’s theology Luther found the foundations of theological insights he needed to oppose the theology of his own time, especially when it come to the portray of the fallen mankind and the nature of divine justice as revealed in the Scripture. Luther felt spiritually identified with Augustine and this spiritual identification certainly helped in the shaping Luther’s theological identity which is strongly Augustinian. Discussing how Luther’s spiritual crisis brought him into a deeper and direct contact with Augustine by the time the Reformer wrote his Lectures on Romans, Giancarlo Pani writes: “[…] quando Lutero decise la lettura della Lettera ai Romani esisteva tra lui ed Agostino un rapporto pi¾ diretto, non mediato dalla tradizione dell’Ordine, e strettamente connesso con la sua vicenda spiritualle. Il ritorno a pi¾ genuino agostiniano era legato intimamente con la crisi spirituale che Lutero andava attraversando fin quasi dalle origini della sua vocazione religiosa. Come Agostino, sabene per altro itinerario, egli si sentiva un converstito: una afinit— che si esprime spontaneamente, sia per Lutero, con una particiazione viva dell’apostolo Paolo, anch’egli un convertito, e il modello di tutti I convertiti cristiani. […]/ Per comprendere la ragioni della scelta di Lutero, e della sua preferenza nei riguardi della Lettera ai Romani, – bisogna tener presenti I punti di encontro tra la personalit— di Paolo e quella di Agostino. Si À notato che Paolo e Agostino sono due convertiti. E poi sono due grandi teologi: due teologi che – a differenza di Giovanni l’apostolo o di Tommaso d’Aquino, i qualli obiettivano per intero la propria esperienza spirituale, consumandovela tutta senza residui autobiografici – hanno lasciato nei loro scritti una testimonianza molto viva del loro cammino verso la fede. Di modo che quella teologia À esplicitamente referibile all’itinerario della loro conversione e al travaglio interiore che lo ha accompagnato./ E’ chiaro che quando Lutero legge e medita le opere di Agostino e di Paolo, la sua reflessione À alimentata dalle affinit— tra la propria religiosa e quella degli autori che ha davanti. L’esempio di questi maestri, poi gli, serve per illuminare meglio e chiarire la propria esperienza religiosa interiore e spirituale”. Pani, 1983, 19 – 21 4 On Luther’s largely debated theological breakthrough in relation to late mediaeval theology, see Saarnivaara, 1951 (esp. pp. 53 – 120) and McGrath, 1985. Luther’s theological breakthrough has been motif of a large and warm debate in recent scholarship. After all, the young Luther’s concept of justification, that articulus stantis et cadentis ecclesiae (and the great cornerstone in the modern ecumenical theology orienting the Roman Catholic-Lutheran dialogue) is deeply intertwined with the phenomenon. Here, the central problem leading Luther’s scholars against each other has to do with the difficulty of providing a sustainable account of the nature or dimension of such a breakthrough and the moment in which it took place. The attempt to point to a precise moment in which Luther started to draw clear lines of

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programme was of an exclusive theological nature. He had never conceived any plan of separation from Rome or founding a new church5. It is with this in mind that I intend to make an analysis of Luther’s approach to the doctrines of Original Sin and justification in one of his most important early writings – Commentary or Lectures on Romans. The issue itself is complex and involves a vast net of relationships between theological concepts which assume a fundamental importance in the understanding of the young Luther’s theology. Therefore, for the sake of clarity, a precise thematic realm must be defined here. In the analysis of Luther’s concept of Original Sin, my focus will be on his reading of Rom. 5:12 – 19. Since Augustine (the great theologian of the Fall), the intimate relationship between sin (mainly that of Adam, that is, Humanity’s) and the Christian vision of man and human nature became a a mainstream in the Western theological tradition. Luther’s Pauline exegesis, by emphasizing the remaining concupiscence, constitutes one of the locus classicus within the Christian theological anthropology. The sin, the strong proneness to sin i. e. concupiscentia carnis that all inherit from Adam, not only defined Luther’s understanding of the fallen humankind, but also played a key-role in his understanding of the process of salvation. This is particularly evident in his theological assertion according to which a justified human being remains simultaneously sinner and righteous (simul iustus et peccator). The finest arguments produced by the young Luther regarding the issue of simul iustus et peccator are in his exegesis of Romans 7. Thus, for this particular issue the focus will be Luther’s interpretation of this chapter, in particular verses 14 – 25. Concerning this issue (as well as some others) I will, always when possible, take into account the question whether it is accurate or not to consider such teachings of Augustinian origin or background (by “Augustinian” I mean only the teachings of Augustine himself)6. demarcation between the late mediaeval theology (mostly the Nominalist tradition) and the “vera theologia” he claimed to have presented is more and more regarded as unproductive. Luther’s theological breakthrough was noting else than a fruit of years of troubled exegetical work added to his own personal and daily anguish and experience as a believer, monk, pastor and teacher. A. Beutel is right when he concludes that “the debate as to whether Luther experienced his Reformation breakthrough in 1514/15 or somewhat later, in 1518, which has not been settled as yet, loses more and more of its importance when Luther’s Reformation theology is not looked at as sudden event, which might even have occurred overnight, but rather as a complex developmental process spreading out over several years, furthering sudden insights on a continuous basis”. Beutel, 2003, 7. My thesis is that such a breakthrough is to be seen as a long process which, nevertheless started gaining momentum, namely during the period which covers the production of his Lectures on Romans, a work that represented a defining stage in the maturation of Luther’s Reformation doctrine of justification. 5 Maury, 1962, 90 – 91. 6 On the polemics concerning the comprehensiveness and complexity assumed by the words such as “Augustinian” or “Augustinianism” in the Middle Ages and Reformation see Saak, 2002 and McGrath, 1981a, 247 – 267.

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Then I will proceed with an examination of justification. Priority will be given to the issues such as the relationship between humility, faith and justification; the crucial importance of a proper distinction between Law and Gospel/grace (which Luther considered “the greatest skill in Christendom” and the most difficult task of theology) and their specific realms and role within the process of justification and the economy of salvation. This matter necessarily leads to another central topic of the young Luther’s doctrine of justification – the problem of merit, a problem to which must be attached a great importance when it comes to Luther’s attitude towards the late-Medieval theology.

2.2

Hereditatis paterne ex Adam: Original Sin and Luther’s portray of the fallen mankind (with particular emphasis on Rom. 5:12 – 19 and 7:14 – 25)

That the (re)interpretation of Augustine played a crucial role in young Luther’s reforming programme can be proved with the fact that, since the very beginning of public disputations occurred before and after the posting of the 95 thesis, the Reformer evoked Augustine’s authority. It is true that Mediaeval theology as a whole went beyond the Augustinian synthesis. However, as throughout the the Middle Ages, in the Reformation period, the most polemical theological debates easily came down to the question whether Augustine’s teachings were to be accepted or rejected. One of the most criticized aspects of Augustine’s doctrine of Original Sin had to do with its ethical and soteriological implications. It was precisely in these realms that Luther tended to follow and use the Church Father’s teachings against the recentiores doctores. Luther had the impression that some his own contemporaries (and opponents), intending to deny the real consequences of Adamic sin, easily shielded themselves in a claim according to which Augustine overreacted in his struggle against Pelagians. He regarded such a claim as outrageously absurd and vehemently refuted it in the opening of Disputatio contra Scholasticam theologiam (1517). Here he recalled that to consider that Augustine overreacted in his struggle against the heretics (especially Pelagians) was the same as saying that almost the totality of the Church Father’s writings was filled with lies and was to be discredited. According to Luther, this would be to attribute the victory to the heretics (“Dicere Augustinus contra haereticos excessive loquatur, Est dicere, Augustinum fere ubique mentitum esse. Contra dictum

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commune. Idem est Pelagianis et omnibus haereticis tribuere occasionem triunfandi, immo victoriam”)7. In my opinion, there can be no doubt that Luther’s doctrine of Original Sin revealed his great indebtedness to Augustine. The evidence in the sources suggests that in his approach to Original Sin, Luther read Paul under the orientation of Augustine. In some aspects such as the transmission of Original Sin and its effects upon human nature, he almost limited himself to reproducing Augustine’s argument by quoting extensively the anti-Pelagian writings of the African theologian. In order to make this plain, I shall start with the analysis of the concept of Original Sin and its exegetical bases as understood by the young Luther. Like Augustine, Luther had not even the slightest hesitation that Original Sin, the guilt and proneness to sin inherited from Adam, was clearly taught throughout the Scriptures. Paul’s words in Rom. 5:12sqq, he stressed, left no room for any sort of doubt, none whatsoever. Like Augustine, he read the passage as an ensemble, up to the verse 19 and placed I Cor. 15:22 in the core of his arguments. All, without exception, even the holiest of human beings, the apostles themselves, Luther pointed out, carried the sin of Adam. On account of this sin, each and every human being faces a strong proneness to sin8. Prior to any doing or willing, every human being shares Adam’s sin. Augustine argued that this is explained by a mysterious naturalis iuris propagatione which involves all humankind in Original Sin. Luther was clear in explaining that before any moral or ethical procedure which characterize the occurrence of actual sins, Original Sin involved human beings. The Reformer identified Original sin with the “iniquity” mentioned by the Psalmsist in Psalms 51:5. Such an iniquity, he writes, exists whether I perform or even know about it. I am conceived in it, but I did not do it. It began to rule in me even before I began to live. It is simultaneous with me. For if this were only the sin of my parents who conceived me, then surely I would not have been conceived in it, for they would have sinned even before I was conceived. Therefore this iniquity and sin existed and they were not mine; I was conceived in them without my consent. But now they have become mine since now I understand that I do evil and disobey the Law. […] This sin is now my own, i. e. by my will it has been approved and accepted by my consent, because, without grace I have been unable to overcome it in myself; therefore it has overcome me, and I am, because of that same tinder and evil lust, through my work also an actual sinner and not merely under original sin9. 7 WA 1, 224, l. 7. 8 WA 56, 321, l. 10: “Sic itaque omnes Apostoli et sancti confitentur peccatum et concupiscentiam in nobis manere, donec corpus in cinerem resoluatur et aliud resuscitetur sine concupiscentia et peccato, Vt 1. Pet. vltimo: ‘Nouos Vero celos et nouam terram et promissa ipsius expectamus, in quibus Iustitia habitat’, q. d. quia in ista peccatum habitat”. 9 WA 56, 287, l. 1: “Ideo non dixit: in iniquitatibus meis, Sed ‘iniquitatibus’, q. d. etiam est ista iniquitas me non operante aut sciente. conceptus sum in ipsa et non feci illam. Cepit in me

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Augustine, as it has been said, spoke of concupiscentia carnis meaning sinful desires, longing or predisposition to sin. But, sometimes, he was not clear whether he considered this concupiscence to be itself sin stricto senso in the regenerated human beings. Luther, basing himself in Augustine’s anti-Pelagian works, especially Contra Julianum, insistently maintained that the remaining concupiscence is itself sin. Some scholars sees this detail as a proof that the Reformer twisted Augustine’s theological message10. In my opinion, this was hardly the case. It may be a more radical approach on concupiscentia carnis, but the theological message here is not different from Augustine’s. The Church Father’s deeply negative approach to concupiscence was partly the result of his long confrontation with Julian. Julian maintained a fairly positive and optimistic approach to concupiscence. Luther’s radical approach to concupiscentia carnis has also to be contextualized. Some of Luther’s opponents had a much more colourful conception of human nature. They approached concupiscence with a different attitude than that of the Reformer. It is never too much to recall that one of the points of discordia between Luther and some lateMediaeval theologians and some his direct opponents was not only whether this concupiscence remains after baptism, but also its true nature. Does it remain even after baptism? Can it be considered itself sin? Luther’s radical approach to concupiscence was certainly a reaction to what he considered a foolishly optimistic treatment of concupiscentia carnis. His opponents, he claimed, even denied concupiscence as sin. The recurrent references to the alleged “inexistent sin” in young Luther, one must remember, had to do with the question of remaining concupiscence (of utmost importance to understand Luther’s doctrine of simul iustus et peccator). This same issue would later be in the centre of debate with his opponents, namely on the Trent decree on Original Sin11. According to Luther, sin is always going away from God, but this

regnare, antequam ego cepi esse, et simul mecum. […] Igitur ista iniquitas et peccatum fuerunt et non mea; conceptus sum in ipsis et non consensi. Sed nunc facta sunt mea. Nunc enim intelligo, Quod male ago et contra legem. […] Ideo nunc peccatum etiam meum est i. e. mea voluntate approbatum et per consensum acceptum, quia sine gratia non potui ipsum vincere in me; ideo vincit me et sum eodem fomite et concupiscentia propter opus nunc ipse quoque actualis peccator et non tantum originalis” (English translation LW 25, 274). 10 See, Pani, 1989, 270. 11 See, for instance the famous 5th Canon on original of the Council of Trent: “Qui autem dixerit, sacramento de baptismi rite suscepto hoc originale peccatum et culpam non toli, sed adhuc manentem non imputari, anathema sit. Derogat enim gratiae Dei venientis per Christum, et veram et abo mini ecclesia catholica praedicatam sacramentorum tollit ‘Qui enim mortuus est’ per baptismum in Christo ‘iustificatus est a peccato’, ut ait Apostolus”, Decreti de peccato originali minuta ». in Concilium Tridentinum: diarorum, actorum, epistolarum, tractatuum, Nova collectio, tomus duodecimus, (edidit Societas Goerresiana) Friburgi Brisgoviae Herder & Co, Typographi Editores Pontificii, 1930, p. 568.

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desertion is inspired by an evil impulse. This impulse is concupiscence of the flesh. Being the source of sin, it is itself sin12. What is crucial here is to take into consideration that Luther discussed the issue of remaining concupiscence as integrated in the issue of simul iustus et peccator. Saints are simul iustus et peccator. How explain this? For Luther it was quite simple: every single human being carries with him sinful desires on account of the concupiscence of the flesh. So every single human being is inherently sinner. But the righteous are those who acknowledge this fact, who assume themselves as sinners and self-accuse (Sic Iustus in principio est accusator sui). On account of this self-accusation the righteous one is regarded by the mercy of God also as righteous. Sin can be said to, at the same time, remain and not to remain in the saint (“Igitur Mirabilis et dulcissima misericordia Dei, Qui nos simul peccatores et non-peccatores habet. Simul manet peccatum et non manet”)13. Here is the theological message of Luther’s radical approach to the remaining concupiscence: this proneness to sin is to be taken seriously and it is a grave error to think that it can be eliminated through any human endeavour in this life. God’s mercy alone is the way out of this problem. It is in his promise of deliverance that we must believe; this is what makes us righteous. In other words, the doctrine of remaining concupiscence in young Luther is another tool at the service of his doctrine of justification by faith alone14. Unlike Scotus and Ockham who taught that Original Sin is removed at baptism, Luther, in the footsteps of Augustine, argued that the guilt of Original Sin alone is removed since God decided not to impute Original Sin to us. The sin 12 See, for instance WA 56, 271, l. 1: “Non tantum hic loquitur de peccatis in opere, Verbo et cogitatione factis, Sed et de fomite, Vt infra 7.: ‘Non ego, Sed quod habitat in me peccatum.’ Et ibidem Apellat ipsum ‘passiones peccatorum’ i. e. desyderia, affectiones et inclinationes ad peccata, quas dicit operari fructum morti. Ergo Actuale (sicut a theologis vocatur) verius est peccatum i. e. opus et fructus peccati, peccatum autem ipsa passio fomes et concupiscentia siue pronitas ad malum et difficultas ad bonum sicut infra: ‘Concupiscentiam nesciebam esse peccatum.’ Si enim ‘operantur’, ergo non sunt ipsa opera, Sed operantes, Vt fructificet; ergo non sunt fructus. Igitur a Contrario: Sicut Iustitia nostra ex Deo Est ipsa ipsa Inclinatio ad bonum et declinatio a malo interius per gratiam data, opera autem sunt potius fructus Iustitie?, Ita peccatum est ipsa declinatio a bono et inclinatio ad malum. Et opera peccati fructus sunt huius peccati, Vt infra clarius Videbitur 7. c. et 8”. 13 WA 56, 270, l. 9. 14 WA 56, 271, l. 24: “Et error est, Quod hoc malum possit per opera sanari, Cum Experientia testetur, quod in quantumlibet bene operemur, relinquitur concupiscentia ista ad malum et nemo mundus ab illa, nec Infans vnius diei. Sed misericordia Dei est, Quod hoc manet et non pro peccato reputatur iis, qui Inuocant eum et gemunt pro liberatione sua. Tales enim facile et opera cauent, quia querunt Iustificari omni studio. Sic ergo in nobis sumus peccatores Et tamen reputante Deo Iusti per fidem. Quia credimus promittenti, quod nos liberet, dummodo interim perseueremus, ne peccatum regnet, sed Sustineamus ipsum, donec auferat ipsum”.

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itself remains and the “works of sin” are the fruits of this sin we all share with Adam. For Luther, as for Augustine, concupiscence remained in the baptised who deal daily with its attacks. Luther perhaps only differed from Augustine when he insisted that this concupiscence was itself is sin (however, concerning the issue whether concupiscence is itself sin or not, in Augustine’s theological reasoning is, sometimes, not entirely clear). Augustine used the terms concupiscentia carnis to speak of a proneness to sin, sinful desires, the mark and effect of Original Sin. He spoke of concupiscentia carnis as an identifiable cause and the specific mean of the transmission and propagation of Original Sin. Luther was peremptory in identifying our inherent sinfulness, with the fomes peccati or fomes concupiscentiae that he believed to remain in the baptised Christians and is itself sin (tinder, the term fomes, occurs amongst the Scholastic theologians, meaning precisely the human’s natural proneness to sin). According to Luther, this is what Paul mentioned in Rom. 7:20 when he declared “it is no longer I who do it, but the sin that dwells in me”. Such concupiscence remains and not even day-old infants are cleansed of it (“relinquitur concupiscentia ista ad malum et nemo mundus ab illa, nec Infans vnius diei”)15. To deny this, Luther insisted, is to minimize the effects of Original Sin. Accordingly, against what he considered an attempt to minimize the effects of the Adamic sin, Luther committed himself to providing textual proofs not only regarding the presence of such a sin in us but also of its gravity. The Pauline corpus, especially the epistle to the Romans, was chosen by the young Luther as the main source to accomplish the task. Like Augustine, Luther regarded Rom. 5:12 – 19, along with passages such as I Cor. 15:22 or Psalms 51:5, as eloquent scriptural passages supporting his teachings on Original Sin. Was the Apostle in fact speaking here about Original Sin? Luther’s answer to this question was peremptory in tone. It is beyond doubt that here Paul was talking about Original Sin and not actual sin (“Quod Apostolus hoc loco de peccato originali loquatur et [non de] actuali”)16. Before advancing with his famous definition of Original Sin in Lectures on Romans, he undertook an exegetical effort which resulted in a detailed analysis of the passage and ten propositions based on Biblical and patristic evidences, to support his positions. It may be useful to report some of them. The first two revealed a direct reliance on Augustine and are based on the understanding of the phrase “per unum hominem”. According to Luther, Paul was talking about Original Sin since he wrote “through one man”. Like Augustine, Luther followed the translation of “di 2mºr !mtq¾pou” into the Latin “per unum hominem” (through one man). The Reformer gave his endorsement to the 15 WA 56, 271, l. 25. 16 WA 56, 309, l. 21.

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African Church Father’s propagation thesis (widely present in the opposition to the Pelagian imitation thesis). On this matter, Luther did not introduce any new argument. He limited himself to reproducing Augustine’s explanation. Like the Church Father, in Rom. 5:12, the Reformer claimed, if the Apostle had actual sin in mind, then he would have written “through Devil” and not “through one man”17. Furthermore, based on one of the differences between Original Sin and actual sin is the understanding that Paul would not have written “through one man” if he was referring to actual sin. Actual sin is committed by many and, in this case, each one brings his/her own sin into the world (“Et Chrisostomus hoc loco: ‘Manifestum’, inquit, ‘quia non peccatum illud, quod ex transgressione legis, Sed quod ex Ade inobedientia, hoc est, quod contaminauit omnia”)18. The third argument was based on the phrase “the sin came into the world”. No actual sin, Luther explained, has ever entered into the world. Each man’s sin hangs over him, and it does not come upon anybody else; it remains in each one individually. “Sin came into the world” means nothing else but that the world became guilty and sinful on account of one man’s transgression, as it is clear 17 WA 56, 309 – 310, l. 23: “Primo, quod dicit: ‘per vnum hominem’. Vnde b. Augustinus contra Pelagianos li. 1. de pec. meri. et re.: ‘Si Apostolus peccatum illud commemorare voluisset, quod in hunc mundum non propagatione, Sed imitatione intrauerit, non eius principem Adam, Sed diabolum diceret, de quo dicitur Sap. 2.: “Imitantur autem eum, qui sunt ex parte eius”. Ideo et Adam eum fuit imitatus et principem habuit peccati sui diabolum. Hic autem dicit: “per hominem”. Actualia enim omnia per diabolum intrant et intrauerunt in mundum, Sed originale per hominem vnum.’ Ibidem b. Augustinus: ‘Proinde Apostolus cum peccatum illud ac mortem commemoraret, que ab vno in omnes propagatione transissent, eum principem posuit, a quo propagatio generis humani sumpsit exordium”. Et alia pulchra. Luther also made reference to Augustine’s quotation from Jonh Crysostom in Contra Iulianum. But here would be pertinent to compare Luther’s positions with that of Augustine in De peccatorum meritis… I, IX, 9 against the distorted opinions (detorquere opinionem) of the Pelagians who denied corporal sin as a result of Original Sin and denied the heritage of Original Sin in newborn and consequently denied the need of infant baptism: “Hoc autem apostolicum testimonium in quo ait, Per unum hominem peccatum intravit in mundum, et per peccatum mors, conari eos quidem in aliam novam detorquere opinionem, tuis litteris intimasti; sed quidnam illud sit, quo in his verbis opinentur, tacuisti. Qantum autem ex aliis comperi, hco ibi sentiunt, quod et mors ista quae illic commemorata est, non sit corporis, quam nolunt Adam peccando meruisse, sed anima quae in ipso peccato fit: et ipsum peccatum non propagatione in alios homines ex primo homine, sed imitatione transisse. Hinc enim etiam in parvulis nolunt credere per Baptismum solvi originale peccatum, quod in nascentibus nullum esse omnino contendunt”. PL, 44 114. Augustine was quite firm in his arguments on the historicity of original sin. It was an act which took place in the history of mankind. Adam is the mankind. See L. Renwart, 1991, 535 – 542. In his De civitate Dei where the Church Father provides the first Christian Theology of History, sin is defined as the very motor of historical process “Ac per hoc a libri arbitrii malo usu series calamitatis huius exorta est, quae humanum genus origine depravata, uelut radice corrupta, usque ad secundae mortis exitium, quae non habet finem, solis eis exceptis qui per Dei gratiam liberantur, miseriarum conexione perducit” (cf. XIII, 14). 18 WA 56, 310, l. 8. As quoted by Augustine in Contra Julianum I, VI, 27.

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from verse 1919. Fourth, Luther recalled a consequence of the Original Sin – death. It is unquestionable that when Paul stated that death came through sin he was not referring to actual sin. The death of the world (meaning of mankind) cannot be seen as the consequence of the personal sin of each man, since even those who have not personally sinned die. So it is to be concluded that, if death came by sin and if without sin there would have been no death, then sin is in all of us. Consequently, the Apostle was not talking about personal sin here. To teach otherwise is erroneous since it would be false to say that death had entered through sin, but true to say that it came through the will of God20. Moreover, Paul said that death came upon all men. If such death was on account of actual sin it would have come upon he who sins individually21. The sixth argument is a grammatical consideration. The word “sin”, Luther notes, is in singular. It would not have been so if Paul wanted it to be understood as actual sin22. The seventh argument is a theological approach to the phrase which was one of the main themes of dispute between Augustine and Julian – 1(v ¢j p²mte r 5laqtom, translated as “in quo omnes peccaverunt” (in which all have sinned). There was nothing else, Luther explained, in which all have sinned but Original Sin, since, apart from it, i. e. concerning actual sins, each one sins individually23. The tenth argument is a soteriological and christological consideration which implied the well-known parallelism between Adam and Christ. It was not on account of his actual sins that Adam is the image of Christ that was

19 WA 56, 310, l. 13: “Tertio, quod dixit: “Intrat in mundum’. Sed nullum actuale intrat in mundum, Sed vniuscuiusque peccatum est super ipsum, Vt Ezechiel. 18.: ‘Vnusquisque peccatum suum portabit’. Ideo non intrat in alios, Sed manet in ipso solo. Quod autem ‘Mundus’ hoc loco non celum et terram, Sed homines in mundo significet, patet ex supra 3. c.: ‘Quomodo Deus Iudicabit hunc mundum?’ Et 1. Iohann. 5.: ‘Totus mundus in maligno positus est.’ Iohann. 3.: ‘Sic Deus dilexit mundum.’ Et infra: ‘Si mundus vos odit’ etc. Item: ‘Ego elegi vos de mundo.’ Et ratione, Quia Corporalis mundus insensibilis est nec capax peccati, Vt in ipsum intret peccatum aut mors. Non enim moritur nec peccat, Sed homo peccat et moritur : Ergo peccatum Intrare in mundum E[s]t Mundum reum fieri et peccatorem per vnum hominem. Vt infra: ‘Si vnius delicto peccatores constituti sunt multi”. 20 WA 56, 310, l. 26: “Quarto « per Ipsum mors, Quia certum est, Quod mors mundi (i. e. omnium hominum) non de proprio peccato venit, Cum moriantur (Vt sequitur), qui non peccauerunt. Si ergo Mors per peccatum et sine peccato non esset mors, Ergo peccatum in omnibus est. Non proprium, ergo. Alioquin falsum esset, quod per peccatum mors intrasset, Sed per voluntatem Dei dicere debuit”. 21 WA 56, 310, l. 32: “Quinto “Quia in omnes mors pertransiit, proprio autem, etiamsi mors intret, tamen solum in ipsum, qui operatur, Vt lex dicit: ‘Non moriantur patres pro filiis’ etc”. 22 WA 56, 311, l. 1: “Sexto Quia ‘peccatum’ dicit singulariter de vno. Quia si de actuali intelligi vellet, pluraliter diceret, Vt Infra: ‘Ex multis delictis’, Vbi manifeste illud vnum singulare cum multis aliis comparat, Et ex eo maiorem efficatiam gratie concludens quam peccati esse”. 23 WA 56, 311, l. 5: “Septimo ‘In quo omnes peccauerunt’. Sed nullum aliud est, ‘in quo omnes peccauerunt’, proprium peccatum, Sed Vnusquisque in suo peccat“.

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to come, but rather on account of the propagation of his sin to the whole humankind24. Characteristic of Luther’s doctrine of Original Sin (as in Augustine, in reaction to what the Reformer considered to be the attempt to minimize the Adamic sin) was the constant emphasis on the magnitude of this sin of the origins, laying a special stress on its consequence. He was convinced that the Scholastic definition of Original Sin in terms of of privatio alone was a reductionistic approach and did not express the real gravity of the Adamic sin. To identify Original Sin with the loss of original righteousness or some particular quality of the soul was not enough. Original Sin was something far deeper and troublesome. This concern decisively determined young Luther’s definition of Original Sin. The clearest of all definitions of Original Sin in young Luther’s writings was recorded in his shcolium on Rom. 5:12, where the Reformer provided a definition of the Adamic sin against the “subtle distinctions of the Scholastic theologians”. To the question what is the Original Sin, Luther answered as follow: First, following the precision of arguments of the Scholastic theologians, it is privation or lack of original righteousness. Righteousness, however, according to them is only something subjective in the will, and therefore also the lack of it, its opposite. This definition follows the category of a quality, according to the Logic and Metaphysics of Aristotle. Second, however, following the Apostle and the simplicity of meaning in Christ Jesus, it is not about the privation of a quality in the will, nor even only a lack of light in the mind or of power in the memory, but particularly it is a total lack of uprighteousness and of the power of all the faculties, be it of the body, be it of the soul or of the whole inner and outer man. On top of all this, it is a proneness to evil. It is a nausea towards the good, a disgust for light and wisdom, and a delight in error and darkness, a flight from and abomination for all sort of good works, a pursuit of evil […]. Thus as the ancient Fathers rightly pointed out, this Original Sin, is the very desire for sin, the law of the flesh, the law of the members, the tyrant, the original infirmity, etc. For it is 24 WA 56, 311, l. 14: “Decimo: Quia per Illud Adam est forma futuri, Sed non per actuale, alias omnes essent forma Christi, Sed nunc solus Adam propter diffusionem vnius peccati sui in omnes est forma Christi. See also p. 317, l. 14: “Hoc Chrisostomus referente b. Augustino sic: ‘In similitudinem’, inquit, ‘transgressionis Ade, qui est forma futuri, propterea et forma est Christi Adam. Quomodo est forma? aiunt. Quoniam Sicut ille ex semet nascentibus, quamuis non manducauerint de ligno, factus est causa mortis, que per cibum inducta est, Ita et Christus iis, qui ex ipso sunt, tametsi nihil Iuste egerint, factus est prouisor Iustitie, quam per crucem nobis omnibus condonauit.’ Ergo Similitudo preuaricationis Ade in nobis est, quia morimur, quasi similiter peccassemus. Et similitudo Iustificationis Christi in nobis est, quia viuimus, quasi similiter Iustitiam fecissemus. Ideo propter hanc similitudinem Adam ‘est forma futuri’ post eum Christi. Immo Vt Christus hanc similitudinem auferret et nobis suam daret, ‘factus est in similitudinem hominum’, Phil 2., Et missus a patre ‘in similitudinem carnis peccati’. Et ita ‘sicut in Adam omnes moriuntur, Ita et in Christo omnes viuificabuntur’. Vnde iam magis Accedo Chrisostomo, Quod ‘in similitudinem’ ad verbum‘regnauit’ referendum sit”.

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like a sick person whose mortal illness is not only the loss of health of one of his members, but it is in addition to the lack of health in all his members, the weakness of all of his senses and powers, resulting even in the dislike for those things which are healthful and in the desire for those thing which makes him sick.25

Luther made few points here. He clearly stated his preference for the Augustinian definition of Original Sin over that of the Scholastics which he rejected. As many other passages of the Lectures on Romans, here, with the term “Antiqui patres Sancti” Luther means simply Augustine. This was hardly surprising. After all, what was at stake here was precisely what Augustine considered to be at stake in his debate with Julian, namely human salvation. Luther did not paint this bleak image of human nature just for personal caprice. He did so in order to defend a certain understanding of human salvation, namely that once fallen into sin, human nature collapsed to the point that it cannot work for its salvation. The process of salvation, from the very beginning to its conclusion, is, thus, God’s doing, not humans. According to Luther, Original Sin “distorts, even realigns the totus homo, the whole person. It is more than a deficiency in a localized ‘part’ of human person”. Original Sin is more than privatio. “While it includes a privation of all uprightness and power of the totus homo, it is in addition a positive reality, a real

25 WA 56, 312, l. 2: “Primo secundum subtilitates Scholasticorum theologorum Est priuatio seu carentia Iustitie originalis. Iustitia autem secundum eos Est in uoluntate tantum subiectiue, ergo est priuatio eius opposita. Quia scil. est in predicamento qualitates secundum Logicam et methaphysicam. Secundo autem secundum Apostolum et simplicitatem sensus in Christo Ihesu Est non tantum priuatio qualitatis in uoluntate, immo nec tantum priuatio lucis in intellectu, virtutis in memoria, Sed prorsus privatio uniuerse rectitudinis et potentie omnium uirium tam corporis quam anime ac totius hominis interioris et exterioris. Insuper et pronitas ipsa ad malum, Nausea ad bonum, fastidium lucis et sapientie dilectio autem erroris ac tenebrarum, fuga et abominatio bonorum operum, Cursus autem ad malum […]. Igitur Sicut Antiqui patres Sancti recte dixerunt: Peccatum illud originis Est ipse fomes, lex carnis, lex membrorum, languar nature, Tyrannus, Morbus originis etc. Sed Vltra sanitatem omnium membrorum priuatam debilitatio omnium sensuum et uirium Insuper Nausea eorum, qui salubria sunt, et cupiditas eorum, que noxia sunt”. Looking into this definition of Original Sin it is not hard to see that Luther’s approach to the issue, in large extant, mirrors his personal religious experience. A. S. Wood is right in noting the need of taking into consideration the Reformer’s religious experience in order to understand his theological insights, namely when it comes to the issue of Original Sin. “Read in light of Luther’s autobiographical confessions”, Wood writes, “his doctrine of original sin, like of Paul himself, is seen to be born out of a profound religious experience. He does not deal with this difficult theme either as a detached Philosopher or as a merely academic theologian. His theology is always the theology of experience. That is not to condemn it as ‘subjective’. Luther would hardly have recognised such a category. By experience he means Divinehuman confrontation in which God visits man and addresses him. In all genuine Christian experience the stress is laid not on man hearing, still less feeling, but on God speaking”. Wood, 1950a, 8.

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‘propensity toward evil’”26. Though the above outlined definition may have some influences of Lombard, there can be no doubt that it is essentially inspired in Augustine’s portrayal of the fallen human nature. It is hardly possible not to see in this passage the Augustinian image of a congenital pathology which, since Adam’s fall, fuels sinful desires in human nature: the proneness to sin which compromised human freedom of choice (the capacity to wish and remain in good)27. It is hardly necessary to say that such a gravity ascribed to Original Sin is intimately connected with Luther’s doctrine of salvation. The Augustinian theological formulations such as massa damnata and rebellion of flesh against the spirit (on account of Original Sin) was particularly suitable for Luther’s anthropological and soteriological insights. In Augustine’s doctrine of massa damnata and disorder inherent in fallen human nature, Luther found a fine parallel with his teaching according to which, after sin, human nature entered into a state of deprivation and remained curved upon itself. The remedy for this disease is no other but God’s grace. I will return to these issues in due course In order to explain the theology inherent in the doctrine of Original Sin, Luther followed the Augustinian pattern. Often he posed the same question as Augustine only to provide similar answers to those of the Church Father. A clear example was his interpretation of the words “in the likeness of Adam’s prevarication (Rom. 5:14)”. Augustine understood the expression to apply to those who had not made use of their own free will to commit sin, i. e. the little ones who, though without free will, share Adam’s sin28. Luther’s interpretation was the very same. He based himself on the doctrine of hereditary guilt to emphasise the difference between sin and transgression. He did so by stressing that such difference made it possible to argue that though not all have committed the action, sin remained as a guilt, the very guilt which bonds the entire mankind in Adam (who alone sinned by both action and guilt, since he committed the first sin). How could it be, he asked, that all have sinned and yet some have not sinned, unless it means that all have sinned in Adam and in Adam’s sin, but not all have sinned in the likeness of Adam’s sin or transgression (“Quomodo enim omnes peccauerunt et non peccauerunt aliqui, Nisi Quod omnes peccauerunt in Adam et

26 Jenson, 2006, 55 – 56. 27 Giancarlo Pani (1983) tries to argue that Luther radicalized Augustine’s views based on Expositio quarundam propositionum ex epistola ad Romanos, a work in relation to which Augustine later came to suggest many corrections (Pani, 1989, 271). I think that is not the case. Though Luther often quoted this Augustine’s work in the discussion of the problem of Original Sin and in his reading of Rom. 5:12, his key ideas were taken from the anti-Pelagian writings. 28 pecc. merit. I, XI, 13.

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peccato Adae, Sed non omnes peccauerunt in similitudinem peccati Adae, immo preuaricationis Adae?) ”?29 As for Augustine, Original Sin provided Luther with the basis for a Christcentered soteriological discourse. Such an interpretation, obviously, found its roots on the parallel between Adam, and Christ, the second Adam, inspired by several Pauline passages such as Rom. 8:3, Philip. 2:7, but above all I Cor. 15:22. The same way that Adam became the cause of death for those who are born of him, even though they have not eaten from the tree, Christ was made a provider of righteousness for those who belong to Him30. Following the Augustinian distinction between nature (natura) and defects or vices of nature (vitia naturarum), Luther explained that it was the Adamic bond that made of human29 WA 56, 316, l. 20: “B. Augustinus Vbi supra sic Exponit i. e. in eos, qui nondum sua et propria voluntate peccauerunt sicut ille. Et sic etiam B. Ambrosius intelligit, Qui illud ‘in similitudinem’ refert ad proximum verbum ‘non peccauerunt’, alioquin nisi Apostolus determinasset hoc verbum ‘Non peccauerunt’, sibi contradixisset superius: ‘In quo omnes peccauerunt’. Quomodo enim omnes peccauerunt et non peccauerunt aliqui, Nisi Quod omnes peccauerunt in Adam et peccato Ade, Sed non omnes peccauerunt in similitudinem peccati Ade, immo preuaricationis Ade? Quasi aliud sit peccatum et preuaricatio, quia peccatum vt reatus manet, preuaricatio autem vt actus transit. Ergo peccauerunt omnes non actu, Sed reatu eodem, Solus autem Adam actu et reatu simul quoad primum peccatum”. Here Luther shows himself aware of Augustine’s interpretation of Chrysostom’s explanation on the issue (Chrysostom’s Homilia X. in ep. Ad romanos, is quoted by Augustine in Contra Julianus, I, VI, 27, PL 44, p. 659). The reformer endorses the Greek Father’s explanation, stressing that this takes the phrase “even over them who have not sinned” as being in parenthetical position. The expression “who have not sinned” must be understood as referring to personal sin in a stricter sense than Paul used above when he said “in which all have sinned: “Stapulensis autem Aliter hic sentit Et contradictionem illam ‘In. quo omnes peccauerunt’, Et *‘Qui non peccauerunt’ aliter conciliat. Sed dubito, immo timeo, ne male conciliet. Illud autem, quod ait ‘In similitudinem’ referri ad verbum ‘Regnauit’ propter Iohannem Crisostomum admitto, Qui et ipse hunc Locum sic exponit dicens: ‘Quomodo regnauit? In similitudinem transgressionis Ade.’ Et sic illud ‘Etiam in eos, qui non peccauerunt’ in parenthesi positum accipit. Et tunc illud ‘Non peccauerunt’ intelligendum est scil. proprio peccato et strictius, quam supra dixit: ‘in quo omnes peccauerunt’. Sicut idem doctor de paruulis dicit: ‘Quapropter et infantes baptisamus, quamuis peccata non habentes’ sc. propria, Vt B. Augustinus ex eodem auctore probat li. 2. contra Iulianum latissime”. WA 56, 317, l. 1. 30 WA 56, 317, l. 14: “Hoc Chrisostomus referente b. Augustino sic: ‘In similitudinem’, inquit, ‘transgressionis Ade, qui est forma futuri, propterea et forma est Christi Adam. Quomodo est forma? aiunt. Quoniam Sicut ille ex semet nascentibus, quamuis non manducauerint de ligno, factus est causa mortis, que per cibum inducta est, Ita et Christus iis, qui ex ipso sunt, tametsi nihil Iuste egerint, factus est prouisor Iustitie?, quam per crucem nobis omnibus condonauit.’ Ergo Similitudo preuaricationis Ade in nobis est, quia morimur, quasi similiter peccassemus. Et similitudo Iustificationis Christi in nobis est, quia viuimus, quasi similiter Iustitiam fecissemus. Ideo propter hanc similitudinem Adam ‘est forma futuri’ post eum Christi. Immo Vt Christus hanc similitudinem auferret et nobis suam daret, ‘factus est in similitudinem hominum’, Phil 2., Et missus a patre ‘in similitudinem carnis peccati’. Et ita ‘sicut in Adam omnes moriuntur, Ita et in Christo omnes viuificabuntur’. Vnde iam magis Accedo Chrisostomo, Quod ‘in similitudinem’ ad verbum ‘regnauit’ referendum sit”.

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kind the old man (vetus homo), not because it was created with any natural fault, but rather because it springs from Adam, not according to nature, but according to vices (“Vetus homo Est, qualis ex Adam natus est, non secundum naturam, Sed secundum vitium naturae. Natura enim bona est, Sed vitium malum”)31. Thus, from Adam, mankind received a penalty leading it to condemnation; from God mankind freely received in Christ the only gift avoiding such a condemnation – God’s grace32. Luther’s approach to Original Sin and human nature was certainly the main issue leading many to consider the Reformer a “pessimist”. There is no doubt that, like Augustine, Luther’s portrayal of the fallen humankind was very pessimistic. Both theologians are pessimistic regarding the ability of humankind, unassisted by grace, to perform what is good. It is only in this realm that one can accurately speak of pessimism. In truth, such a pessimism provided the basis for a rather optimistic approach regarding salvation. Both Luther and Augustine stressed the human wretchedness before God but this very wretchedness also served the purpose of making plain the ineffable value of God’s redemptive plan revealed in us. After all, the Son of God Himself gave His life for our ransom. Not even the most pure of angels had such a privilege. Pessimism and optimism here are a sort of two sides of the same shield. It is to be remembered that if it is true that in the issue in the relationship between Original Sin and its soteriological implications, the magnitude of the Adamic sin was crucial to Luther’s reasoning, it is also true that beyond this insistence on the magnitude of Adam’s sin lay a great concern which is ultimately present in Luther’s doctrine of Christian humility. The Reformer understood that the portrayal of Original Sin merely as privation of original righteousness would leave room for lukewarmness and collapse the whole concept of penitence. It would promote pride and presumptuousness, and lead to eradication of the fear of God, to outlaw humility, to make the command of God worthless, and thus condemn it completely. This, Luther noted, would be the result if one followed the conclusion of the scholastics33. But the issue, Luther, taught, was much more serious; more than the loss of original righteousness, human nature is curved upon itself to the point of, selfishly using any means, even God Himself, 31 WA 56, 325, l. 1. 32 WA 56, 318, l. 27: “Sic et peccatum originis (si liceret dicere) donum est in peccato vnius hominis Ade. ‘Gratia Dei’ autem et ‘donum’ idem sunt sc. ipsa Iustitia gratis donata per Christum. Et addit eam Gratiam, quia et amicis donari consueuerunt. Sed hoc donum etiam inimicis ex misericordia donatum est, Quia non fuerunt digni hoc dono nisi misericordia et gratia Dei digni facti ac reputati”. 33 WA 56, 313, l. 18: “Putare ergo peccatum Originis Esse solam priuationem Iustitie in Voluntate, hoc est occasionem dare tepiditatis et resoluere totum conatum penitentie, immo superbiam et presumptionem plantare Et timorem Dei eradicare, humilitatem proscribere, Mandatum Dei irritum facere ac sic penitus damnare. Si saltem, sicut sonant, intelligantur!”

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in order to self-satisfy. In order words, it is totally corrupted and hence deviated from the original purpose of its creation, namely living in harmony with God34.

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It has been said that Augustine understood Original Sin as that first abandonment of contemplation of God by our first ancestors. This attitude on the part of our original ancestors led to catastrophic consequences for the human race, namely the installation of a state of disorder in human nature which, since then, has come under a strong self-satisfying trend. This sense of disorder was well expressed in the Augustinian image of human nature curved upon itself. Luther adopted the very same image to shape his theological anthropology which followed a similar path as Augustine’s (though eventually making use of an even more radical language). As in Augustine, in Luther, Rom. 7:14 – 25 played a crucial role in the way fallen human nature was approached. According to Luther the fact that human nature fell to corruption and vices, and thus, since then, is driven by an unquenchable thirst for self-satisfaction, was a strong reason to argue that Christian salvation can only be exclusively God’s operation. Christ rescues sinner from the evil of this world, but the sinner is also part of this evil. So when one is rescued by Christ, one is rescued from oneself, one’s worse enemy, since as Paul states, nothing good dwells in us (Rom. 7:18). This liberation from the chains of the world and of the self simply cannot be accomplished by human efforts. For Luther, to ignore this and to rely on the engagement in rituals, ceremonies, and alleged virtuous deeds, can only produce “incorrigible hypocrites”. The motivator and operator of human salvation is the divine gracious mercy. Nothing else35 ! 34 WA 56, 304, l. 25: “Ratio est, Quia Natura nostra vitio primi peccati tam profunda est in seipsam incurua, vt non solum optima dona Dei sibi inflectat ipsisque fruatur (vt patet in Iustitiariis et hipocritis), immo et ipso Deo vtatur ad illa consequenda, Verum etiam hoc ipsum ignoret, Quod tam inique, curue et praue omnia, etiam Deum, propter seipsam querat”. 35 WA 2, 459, l. 21: “Ideo quando Christus te eripit a seculo, certe a te ipso ut omnium tibi pessimo hoste te eripit, sicut Paulus Rho. vij. Non habitat in me, hoc est in carne mea, bonum. Igitur non tuis viribus seculum nequam et vitia tua vinces: frustra sunt opera, nisi Christus te eripiat solus. Quare cave, ne ieiunia, vigiliae, studia, temperantia, sobrietas aliaeque virtutes te hypocritam irreparabilem faciant.[…] Sicut enim viri misericordiae et vasa misericordiae dicuntur, quod non suo merito sed dei misericordia suscipiuntur, Ita homines bonae voluntatis, quod non suis viribus, sed divinae voluntatis beneplacito salventur, ut stet ‘gloria soli deo in secula seculorum Amen’, ut hic Apostolus dixit. Nam siquid nos possumus, certe non hoc in gloriam dei, sed in nostram referri debet. Sed absit, ut pulvis et is qui nihil est laudem et gloriam habeat”.

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The sense of curvitas gained such a gravity in Luther’s portrayal of fallen mankind in the Reformer’s reading of the Pauline term “old man” (vetus homo). The meaning of the term vetus homo, Luther explained, illustrates well the extreme of what the homo incurvatus in se is able. It is not on account of the defects of the nature or just because the work of flesh (opera carnis) one performs that the term vetus homo was applied to the humankind sprung from Adam. The term was above all used to illustrate the fact the vetus homo’s behaviour is driven by pride even when he acts righteously and practices wisdom and exercises all spiritual good works to the point of loving and worshipping God. What makes this evident is the fact that in all these things the homo incurvatus in se “uses” the gift of God and “uses” God. This is what makes the perverse person harder to be set free from his/her perversity. This is so not only because of the stubbornness of the perverse people, but also on account of the deep inherited infection and original poison leading man to seek his own advantage even in God Himself on account of human love of concupiscence (“propter profundissimam infectionem huius paterni vitii et originalis veneni, quo etiam in ipso Deo per amorem concupiscentie¸ querit homo, que sua sunt)”36. Accordingly, Luther followed the Augustinian interpretation of the Pauline words “that the body of sin might be destroyed”. The destruction here, he maintained, is to be understood spiritually (“destruere” hoc loco spiritualiter accipitur) since to destroy the body of sin is to break the lusts of the flesh and of the old man by works of penitence and the cross. These diminish the carnal lusts day by day and put them to death37. Hence, the Reformer refused to accept any mystical interpretation of the term “body of sin” (corpus peccati). The term, he insisted, is the very human body we carry around. It is called body of sin on account of its inclination towards sin and opposition to the spirit38. This proneness to sin was sowed by the Devil and dwells in man (Luther makes this 36 WA 56, 325, l. 3: “Non autem ‘vetus homo’ tantum dicitur, quia opera carnis operatur, Sed etiam magis, dum Iuste agit et Sapientiam tractat ac in omnibus spiritualibus bonis se exercet, immo dum etiam ipsum Deum diligit et colit. Ratio est, Quia in iis omnibus fruitur donis Dei et vtitur Deo. Nec potest ab hac peruersitate abusus sui (que in Scripturis vocatur curuitas, iniquitas et peruersitas) nisi per gratiam Dei erigi. Prouer. Ecclesiastis 1.: ‘Peruersi difficile corriguntur’, quod non tantum propter pertinaciam peruersorum dicitur, Sed * magis propter profundissimam infectionem huius paterni vitii et originalis veneni, quo etiam in ipso Deo per amorem concupiscentie? querit homo, que sua sunt”. 37 WA 56, 326, l. 5: “Exposuit (inquit b. Augustinus), quod dixit: ‘Vt destruatur corpus peccati’. Igitur destrui corpus peccati Est concupiscentias carnis et veteris hominis frangi laboribus penitentie et crucis ac sic de die in diem minui eas et mortificari. Vt Col. 3.: ‘Mortificate membra vestra, que sunt super terram.’ Sicut Ibidem clarissime vtrunque hominem describit, nouum et veterem”. 38 WA 56, 326, l. 14: “Corpus ergo ‘peccati’ Non aliquod mysticum intelligi debet, Vt multi fingunt ‘Corpus peccati’ i. e. cumulum totum malorum operum, Sed ipsum hoc corpus, quod portamus. Quod dicitur ‘corpus peccati’, Quia contra spiritum inclinat ad peccatum”

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assertion quoting Genesis 3:15). It coexists with the seed of woman which is the Word of God in the Church because it inclines towards righteousness and good works. The seed of the devil is sin in itself, the tinder and the evil lust in our flesh. It was because of this constant enmity that Paul mentions the discordia spirtus carnis in Gal. 5:1739 The concept of homo incurvatus in se is of utmost importance not only for understanding Luther’s anthropology, especially concerning human abilities to perform good, but also for recognizing the very essence of the Reformer’s theological ethics. The image of homo incurvatus in se was the great reference for Luther’s argument according to which in Adam humankind was catapulted from the contemplation of God into a self-oriented sense of satisfaction, driving him astray from God. This was the reason Luther shook his head in disapproval regarding the classical Philosophy’s statement according to which a certain “natural good” remains in mankind. The Reformer revealed himself highly sceptical in relation to the statement according to which there is an “inborn habit”, “a natural inclination”, “an inextinguishable spark of reason”, “a power tending naturally to the good” in human nature. He saw danger in any sort of theological applicability of the Aristotelian statement according to which reason urges to the best. Though he admitted that the natural law is known to all and human reason, and, in fact, does speak for the best things, Luther urged to clarify the nature of these “best things”. Human reason, to use Luther’s own words, stands for the best things not according to God, but according to humans (Non secundum Deum, Sed secundum nos); it stands for “things that are good in an evil way” (male bona deprecatur)40. The raison d’Þtre of this fact, Luther explained, has to do with the curvitas affecting human beings. All this becomes clear if one takes into account that human being is curved upon itself. This fact allowed Luther to claim that human nature lacks the sense of altruism. It knows nothing but its own good, or what is

39 WA 56, 326, l. 14: “Corpus’ ergo ‘peccati’ Non aliquod mysticum intelligi debet, Vt multi fingunt ‘Corpus peccati’ i. e. cumulum totum malorum operum, Sed ipsum hoc corpus, quod portamus. Quod dicitur ‘corpus peccati’, Quia contra spiritum inclinat ad peccatum. Et semen diaboli in ipso est, Vnde Dominus Gen. 3.: ‘Inimicitias ponam inter semen tuum et semen illius.’ Semen mulieris Est verbum Dei in Ecclesia, quod inclinat ad Iustitiam et bona. Semen diaboli est ipsum peccatum, fomes, concupiscentia in carne. Et iste Inimicitie aguntur assidue, secundum Apostolum Gal. 5: ‘Caro concupiscit aduersus spiritum et spiritus aduersus carnem.’ Caro habet semen diaboli et querit parere et fructificare peccatum. Sed spiritus habet semen Dei et parere ac fructificare querit Iustitiam. Et sic hec duo ‘sibi inuicem aduersantur, Vt non ea, que vultis, faciatis’”. 40 WA 56, 355, l. 16.

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good and honourable and useful for itself; it ignores the goodness of giving up itself for the glory of God and for the good of others41. Luther’s greatest concern was to fight what he considered a Scholastic trend which consisted in an attempt to replace divine grace for this light of human reason. The cornerstone of Luther’s theological ethics was essentially based upon a sharp contrast between the presuppositions inherent in justification coram Deo and the justification coram hominis. The justification coram Deo contradicts the ethics of philosophers and lawyers, i. e. human ethics. Luther stressed that there is a considerable gap between human ethics and the theological ethics inherent in the justification of the sinner coram Deo. It is the notion of curvitas affecting human nature that ultimately outlines the abyssal difference between divine grace and and human reason; that makes them rather contrary realities. According to Luther, grace is characterized by its search for God, and human reason for the search for the self, leading to “spiritual fornication” since human reason even makes use of God and His gifts for its own satisfaction42. Accordingly, no help comes to humans from the inside, since human beings are curved upon themselves and such curvedness is a natural sinfulness (naturale malum). Only the gift of faith, in love, i. e. the action of grace, searches God and His interests. Out of its natural powers, humankind only seeks itself and its own interests, never God’s. Hence, whatever good things are desired or performed by natural capacity are good in an evil way, since they are performed not for the service of God, but in service of the creature, i. e. oneself. To teach 41 WA 56, 355 – 356, l. 27: “Quod dicitur humanam naturam in genere et vniversali nosse et velle bonum, Sed in particulari errare et nolle, Melius diceretur in particulari nosse et velle bonum, Sed in vniversali non nosse neque velle. Ratio, Quia non nouit nisi bonum suum, seu quod sibi bonum est et honestum et vtile, Non autem, quod Deo et aliis. Ideo magis particulare, immo Indiuiduum tantummodo bonum nouit et vult. Et hoc consonat Scripture?, Que? hominem describit incuruatum in se adeo, vt non tantum corporalia, Sed et spiritualia bona sibi inflectat et se in omnibus querat”. 42 WA 56, 356 – 357, l. 22: “Gratia enim sibi preter Deum nullum statuit obiectum, in quod feratur et tendit; hunc solum videt, hunc solum querit et in omnibus intendit ceteraque omnia, que in medio sui et Dei videt, quasi non videat, transit et in Deum pure dirigit. Hoc est ‘cor rectum’ et ‘spiritus rectus’. Natura vero preter seipsam nullum sibi statuit obiectum, in quod feratur et intendat; se solam videt, querit et in omnibus intendit, Ceteraque omnia, ipsum quoque Deum in medio, quasi non videat, transit et in seipsam dirigit. Hoc est ‘cor prauum’ et ‘iniquum’. Sicut gratia Deum statuit in loco omnium, que videt, etiam suiipsius, et prefert sibi solumque ea querit, que Dei sunt, non que sua sunt: Ita Natura econtra seipsam statuit in locum omnium et in locum etiam Dei solumque ea querit, que sua sunt, non que Dei. Ideo Idolum est ipsa sibi primum et maximum. Deinde et Deum sibi transmutat in idolum et veritatem Dei in mendacium, tandem omnia creata et dona Dei. Gratia in omnibus, que videt, non est contenta, nisi Deum in illis et supra illa videat et in gloriam Dei omnia esse, videri, operari velit, optet et gaudeat. Natura contra omnia, que videt, nihil esse putat, nisi in sua commoda veniant et sibi sint et operentur. Tunc autem estimat ea, si in suam fruitionem et vsum et bonum ea perduxerit”.

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otherwise, Luther declared, is to make grace useful but not necessary and to deny the wickedness we all share on account of Adam’s fall. In other words, is to assert the integrity of our natural powers43, but even more concerning, it is to nullify Christ’s redemptive sacrifice44. The image of homo incurvatus in se is mainly an image of disorder installed in humankind. No wonder the concept of curvitas laid deep in Luther’s understanding of man. The notion of curvitas was regarded by Luther as a good point of departure for the teaching of absolute need for grace, an external help, against the trend to assert an inside source of help i. e. human natural powers. This external help is the love without which man always turns against the law. It is the divine grace which reorients human will and make it focus on God, so that one may come to know good. Fulfilling the percepts of the Law is an impossibility in the absence of divine assistance45. Thus, Luther endorsed Augustine’s teaching according to which law was given in order to make humankind aware of its frailty. God commanded something humans cannot accomplish in order for the latter to know what must be really asked of Him – grace46. Luther’s reflection over the Augustinian sharp distinction between nature and grace provides important details to understand the full range of the ethical scope of his theological approach to homo incurvatus in se. As it has been said, he insisted in the strict distinction between the light of nature and that of grace. The light of nature, he stated, is more likely shadow and contrary to grace; it appeared after sin. This, Luther claimed, is clear in the reference made in Gen. 3:7 (their eyes were opened). What ultimately defines such a distinction is their behavioural orientation. While one orients human beings towards God, the other orients them towards the self. Grace, he explained, has before itself nothing but God; it moves towards Him, it sees and seeks only Him (“Gratia enim sibi preter Deum nullum statuit obiectum, in quod feratur et tendit; hunc solum videt, 43 WA 56, 355 – 356. 44 Luther often established the parallelism between gratia vs natura and prudentia spiritus vs prudentia carnis. If ex puris naturalibus man can perform good deeds and, on account of that, deserve salvation, or if the wisdom of the flesh enables one to love God above all things, then Christ died to no purpose (Gal. 2:21). As grace, the prudentia spiritus (which is fruit of grace) is not focused on it own personal good; prudentia spirtus struggles for the common good and does not avoid personal evil. The prudentia carnis (based on the natural reason) does the contrary. The prudentia spiritus leads one to love and welcome the will of God since those who love the prudentia spiritus are conformed to God’s will. WA 56, 358 – 365. 45 WA 56, 356, l. 7: “Que Curuitas est nunc naturalis, naturale vitium et naturale malum. Ideo ex Nature viribus non habet adiutorium, Sed ab extrinseco aliquo potentiore opus habet auxilio, quod est Charitas, sine qua semper peccat contra legem: ‘Non concupisces’, i. e. nihil tibi inflectes et queras, Sed Deo soli omnia viuas, agas, cogites. Tunc enim cognoscet vniversaliter bonum cum omnibus particularibus bonis et Iudicabit omnia. Igitur Impossibile est nobis preceptum”. 46 WA 56, 356. Cf. gr. et lib. arb. XVI, 32.

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hunc solum querit et in omnibus intendit ceteraque omnia, que in medio sui et Dei videt, quasi non videat, transit et in Deum pure dirigit. Hoc est ‘cor rectum’ et ‘spiritus rectus’”.). Nature, on the other hand, sees, seeks and works in all matters, using any means, even God Himself, for itself, for its own misguided interests (“Natura vero preter seipsam nullum sibi statuit obiectum, in quod feratur et intendat; se solam videt, querit et in omnibus intendit, Ceteraque omnia, ipsum quoque Deum in medio, quasi non videat, transit et in seipsam dirigit. Hoc est ‘cor prauum’ et ‘iniquum’”). Therefore, it is its own first and great idol (Ideo Idolum est ipsa sibi primum et maximum). More: it turns God into an idol and the true God into a lie, and finally makes idols of all created things and of all gifts of God47. From this distinction it is clear that, for Luther, the homo incurvatus in se was nothing more than the product of the effect of sin over created human nature; it was corrupted human nature. Accordingly, Luther identified all this behaviour of the corrupted nature with “spiritual fornication”, iniquity, and a terrible curving on itself. Therefore the light of nature, or human wisdom is not a light but it can properly be called darkness (“Hec est fornicatio spiritualis et iniquitas et curuitas nimia valde. Non ergo Lumen, sed tenebre rectius vocari potest ista prudentia”)48. The image of homo incurvatus in se became thus a recurrent theme in Luther’s writings since it encapsulates the theological, anthropological and ethical dimensions of Luther’s doctrine of concupiscence that remains in human persons. The Reformer’s reading of I Cor. 15:54 sheds much light on this issue. Luther concluded that the meaning of the Apostle’s words was clear : to be dead to sin; but to live unto God; serve with mind the law of God. The law of sin means that one does not yield to one’s evil lusts and to sin, even though sin still remains in 47 WA 56, 356 – 357, l. 18: “Frustra magnificatur ab aliquibus Lumen nature et comparatur Lumini gratie, cum potius sit tenebra et contrarium gratie. Vnde et A Iob et Ieremia maledicitur, quod sit dies mala et visio pessima, quod Lumen statim post peccatum ortum est, sicut Scriptum est: ‘Et aperti sunt oculi eorum’, Genes. 3. Gratia enim sibi preter Deum nullum statuit obiectum, in quod feratur et tendit; hunc solum videt, hunc solum querit et in omnibus intendit ceteraque omnia, que in medio sui et Dei videt, quasi non videat, transit et in Deum pure dirigit. Hoc est ‘cor rectum’ et ‘spiritus rectus’./ Natura vero preter seipsam nullum sibi statuit obiectum, in quod feratur et intendat; se solam videt, querit et in omnibus intendit, Ceteraque omnia, ipsum quoque Deum in medio, quasi non videat, transit et in seipsam dirigit. Hoc est ‘cor prauum’ et ‘iniquum’. Sicut gratia Deum statuit in loco omnium, que videt, etiam suiipsius, et prefert sibi solumque ea querit, que Dei sunt, non que sua sunt: Ita Natura econtra seipsam statuit in locum omnium et in locum etiam Dei solumque ea querit, que sua sunt, non que Dei. Ideo Idolum est ipsa sibi primum et maximum. Deinde et Deum sibi transmutat in idolum et veritatem Dei in mendacium, tandem omnia creata et dona Dei. Gratia in omnibus, que videt, non est contenta, nisi Deum in illis et supra illa videat et in gloriam Dei omnia esse, videri, operari velit, optet et gaudeat. Natura contra omnia, que videt, nihil esse putat, nisi in sua commoda veniant et sibi sint et operentur”. 48 WA 56, 357, l. 12.

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us. This is the same as saying sin does not have dominion, righteousness rules. Human being carries Original Sin, i. e. the desire/trend/proneness to sin, that paternal heritage from Adam which remains (“desideria peccati, que et ipsa peccatum sunt scil. originale et reliquum hereditatis paterne ex Adam, manent”). Righteousness, however, rules when such proneness to sin (which is itself sin) is fought off and not followed49. The full righteousness comes only when such remaining concupiscence is totally removed. This, according to Luther, does not happen before death has been swallowed, before this body of death gives place to the spiritual body, a transformation which only occurs in the afterlife. This is to be identified with the new heavens and new earth in which righteousness dwell, as described in Peter 3:13. In this earthly life, then, even the most righteous of human beings is also sinner. One is righteous on account of the justifying faith, but still a sinner ; simul iustus et peccator, as Luther lapidarily put it.

49 WA 56, 320, l. 20: “Ex quibus verbis clare patet Intelligentia verborum Apostoli. Quia omnes iste propositiones: 1. Mortuum esse peccato; 2. Viuere autem Deo; 3. Seruire mente legi Dei et carne legi peccati, Non est aliud quam non consentire concupiscentiis et peccato, licet peccatum maneat. Idem est 4. peccatum non dominari, non regnare, Sed 5. Iustitiam regnare etc. Vnde infra c. 13.: ‘Et carnis curam ne feceritis in desideriis’, q. d. desideria peccati, que et ipsa peccatum sunt scil. originale et reliquum hereditatis paterne ex Adam, manent, Sed ne obediatis eis. Item, Vt destruatur corpus peccati, quod fit per non-consensionem et repugnantiam spiritus”.

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Iustificatio Dei, iustificatio nostri: justification as the belief in the Word of God1

By the time Luther wrote his Lectures on Romans he regarded his own teachings on justification by faith alone as the issue that distinguished him from the mainstream of Scholastic theology and earned him the ferocious opposition on the part of many of his contemporaries. As Luther saw it, the great difference between his own theology and that of his predecessors and contemporaries, who were his opponents, ultimately had to do with Christology. His fight was for the sake of a christologicaly-oriented exegesis and theology. This, he claimed, was distinctive of his own theology and was absent in the theology of his opponents. The young Luther, commentator of Paul, argued that the conclusion of the scholastics regarding Christian soteriology was unacceptable for several reasons. First and foremost, it had a weak christological tone and consequent excessive anthropological optimism. Such anthropological optimism resulted in a dangerous and outrageous confusion in which what is God’s was ascribed to human abilities2. This theological theft of which Luther accuses his opponents 1 The Cardinal Newman regarded the Church Father as the man who shaped Europe’s intelligence (Newman, 1968). The words recorded by Von Campenhausen in his Lateinische Kirchenväter regarding Augustine’s presence in, and influence over the Western theological tradition, remains accurate. “Augustin”, he writes, ist der einzige Kirchenvater, der bis auf diesen Tag eine geistige Macht geblieben ist. Er lockt Heiden und Christen, Philosophen und Theologen ohne Unterschied der Richtung und Konfession zur Beschäftigung mit seinen Schriften und zur Auseinnandersetzung mit deinen Wollen und seiner Person. Er virkt zugleich auch mittelbar als bewußte oder unbewuße Überlieferung in den abendläsdischen Kirchen und durch sie im allgemeinen Kulturbewußtsein mehr oder weniger verändert und gebrochen fort”. Von Campenhausen, 1986, 151. 2 This fact must be taken in to account in order to understand that Luther’s view of the fallen state of humankind is for itself a step for justification by faith alone, as he explains in his Lectures on Galatians: “Ioan. iij.[John 3, 27] non potest homo quicquam accipere, nisi fuerit ei datum desuper, et Ioan. vi. Nemo venit ad me, nisi pater meus traxerit eum. Nihil enim boni ex nobis possumus, sed tantum errare, ignorantias augere et peccare. Proinde qui suis viribus

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constituted the very leitmotiv of the Reformer’s life-time theological production. It inspired the doctrine lying in the very core of his theology – justification by faith alone. In what does Luther’s doctrine of justification by faith alone consist? What does it stand for? What does it mean? The answers tout court for these three questions are easy : it consists in appointing faith as the condition for justification to take place. Justification by faith alone stands for the supremacy of faith in the whole process of salvation. It means that human salvation is God’s exclusive operation, since faith, the fulfilment of the Law, and the very faith through which justification takes place, is God’s gift. However, Luther’s doctrine of justification by faith alone cannot be grasped unless a careful attention is paid to his insistent christological approach to three key-concepts that shaped the same doctrine as addressed by the Reformer : the Word of God, faith and righteousness. I will now proceed with the issue of the Word of God. As it has been said, the Scholastic theology, as Luther criticized it, failed to provide a christologicaly-oriented debate on the matter of justification. For the young Luther this was unbearable especially when one keeps Paul’s teaching present in mind. Accordingly, the collision between the Reformer and the theological production of his own time became inevitable. Luther materialized in many ways his disapproval regarding the absence of a consistent christological tone which he insisted to have been the very distinctive trait of the theological debates and of the Church magisterium of his time. One of the most striking way he found to oppose to such a trend was the focus on the Word of God. The theology of Word (and its essential relationship with faith) must be the great point of departure for one who aims to understand Luther’s doctrine of justification by faith alone. According to Luther, only the adherence to the Word of God shaped the spiritual human being. Thus in the Word of God alone the sinful soul can find a way out. The sending of the Word, Luther explained, was the finest expression of divine mercy. It was in the Word of God that the very redemptive mission carried by Christ and the entire mission of the Church found its meaning. Some of young Luther’s most brilliant insights on the Word of God were in one of his best known early works – De libertate Christiana. It is important, then, to take a quick look into this early work of the Reformer in order to better understand his Christological approach on the Word of God. The belief in the ignorantiam quamcunque evadere tentat, duplici peccato et ignorantia se excaecat, primum quod ignarus est, secundo quod ignorat se ignarum esse et per ignorantiam ignorantiam praesumit pellere et opus efficere, quod solius dei est. ita dum ad meliora per seipsum nititur sine deo, de peccato impietatem facit, et quod a deo quaerere debuerat, in seipso invenisse se mentitur. Solus Christus est lux et vita omnium hominum, non ratio nostra”. WA 2, 538, l. 7.

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divine Word, Luther remarked, is the source of all blessings. Thus, he argued that it is […]certain and firmly established that the soul can do without anything except the Word of God and that where the Word of God is missing there is no help at all for the soul. If it has the Word of God it is rich and lacks nothing since it is the word of life, truth, light, peace, righteousness, salvation, joy, liberty, wisdom, power, grace, glory and every incalculable blessing. […] On the other hand, there is no more terrible disaster with which the wrath of God can afflict men than a famine of the hearing of His Word […] Likewise there is no greater mercy than when he sends for his Word, […] Nor Christ was sent into the world for any other other ministry except that of the Word. Moreover, the entire spiritual estate – al the apostles, bishops, and priests – has been called and instituted only for the ministry of the Word3.

What is, then, God’s Word? Luther’s definition left no room for doubt regarding the aforementioned christological approach. “The Word”, he wrote, “is the Gospel of God concerning his Son, who was made flesh, suffered, rose from the dead, and was glorified through the Spirit who sanctifies”4. Accordingly, all one needs is faith in God’s promises, i. e. in His Word. This is what justifies, not works. For justification, then, one needs no law. When one believes that Christ died and rose for one’s sake, then one becomes a new man since one’s sins are forgiven and one is justified not on account of one’s merits, but on account of those of Christ alone. Thus, “faith alone is the saving and efficacious use of the Word of God”, since “the Word cannot be received and be cherished by any works whatever but only by faith”. “Therefore it is clear that, as the soul needs only the Word of God for its life and righteousness, so it is justified by faith alone, not by works; for if it could be justified by anything else, it would not need the Word, and consequently it would not need faith”5.

Thus, I think one can safely argue that the true basis of Luther’s doctrine of justification by faith alone was his theology of Word. This means that, in order to accurately understand Luther’s doctrine of justification by faith alone is, then, of paramount importance not to lose sight of his evangelical theology. For Luther, the justifying faith was nothing more than adherence to God’s Word. This very adherence is the source of joy and love with which one performs the precepts of the Law as the result of the justification previously received by faith. In other words, the adherence to the divine Word is itself the reason behind the fact that the justified sinner finds great joy in living in accordance with God’s Word. For Luther, the Word was the foundation of Christian freedom. How so? For the simple fact that the only source of help for the soul is the Word of God. This 3 LW 31, 345 – 346 4 LW 31, 346. See also Pani, 1983, 29 – 31. 5 LW 31, 346

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freedom, however, the Reformer explained, was not that pseudo-freedom according to which one is free to do what one pleases. Christian freedom, Luther pointed out, has a twofold implication. If on one hand, the gift of faith from which it emanates truly sets the believer free, on the other hand, it implies a strong sense of ethical commitment, including imitatio Christi, in servitude to the neighbours. In the same way, Christ, Lord of all, assumed “the form of a servant” (Philip. 2:6 – 7). In the same way, by adhering to the Word, i. e. when believing, the Christian becomes a free lord of all, subject to none, and yet a dutiful servant of all, subject to all (see I Cor. 9:19; Rom. 13:8). This apparent contradiction in his portrayal of justified Christian, Luther claimed, is in accordance with the twofold nature of human beings: bodily and spiritual. On account of the first, humans are said to be carnal, outward or “old man”. On account of the latter, spiritual, inner or “new man”. It is by inquiring on the shaping of the spiritual man that Luther came to the conclusion that the Word was the only way out for the soul. No external thing can be determinant in the making of the Christian man. None of the precepts and rituals have impact in either freedom or servitude of the soul. These are determined only by the presence or absence of the Word, the adherence to it, its acceptance or its rejection, nothing more. “One thing and only one thing is necessary for Christian righteousness, and freedom. That one thing is the most holy Word of God, the Gospel of Christ”6. It was, thus, on the theology of Word that Luther’s concept of Christian righteousness and freedom unfolded. What also led Luther to regard the Word as having crucial importance in the process of salvation was the very nature of the divine Word. According to Luther, the Word’s own features explained its intrinsic relationship with justifying faith. The Word of God, Luther explained, is His promises, and His promises are truthful, righteous, full of goodness, etc. By clinging to God’s Word the believer is intoxicated by it; he/she becomes all that the Word of God is on account the belief in the same Word. It is faith and the Word of God alone that rules in the soul. Just as the heated iron glows like fire because of the union of fire with it, so the Word imparts its qualities to the soul7.

When reflecting upon Luther’s doctrine of justification by faith alone one must be aware of the importance of the the term alone. Luther used the term mainly to emphasise the reasons why no other thing but faith justifies. What reasons were 6 LW 31, 345. J.-P. Massaut explains the nature of this freedom well. “Cette libert¦ int¦rieure”, he writes, “n’ autorize ni la licence morale ni la s¦dition. Elle libÀre de la tyranie des observances, de la fause s¦curit¦ des oeuvres, de l’illusion du m¦rite, de l’orgueil et du d¦sespoir. Elle libÀre de la loi, non contre la loi, mais pour l’accomplir autrement, non plus par l’int¦rÞ, mas par reconnaissance, mÞme aux creux de l’¦preuve. Juste et p¦cheur, l’homme nouveau justifi¦ par la foi lutte contre l’ancien, non pour Þtre sauv¦, mais parce qu’il est sauv¦. Cette voie du salut n’est connue que par la Parole de Dieu dans l’Êcreiture seule”. Massaut, 2007, 282. 7 LW 31, 349.

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those? Such reasons become evident in Luther’s insistence in a few exclusive prerogatives of faith. One of the works of the Reformer in which such prerogatives were clearly enumerated is De libertate Christiana. Faith alone justifies because a) it alone shapes the spiritual man; b) it ascribes to God what is due to Him (without this, God cannot be even worshipped), i. e. confesses Him to be truthful and righteous, which means that faith alone leads to repentance; c) it brings the soul into a true union with God. The second prerogative (b) is a crucial one for understanding the relationship between the Word of God and justification by faith alone in young Luther’s theology, especially in his early Pauline commentaries. It is important to start by saying that Luther equalizes the acknowledgement of God’s righteousness to a sinner’s repentance and, consequently righteousness. “When, however, God sees that we consider him truthful, he writes, and by the faith of our heart pay him the great honor which is due to him, he does us the great honor of considering us truthful and righteous for the sake of our faith. Faith works truth and righteousness by giving God what belongs to him. Therefore God in turn glorifies our righteousness. It is true and just that God is truthful and just, and to consider and confess him to be so is the same as being truthful and just8.

In the Lutheran lexicon the term “confession” carried the Augustinian twofold meaning of both repentance, or confession of sins and acknowledgement of God’s qualities, i. e. the praise of God. This detail is a crucial one for understanding Luther’s insistence on linking justification with the confession of the Word. This central idea of faith as simultaneously confession of sin and praise of God was largely exploited by Luther especially in his exegesis of an ideal penitential Psalms, Psalm 51. It is to remembered that the Reformer dedicated himself to the Pauline letters after having produced a vast commentary on the Psalms. No wonder some crucial passages of the Psalterium came to play a key role on Luther’s explanation of the justification process, for instance, as expounded in the epistle to the Romans. I now return to the Lectures on Romans! Luther’s use of some passages of the Psalterium in his Pauline commentaries is of crucial importance for understanding his doctrine of justification by faith. A clear example was Luther’s interpretation of the first verses of Psalms 51, namely the expression “that Thou may be justified in Thy words”, to explain how justification of the sinner takes place. Luther’s reflections upon this phrase resulted in a portrayal of justification as a sort of dialectics of declaration/recognition/ imputation and non-imputation/acknowledgement. Luther’s exegesis of Psalms 51 as expounded in 8 LW 31, 351.

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Lectures on Romans was very clear in one aspect: it stated the centrality of confession (with its twofold meaning) in the justification event. When God is confessed or believed to be righteous, i. e. when the sinner self-accuses, which means declaring God to be righteous, then God looks upon the same sinner as righteous. The justification of the sinner takes place alongside of God’s own justification. God is, thus, justified through an act of a true confession. And a true confession cannot take place without the abandonment of the self. This is a key-component of Luther’s understanding of justifying faith. God, Luther argues, is justified in three ways: first, when He punishes the unrighteous (“quando Iniustos punit); second, when His shiny righteousness is placed alongside with our unrighteousness (per accidens siue relatiue, sicut opposita iuxta se posita magis elucescunt quam seorsum posita. Ideo tanto est pulchrior Dei Iustitia, quanto nostra Iniustitia fedior”)9, and third, when he justifies the ungodly. This third way is de facto our justification10. Sometimes Luther is not clear in explaining how this takes place. He asserts that it takes place when God justifies the ungodly and pours out His grace upon them, or when God is believed to be righteous in His words. The fact is that, from Luther’s understanding of the justification process, the belief in God as righteous cannot take place without shedding grace upon the ungodly’s heart. This detail, as will be seen, is a central one for understanding that Luther’s notion of justification went beyond a simple forensic declaration of righteousness. It pointed rather to a real communion with God. On account of such a belief, God justifies, that is, accounts the ungodly as righteous. This is why it is called righteousness of faith or of God ( Iustitia fidei et Dei). Regarding the nature of justification, it must be said that it is a complex task to define the relationship between faith and justification in young Luther’s Pauline commentaries. At first, justification seems to be tout court the result of faith. He who believes is justified, is acknowledged or is looked upon by God as righteous. The equation, however, is not that simple if one asks: by whose initiative does one come to believe? One’s own? God’s? To answer to these questions, Luther followed the Augustinian line of reasoning by maintaining that the very initiative of believing belongs to God’s grace as is clear from passages of the Gospel such as John 6:44; 14:6 or Mt 16:17. Now one may ask: is such gift of justifying faith

9 WA 56, 220, l. 5. 10 WA 56, 220, l. 9: “Tertio, Quando Impios Iustificat et gratiam infundit siue quando Iustus esse in suis Verbis creditur. Per tale enim Credi Iustificat i. e. Iustos reputat. Vnde hec dicitur Iustitia fidei et Dei. Sicut in simili Bonus artifex tripliciter commendatur. Primo, dum imperitos arguit et reprehendit, Vbi errant. Secundo, quando eis comparatus doctior apparet ipsis. Tertio, quando tradit sue? artis perfectionem aliis, qui eam non habebant. Et hec est Vera commendatio”.

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bestowed upon a righteous person? No, Luther would say. It is bestowed upon an unrighteous person in order that he or she becomes righteous. In all this process, Luther fused justification with the very confession of faith. In what did this confession of faith consist? It consisted in the justification of God in His words, that is, the act by which the sinner recognizes him/herself to be unrighteous and God righteous. For Luther, this justification of God in His words was, then, one’s own justification, just as the condemnation of God in His words (when one claims to be righteous, making of God a liar and unrighteous) was identified by the Reformer as one’s own condemnation. This was precisely why Luther presented the justification process as a sort of exchange of declarations or acknowledgements. It was for this reason that Luther evoked the verse 4 of the Psalms 51 (quoted by Paul in Rom. 3:4) “That you may be justified in your words”. God is justified in His words when His Word is acknowledged or declared to be righteous. This takes place through faith in His Word, as He is judged when His Word is regarded as false and this takes place through unbelief and pride11. Thus, for Luther, justification takes place when the sinner, having abandoned the self-glorification, self-accuses. He empties him/herself of self-righteousness to be filled with God’s12 ; when one’s unrighteousness truly becomes one’s own, that is, acknowledged, admitted. In other words, justification takes place when the sinner regards him/herself truly as such and God as righteous. When a sinner justifies God in His words the sinner is automatically justified, as when a sinner condemns God in His words, the same sinner meets condemnation (“Sic etiam Iustificatio Dei in sermonibus suis potius nostri est Iustificatio; Et Iudicatio siue condemnatio eius nostri potius est secundum illud [Mark 16:16]: ‘Qui autem non crediderit, condemnabitur.’ ”)13. All in all, the great message of Psalms 51:4 was that justification takes place with the confession of our sins. To confess our sins is to acknowledge God’s righteousness. Though He is righteous and truthful in Himself, yet this is not true in us 11 WA 56 212, l. 26: “Sed tunc Iustificatur Deus in sermonibus suis, quando sermo eius a nobis Iustus et verax reputatur et suscipitur, quod fit per fidem in eloquia eius. Tunc autem Iudicatur in sermonibus suis, quando sermo eius vt falsus et mendax reputatur, quod fit per incredulitatem et ‘superbiam mentis cordis nostri’”. 12 WA 56, 219, l. 3: “Cum ergo sic omnis creatura loquatur, Non potest fieri, vt plenus Iustitia sua repleatur Iustitia Dei, Qui non implet nisi esurientes et Sitientes. Ideo satur veritate et sapientia sua non est capax veritatis et sapientie Dei, Que? non nisi in vacuum et inane recipi potest. Ergo dicamus Deo: O quam libenter sumus vacui, vt tu plenus sis in nobis! Libenter infirmus, vt tua virtus in me habitet; libenter peccator, vt tu Iustificeris in me; libenter Insipiens, vt tu mea sapientia sis; libenter Iniustus, vt tu sis Iustitia mea! Ecce hoc est, quod ait: ‘Tibi peccaui, vt Iustificeris in sermonibus tuis’”. 13 WA 56, 213, l. 13. For a good survey on the way Luther explains why the justification of humans implies the justification of God, see PANI, 1983, 61 – 87.

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until we confess our sins, which means to declare God’s righteousness (“Ibi enim ponitur, vt Deus Iustificetur per confessionem peccati nostri. Quia licet sit in se Iustus et verax, tamen non in nobis, donec confessi dicamus: ‘Tibi soli peccaui’ etc.; tunc enim agnoscitur solus Iustus. Et ita in nobis quoque fit Iustus”)14. Ultimately, the confession of sins commends the righteousness of God15. This confessional tone inherent in Luther’s reflection on justification has a crucial purpose: it is the cornerstone of the christological building which is Luther’s doctrine of justification. It is by stressing the sense of confessio in his theological reflection on the issue of justification that Luther found his way through to break with the old Anselmian doctrine of satisfaction and present a radically christological approach to the work of Christ which shapes justification and human salvation in its whole. Here Luther could not afford to be on shaky ground. A secure way to explain the belief in the work of Christ and its essential relationship with justification is, in Luther’s eyes, to recover the Augustinian portrayal of Christ as sacramentum and exemplum. As sacramentum, Christ is the sign and the efficient cause of the new life of those who are united to Him through faith, i. e. the believers. Christ’s passion and exaltation are the basis for this efficient process in which the believers take part through conversion which makes them dead to sin. To Luther’s eyes, it was precisely because the whole process of justification and salvation find their basis and are shaped by the work of Christ, that the reliance upon moral struggle was a foolish way to set out the imitation of Christ. Before looking into Christ as exemplum one should look to Him as sacramentum, i. e. confess Him to be one’s only Saviour. He who wants to imitate Christ as example, Luther argued, it is necessary that he first believes with a strong faith that Christ has suffered and died from him/her as sacrament (“Ideo qui Christum velut imitiari quoad exemplum, necesse est ut credat primum firma fide Christum pro se esee passum ac mortum quoad sacramentum”)16. Being justified means being humble enough to look to Christ as sacramentum, accepting the real meaning of His passion, death and resurrection. In other words, believing that faith in Christ alone brings us to the union with Christ who 14 WA 56, 215 – 216, l. 16: “Vnde Non hic loquitur de Iustitia, qua ipse Iustus est, Sed qua Iustus est et nos Iustificat et ipse respectu nostri solus iustus j; illam enim nostra iniustitia, si facta fuerit nostra (i. e. agnita et confessa), commendat, nos enim humiliat et Deo prosternit eiusque Iustitiam postulat, qua accepta Deum largitorem glorificamus, laudamus, amamus. VbiContra, Iustitia nostra vituperat, immo tollit ac negat Iustitiam Dei ac mendacem falsamque arguit, dum scil. verbis Dei resistimus nec Iustitiam eius necessariam reputamus et nostram sufficere credimus. Dicendum ergo est: ‘Tibi soli peccaui, vt Iustificeris’ (i. e. cum Laude et gloria solus Iustus et Iustificator noster prediceris) ‘in sermonibus tuis’ i. e. sicut promisisti et contestatus es”. 15 WA 56, 216, l. 13. 16 . WA 57/III, 114, 15.

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assumed our wretchedness makes His virtues ours. This was the purpose of Christ’s redemptive sacrifice17. Hence the crucial role of humility in justification of the sinner, an issue with which I will be dealing in due course.

3.2

Faith

Another crucial concept in Luther’s doctrine of justification by faith alone is, obviously, the concept (and the reality) of faith. It is clear that the effective role of Law was annihilated from the start in the scheme Luther used to explain the doctrine of justification by faith. The equation he adopted is fully Augustinian: without grace one cannot perform the commands of the Law unless on account of either fear of punishment or hope of a promised reward. In either case, Luther argued, the action would be fleshly and mercenary (“posse hominem citra gratiam legem operari nisi vel timore poenae vel spe promissi: utrunque autem carnaliter et mercennarie agitur”)18. If there would be a work one must link with justification, such a work would be faith (which is God’s gift). This was the reason why, Luther claimed, when questioned by the Jews on what one must do in order to attain salvation, Christ did not bother to mention all the good works they so zealously did, but rather explained that the work of God consisted in the belief in Him who was sent by the Father (John 6:29)19. Luther’s discussion on faith becomes a fundamental tool to grasp his doctrine of justification by faith alone, especially when due attention is paid to the remarkable christological emphasis he placed on both faith and justification. For Luther, justification occurs through faith alone (and not on account of the works of Law) for the simple fact that the reality of faith in itself includes an unparalleled theological range. Faith does and contains what nothing else does and contains. Being God’s gift, faith contains God Himself. It, thus brings the believer to a true union with Christ, to an ontological communion with the divine nature, since it contains Christ Himself. This christological approach to faith makes it a simply matchless tool in the justification process, in particular, and in the salvation process in general, as Luther understood it. Luther’s writings are flooded with excerpts one could quote to make this plain. Here I can only provide a glimpse and choose to quote his Lectures on Galatians, where he writes: 17 WA 57/III, 114, 5: “Ideo non potest fieri, ut fides in illum sit ociosa, sed vivit et ipsa, operatur atque triumphat, et ita sua sponte fluunt opera foras ex fide. Sic enim nostra paciencia ex paciencia Christi, nostra humilitas ex illius et cetera bona simili modo, si modo firmiter credimus, quod pro nobis ista omnia fecerit, et non solum pro nobis, sed eciam coram nobis”. 18 WA 2, 565, l. 3. 19 LW 31, 347.

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It follows that, he [Paul] says, “since you are sons,– obviously through faith as it has been constantly said – God has sent the Spirit of His Son into our hearts”. With this assertion, a reply is easily provided to the question raised by those who ask how one can teach that human beings are justified and saved by faith alone. No reason here for alarm. If faith is really genuine and you are really a son, the Spirit will certainly not be lacking. But if the Spirit is present, He will pour forth love and spread all that symphony of virtues which in I Cor. 13:4 Paul attributes to love. […]. Thus, when he speaks about justifying faith, he speaks of that sort of faith which works through love, as he mentions elsewhere [Gal. 5:6]. For it is faith that gains the giving of the Spirit, as he said above [Gal. 3:2]: “Did you receive the Spirit by works of the Law or by hearing with faith?” On the other hand, the faith which causes the demons to shudder (James 2:19) and the ungodly to do miracles is not genuine, since they are not yet sons or heirs of the blessing20.

First of all it is important to notice that this approach to justifying faith is fully Augustinian. Luther did, in fact, follow Augustine in his reading of Gal. 5:6. Justifying faith does not annihilate good works; it is rather the prelude to genuine good works. Genuine faith is measured by the genuineness of the works it produced. Genuine good works have to be inspired by true and disinterested love. Only this sort of works are fruit of that faith which works or operates through the love of which Paul spoke in Gal. 5:6. To Luther’s eyes, faith brings or is righteousness because it alone can bring the believer into communion with the greatest of righteousness i. e. Christ Himself. To have faith means to have everything in common with Christ, to become one with Him. Thus the believer’s sins are no longer his/hers, they are Christ’s, and sin is unable to overcome Christ, so it finds destruction in Him. On the other hand, Christ’s righteousness is now not only His, but also belongs to all those 20 WA 2, 536 – 537, l. 14: “Quia, inquit, estis filii, utique per fidem ut iam saepe dictum est, misit deus spiritum filii in corda nostra. Quibus facile solvitur illorum quaestio, quomodo sola fide hominem iustificari et salvari doceatur. Nihil est quod movearis: si vera est fides et vere filius, non deerit spiritus: si autem assit spiritus, charitatem diffundet et omnem illum virtutum concentum absolvet, quem i. Corin. xiij. tribuit charitati […] ideo quando de fide iustificante loquitur, de fide quae per dilectionem operatur, ut alias dicit, loquitur. Fides enim meretur, ut spiritus detur, sicut et supra: Ex operibus an ex auditu fidei spiritum accepistis? Caeterum fides, qua et daemones contremiscunt et impii miracula faciunt, vera non est, cum nondum sint filii nec haeredes benedictionis”. Luther follows the same reasoning when approaching the theological meaning of the son-ship in faith and its relationship with justification by faith alone. So he writes: Iam sequitur, quod iustus per fidem nulli dat quod suum est per seipsum, sed per alium, scilicet Iesum Christum, qui solus ita iustus est, ut omnibus reddat quod reddendum est, immo omnia ei debent. Qui autem in Christum credit et spiritu fidei unus cum eo factus est, iam non solum satisfacit omnibus, sed id quoque efficit, ut omnia sibi debeant, habens cum Christo omnia communia. Peccata sua iam non sua, sed Christi sunt. At in Christo peccata iusticiam vincere non possunt sed vincuntur : ideo in ipso consumuntur. Rursum, iusticia Christi iam non tantum Christi, sed sui Christiani est. Ideo non potest ulli debere aut a peccatis opprimi, tanta fultus iusticia”. WA, 2, 504, l. 4.

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who believe in Him. This makes the Christian free from any oppression of sin since he/she is under the protection of such a great righteousness. The grace of faith, Luther stressed, was, indeed, so inestimable. To have faith means to be filled with Christ. Though living a life of a mere mortal, in this life it is no longer the Christian who lives, speaks, works or suffers. On account of faith, it is Christ who does all this in him/her. This centrality of faith became particularly clear in Luther’s approach to the spiritual status of those living under the Law (meaning those whose reliance is on the works of the Law) and those living by faith. Their mind frames, the spiritual disposition towards God and His works, could not be more different. The Reformer’s point was basically that living by faith brings to communion with God. Living obsessed with the Law and relying on one’s own abilities brings to a dangerous commitment with oneself, which ultimately means self-destruction. In his Lectures on Galatians he put it as follows: Since indeed, as was said above, it is not the Christian who lives, speaks, works and suffers; it is Christ who does all this in him. All his works are works of Christ, so inestimable is the grace of faith. Therefore he who is removed to the Law now lives in himself; he busies himself with his own works, his own life, his own word; that is, he sins and does not fulfil the Law. He has no interest in Christ; Christ does not dwell in Him or make use of him. He observes an utterly wicked and miserable Sabbath, a rest from the works of the Lord, when, on the contrary, he should be observing a Sabbath from his own works and should be unoccupied and disengaged , in order that the Lord’s work might be done in Him, which as saint Augustine teaches, was formally prefigured by the Sabbath. Therefore we who believes in Christ empties himself and becomes disengaged from his own works, in order that Christ may live and work in him. But he who seeks to be justified by Law empties himself from Christ and becomes disengaged from the works of God in order that he may live and work in himself, that is, in order that he may perish and be destroyed (translation Richard JUNGKUNTZ, LW 27, 332)21.

As reader of Paul, the young Luther’s greatest endeavour was the fight against the application of an ordo iustificationis he understood to draw its inspiration from the Aristotelian/human righteousness, to the Christian concept of justification. 21 WA 2, 564, l. 20: “Et mire placet huius verbi Emphasis: vult dicere ‘otiosi, inanes, vacui estis opere Christi, et Christi opus non est in vobis’, siquidem, ut supra dictum est, Christianus non vivit, non loquitur, non operatur, non patitur, sed Christus in eo, omnia opera eius sunt opera Christi: tam inaestimabilis est gratia fidei. Qui ergo in legem transfertur, iam ipse in se vivit ipso, suum opus, suam vitam, suum verbum exercet, id est, peccat et legem non implet, otiosus est Christo, Christus non habitat in eo nec utitur eo, agitque pessimum et infoelix quoddam sabbatum ab operibus domini, cum contra sabbatissare deberet ab operibus suis, vacare et otiosus esse, ut opera domini in eo fierent, quod per sabbatum olim figuratum docet beatus Augustinus. Igitur qui credit in Christum, evacuatur a seipso, fit otiosus ab operibus suis, ut vivat et operetur in eo Christus. Qui lege quaerit iustificari, evacuatur a Christo, fit otiosus ab operibus dei, ut vivat et operetur in seipso, hoc est pereat et perdatur”.

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His opponents, Luther claimed, failed to understand how contrary these two realities are. According to Luther, the antithesis between these two sort of righteousness lay in on the fact that in the Aristotelian/human righteousness, the good works produce righteousness which the Christian doctrine of justification stated that it is righteousness that produces good works. This antithesis can be encapsulated in a theological equation, that, according to Luther, defined the very essence of the Christian doctrine of justification: works do not justify, neither the ones preceding, nor those following justification. The preceding works do not justify because they prepare for righteousness; those which follow do not justify because they are the result of an already accomplished justification. One is not made righteous by doing righteous works, but rather one does righteous works by being righteous. Hence, grace alone justifies22. Luther’s Christological approach to faith, as well as the controversial theological formulation according to which a justified sinner is both righteous and sinner, would suffice to argue that the Reformer’s understanding of justification went far beyond a mere forensic declaration of righteousness. The justifying faith, that is the personal acknowledgement that Christ was handed over for one’s sins (it was this personal tone, Luther stressed that, distinguished justifying faith from the faith of demons and ungodly, who believe that Christ was handed over for the others’ sins)23, is a gift (donum) of Christ and contained Christ Himself with all His attributes. For Luther faith was the finest expression of God’s grace and mercy since it is in faith that God reveals Himself as a selfgiving God by giving Himself to the sinner and bearing sinners’ miseries. Thus the justified sinner enjoys an ontological communion with Christ. To these issues, I will return in the due course. 22 WA 56, 255, l. 15: “Immo nec opera precedentia nec sequentia Iustificant, quanto minus opera legis! Precedentia quidem, quia preparant ad Iustitiam; Sequentia vero, quia requirunt iam factam Iustificationem. Non enim Iusta operando Iusti efficimur, Sed Iusti essendo iusta operamur. Ergo sola gratia Iustificat”. 23 Luther stressed that the faith that justifies is this personal acknowledgement of Christ as one’s Redeemer. This is the faith meaning Christ’s indwelling, living and reigning over one’s life, the divine filial adoption through the testimony of the Holy Spirit. Thus it is easily noticeable that all this happens not on account of one’s strength or capacities. It must be accepted in humility and despair. It is in this justifying faith that Luther based his teachings on the certainty of salvation, whose denial he considered mere “fables of the famous scholastics”: “Nihil enim tibi profuerit credere, Christum esse pro peccatis sanctorum aliorum traditum, pro tuis autem dubitare. Nam hoc et impii et demones credunt. Verum constanti fiducia praesumendum est tibi, quod et pro tuis et unus sis illorum, pro quorum peccatis ipse traditus est. Haec fides te iustificat, Christum in te habitare, vivere et regnare faciet. Haec est testimonium spiritus, quod reddit spiritui nostro, quod simus filii dei. Quare facile senties, si advertas, hunc affectum ex tuis viribus in te non esse: impetrandus ergo per humilem et in seipso desperatum spiritum. Fabulae ergo sunt opinatorum Scholasticorum, hominem esse incertum, in statu salutis sit nec ne”. WA 2, 158, l. 20

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The concept of righteousness carries an equally determinant christological sense in its core. This christological tone of righteousness, Luther pointed, was made clear in Paul’s statement in Rom. 4:25. Here the Apostle declared that Christ was handed over for our transgressions and raised for our justification. The statement, then, made it clear that the righteousness through which sinners are justified emanates from Christ’s resurrection and not from any sort of human moral or ethical engagement and progress. Luther’s discussion on justification never lost sight of what he considered the Pelagian-oriented understanding of justification among the scholastics. Thus, the Reformer’s emphasis on the Christological basis of iustitia against its meritoriented definition which he ascribed to the scholastics is very recurrent. In his Lectures on Galatians he explained to his readers the reason why Paul laid such a strong emphasis on Christ’s resurrection even in some places where it may not have been so necessary (as in the introduction to the epistle to the Galatians). According to Luther, Paul’s stress on the resurrection of Christ aimed at the destruction of self-righteousness, an opposition to work-righteousness. Why such an opposition? Because work-righteousness constituted the very denial of the christological nature of the Christian notion of justification. To assert that works produced righteousness was to deny and mock Christ’s resurrection since there was no other way of being righteous but believing in Christ. Any attempt to remove Christ from His central place in the process of justification is to reduce His resurrection to nothing. It is this belief in Christ’s death and resurrection for one’s justification that enables sinners to die to sin in Christ’s death and rise with Him in His triumphal victory over death. Only through this very same faith Christ comes to dwell in sinners. Christ’s resurrection is, thus, a sinner’s very righteousness. Without it no one will ever rise regardless of the magnitude or amount of good works he/she may perform; and in Christ’s resurrection any one at all who believes will rise regardless of the evil deeds he or she may have performed24. 24 WA 2, 455, l. 11: ”Quod autem resurrectionem Christi interserit, videtur otiosum. Verum solet Apostolus libenter resurrectionem Christi commemorare, potissimum contra eos, qui in iusticiam propriam confidunt. Sic et in Rhomanorum salutatione eiusdem et copiosius meminit, quod et ibidem fortiter contra iusticiam operum disputat. Qui enim tales sunt, necesse est, ut resurrectionem Christi negent, immo irrideant. Nam Rho. iiij. Christus, inquit, mortuus est propter peccata nostra et resurrexit propter iustificationem nostram. Ideo, qui alia via praesumit iustus esse quam credendo in Christum, hic Christum a se reiicit et otiosam eius passionem et resurrectionem ducit. Qui autem in Christum morientem credit, simul et ipse moritur peccato cum Christo, et qui credit in resurgentem et viventem, eadem fide et ipse resurgit et vivit in Christo et Christus in eo. Ideo resurrectio Christi est iusticia vitaque nostra, non tantum exemplo sed et virtute. Sine resurrectione Christi nemo resurgit, quantumlibet operetur bona: rursum, per resurrectionem quilibet resurgit, quantumlibet operatus sit mala, ut haec latius ad Rhomanos”.

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Justification by faith: theological and exegetical bases

On the phrase “iustitia Dei” in Rom. 1:17

Of paramount importance for understanding Luther’s doctrine of justification that one pays attention to his discussion on the nature of Christian righteousness. Luther’s reflections on the meaning of the term iustitia Dei used by Paul in Rom. 1:17, where the Apostle declared (quoting Malachi) that “the one who is righteous by faith will live” is extremely important for this purpose. I shall now focus on Luther’s exegesis of this Pauline passage. In the sequence of aforementioned words of Rom. 1:17, the Apostle made an intriguing declaration. First he presented the Gospel as the guidance for the mankind and asserted that “in it [Gospel] is revealed the righteousness of God from faith to faith”. In his reading of the passage under consideration, Luther refused the interpretation that pointed to a progression from “unformed faith to formed faith (an interpretationwhich he attributed to Nicholas of Lyra). No righteous person, he claimed, can possibly live from an “unformed faith”, because the righteousness of God does not come from such sort of faith. An “unformed faith”, Luther insisted, is no faith at all since no one can believe with an “unformed faith (Non enim credo, quod quis fide informi possit credere)”25. The possibility that Paul’s intention was to refer to a progression from the faith of the Patriarchs of the Old Law to the faith of the New Law sounded more acceptable, but was, nevertheless, ruled out by Luther. His explanation denying this possibility was based on the fact that the righteous do not live by the faith of past generations. Besides, there is only one faith and the Patriarchs’ faith was the same as ours. It was only less clear, as the educated and uneducated people may believe the same thing, but the faith of the former is clearer than that of the latter26. To what sort of righteousness was Paul, then, referring? What sort of righteousness does faith commend? Luther dealt with this issue in many of his writings, especially in his early Pauline commentaries. But here I shall take a work in which the Reformer was particularly clear on his approach to the issue – De duplicii iustitia. To start with, Luther, in the footsteps of Augustine, stressed a grammatical detail that found its explanation in a crucial theological and doc25 WA 56, 172 – 173, l. 16: “Secundo Notandum: Illud, quod dicitur : Ex fide in fidem [1, 17] varie exponitur. Lyra vult, quod ‘ex fide informi ad fidem formatam’. Quod nihil valet omnino, quia ex fide Informi Iustus nullus viuit Et nec est Iustitia Dei ex illa, quod tamen vtrunque hic dicit. Nisi velit fidem informem intelligere fidem incipientium et fidem formatam perfectorum. fides enim informis non est fides, Sed potius obiectum fidei. Non enim credo, quod quis fide informi possit credere”. 26 “Alii sic: ‘Ex fide sc. patrum antique legis in fidem noue legis.’ Et hec glosa sustinetur, licet possit reprobari et redargui videri, Ex hoc scil., Quod non viuit Iustus ex fide preteritorum, cum tamen dicat: ‘Iustus ex fide viuet’, Et eadem crediderunt patres, que? nos, Vna fides, licet illi obscurius, Sicut et modo docti idem credunt, quod rudes, Sed tamen clarius”.

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trinal concern. The genitive used by Paul in the phrase iustitia Dei carried an important theological message; the Apostle was, in fact, talking of a righteousness which belongs to God, not humans. What is important to mention here, Luther explained, is the fact that Paul was talking of the primal sort of Christian righteousness, the one from which emanates all our righteousness. According to Luther, there were two kinds of Christian righteousness. The first type of righteousness is the one Paul wrote about in Rom. 1:17, i. e. an alien righteousness, instilled from without. The essential relationship between faith and this type of righteousness is clear, taking into consideration the very manner it is imputed to the sinner. It is “the righteousness of Christ by which he justifies, through faith”27. This righteousness is imputed to humans in baptism or whenever they are truly repentant, i. e. when they come into union with Christ through faith. The communion that takes place through faith allows everything which belongs to Christ to belong, henceforth, to the believers as well, in the same way as a bridegroom possesses all that is his bride’s and she all that is his. For Luther, this gift of grace was part of the very redemptive mission God prepared for His people when he made promises to Abraham and, later on, gave up His own Son for all those who believe in Him. Accordingly, the first type of Christian righteousness could have no other origin than faith in the Redeemer. Faith and faith alone brings humans into the communion with Him. It is on account of this exclusive accomplishment of faith that Luther maintained that Everything which Christ has is ours, graciously bestowed on us unworthy men out of God’s sheer and mercy, although we have rather deserved wrath and condemnation, and hell as well. […] Through faith in Christ, therefore, Christ’s righteousness becomes our righteousness, and all that he has becomes ours; rather he himself becomes ours. Therefore the Apostle calls it “the righteousness of God” in Rom. 1:17 […]. This is an infinite righteousness, and one that swallows up all sin in a moment, for it is impossible that sin should exist in Christ”. On the contrary, he who trusts in Christ exists in Christ; he is one with Christ, having the same righteousness as he. This righteousness is primary ; it is the basis, the cause, the source of all our own actual righteousness. For this is the righteousness given in place of the original righteousness lost in Adam. It accomplishes the same as the original righteousness would have accomplished; rather, it accomplishes more28.

For these reasons, Luther explained, the term faith is connected with “the work of the Lord”, “confession”, “power of God”, “truth”, “righteousness”, – all “names for faith in Christ, for the righteousness which is in Christ”. This is what makes true the Pauline statement according to which it is no longer the believer 27 LW 31, 297. 28 LW 31, 298 – 299.

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living but Christ living in the believer (see Gal. 2:20). Accordingly, the first kind of Christian righteousness is an alien sort of righteousness, “instilled in us without our works by grace alone”29. As Luther understood the issue of Christian righteousness, from the first sort of Christian righteousness there emanates a second one. This second one points to a harmony of the believers’ way of life with that alien righteousness imputed to him/her on account of faith. This second sort of righteousness, thus, can be correctly called, “our proper righteousness”. Not because we alone work it, Luther stressed, but because we work with that first and alien righteousness”30. This detail is of crucial importance especially to clarify the accusations pending on Luther that he excluded good works from justification. He did not! His emphasis on the primacy of the grace of faith had the same purpose as Augustine had in his debate with Pelagians. The purpose of both theologians was to make sure that good works were placed in the right moment of the justification process, that is as a product of righteousness rather than the origin or source of the same righteousness. To make this plain it would suffice to pay close attention to the second sort of Christian righteousness as understood by the young Luther. Luther was quite insistent on the fact that the gracious bestowal of the first type of righteousness upon the sinner does not close the process of justification. The bestowal of grace is just an event. A crucial event, but still an event in the grand scheme of things. Luther understood justification of a sinner as a life-long process. When reckoning the sinner as righteous, God draws him/her to Christ. This alien righteousness is the opposite of Original Sin, which humans acquire without works, by birth alone. So justification is ultimately a long process in which Christ “daily drives out the old Adam more and more in accordance to which faith and knowledge of Christ grow. For alien righteousness is not instilled all at once, but it begins, makes progress, and is finally perfected at the end through death”31. If the believer would be a perfectly spiritual man after the bestowal of grace, Luther pointed out, then it would be proper to say that, since faith does all things and it alone suffices for righteousness, he/she could take ease and do no works and be content with faith. To behave on this basis would be a grave error. The believer is not entirely spiritual, but partly carnal. The perfectly spiritual man will reveal him/herself only at the resurrection of the dead in the last day. If faith shapes the spiritual man, it takes leading a life in accordance with the very same faith for the body to be under the dominion of the spirit, to progressively build a life of harmony between the spiritual and carnal man. In hoc saeculum, i. e. as 29 LW 31, 299. 30 LW 31, 299. 31 LW 31, 299.

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long one leaves in the flesh one only begins a process which will be perfected in the future life. This was the reason why Luther portrayed the spiritual man or the Christian in a dual and antithetical manner. For Luther, a Christian was totally free and lord of all, but still a carnal man walking the paths of progression towards the future life. The Christian is servant and does all kind of works. That is because in this life the Christian needs to control his/her body and has dealings with the neighbours, as he explained in the following lines Here the works begin; here a man cannot enjoy leisure; here he must indeed take care to discipline his body by fastings, watchings, labors, and other reasonable discipline and to subject it to the Spirit so that it will obey and conform to the inner man, as it is the nature of the body to do if it is not held in check. The inner man, who by faith is created in the image of God, is both joyful and happy because of Christ in whom so many benefits are conferred upon him; and therefore it is his one occupation to serve God joyfully and without thought of gain, in love that is not constrained./ While he is doing this, behold, he meets a contrary will in his own flesh which strives to serve the world and seeks its own advantage. This the spirit of faith cannot tolerate, but with joyful zeal it attempts to put the body under control and hold it in check, as Paul says in Rom 7 [:22 – 23], «For I delight in the law of God […]32.

It is this sense of progression, this struggle of the believer in order to live in accordance with the gift of faith, i. e. the striving of the spiritual man to live spiritually by controlling the carnal man, that makes the second type righteousness the great basis of ethical nature inherent in Luther’s doctrine of justification. The “our proper righteousness” which emanates from the alien righteousness, graciously bestowed on account of faith, consists in the believer living in accordance with the very righteousness of faith, that is, living his/her life as Christian. Thus this second type of righteousness consists in that manner of life spent profitably in good works, in the first place, in the slaying the flesh and crucifying the desires with the respect to the self […]. In the second place, this righteousness consists in loving one’s neighbour ; and in the third place, in meekness and fear toward God33.

Accordingly, Luther declared that the best interpretation of Rom. 1:17 is to identify the passage with a spiritual growth. The righteousness of God is exclusively from faith, but such faith has a sort of space for progression in a way that becomes clearer (as I Cor. 3:18; Psalms 84:8 and Rev. 3:12, he claimed, would suggest). In other words, this fact made of Christian faith a continuous search, a constant spiritual struggle aiming at spiritual growth (Philip. 3:12). Augustine, Luther reminded his reader, taught that faith progresses from the 32 LW 31, 358 – 359. 33 LW 31, 299.

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faith of those who confess with their mouth to the faith of those who are obedient34. Besides, for Luther, the second type of righteousness, emanating from the first, was its product, fruit, consequence. The second righteousness goes on to complete the the first for it ever strives to do away with the old Adam and to destroy the body of sin. Therefore it hates itself and loves its neighbour ; it does not seek its own good, but that of another, and in this its whole way of living consists. For in that it hates itself and does not seek its own, it crucifies the flesh. Because it seeks the good of another, it works love. Thus in each sphere it does God’s will, living soberly with self, justly with neighbour, devoutly toward God35.

Accordingly this righteousness follows the example of Christ. Just as Christ did all things for us, not seeking His own good but ours only, so He desires that we also should set the same example for our neighbours. The first and the second sort of righteousness, then, come into a union which Luther explains making use of image of marriage: We read in Rom. 6 [:9] that this righteousness is set opposite to our own actual sin: “For just as you once yielded your members to impurity and to greater and greater iniquity, so now yield your members to righteousness for sanctification” Therefore through the first righteousness arises the voice of the bridegroom who says to the soul, “I am yours”, but through the second comes the voice of the bride who answers “I am yours”. Then the marriage is consummated […] Then the soul no longer seeks to be righteous in and for itself, but it has Christ as its righteousness and therefore seeks only the welfare of others36.

For Luther, to be justified meant to be declared, looked upon, as a, or to be considered righteous. To be righteous before God is the equivalent of “to be justified in the presence of God”. The following scheme, it is never too much to stress, must not be neglected: one is not considered righteous because one is righteous, but because one is made righteous one is looked upon as righteous by the same God who makes one righteous. No one is looked upon by God as righteous except he who fulfilled the law and the only way to fulfil the Law is through faith in Christ, the true fulfiller of the Law. Accordingly, apart or outside 34 WA 56, 173, l. 7: “Ideoque sensus Videtur esse, Quod Iustitia Dei sit ex fide totaliter, ita tamen, quod proficiendo non venit in speciem, Sed semper in clariorem fidem, secundum illud 2. Corinth. 4.: ‘Nos transformamur a claritate in claritatem’ etc. Item: ‘ibunt de virtute in virtutem’, ita ‘de fide in fidem’, semper magis ac magis credendo, Vt ‘qui Iustus est, Iustificetur adhuc’, ne quis statim arbitretur se apprehendisse et ita desinat proficere i. e. incipiat deficere. B. Augustinus c. XI. de spi. et lit. Sic: ‘ex fide annunciantium in fidem obedientium’”. 35 LW 31, 300. 36 LW 31, 300.

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Christ no one is righteous, no one fulfils the Law37. Then the most accurate way to express the justification process as understood by Luther is justification by faith through grace. Grace is the operator and faith is a sort of canal to justification. Faith, it must be recalled, however, is itself a gift, hence itself grace.

3.4

Justification of the sinner: a divine arbitrary decision

In his approach to justification Luther was very clear in one aspect: here one must avoid or reject all sort of speculations peculiar to lawyers and philosophers who make God a final goal of speculation. To understanding salvation in general and justification in particular, requires regarding God as the starting point of all inquiry. Like Augustine, Luther regarded justification as depending not on human moral or ethical engagement but rather on God’s immutable will. Justification is a gift of grace and grace precedes any sort of good work. Man cannot contribute to his justification. Luther endorsed the Augustinian claim according to which grace is not grace if it is due and not freely given. All this makes it clear that, for Luther (as for Augustine) the justification of a sinner had its origins in the arbitrary will of God. For Luther, justification was a God-driven process, it depended not on individual merits but upon God’s arbitrary will that ultimately decided the justification of the sinner. Since all are sinners and justification is not based on individual merits but exclusively on God’s grace and mercy, and not all sinners are brought to justification, one has no other option but to conclude that God arbitrarily chooses who will be justified and who will not. This arbitrariness inherent in Luther’s understanding of justification was also an Augustinian inheritance which led the young Luther to a similar theological and ethical determinism that one finds in Augustine’s doctrine of election, predestination, justification, and salvation in general. It has been said in the first part of this work that Augustine maintained that unless assisted by grace, the sinner cannot search for God’s path. For Augustine, grace was a free and undeserved gift and its absence led to the necessity of sin. Augustine did not admit that such a necessity could be inferred from his teaching, but there is no way to deny that the Church Father’s doctrine of grace led to a theological determinism. Without grace, human beings do not want and cannot want to chose anything good, only sin. Augustine insisted that still one should not speak of determinism in this case because the sinner desires and take pleasure in committing sin. Well, according to Augustine’s own reasoning, without grace, the sinner had no choice but to take pleasure in sin. 37 WA 56, 22 – 23.

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It was this line of reasoning that the young Luther followed. In the absence of grace sin is the only path one wishes to follow. All this, of course, raises the polemical question whether these two theologians taught predestination to punishment and condemnation. Augustine went through a lot of trouble to avoid approaching the issue but it is clear that his teachings on predestination suggests that some are predestined to salvation and others to condemnation. Luther’s discourse of salvation was also defined within this theological framework. Were they totally wrong? It is a matter of dispute far beyond the scope of this study. Here I only remind the reader that the position of the two theologians may have been rooted in consistent Biblical statements. Regarding the issue of predestination I think it has always been difficult for theologians to evade the Pauline declaration that “God has mercy upon whomever he desires and he harden the hearts of whomever he desires”. Are these words to be interpreted that both those whose hearts God hardened and those on whom He he had mercy had been predestined to their eventual condition? It is a possibility of interpretation that neither Augustine nor Luther ruled out. Luther’s understanding of justification can be represented in the picture of God coming to rescue of sinners. Justification was, thus, a crucial step in the salvation process. However, according to Luther, God did not come to rescue all sinners. In fact He has abandoned some “to the lust of their hearts” (Rom. 1:24). Human salvation took place through God’s decisive assistance in coming to rescue the sinner. Human condemnation took place through God’s abandonment of human beings to their own. It is fair to say that, as Luther put it, the unrighteous had no chance to avoid sin. It is true that, being unrighteous, they do not want to avoid but rather delight themselves in sin. The fact, however, is that those unrighteous who are declared righteous are graciously provided with a different disposition of the will (since they are brought into communion with Christ and share all His attributes), so that, though they will not be able to avoid sin at all times, they at least find joy in God’s Law (thus they are at once righteous and sinners). To say that Luther’s doctrine of justification pointed to an event and process that found its basis on a divine arbitrary will may be confusing. Unlike in the thought of the anti-Pelagian Augustine, predestination, to the untrained eye does not seem to assume a crucial role in young Luther’s soteriology. The issue may even seem to be rather fading in young Luther’s theological production. That was not the case. Though the issue of predestination in young Luther was far from being a recurrent issue as it was Augustine’s later writings, it would be wrong to underestimate its role in the Reformer’s theological reasoning. A careful analysis of some passages of Luther’s early writings would reveal that the reality of predestination does, in fact, lay at the core of many of his theological insights, including justification by faith.

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This is not hard to prove. Like Augustine in his struggle against Pelagians, predestination obviously served Luther’s goals, namely in shaping his arguments for a soteriological framework where God initiated and concluded the process of salvation. After all, if everything depended on the divine decree of predestination, which took place beforehand, how could one maintain that the human being had any sort of merit in its salvation? In Disputatio contra scholasticam theologiam, in opposition to certain branches of Scholasticism, Luther denied that sinner can prepare themselves for grace. He refuted the Scholastic understanding of preparation for grace with the argument that the eternal election and predestination of God was the best and infallible preparation for grace and the only disposition towards grace (thesis 29)38. In fact, it would be hard to understand Luther’s theological discourse, as having been strongly rooted upon a theological concept such as the gift of faith (which is itself grace) if predestination would have been ruled out. According to Luther, the bestowal of the gracious gift of faith depended exclusively on God’s arbitrary mercy and will, not on any sort of human collaboration. Without the reality of predestination Luther’s entire discourse of salvation would have become simply senseless. Human salvation, the Reformer explained, depends on the eterna et fixa charitas Dei39. In his Lectures on Romans, dealing with the case of the twins Jacob and Esau, Luther revealed himself faithful to Augustine by maintaining that nothing but divine election distinguished humans before God (non nisi electio distinxit)40. It was the divine election and predestination that explained that, being part of the very same mass of perdition, Jacob and Esau had the radically different fates. Luther’s explanation is basically the reproduction of Augustine’s. Both twins were born under condemnation on account of Original Sin, hence deserved to be condemned (“Quod ambo mali essent vitio originalis peccati, licet de Iacob aliqui sentiant, Quod in vtero fuerit sanctificatus. Sed merito proprio erant Similes et e¸ quales ac eiusdem masse et perditionis”)41. This, Luther stressed, meant that it was not the flesh that makes one son of God or heir of the promise, but only God’s gracious election (“Quod Caro non facit filios Dei et heredes promissionis, Sed electio et gratia Dei. Sic, Sic ergo humiliata superbia carnis potest nasci spiritus et gratia Dei”)42. 38 Predestination and election, Luther also stressed, serve the purpose of distinguishing Christian faith from paganism since it made clear that Christian religion was not based on fate, determined by stars, but rather on God’s definite plan that it should be so (“Vt non temere venisse aut ex fato stellarum (vt multi vani presumpsere) religio Christi, Sed certo consilio et premeditata ordinatione Dei sic futura fuisse cognosceretur”) WA 56, 166, l. 9. 39 WA 56, 382, l. 8. 40 WA 56, 384 41 WA 56, 396, l. 5 42 WA 56, 384, 24

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All this being said, I now focus my attention on how Luther regarded the relationship between the divine arbitrary will and the justification event. For Luther, not being justified meant not being declared righteous on account of God’s mercy or not having been brought to communion with God. This unfortunate status, according to Luther, implied that the unrighteous despised the Law and wished to sin. Luther went even to the point of declaring that, when it comes to the unrighteous, God even desires sin. If it is true that God did not surrender anyone to evil when He acts in the good, it is also true that, in His severe punishments, God makes the evil ones to increase their sins against the divine commandments in order to meet an even greater punishment. God does not order anyone to commit evil, but He abandons the evil ones so that their free will would become definitely powerless to struggle against the Devil’s temptations. The way Luther put it is similar to Augustine’s. It seems that, when it comes to the unrighteous, if it is true that God does not like sin, He certainly seems interested in seeing sin growing in them. Luther’s God, as that of Augustine, is a narcissistic one. This God goes to the point of wishing sin to take place so His power and kindness may be be revealed. Luther stated, it is God’s will that humans be overwhelmed by sin. God does not wish sin, but He wants it to be done so that His punishments may take place. He does not wish sin for His own sake but for the sake of punishments. For this, He even desires some humans to be submitted to what He Himself hates the most – sin43. God, Luther pointed out, does not wish sin in the same way man wishes it. It would be impossible for evil to spring from God’s will in the way it does with humans. God wishes evil in terms that this remains outside Him and such evil is committed by a creature (either man or demons). The same way He does not will the good because, while he wills that all humans should be bound to His laws; yet he does not will that that all fulfil them. Therefore it would be correct to say that

43 WA 56, 180, l. 7: “Et si obiicitur : Deus prohibet malum, ergo non tradit in malum i. e. non suscitat malum, vt dominetur et superet, nec precipit ipsum fieri, Respondetur : Verum est, Quando in bonitate agit; Sed quando in seueritate punit, peruersos facit abundantius peccare contra suam prohibitionem, vt abundantius puniat. Et Concordando vtrinque partes: Hoc ‘tradere’ ex parte hominis, qui traditur, est quidem permissio, quia subtrahit auxilium suum ab eo et deserit eum. Tunc mox diabolus, qui semper ad talia expectans est paratus, accipit Vel eo ipso se accepisse sentit potestatem et Iussionem a Deo. Et sic est preceptio Dei. Neque enim Verum est, quod arguitur, Deum precipere homini malum facere, Sed deserit, vt diabolo nequeat resistere, qui habet ad hoc mandatum et voluntatem Dei. Et quicquid moliamur, Voluntas Dei est, vt ille superetur a peccato, Sed voluntas etiam beneplaciti, Quia vult, quod superetur ab eo, quod Deus maxime odit, et seruum facit illius, quod maxime intendit punire. Illa enim est maxima seueritas, tradere aliquem in eius manus, quem tu maxime oderis”.

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God wills good; God does not will evil, and God does not will good. Those who objects to this, Luther sentenced, do not understand the depths of theology44. All these statements, Luther acknowledged, contains the most subtle secrets of theology. The reason why God bestows grace upon some and not others, we will never know in this life, but faith, which is the conviction of things not seen, demands that we believe this. To some whom God does not want nor will to justify so that in them He can show greater glory in the elect, in those He decided to justify. Accordingly He wills sin for the sake of His glory and for the sake of the elect. God hardened Pharaoh’s heart in order to show His power through him (Rom. 9:17). Of course, Luther stated, all this having in mind some of Nominalist theologians, namely Biel who claimed that if this would be the case then people would have been condemned without guilt since they are asked to do the impossible45. To this claim, Luther replied, Paul answered with Rom. 9:20. God has mercy on whom He wills (Rom. 9:15; Ex. 3:19). So He caused Jews to fall and thus showed His power through the Gentiles. How could the Jews do evil unless God had permitted it? How could He have permitted it if He would not have wished it? He certainly permitted it willingly, Luther concluded.

44 WA 56, 181 – 182, l. 24: “Vera est ista: Deus Vult malum seu peccata, sicut et illa: Deus intelligit malum seu peccata. Tunc illi stupent dicentes: tota Scriptura dicit, Quod non vult malum et odit malos, et ista sunt contradictoria. Respondetur : Quod Vult malum, dupliciter intelligitur (i. e. quod malum ab eius voluntate eliciatur propria, sicut homo vult malum, hoc est impossibile in Deo). Alio modo vult malum, sc. quod extra ipsum est et alius facit, puta homo Vel demon. Hec vera est. Quia si nollet, non fieret. Sic Ediuerso Non vult bonum, Quia vult nos omnes obligari ad precepta, et tamen non vult omnes illa implere. Ergo omnia hec sunt Vera: Deus Vult malum, Deus Vult bonum; Deus non vult malum, Deus non vult bonum. Sed obstrepunt hic, Quia Liberum arbitrium est in culpa. Sed hoc secundum profundiorem theologiam nihil est”. 45 WA 56, 182 – 183, l. 14: “Hec enim duo quomodo consonent et quo Iudicio Iusta sint, sc. Quod Deus vult me obligari et omnes, et tamen non dat gratiam, nisi cui velit, Nec vult omnibus, Sed electionem in illis sibi reseruat: hec, inquam, in futuro videbimus. Nunc autem Bl. 37 oportet credere esse hoc Iustum, quia fides est Inuisibilium, Quamquam hoc verum sit, Quod Deus nunquam vllum peccatum vult propter ipsum peccatum, Sed sic scil., Quod non vult nec placet ei aliquos Iustificare, vt per eos ostendat eo maiorem gloriam in electis. Et sic peccata etiam vult propter aliud i. e. propter suam gloriam et electos, Sicut clare infra patebit, quando dicit, Quod Pharaonem excitauit et indurauit, vt virtutem suam ostenderet in eo. Et iterum: ‘Miserebor, cui voluero’ etc. Ita et Iude?orum delicto salus est Gentium; vt ostenderet misericordiam suam Gentibus clarius, fe?cit illos ruere. Quomodo enim mali esse et malum facere possent, si ipse non permitteret? Et quomodo permitteret, nisi vellet? non enim nolens hoc facit, Sed volens permittit. Et ideo vult, vt bonum oppositum magis elucescat. Sed hic ganniunt: Ergo sine culpa damnantur, Quia obligantur et non possunt implere Vel ‘obligantur ad impossibile’. Respondet Apostolus: ‘O homo, tu quis es, qui respondeas Deo?”’

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Conclusions

To sum up, one must stress that Luther’s doctrine of justification based on a concept of iustitia that is an externa et aliena iustitia. This is of crucial importance for understanding the two standpoints from which Luther did analyse the concept of righteousness: coram Deo and coram hominibus. The Augustinian and Biblical antithesis coram Deo/coram hominibus occurs over 60 times in Lectures in Romans and most of the time its use aims to stress a point of crucial importance for understanding Luther’s doctrine of justification: when comes to the issue of justification of the sinner, Luther’s ethical theology suggests a radical transformation of human values. To be just or righteous coram hominibus implies the performance of good, to act righteously, to behave in accordance with a code of norms or law. But none of this makes anyone righteous coram Deo. How so? According to Luther one is righteous coram Deo simply because God declares and makes one righteous. That is, God enables one to perform righteous deeds. Such deeds are, thus, performed in faith. Accordingly, when dissociated from faith, human deeds that may be just coram hominibus are unjust coram Deo. Coram Deo, human wisdom is ignorance, human strength is weakness, etc.

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4. Approaching the issue of simul iustus et peccator: Luther’s theological anthropology and the doctrine of justification by faith

4.1

Simul iustus et peccator. The place of consent and sin

The doctrine of simul iustus et peccator per se raises two main questions: what does it mean to be simultaneously righteous and sinner? How explain the fact that justified human beings still commit sin? To start with it is important to mention that by formulating the second question one is immediately brought to the issues of free will and consent to sin. Luther’s most detailed discussions on free will was produced only by the time the he found himself engaged in debate with his Dutch contemporary Erasmus. However, the Reformer’s main insights on free will were also recorded in his works preceding 1525. In some of these writings, namely his early Pauline commentaries, Luther firmly showed his inflexible opposition to the Scholastic and humanists’ approach to free will. Their approach to human free will, Luther claimed, was driven by an excessive and foolish anthropological optimism. It is important not to lose sight of this assessment when studying Luther’s early interpretation of Romans 7. Luther’s reading of this passage was determined by a crucial statement that ultimately defined the essence of his doctrine of simul iustus et peccator: even in the justified human being, free will is not free to avoid sin; the righteous sin even unwillingly. Both for Luther and Augustine it is difficult to say whether it is the fall of human nature that explains their soteriological insights, or rather these are at the service of the pessimistic theological anthropology common to both. What appears to be clear is that both theologians established a close connection between the portrayal of fallen humankind and the way the Christian doctrine of salvation is to be understood. Luther was forthright in teaching that what drew the line between righteousness and unrighteousness is repentance. Hence the importance of humilitas and confessio, terms which, in Luther’s writings, fuse with the very notion of faith. In his Lectures on Romans, in a surprising use of the Aristotelian teaching on the five stages of natural things non-being, becoming, being, action, being

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acted upon (that is, privation, matter, form, operation, passion), Luther explained that the same case could be applied to the spirit: non-being would be a thing without name and a man in his sins; becoming is justification; being is righteousness; action is doing and living righteously ; being acted upon is to be made perfect and complete. These five stages would always be in motion in man. Luther acknowledged that Aristotle philosophized well on this matter but was frequently misunderstood. The Reformer saw in those Aristotelian teachings an opportunity to explain the doctrine of simul iustus et peccator. The justified Christian is always in non-being, in becoming in being, always in privation in potentiality, in action always in sin, in justification in righteousness. In other words, the justified is always a sinner, always a penitent, always righteous. Repentance makes a righteous out of an unrighteous person. Repentance is the tiny line of demarcation between unrighteousness and righteousness. Thus one is in sin as the terminus a quo and righteousness as the terminus ad quem. If we always are repentant, we are always sinners, and thereby we are righteous and we are justified; we are in part sinners and in part righteous. We are nothing but penitents1. It is not my purpose to give here a detailed account of all these issues. I focus on the doctrine of simul iustus et peccator and its Biblical background as regarded and formulated by Luther. Even when talking about divine grace’s operation, the young Luther was careful and thus made some fundamental remarks concerning the state of the justified Christian. Such remarks are of utmost importance for understanding his theological formulation of simul iustus et 1 WA 56, 441 – 442, l. 23: “Nam Sicut In Naturalibus rebus quinque sunt gradus: Non esse, fieri, Esse, Actio, passio, i. e. priuatio, Materia, forma, operatio, passio, secundum Aristotelem, Ita et Spiritu: Non Esse Est res sine nomine et homo in peccatis; fieri Est Iustificatio; Esse est Iustitia; opus Est Iuste agere et viuere; pati est perfici et consummari. Et hec quinque semper velut in motu sunt in homine. Et quodlibet in homine est Inueniri — respectiue preter primum non esse et vltimum esse, Nam inter illa duo: Non esse et pati currunt illa tria semper, sc. fieri, esse, agere — per Natiuitatem nouam transit de peccato ad Iustitiam, Et sic de non esse per fieri ad esse. Quo facto operatur Iuste. Sed ab hocipso esse nouo, quod est verum non esse, ad aliud nouum esse. proficiendo transit per passionem i. e. aliud fieri, in esse melius, Et ab illo iterum in aliud. Quare Verissime homo semper est in priuatione, semper in fieri seu potentia et materia et semper in actu. Sic enim de rebus Philosophatur Aristoteles et Bene, Sed non ita ipsum intelligunt. Semper homo Est in Non Esse, In fieri, In esse, Semper in priuatione, in potentia, in actu, Semper in peccato, in Iustificatione, In Iustitia, i. e. Semper peccator, semper penitens, semper Iustus. Quod enim penitet, hoc fit de non Iusto Iustus. Ergo penitentia Est medium inter Iniustitiam et Iustitiam. Et sic est in peccato quoad terminum a quo et in Iustitia quoad terminum ad quem. Si ergo semper penitemus, semper peccatores sumus, et tamen eoipso et Iusti sumus ac Iustificamur, partim peccatores, partim Iusti i. e. nihil nisi penitentes. Sicut econtra Impii, Qui recedunt a Iustitia, medium tenent inter peccatum et Iustitiam contrario motu. Quare hec Vita Est via ad celum et infernum. Nemo ita bonus, vt non fiat melior, nemo ita malus, vt non fiat peior, vsque dum ad extremam formam perueniamus”.

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peccator. Luther fully endorsed the Augustinian argument according to which when a sinner is reached by spiritual righteousness, he/she is turned away from his/her sins; but the sin itself, that is concupiscentia carnis, proneness to sin, remains. While the spirit is made righteous, concupiscence is allowed to remain in the flesh2. So, as long as one lives one has no way to prevent being under sin. His opponents, Luther argued, maintained that the evil lusts of the flesh were also taken away and in maintaining such teaching they only promoted self-righteousness. Luther’s doctrine of simul iustus et peccator finds its strongest roots in the Reformer’s belief in the remaining concupiscence in the justified Christian (a distinctive of both Luther and Augustine’s theological anthropology). A better example than Paul’s own case, Luther claimed, could not be found. Paul was a justified Christian, yet he confessed that he was under attack of concupiscence of his own flesh. Hence the Apostle’s dramatic and absorbing words in Rom. 7:14 – 25 was regarded by the Reformer as the finest source to explore the issue. Although Luther believed that from the verse seven onwards Paul was speaking of his own person and as a spiritual man, in his analysis he laid emphasis on verses 14 – 25. In harmony with mature Augustine,3 Luther claimed that the Paulus christianus declared that Law was spiritual and he himself carnal, sold into slavery to sin. In the Pauline passage, then, followed the known and intriguing outcry. Intriguing because it referred to an individual struggling against the sinful impulses of his own flesh; an individual who though unwilling still committed sin. Intriguing because it reported in the first person4. How should the Pauline 1c½ (I) be interpreted? Was this troubled man the passage portrayed under God’s grace? What was really at stake if this Pauline “I” was understood as a man under the Law and not yet under grace as the young

2 WA 56, 334, l. 24: “Et ratio huius locutionis: Quia gratia et spiritualis Iustitia ipsum hominem tollit et mutat et a peccatis auertit, licet peccatum relinquat, Vt dum Iustificat spiritum, reliquit concupiscentiam in carne et in medio peccatorum in mundo Et iste modus Validissima machina est contra Iustitiarios”. 3 WA 56, 339sqq. See C. ep. Pel. I, X, 17; Retr. I, 23; C. Jul. V, 13 – 14, etc. 4 “What I do I do not understand. For I do not do what I want, but I do what I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I concur that the law is good. So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me. For I know that good does not dwell in me, that is, in my flesh. The willing is ready at hand, but doing the good is not. For I do not do the good I want, but I do the evil I do not want. Now if (I) do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me. So, then, I discover the principle that when I want to do right, evil is at hand. For I take delight in the law of God, in my inner self, but I see in my members another principle at war with the law of my mind, taking me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Miserable one that I am! Who will deliver me from this mortal body? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord. Therefore, I myself, with my mind, serve the law of God but, with my flesh, the law of sin”Rom. 7, 14 – 25 (NAB, 1794).

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Augustine had concluded?5 Would a man under grace do any better or avoid such inner struggles? Luther followed Augustine’s later opinion, namely as stated by the Church Father in his Contra Julianum, which the Reformer quoted extensively. Thus, Luther applied the “I” to the very best Christians, to Paul himself with his inner struggles. As Augustine had done before, Luther chose a point which he thought crucial when it comes to the revelation of the true identity of the Pauline I: the attitude of the subject (that is, Paul) towards sin. The whole passage, Luther pointed out, emphasised the subject or speaker’s complaint and hatred of the flesh and love for the good and the Law (“totus ille textus expresse indicat gemitum et odium contra carnem et dilectionem ad bonum et ad legem”)6. This is the very trademark of the spiritual man, what distinguishes him from the carnal man. For Luther, the delight of the Law (verse 22) or the serving the law with the mind (verse 25) and the struggle against the desires of the flesh (echoing the discordia spiritus vs carnis of Gal. 5:17) were all features that could, by no means, be identified with the carnal man because this latter laughs at the law and gladly yields to the desires of the flesh. The feeling of dissatisfaction and disagreement throughout the passage was identified by Luther in each verse. The Pauline “I” referred to a spiritual man and not carnal since a carnal man would never bother himself with the sins he committed. He is not interested in avoiding it. He rather enjoys sinning. Only the spiritual man declares war on the remaining concupiscentia carnis in him. The attitude of struggle against sin is simply not one of carnal man’s attitude. He rather prefers to mock the law. He has a great hatred for the law and no remorse for the fact that he follows the desires of the flesh. The spiritual man, in his turn, fights and groans because he can not do good as he wants to do. The carnal man does not fight against his flesh, he consents to it. This is the great difference between the spiritual and the carnal man. The first struggles against sin (though 5 Though the Church Father may have changed his opinion before the Pelagian controversy, or early in the controversy, it is during this controversy that he stresses clearly this change in his understanding of the passage. See Contra duas epistolas Pelagianorum I, X, 22: “Visum autem aliquando etiam mihi fuerat ”Hominem sub lege” isto Apostoli sermone describi. sed uim mihi postea ista verba fecerunt, quod ait: Nunc autem iam non ego operor illud. ad hoc enim pertinet quod ait et postea: nulla ergo condemnatio est nunc his, qui sunt in Christo Iesu, et quia non uideo quomodo diceret homo sub lege: Condelector legi Dei secundum interiorem hominem, cum ipsa delectatio boni, qua etiam non consentit ad malum non timore poenae, sed amore iustitiae – hoc est enim condelectari – non nisi gratiae deputanda sit”. CSEL, pp. 442 – 443. See also Retractationum, I, XXIII, 1. Luther did not hesitate to follow Augustine’s late approach to the identity of the Pauline “I”. The identification of the “I” of the seventh chapter of Romans, Luther was aware, assumes itself as a strong argument in his claim according to which Christians, after justification are, in fact, simul iustus et peccator. PANI, 1989, 272 – 273. 6 WA 56, 340, l. 6.

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he sins); the second finds joy in it7. Thus, it was clear for Luther that in Rom. 7:14 – 25 Paul was speaking of his daily Christian experience. It was, in fact, this very attitude of repugnance towards the sinful life and the love of the Law and wish for righteousness that shaped the picture of the justified sinner as simul iustus et peccator in young Luther’s exegesis. The issue is a complex one. It involves several and crucial problems. Among these problems are the relationship between the righteous God and unrighteous sinner and their respective role in the justification of the sinner ; the concept of a justified Christian, as well as the proper definitions of Law and Gospel/grace, their place, range and role in the processus iustitificationis. Of paramount importance in the shaping of Luther’s definition of justified sinner as simul iustus et peccator is the strong Augustinian theological distinction between to do (facere) and to accomplish (perficere) as well as the meaning of “fulfilment of the law” (strongly identified with faith and grace). I now focus on Luther’s discussion regarding the identity of the Pauline “I”. The very fact that the Apostle declared “but I am carnal”, Luther stressed, implies that these words could only be referring to the spiritual man. The acknowledgement that one is carnal can only come out of love of God’s law and hatred of the self. This interpretation was in harmony with the very nature of young Luther’s doctrine of justification which was defined in a constant attack on self-righteousness. Paul’s purpose was to engage and crush any attempt to value the self. Consequently, Luther concluded, it is proper to a spiritual and wise man to recognize he is carnal and displeasing to himself; to hate himself and, by doing so, to approve God’s law. The spiritual man acknowledges that God’s law is spiritual, unlike the carnal and foolish man who considers himself spiritual and would be pleased with himself and love his life in this earthly journey8. It was on account of this focus on the hatred of self that the confession of sins emerged as a fundamental reality in the shaping of Luther’s doctrine of simul iustus et peccator. For Luther, by confessing him/herself carnal and sinner, the sinner made God truthful. Confessio, as it has been noticed, occurs in young Luther’s writings with its double sense, confession of sins and praise of God. When a sinner 7 WA 56, 340, l. 5: “Primum, quod totus ille textus expresse indicat gemitum et odium contra carnem et dilectionem ad bonum et ad legem. Hoc autem carnali homini nullo modo conuenit, qui potius odit legem et ridet ac sequitur carnem per prona. Spiritualis enim pugnat cum carne et gemit, quod non tantum potest, quantum vult. Carnalis autem non pugnat, Sed cedit atque consentit. Hinc est illa vulgata sententia b. Augustini: ‘Velle esse Iustum est magna pars Iustitie?”. 8 WA 56, 340, l. 24: “Primum ergo Verbum, quo probatur hec spiritualis esse hominis verba, Hoc est: Ego autem Carnalis sum [7, 14]. Quia spiritualis et sapientis hominis est scire se esse carnalem et sibi displicere, seipsum odire et legem Dei commendare, quod sit spiritualis. Rursum Insipientis et carnalis est scire se spiritualem vel sibi placere, amare animam suam in hoc mundo”.

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justifies God i. e. recognises Him as just, such an attitude commended the very justification of sinner. From all this, I think it is fair to conclude that Luther’s real concern in teaching simul iustus et peccator was to state that, although justified, the Christian remains sinner and he/she would necessarily fail in the attempt of accomplishing good even when this is what he/she desires the most. Ultimately, Luther’s exegesis intended to support the cause of Christian humility. It would be the Christian humility at stake if the Pauline “I” would be understood as applying to carnal man. For the sake of Christian humility it is necessary to declare war on the self-righteousness. If the Apostle himself cried for liberation, Luther pointed out, how could we have any reason to boast ourselves in our good deeds? This crying for liberation on the part of Paul is, after all, to be seen as a comfort for any Christian (“Immo Consolatorium est tantum Apostolum audire eis adhuc gemitibus et miseriis inuolutum, quibus et nos Inuoluimur, dum Deo obedire cupimus”)9. Another reason Luther evoked to link the Pauline “I” to the spiritual man was the fact that the Apostle wrote that he did not understand what he did. Nothing is more peculiar to the spiritual man, Luther concluded. The spiritual man fails to understand anything which does not come from God. He commits sins but he does not understand it. This explains the state of frustration (not despair) and the wish for liberation10. Unlike the carnal man, the spiritual man acknowledges that the Law is good, loves it and feels a strong hatred for sin on which he/she declares war11. This belligerent attitude towards sin was, like in Augustine, expressed by Luther’s recurrent use of the verb confligere or its synonyms/ equivalents. It is now clear that Luther’s portrayal of the justified sinner as simul iustus et 9 WA 56, 346, l. 31. 10 WA, 56, 340 – 341, l. 30: “Secundum: Quod enim operor, non intelligo [7, 15]. Hoc b. Augustinus exponit: ‘i. e. non approbo’, forte, quia spiritualis homo, quia mente viuit, non sapit, nisi que Dei sunt; ideo non intelligit, non sapit malum, quod operatur. Sicut econtra, Quod non operatur, optime intelligit et sapit, sc. bonum. Econtra ‘Carnalis homo non sapit ea, que spiritus Dei sunt, Nec potest intelligere’, Sed bene intelligit i. e. approbat, que facit. […] Non intelligo’ i. e. fallor inquantum carnalis et seducit me peccatum, dum operor malum. Quia non vt spiritualis intelligo nisi bonum, et tamen facio, quod non sapio nec volo, sc. malum, q. d. Ex intentione et consilio electionis non facio malum, Sed bonum eligo, et tamen fit, vt contrarium faciam. Carnalis autem vtique intelligit, quia de proposito et industria atque electione operatur malum volens. Et si quando bonum operatur, casualiter facit”. 11 WA 56, 341, l. 20: “Quartum: Consentio legi Dei, quoniam Bona est [7, 16], quia lex vult bonum et ipse vult bonum, ergo consentiunt. Hoc non facit Carnalis homo, Sed semper dissentit legi et mallet legem (si fieri posset) non esse. Ideo non vult bonum, Sed malum. Et licet operetur bonum (Vt dixi), non tamen sapit ipsum, quia timore seruiliter coactus operatur Semper habens desiderium contrarium, si liceret Impune”.

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peccator relies strongly on the willingness of the spiritual man and unwillingness of the carnal man towards God’s commandments and on their own attitude towards sin and the remaining concupiscence. An unavoidable question, then, has to be asked: if the justified sinner still struggles with sinful desires, can he/ she still perform good deeds? Luther’s answer, shows, once more his indebtedness to Augustine. The Reformer made use of the Augustinian distinction between to do (facere) and to accomplish (perficcere) to explain to what extent a justified sinner performs good deeds (this distinction constituted one of the cornerstones of Luther’s doctrine of simul iustus et peccator). For Augustine, what defined perficere was the absence of any contrary inclination in the performance of a good deed, that is, a total consent in the performance of a good deed. In his confrontation with Julian, Augustine saw no problem in applying the “I” of Romans 7:14sqq to Paul. The passage, he claimed, was in harmony with the situation of all those who struggle against their carnal inclinations without consenting to them (that is, without accomplishing -perficere – evil) because of their spiritual love (“omnes accipi uelit, qui se nouerunt spirituali dilectione cum carnis affectione sine consensione confligere”)12. To bring the good to completion (perficere) is impossible when concupiscence is present; whenever concupiscentia carnis is present, the good cannot be complete, even without consent to it, which implies the performance of an evil action (“hoc est enim perficere bonum, ut nec concupiscat homo; imperfectum est autem bonum, quando concupiscit, etiam si concupiscentiae non consentit ad malum”)13. It is to be noted that Luther rejected any moral or metaphysical reading of Rom. 7:14 – 25. Should one infer from this passage that the apostle, from the moral point of view, did nothing good but only evil? Certainly not! Though in the current language it would mean that, here, Luther insisted that the issue was entirely theological. What Paul meant was that he did not do good as often and as much and as easily as he would like. His desire was to act in a pure, complete and joyful manner, without being troubled by his rebellious flesh (rebellem carnem), but this he could not accomplish. 12 C. duas ep. Pel. I, X, 17, CSEL 60, p. 440, l. 1. 13 Luther’s approach to the difference between facere and perficere bonum is often misunderstood by modern scholars. Giancarlo Pani is one them. Though he admits that it is from Augustine, namely from Contra Julianum that Luther borrowed the distinction between facere and perficere bonum, he emphasises that in Augustine the distinction is rhetorical not exegetical. Then, he argues that Luther radicalised the issue by maintaining that it is a main feature of Augustine’s exegesis, the claim according to which humans face an undeniable inability to do the good to which they aspire. Pani, 1989, 273 – 274. This is not what Luther meant. What Luther maintained is the same as Augustine: human do good, but on account of the presence of the sinful trend in the totus homo, these goods cannot be brought to perfection, since perfection is only possible when there is no sinful desires, none whatsoever.

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The same would happen to someone who desires to be chaste. He/she would wish to face no temptation and possess chastity with ease, but this is something that his/her flesh would not allow him/her. With its inclinations and desires, the flesh makes chastity very heavy. Unclean desires arise from the flesh though the spirit is truly willing and aims at chastity. For this reason, Luther suggested, in reading the Pauline passage of Rom. 7:14 – 25 one must apply the distinction between to do and to accomplish as taught by Augustine in the third book of his Contra Julianum. To do good, Luther explained, following Augustine, is to try, to devise, to have the desire and to be willing, in the context of the interruptible struggle of the flesh against the Spirit and the Spirit against the flesh14. According to Luther, if the expression “to do” were to be taken in the sense of “fulfilling” by means of one’s work, then the Apostle would not have said “The evil I do not want is what I do, but I do not do the good I want” (v. 19). With these words Paul was referring to the battle between the flesh and the spirit. This “wanting to do what he does not” means that he had a gracious and good purpose. Through the love spread abroad by the Spirit, he inclined towards good and hated evil. Yet, because the flesh resisted and because his concupiscence opposed him, he could not accomplish and fulfil this desire of fulfilling the good. To accomplish, for both Augustine and Luther, was to fulfil what one wishes or desires15. 14 C. duas ep.Pel. I, X, 19, CSEL 60, 441, l. 2. One of the reasons Augustine evoked to explain his change of opinion on the identity of the Pauline “I” in Rom. 7 has to do with a series of data present in the lines of that chapter that, by no means, match with the man under the law. Though the entire passage from verses 14 to 25, with particular emphasis on verse 17 (“But it is not I who do this”, passage which Augustine links with Romans 8:1), is to be taken into account in order to understand Augustine’s new interpretation of Romans 7. The theological deduction and implications of verse 22 (I delight in the law of God in the interior self) seems to be decisive in the Church Father’s conclusion. It is simply not conceivable, Augustine stressed, to apply such words to a human being under the law since the delight in the good, by which one avoids consenting to evil, not out of fear of punishment, but out of love of righteousness (this is the meaning of having delight in good) is an en exclusive operation of grace (“quia non uideo quomodo diceret homo sub lege: condelector legi dei secundum interiorem hominem, cum ipsa dilectatio boni, quia etiam non consentit ad malum non timore poenae, sed amore iustitiae – hoc enim est condelectaru – non nisi gratiae deputanda sit”). Cf. Contra duas ep. Pel. I, X, 22, CSEL 60, 443, l. 3. Besides, the sign of disapproval for what he does is clear in the verse 15 (“illud etiam ubi ait: quod enim operor, ignoro, quid est aliud quam “nolo”, “non adprobo”, “non consentio”, “non facio”) Cf. Contra duas ep. Pel. I, XI, 23, CSEL 60, 443, l. 19. 15 WA 56, 342, l. 6: “Notandum est, Quod ‘facere’ et ‘perficere’ Apostolus distinguit, Vt b. Augustinus li. 3. in fine contra Iulianum copiose docet. ‘Facere’ enim hic pro conari, machinari, desideria mouere, velle etc. accipitur, Qualia sine intermissione caro contra spiritum et spiritus contra carnem operatur. Si enim pro ‘opere implere’ acciperetur, Non deberet Apostolus dicere: ‘Quod nolo malum, facio, quod volo bonum, non facio’, quibus verbis euidentissime expressit pugnam inter carnem et spiritum. Quia ‘vult aliud quam facit’, hoc est, habet beneplacitum et voluntatem per spiritum diffusa charitate promptam ad bonum et

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It was on account of this continuous struggle that Paul wrote “It was no longer I that do it, but, sin which dwells within me” (v. 20). It was not he who sinned, since his flesh lusted without his consent, indeed he himself did not lust because he was opposed to the lusts of the flesh. Luther’s arguments relied on a very basic anthropological principle to clarify these two seemingly contradictory statements: the one which stated that human being is made of body and spirit. Paul, as any other human being, was spirit and flesh, therefore what he did in the flesh was done to the the whole man. And yet because he resisted, it is possible to argue that the whole man was not “doing”, but only a part of him – that he himself did odium ad malum, et tamen resistente carne et aduersa concupiscentia non potest hanc voluntatem implere et perficere. Si enim perficeret et impleret, sine resistentia bonum operaretur et delectabiliter; hoc enim vult voluntas eius. Nunc autem non ita operatur ; ideo quod vult, non facit, Sed quod non vult, facit. Is autem, qui sine pugna est et carnem sequitur et concupiscentiis obedit, vtique non resistit, non dicit: ‘Quod nolo, hoc facio’, non delectatur in contrario quam facit, Sed in eo, quod operatur. ‘Perficere’ autem est implere, quod vult vel concupiscit. Vt Spiritus perficit, quod vult bonum, quando sine rebellione operatur secundum legem Dei, quod non est huius vite?, quia ‘perficere non Inuenio’. Caro autem perficit, quando cum delectatione sine repugnantia et difficultate operatur secundum concupiscentias. Et hoc est huius vite?, immo mortis et perditio mundi; facile est enim malum operari. Ideo dixi hoc verbum probare non carnalem, Sed spiritualissimum hominem Paulum hic loqui”. Contra Julianum III, 26, 62 is to be compared with this passage. It is obvious that conclusions present in the text just quoted deeply influenced Luther’s doctrine of servum arbitrium. It must be noted, however, that, although Augustine, in practical terms taught servum arbitrium, the Church Father never expressed it as Luther did. For instance, in every stage of his theological development he stressed that divine grace does not compromise human free will but rather heals, frees and helps it. With the advent of the Pelagian controversy he attributed more and more to God’s grace and less to the power of will. However, he never stated that one sins against his own will, though the term servum arbitrium itself is Augustinian (Contra Julianum II, 8, 23). I think the doctrine of servum arbitium has its roots in Augustine. Augustine taught that man is endowed with free will at the moment of his creation. But whenever sin takes place, this free will comes under the servitude of sin. When Adam, using free will, committed sin, freedom was lost and reduced to nothing. See Enchiridion ad Laurentium, I, 9, 39 “Verum haec pars generis humani, cui liberationem Deus regnumque promisit aeternum, numquid meritis operum suorum reparari potest? Absit! Quid enim boni operatur potest perditus, nisi quantum fuerit a perditione liberatus? Numquid libero voluntatis arbitrio? Et hoc absit. Nam libero arbitrio male utens homo et se perdidit et ipsum”. PL 40 p. 246. In C. duas ep. Pel. Augustine argued that free choice did perish with Adam’s sin; freedom did. Augustine made a distinction between free will and freedom. He stated that even sinners never lose freedom of the will, since they do evil not by necessity, but freely. What they do lose is the freedom man had in paradise. This freedom, the power given to the first man of being able not to sin (posse non peccare) was lost through Original Sin: “Quis autem nostrum dicat, quod primi hominis peccato perierit liberum arbitrium de genere humano? libertas quidem periit per peccatum, sed illa, quae in paradiso fuit, habendi plenam cum inmortalitate iustitiam. propter quod natura humana divina indiget gratia, dicente domino: Si uos Filius liberauerit, tunc uere liberi eritis, utique liberi ad bene iusteque uiuendum. nam liberum arbitrium usque adeo in peccatore non periit, ut per [illud] ipsum peccent maxime omnes, qui cum delectatione peccant et amore peccati et hoc eis placet quod eos libet. Unde et Apostolus: Cum essetis, inquit, serui peccati, liberi fuistis iustitiae ”. I, II, 5, CSEL 60 pp. 425 – 426. see also WA 56, p. 353 and Contra Julianum 26, 62.

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it, and he himself did not do it16. This involvement of the totus homo who does and at the same time does not, makes it clear that the relationship between consent and sin is the key for the understanding of Luther’s doctrine of simul iustus et peccator. For further clarification Luther used the famous Augustinian image of horserider and the horse. When the horse does not follow the way the rider wants it to follow, it is he himself and yet not he himself who makes the horse run in such and such a way, for the horse is not without him and he is not without the horse17. So, Luther understood the Christian man as whole made of flesh and spirit. Both were part of the totus homo involved in this struggle. However, it seems that Luther saw in Rom. 7:18 (For I know that good does not dwell in me, that is, in my flesh.) an opportunity to identify the flesh (the natura depravata) with the origin of the evil deeds and the spirit with the good desires and doing good. That is, on account of spirit, the Christian is spiritual and so desires and does good. But because of the flesh, the very same Christian is carnal and wicked, no good dwells in him/her. His/her nature is corrupted and does evil18. This opposing relationship between spirit and flesh in the Christian man as well as the interpretation and application of the verbal forms “volo”, “odio”, “facio” and “operor” in the passage of Rom. 7:14 – 25 lie at the core of Luther’s theological and exegetical arguments for his doctrine of simul iustus et peccator. Without the spirit, the whole man would be the old (and lost) man (Quia sine spiritu totus homo est vetus)19 but that is not the case. The Christian man/woman believes and faith sets him/her free from the old condition and makes him/her desire good. More: faith itself is the beginning of good work, the fulfilment of the Law. In Rom. 7, 14 – 25 Luther applied the phrases “I want” and “ hate” to the spiritual man or to the spirit, and “I do” and “I work” to the carnal man or to the 16 WA 56, 342:343, l. 30: “Quintum: Non ego operor illud, Sed quod habitat in me peccatum [7, 20]. Ideo etiam non peccat, quia cum dissensu suo caro concupiscit, immo proprie ipse non concupiscit, quia dissentit concupiscentie? carnis. Et tamen dicit: ‘Quod volo bonum, non facio.’ Quia eadem persona est spiritus et caro; ideo quod facit carne, totus facere dicitur. Et tamen, quia resistit, totus non facere, Sed pars eius etiam recte dicitur. Vtrunque ergo verum, Quod ipse et non ipse operatur”. 17 WA 56, 343, l. 3: “Sicut Sessor, dum equi non omni voto eius incedunt, ipse et non ipse facit, quod incedit taliter. quia non est equus sine eo nec ipse sine equo. Carnalis autem vtique, quia consentit legi membrorum, vtique ipse operatur, quod peccatum operatur. quia iam non tantum vnius sunt persone? mens et caro, Sed etiam vnius voluntatis”. 18 WA 56, 343, l. 8: “Sextum: Scio, Quia non habitat in me, hoc est in carne mea, bonum [7, 18]. Vide, quomodo carnem, partem sui, sibi tribuit, quasi ipse sit caro. ideo supra dixit: ‘carnalis sum’; ita nunc se non bonum, Sed malum fatetur, quia facit malum. Propter carnem est carnalis et malus, quia non est bonum in eo et facit malum; propter spiritum est spiritualis et bonus, quia facit bonum»”. 19 WA 56, 345

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flesh. But because the same one and complete person consists of flesh and spirit, the Reformer taught, both of these opposing qualities which comes from the opposing parts of it are to be ascribed to the whole person. Thus, in this way there came about a communication of attributes, making of one and the same man spiritual and carnal, righteous and sinner, good and evil, just as the same person of Christ is both dead and alive, at the same time suffering and in a state of bliss. In no way would this be applicable to the carnal man, since he is entirely flesh, because the Spirit of God does not remain in him. Unlike the spiritual man, his own will is in perfect harmony with his flesh20. The spiritual man faces a contrary law (meaning here, concupiscentia carnis) when he is willing and ready to act in accord with the law of God. In his turn, the carnal man does not face any adversity for he is not opposed to concupiscence (flesh desires), but submits himself to it and promptly follows it. He is not ready to realise that evil is close at hand since no one knows the evil laying in him except when established in the good above the evil, from where he can judge and discern the same evil21. In his innermost self the spiritual man loves God’s law even when he sins (v. 22). Nothing is more peculiar to the spiritual man; without this contrast fed by the spirit (peculiar to the inner man) the entire man would be the “old man” and only outward. The inner man is a mind and conscience that is pure and delights in the law of God. The carnal man is full of hatred towards God’s law, his will, suffering from the fever of sin, hating God’s words, even though in his own eyes and those of others he might almost seem to love them because of the fear of

20 WA 56, 343, l. 13: “Notandum, Quod hoc verbum ‘Volo’ et ‘odio’ ad spiritualem hominem seu spiritum, ‘facio’ autem et ‘operor’ ad carnalem seu ad carnem j refertur j. Sed quia ex carne et spiritu idem vnus homo constat totalis, ideo toti homini tribuit vtraque contraria, que ex contrariis sui partibus veniunt. Sic enim fit communio Ideomatum, Quod idem homo est spiritualis et carnalis, Iustus et peccator, Bonus et malus. Sicut eadem persona Christi simul mortua et viua, simul passa et beata, simul operata et quieta etc. propter communionem Ideomatum, licet neutri naturarum alterius proprium conueniat, Sed contrariissime dissentiat, vt notum est. Hec autem in Carnali homine nequaquam habent locum, Vbi omnino totus homo caro est, quia non permansit in eo spiritus Dei. Ideo carnalis non potest dicere: ‘in me id est in carne mea’, quasi ipse aliud a carne per voluntatem sit, Sed est idem cum carne per consensum in concupiscentias eius, Sicut vir et mulier vna sunt caro figuratiue, Sed meretricaliter et fornicarie”. 21 WA 56, 345, l. 18: “Quia auersatur eam et ideo, quo magis resistit et concupiscit, eo auget odium sui. Sicut Irato, si offensor magis instet, magis iratum facit. Sed hunc Indignationis ignem non habet Carnalis nec sentit resistentiam, quia rapitur et sequitur./ Nec agnoscit, ‘quod malum sibi adiacet’. Nemo enim malum suum agnoscit, nisi sit in bono super malum constitutus, vnde Iudicare et discernere potest suum malum, Sicut tenebras non nisi per lucem decernimus et contrarium contrario metimur et vilius preciosiore Iudicamus. Si ergo non esset in luce spiritus, malum carnis sibi adiacere non videret nec gemeret, Vt patet in submersis et superbis in mundo”.

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punishment. This delight for God’s law comes from the Holy Spirit through love; without this love it would be impossible to love the Law and righteousness22. In the end of the passage Paul asserted “I myself [Paul says], with my mind, serve the law of God but, with my flesh, the law of sin”. Luther regarded these words as a strong scriptural support for simul iustus et peccator. The Reformer could hardly be clearer when he wrote Note that it is one and same man who at the same time serves the law of God and the law of sin. At the same time he is righteous and sins! For he does not say : “My mind serves the law of God”, nor does he say : “My flesh serves the law of sin”, but: “I, the whole man, the same person, I serve a twofold servitude”. Therefore he also gives thanks that he serves the Law of God,and seeks mercy for having served the law of sin. Who will assert this of the carnal man; that he serves the Law of God? Now notice what I said above, that the saints as the same time as they are righteous are also sinners; righteous because they believe in Christ, whose righteousness covers them and is imputed to them, but sinners because they do not fulfil the Law, are not without concupiscence, and are like sick men under the care of a physician; they are sick in fact but healthy in hope and in the fact that they are beginning to be healthy. That is, they are being healed. They are the people for whom the worst possible thing is the presumption that they are healthy, because they will suffer a worse relapse23.

A man under God’s grace, Luther insisted, is a man at war. God’s grace takes guilt away. He pleases God and hence displeases the devil, the world and his own flesh. A war, then, breaks out. As long he is righteous in God’s sight he is a sinner to his flesh and to the world. The grace of God is the world’s perturbation (“Gratia dei et indignatio mundi; pax dei et turbatio mundi; gratia mundi et indignatio dei; pax mundi et turbatio dei”)24. 22 WA 56, 345 – 346, l. 30: “Ecce expresse dicit se habere interiorem hominem. Hic autem non est nisi spiritualis, Quia sine spiritu totus homo est vetus et exterior. Est autem interior mens et conscientia pura et volens in lege Domini. […] Carnali vero sunt amara et aspera plenaque odio, quia Voluntas febre peccati laborans ea fastidit, licet timore pene? se diligere ea videatur sibi et aliis. Ista delectatio est ex spiritu sancto per Charitatem, vt sepe dictum est, sine qua Impossibile est diligi legem et Iustitiam; immo vehementius horret in lege quam sine lege, quia odit se scire debere, quod non cupit, immo cuius contrarium cupit”. 23 WA 56, 347, l. 2: “Vide, vt vnus et idem homo simul seruit legi Dei et legi peccati, simul Iustus est et peccat! Non enim ait: Mens mea seruit legi Dei, Nec: Caro mea legi peccati, Sed: ego, inquit, totus homo, persona eadem, seruio vtranque seruitutem. Ideo et gratias agit, Quod seruit legi Dei, et misericordiam querit, quod seruit legi peccati. Quis hoc de Carnali asserat homine, quod seruiat legi Dei? Vide nunc, quod supra dixi, Quod simul Sancti, dum sunt Iusti, sunt peccatores; Iusti, quia credunt in Christum, cuius Iustitia eos tegit et eis imputatur, peccatores autem, quia non implent legem, non sunt sine concupiscentia, Sed sicut e?grotantes sub cura medici, qui sunt re vera egroti, Sed inchoatiue et in spe sani seu potius sanificati i. e. sani fientes, quibus nocentissima est sanitatis presumptio, quia peius recidiuant”. 24 WA 2, 456 – 457: “Nam qui in gratia dei est, operatur, quae deo placent: ideo mox displicet diabolo, mundo et carne suae, et dum deo iustus est, carni et mundo peccator est. et ita oritur

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Luther insisted on the doctrine of remaining concupiscence as one which reinforced the thesis of simul iustus et peccator through its close connection with the doctrine of non-imputation of sin or the imputation of righteousness. Following Augustine25, and opposing the recentiores doctores, Luther stated that, though concupiscence (that weakness towards the good) is itself sin, this sin will not be imputed to us unless we acquiesce to it. From this comes the remarkable state of the justified man: he is simultaneously guilty and not guilty. For we ourselves are this weakness; therefore it is guilt and we are guilty until this weakness ceases and is purified. We are not guilty as long as we do not act according to this weakness, since God in His mercy does not impute the guilt of the weakness but only the guilt of the will which consents to the weakness26. It is crucial, however, to pay attention in a very important reservation that Luther stated. The justified sinner remains sinner (peccator) but not ungodly (impius). Self-righteousness, Luther taught, is the equivalent of impiety or iniquity (making use of the translation from the Greek !s´beia). Impiety or iniquity does not signify just any kind of sin, but a sin against the worship of God, that is against faith, through one’s own self-righteousness (“Non autem redeunt ab iniquitate, Nisi qui sunt in illa, Vt Nunc Iude¸ i. ‘Impietas’ enim seu ‘iniquitas’, Grece ‘Asebia’, significat non quodlibet peccatum, Sed peccatum contra cultum Dei i. e. contra fidem, per propriam Iustitiam […]”)27. Ungodly is he who turns away from God, instead of worshipping Him. The justified sinner sins but cries for God’s mercy. He/she is pious and worships God and seek His path (which means fights against sinful condition). For all this, God regards him as righteous28. The justified sinner only can not accomplish the good

25 26

27 28

bellum, bellum foris, pax intus: intus, inquam non sensibiliter et experimentali suavitate, saltem semper, sed invisibiliter et per fidem […]”. WA 56, p. 352 – 354; C. Jul. II, V, 12; II, IX, 32; VI, XVIII, 51 – 52. see also WA 2, 585sqq. WA 56, 351, l. 3: “Et b. Augustinus li. 2. contra Iulianum: ‘Catholice intelligimus vitia nostra, que legi mentis ex lege peccati resistunt. Non hec vitia a nobis separata alicubi alibi erunt, Sed in nobis sanata nusquam erunt. Veruntamen quare non in baptismate perierunt? An nondum fateberis, quod reatus eorum perierit, infirmitas* manserit? Non reatus, quo ipsa rea fuerunt, Sed quo nos reos fecerant in malis operibus, quo nos traxerant. Nec ita eorum mansit infirmitas, quasi aliqua sint animalia, que infirmantur, Sed nostra infirmitas ipsa sunt.’ Ex ista pulchra authoritate patet, Quomodo Concupiscentia sit ipsa infirmitas nostra ad bonum, que in se quidem rea est, Sed tamen reos nos non facit nisi consentientes et operantes. Ex quo tamen mirabile sequitur, Quod rei sumus et non rei. Quia Infirmitas illa nos ipsi sumus, Ergo ipsa rea et nos rei sumus, donec cesset et sanetur. Sed non sumus rei, dum non operamur secundum eam, Dei misericordia non imputante reatum infirmitatis, Sed reatum consentientis infirmitati voluntatis”. See also See WA 2, 584 – 85 WA 56, 438, l. 6. WA 56, 278, l. 11: “Tunc tercio sequitur, quod sit iam Impius Iustificatus; Licet enim sit peccator, Sed non impius. Impius enim dicitur, qui non est cultor Dei, Sed auersus et sine timore et Reuerentia Dei. Iustificatus autem et ‘tectus peccatis suis’ iam est conuersus et pius; colit enim Deum et querit eum in spe et timore. Ac per hoc Deus eum reputat pium et Iustum”.

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work, but he does good works. By not consenting to evil lusts, the spirit of the righteous does good works, but does not fulfil it for the evil desires are not yet destroyed in him, still remain. Luther applied the same equation to explain the practice of evil on the part of the justified sinner. The flesh causes evil desires. In a righteous sinner the evil is not, however, fulfilled since the spirit does not consent to it. Consent is the point where the works of the flesh become subject to condemnation. For Luther, however, in righteous sinner there is no consent29. The implications of this conclusion for the young Luther’s doctrine of justification were inestimable. It allowed Luther to rely, more than ever, on the exclusiveness of God’s grace and mercy to shape his doctrine of the justification of the sinners. These, though justified, remain sinners.

4.2

Peccatores de facto, iustos in spe: did Luther teach an exclusively forensic justification?

Luther’s definition of a justified sinner as simultaneously sinner and righteous was essentially drawn from his exegesis of Rom. 7:14 – 25. According to the Reformer, here one finds a perfect description of Christian life/struggle as well as indisputable evidence that even the very best Christian lives under sin. For Luther, justification, as the entire process of salvation, was worked out in a sort of confrontation of contrasts. On the one hand, the repercussions of Original Sin, that is, spiritual disease and destruction remains a burden for every human being; on the other hand, redemptive grace means healing and reconstruction. On account of Original Sin human beings are confronted with a true battle of wills, preventing God’s Law to be perfectly fulfilled. Thus, Luther maintained that we are sinners as long we live in this flesh and in every work we need the forgiving mercy of God. Those, however, rescued and bestowed with the gift of faith, are, on account of it, regarded simultaneously righteous and sinners. This is so because divine grace acts. It heals and works in the reconstruction of the imago Dei lost due to sin. This is why a justified Christian is both sinner and righteous. Both healing and reconstruction are, however, regarded as processes. To Luther, the starting moment was certainly very important, but he insisted that the process must keep going on until it is complete. This, as I shall explain, became very clear in the main image-analogy used by Luther to outline the life of a justified Christian, a life of a person who is both righteous and sinner at same time (simul iustus et peccator) – like the doctor-patient relationship and the house undergoing construction. 29 WA 56, 354. See also WA 2, 591 – 592.

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One of the great sources of Luther’s doctrine of simul iustus et peccator was the Augustinian insistence (especially throughout his writings against Julian) that concupiscence remains in every baptised Christian, even the very best among them. The Church Father himself often compared the remaining concupiscence with a serious disease which the Redeemer came to heal. So, without any surprise, Luther borrowed this medical language (present also in other Church Fathers) from Augustine to shape his own insights regarding the status of a justified Christian. The image of doctor-patient is a striking one, especially to refute the claims according to which the Reformer’s understanding of the justification process limited itself to a forensic declaration of righteousness. The justified Christian, Luther maintained, is comparable to a sick person under the care of a physician from whom he/she has the promise of a certain recovery and whose order he/she obeys in the hope of promised recovery30. The sick person “being healed” by the physician is both sick de facto and “healthy in hope”. For Luther, this was the real state of the saints, sick de facto yet healed in hope at the same time. Making a parallel with the Christian doctrine, the physician, the sick man and the disease are Christ, the believer and concupiscence of the flesh respectively. Luther expressed it well in the following passage: Thus in ourselves we are sinners, and yet through faith we are righteous by God’s imputation. For we believe in Him who promises to free us, and in the meantime we strive that sin may not rule over us but that we may withstand it until He takes it from us./ It is similar to the case of a sick man who believes the doctor’s order in hope of the promised recovery and abstains from those things which have been forbidden him, so that he may in no way hinder the promised return of health or increase his sickness until the doctor can fulfil his promise to him. Now is this man well? The fact is that he is both sick and well at the same time. He is sick in fact, but he is well because of the sure 30 The struggle against the disease and the doctor’s promise are fundamental details for understanding the importance of this image of doctor-patient in Luther’s doctrine of simul iustus et peccator. Luther spoke of a justified Christian as both partially righteous and partially sinner and totally righteous and totally sinner. T. Mannermaa explains well what Luther meant by both: “When Luther talks about Christians from the ‘total’ point of view, he considers them in a relationship with the one who is ‘outside’ them even when he is ‘in them’, namely Christ. Christians are ‘totally righteous’ in their relationship with the one above, that is, with Christ and God. On the other hand, Christians are to be understood as ‘total sinners’ in themselves, when they are seen as the ‘old Adam [Eve]’, and separated from Christ. When talking about the partial aspect of justification, Luther’s attention is focused on the believers themselves and on the battle between the new and the old in them. Luther states explicitly that Christians live ‘partly in the flesh and partly in the Spirit’ (partim carnem, partim Spiritum habent), which means that they are partly sinners and partly righteous. The ‘flesh’ or the ‘old Adam’, has certainly not died in Christians, and will not die in this life. The flesh is opposed to the ‘Spirit’, and the ‘Spirit’ opposed to the flesh. However, in the course of this battle the present Christ ‘sweeps’ the old Adam[Eve] always and ‘cleanses’ believers”. Mannermaa, 2005, 58 – 59.

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promise of the doctor, whom he trusts and who has reckoned him as already cured, because he is sure that he will cure him; for he has already begun to cure him and no longer reckons to him a sickness unto death. In the same way Christ, our Samaritan, has brought His half-dead man into the inn to be cared for, and He has begun to cure him, having promised him the most complete cure unto eternal life, and He does not impute his sins, that is, his wicked desires, unto death, but in the meantime in the hope of the promised recovery He prohibits him from doing or omitting things by which his cure might be impeded and his sin, that is, his concupiscence might be increased. Now, is he perfectly righteous? No, for he is at the same time both a sinner and a righteous man; a sinner in fact, but a righteous man by the sure imputation and promise of God that He will continue to deliver him from sin until He has completely cured him. And thus he is entirely healthy in hope, but in fact he still a sinner ; but he has the beginning of righteousness, so that he continues more and more always to seek it, yet he realizes that he is always unrighteous31.

With this scheme Luther intended to oppose the recentiores doctores. According to Luther, they, in contradiction to the Scriptures and the Church Fathers, denied that concupiscence remains after baptism32 and taught that the Apostle was not speaking of the spiritual man in Rom. 7:14 – 25. The Reformer saw in those conclusions a foolish anthropological optimism (with which he promptly associated the influence of Aristotle)33 and the path to self-righteousness. The concupiscence (which, for Luther, was sin) remains and is active. Paul taught 31 WA 56, 271, l. 29: “Sic ergo in nobis sumus peccatores Et tamen reputante Deo Iusti per fidem. Quia credimus promittenti, quod nos liberet, dummodo interim perseueremus,ne peccatum regnet, sed Sustineamus ipsum, donec auferat ipsum. Est enim simile sicut cum e?groto, Qui promittenti medico certissimam sanitatem credit et precepto eius obediens interim in spe promisse? sanitatis abstinet ab iis, que proh bita sunt ei, ne promissam sanitatem impediat et morbum augeat, donec impleat medicus, quod promisit. Iste enim Aegrotus nunquid sanus est? Immo egrotus simul et sanus. Egrotus in rei veritate, Sed sanus ex certa promissione medici, cui credit, qui eum iam Velut sanum reputat, quia certus, quod sanabit eum, quia incepit eum sanare nec imputauit ei egritudinem ad mortem. Eodem modo Samaritanus noster Christus hominem semiuiuum egrotum suum curandum susce?pit in stabulum et incepit sanare promissa perfectissima sanitate in vitam e?ternam, et non imputans peccatum i. e. concupiscentias ad mortem, Sed prohibens interim in spe promisse? sanitatis facere et omittere, quibus sanitas illa impediatur et peccatum i. e. concupiscentia augeatur. Nunquid ergo perfecte Iustus? Non, Sed simul peccator et Iustus; peccator re vera, Sed Iustus ex reputatione et promissione Dei certa, quod liberet ab illo, donec perfecte sanet. Ac per hoc sanus perfecte est in spe, In re autem peccator, Sed Initium habens Iustitie?, ut amplius querat semper, semper iniustum se sciens”. 32 WA 56, 353 ff. 33 WA 56, 349, l. 23: “Nonne ergo fallax Aristotelis methaphysica et Philosophia secundum traditionem humanam decepit nostros theologos? Vt quia peccatum in baptismate Vel penitentia aboleri norunt, absurdum arbitrati sunt Apostolum dicere: Sed quod habitat in me peccatum. Ideo hoc verbum potissime eos offendit, vt ruerent in hanc falsam et noxiam opinionem, Apostolum scil. non in persona sua, Sed hominis carnalis esse locutum, quem omnino nullum peccatum habere contra eius multipharias et apertissimas assertiones in multis Epistolis garriunt”.

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that sin dwelt in him (v. 23)34. For the spiritual man the concupiscence remained with the purpose of reducing the pride to humility, and oppressing presumptuousness. The second analogy Luther used was the house in construction. Luther presented the analogy having in mind, once again, what he considered the Scholastic trend to deny the presence of concupiscence in the baptised Christians. Quoting several passages of Augustine’s Contra Julianum against such a trend, Luther compared the life of a justified Christian with a house in construction: Let us force a rather crude example on these unrealistic theologians: Suppose that a house which has fallen into disrepair is in the process of reconstruction, is then its construction and present condition one thing and its state of disrepair something else? It is one and the same thing. It can be said of the same house that because of its being under construction it is a house and that it is in the process of becoming a house, but because of its incompleteness it can at the same time be said that it is not yet a house and it lack what it is proper to a house.35.

Luther’s main intention by making use of this analogy was to state the nature of Christian justification. It is true that justification occurs in a given moment, namely when the sinner is endowed with the gift of faith. This means that the sinner has stopped relying on his/her own abilities and abandoned him/herself to God’s naked mercy. Justification, to Luther’s eyes was, however, more than a mere event. It rather was a process stretching over the entire life of the justified person. Justification, as Luther understood it, involved not only being a recipient of the gift of faith, but also having continuous assistance so that a sinner might live in accordance to that very same faith. Besides, the fact that one has received the gift of faith does not mean that one is without sin. It only means that sin, namely concupiscentia carnis is no longer imputed for one’s condemnation, unless one follows it. One can accurately say that the process of justification, according to Luther, comprised two main parts: the bestowal of faith (an event) 34 WA 56, 350, l. 1: “Que stulta opinio eo profecit nocentissime fraudis, Vt Baptisati Vel absoluti statim se sine omni peccato arbitrantes, securi fierent de adepta Iustitia et manibus remissis quieti, nullius scil. conscii peccati, quod gemitu et lachrymis, lugendo et laborando expugnarent atque expurgarent. Igitur peccatum est in spirituali homine relictum ad exercitium gratie, ad humilitatem superbie, ad repressionem presumptionis; Quod qui non sedule studuerit expugnare, sine dubio iam habet, etiamsi nihil amplius peccauerit, vnde damnetur. Non enim ad ocium vocati sumus, Sed ad laborem contra passiones. Que non essent sine culpa (sunt enim vere peccata et quidem damnabilia), nisi misericordia Dei non imputaret. Non Imputat autem solum iis, Qui viriliter aggressi cum suis viciis gratiam Dei Inuocantes pugnant”. 35 WA 56, 352, l. 12: “Et vt phantasticis theologis crassius ingeramus exemplum: Domus Ecce collapsa ruinis Si incipit instaurari, aliud estne eius constructio Vel status et aliud eius adhuc imperfectio? Eadem res est: eadem domus propter suum construi bene dicitur esse et proficere in domum, Sed propter imperfectionem simul dicitur nondum esse et deficere a proprietate domus”.

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and a life-long process of sanctification which consists in being assisted by divine grace so the sinner may lead a life in accordance with the same faith. To live in accordance with faith involves both not following the impulses of concupiscence and the trust that God is the only healer of this concupiscence. Concupiscence was defined by Luther as the weakness in us towards good and it is itself sin”. Hence “the remarkable fact that we are guilty and not guilty. For we ourselves are this weakness, therefore it is guilty and we are guilty until this weakness ceases and is cleansed. But we are not guilty as long as we do not act in accord to this weakness, since God in His mercy does not impute the guilty of the weakness but only of the will which consents to the weakness”36.

Accordingly, Luther saw in the parable of the Good Samaritan a perfect example of the reality of simul iustus et peccator condition. When the Samaritan poured oil on the half-dead man’s wounds he did not recover immediately, he started to recover. It was the same with a justified man. He was both weak and getting well. Insofar he was healthy, he desired to do good, but as a sick person he wanted something else and was compelled to yield to his illness, which he himself did not actually want to do37.

Luther wanted to make a point worth stressing here. For this sick man (the image of a justified Christian) under the care of the physician, all of him is both sick and well. How so? It is possible if one considers the role of faith (and hope) in the process. The justified sinner is righteous only because God, in His mercy, reckons him/her to be so. It is by no means on account of his/her way of life or good deeds. Thus, a justified Christian is always unrighteous38. It is because of faith that unrighteousness is not imputed to the justified Christian, since when

36 WA 56, 351, l. 11: “Concupiscentia sit ipsa infirmitas nostra ad bonum, que in se quidem rea est, Sed tamen reos nos non facit nisi consentientes et operantes. Ex quo tamen mirabile sequitur, Quod rei sumus et non rei. Quia Infirmitas illa nos ipsi sumus, Ergo ipsa rea et nos rei sumus, donec cesset et sanetur. Sed non sumus rei, dum non operamur secundum eam, Dei misericordia non imputante reatum infirmitatis, Sed reatum consentientis infirmitati voluntatis”. 37 WA 56, 351, l. 17: “Et non potest aptius vtrunque intelligi quam ex parabola Euangelii de homine semiuiuo relicto. Quia Samaritanus Infundens vinum et oleum non statim sanauit, sed incepit sanare. Tunc ille egrotus idem homo est infirmus et sanandus. Inquantum Sanus, bona cupit, Sed vt infirmus alia cupit et cogitur infirmitati cedere, que non vult ipse”. 38 WA 56, 268 – 269, l. 31: “Intrinsece dico, i. e. quomodo in nobis, in nostris oculis, in nostra estimatione sumus, Extrinsece autem, quomodo apud Deum et in reputatione eius sumus. Igitur extrinsece sumus Iusti, quando non ex nobis nec ex operibus, Sed ex sola Dei reputatione Iusti sumus. Reputatio enim eius non in nobis nec in potestate nostra est. ergo nec Iustitia nostra in nobis est nec in potestate nostra. […] Intrinsece autem sumus peccatores per naturam relatiuorum. Quia si solum Deo reputante sumus Iusti, ergo non nobis viuentibus vel operantibus. Quare intrinsece et ex nobis Impii semper”.

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one abandons oneself to God’s mercy and does not trust one’s own abilities, one is counted as righteous on account of such a faith. Worth pointing out is the fact that the doctor-patient relationship is an intertextual reading with the particularity of pointing to a Christological interpretation of the parable of the Good Samaritan. Luther’s main purpose was to stress justification as an event centred in the person of Christ, the Good Samaritan of all sinners covered by the justifying grace. The image of a doctorpatient relationship and that of the house undergoing construction contain two points of paramount importance for grasping Luther’s approach to the justification process. The first point is that the cure does not depend only on the doctor’s skills, but also on the patient’s trust in his doctor and on the patient’s willingness to follow the doctor’s prescriptions. This encapsulates all that Luther taught about justification of the sinner. According to Luther, in the core of justification lay the gift of faith which marked the moment the sinner abandons the manias of the self and embraces God’s mercy. The bestowal of the gift of faith is a fundamental moment, but it is a moment of a process. The house in construction is a house, but it still lacks what is proper to a house and the the sick man is well in hope, but still sick in fact. If the patient thinks that, after having received such a gift he/she could manage to find the cure by him/herself, then everything would be ruined. According to Luther’s line of reasoning, it was necessary to follow the prescriptions in order to keep the recovery going on. In the case of the justified sinner, this meant having enough humility to trust God’s redemptive operation until everything is concluded. Of course, meanwhile, the lusts of the flesh have to be fought off. But all this would be meaningless if it is not done in humility/faith, since apart from humility/faith even the most shining virtues coram hominibus is sin coram Deo. The second detail has to do with the length of the process. This allowed Luther to portray the justification process as simultaneously an event as well as a process. To be more precise, an event that can not be dissociated from the skaton to which it aims. Justification is an event which starts in a given moment, here and now, the moment the sinner is turns to God. Its completion, however, implies a life-long process. This makes of justification a process, as G. Hunsinger puts it, an eschatological event covering three tenses. Justification, as Luther understood it, – he writes – was an eschatological event that centred on the person of Christ. As such it was an event that had three tenses. In one sense it has already occurred, in another sense it has not yet occurred, while in still third sense it occurred continuously in the life of faith here and now. Justification, from the first perspective had already occurred extra nos. For “Christ has achieved it on the Cross” … he “has made us righteous by his death”. Here justification is spoken of in the perfect tense as a fact accomplished apart from us by Christ. From a second per-

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spective, however, justification in all its fullness had yet to taken place. For «we are not yet perfectly righteous. Our being justified perfectly remains to be seen, and this is what we hope for. Thus our righteousness does not yet exist in fact, but it still exists in hope”. Here justification is spoken of as the object of future hope. Finally, from a third, more existential perspective, justification occurred not in the past or in the future but here and now. For when God’s Word is once heard and believed, Christ becomes present to us and justifies us and saves us. It was in this sense that justification occurred by faith39.

Luther’s insistence on this three tenses/perspectives of the justification process aimed, above all, at stating a word of caution: it is presumptuous to think one has been justified and need not be justified, i. e. needs no further divine assistance to lead a life of a justified person. This would be to make heaven on earth, an adulteration of the justification process of which fulfilment takes place not in this life but in heaven. After all, justification in its fullness is the becoming “in fact” what is already “in hope” on account of the trust in Christ’s redemptive work and His promise for the future. This life, Luther recalled, is not a life of sinlessness; it is a life of being healed. The Church in peregrination is ill; it needs a physician. The place of health and righteousness lies ahead, in heaven (“Ista Vita Est Vita curationis a peccato, non sine peccato finita curatione et adepta sanitate. Ecclesia Stabulum est et infirmaria egrotantium et sanandorum. Caelum vero est palatium sanorum et Iustorum”)40. Luther’s insistence on the fact that the justified sinner is righteous in hope, can easily be misunderstood. It is true that he often insisted that justification is about the imputation or declaration of righteousness and that our righteousness was aliena and extranea, and does not come from within, but from outside us. All this, added to the portrayal of the justified sinner as depicted by the Reformer in his reading of Romans 7, may suggest to the unprepared reader that Luther’s understanding of justification lacked or excluded a real and effective sense of transformation in the justified person since he/she still sins. This is, however, not the case. Luther did not deny spiritual or moral progress inherent in the justification process. His understanding of justification by faith can only be understood to have been a one-sided event consisting in the forgiveness of sins and a forensic imputation of righteousness when one ignores the very nature of the Reformer’s concept of faith. For Luther, faith was very effective. Faith, as Luther understood it, was a sort of divine extension into human nature, faith essentially transformed. It is precisely because Luther argued that justification takes place through this transforming faith that his understanding of justification by faith, cannot be accurately regarded as a mere declaration of righteousness. 39 Hunsinger, 2000, 296. 40 WA 56, 275, l. 26.

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The reality of faith is then the key. It is hardly necessary to say that what made the young Luther insist on the justification by faith alone was the nature and the features he linked to faith. By the time Luther wrote his Lectures on Romans he already spoke of both forensic and effective aspects of justification. It seems that the first aspect has been overemphasised, and regarded as almost the exclusive aspect of the Reformer’s understanding of justification; especially amongst the German school of Luther research since the 19th century. In recent studies one finds arguments according to which this forensic notion of justification is what separated Luther from Augustine’s doctrine of grace. Approaching Augustine’s doctrine of grace as participation in divine life, Patricia WILSON-KASTNER writes that “The Greek personal relationship model was replaced by a sovereign disposing of his subjects according to his [God’s] will. Only the Greek elements of deification separate Augustine’s theology of grace from Luther’s, and keep it from being an arbitrary will decreeing a forensic justification”41. This would be true if Luther’s doctrine of justification had limited itself to a forensic declaration of righteousness. Luther’s doctrine of justification, it has been convincingly demonstrated in some recent studies, did not limit itself to a forensic justification, but implied a strong sense of participation in the divine life. A strong wave of criticism against the trend to conceive Luther’s doctrine of justification as mere forensic declaration of righteousness rose up in the middle 1970’s among some theologians of the Department of Systematic Theology of University of Helsinki, under the leadership of Professor Tuomo MANNERMAA. According to MANNERMAA, the idea that Luther’s doctrine of justification by faith is to be understood as mere forensic declaration of righteousness grew solid thanks to a certain school of Luther’s research since Karl Holl, and among some representatives of his line of thought such as Heinrich Bornkamn, Emanuel Hirsch, Hans Rückert, Eric Seeberg, and Erich Vogelsang. “It was because of the the influence of this school, MANNERMAA concludes, that the one-sidedly forensic interpretation turned out to be characteristic of the Lutheranism subsequent to Luther”42. This fact, then, placed Luther more distant in relation to the basic principles of the Christology of the early Church, principles with which the Reformer fundamentally agrees43. 41 Wilson-Kastner, 1976, 152. 42 Mannermaa, 2005, 7. 43 An important detail of Mnnermaa’s argument is the fact that he points out that the understanding of justifying faith mean merely the reception of forgiveness imputed to a human being for the sake of Christ, as presented in the Lutheran confessional text known as Formula of Concord. This does not correspond to Luther’s own understanding of the very same concept. For Luther, justifying faith is to be understood as a real participation in the institution of “blessing, righteousness and life” which is Christ himself. Justifying faith means participation in God’s essence in Christ. “There is no doubt, he writes, that the idea of the believer’s real participation in Christ is an essential part of Luther’s theology of justification.

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The already called “Maanermaa school” vehemently opposes the claims according to which Luther’s doctrine of justification limited itself to a forensic declaration of righteousness. “The doctrine of justification understood as declared righteousness, MAANERMAA argues, does not grasp the whole intent of Luther’s doctrine of justification”44. The basis for the opposition is essentially the nature of justifying faith. In a strike of brilliancy, MANNERMAA roots his arguments in a fundamental detail that the Holl’s school, as he criticizes it, failed to pay due attention: Christ’s presence in the justifying faith. MAANERMAA, argues that Luther’s approach to justification can be grasped only when Christ’s presence in faith is understood as something real, as the Reformer himself considered it. It is a crucial detail on the nature of faith. It is true that Luther taught that justification occurs through faith, but faith contained the very divine person of Christ; to believe is to be in real union with the person of Christ. Anchored in Christology, Luther regarded faith and Christ as belonging together “essentially”. This is the key to understand the true message of Luther’s doctrine of justification. “Faith”, the celebrated Finnish theologian writes, “communicates the divine attributes to the human being, because Christ himself, who is a divine person, is present in faith. Therefore, the believer is given all the ‘goods’ (bona) of God in faith”45. At least on the level of terminology, the distinction between justification and the divine indwelling in the believer, made by the formula of Concord and by the major part of later Lutheran theology, is alien to the Reformer. […] In faith, the person of Christ and that of the believer are made one, and this oneness must not be divided; what is at stake here is salvation, or the loss of it. In the Formula of Concord, on the other hand, justification is defined only as the imputation of the forgiveness of sins, whereas inhabitatio Dei is defined as a separate phenomenon and part of sanctification or renewal. Luther does not hesitate to conclude that in faith the human being becomes “God”, not in substance but through participation. This notion, which has been forgotten in Protestant theology, is an integral part of Luther’s theology, if interpreted correctly”. Mannermaa, 2005, 41 – 42. 44 Peura,1998b, 76. 45 Mannermaa, 2005, 22. This position is strongly corroborated in Peura, 1998a, 50sqq. Simo Peura argues that central to Luther’s understanding of justification is to take into account the Reformer’s claim according to which God gives Himself to the believer. God’s attributes are identical to God Himself. Luther identifies God and His attributes with each other. Accordingly, when God gives spiritual goods such as wisdom, goodness, virtue, etc, God gives himself to the Christians. It is, Peura rightly observes in his reflection over Luther’s understanding of Christ as favor and gift, a Christologicaly-centred approach on Justification and the ontological communion with Christ which takes place in justification that allows Luther to speak of deification of the believer, since grace and gift do not exist separated from the Giver. “The self-giving of God, the Finnish Scholar writes, is realized when Christ indwells the sinner through faith and thus unites himself with the sinner. This means that the Christian receives salvation per Christum only under the condition of unio cum Christo. Luther’s conviction on this point leads to the conclusion that a Christian becomes a partaker of Christ and that a Christian is in this sense also deified. […] This deification is based on God’s indwelling, or inhabitation: a Christian is god, God’s child and infinite, because God indwells in him. Deification means for the Christian participation in God’s divine nature […]

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MANNERMAA’s positions are even more appealing when he explains the real implication of the presence of Christ in faith. This presence of Christ in faith, the Finnish grand homme of Lutheran studies observes, is to the point of implying something truly crucial for the believer – the communication of attributes (communicatio idiomatum). This communication of attributes makes of justification something far wider than the communion of will. It is rather a communion of being between Christ and the believer that takes place in justification46. Christ really had and bore the sin of all human beings in His human nature that He assumed. This fact made Him the greatest sinner (maximus peccatorum, peccator peccatorum). By taking all the sin of human beings, He became the only sinner (solus peccator)47. Stressing that, for Luther, the justifying faith meant something much more than the reception of forgiveness imputed to human being for the sake of the merit of Christ, MANNERMAA writes: What takes place here between Christ and the believer is a kind of communication of attributes: Christ, the divine righteousness, truth, peace, joy, love, power, and life, gives himself to the Christian. At the same time, Christ “absorbs” the believer’s sin, death and curse into himself. As Christians thus really participate in Christ, they have no sin or death any more. […] The presence of Christ in faith, is real, and he is present in it with all his essential attributes, such as righteousness, blessing, life, power, peace, and so forth. Thus the notion of Christ as a “gift” means that the believing subject becomes a participant in the “divine nature”. […] It is precisely the Christ present in justifying faith who communicates God’s saving attributes to the believer in the “happy exchange”. God is righteousness, and in faith the human being participates in righteousness; God is joy, and in faith human being participates in joy ; God is life, and in faith human being participates in life; God is power, and in faith human being participates in power and so forth48. Theosis is a culmination of the train of Luther’s thought as he claims the effective aspect of justification”. Peura 1998a, 51. 46 Mannermaa, 1998b, 32. S. Peura indicates one of the main reasons why this union with Christ in faith was impossible to be admitted in Luther on research since 19th century : the postulates held in the Formula of Concord were secured in Lutheranism under the influence of the neoKantian theology and Philosophy. For instance, the neo-Kantian insistence on the radical separation between God’s being (esse) and his effects (Wirkungen) from each other led to the conclusion that God is not present in the effects he produces. Accordingly some crucial details of Luther’s doctrine of justification has been systematically misunderstood. In light of this reasoning claim, theological ideas such as union of God and the Christian become impossible. “Because of the FC and the neo-Kantian interpretation, gift and the effective justification have lost their ontological content in Lutheran theology. Gift (donum) has taken on the meaning of a new relation to God, a change in one’s self-understanding or existential confidence in God’s mercy. The content of gift is actually reduced to the Christian’s insight that he has a new position coram Deo. [..] In my opinion, the FC and modern Lutheran theology have not correctly communicated Luther’s view of grace and gift”. Peura, 1998a, 47. 47 Mannermaa, 2005, 13 – 16; 1998b, 29 – 31. 48 Mannermaa, 2005, 17 – 22. It is fair to notice that many conclusions reached by Mannermaa and his disciples were already brought about by some scholars in 1950’s. A. Skevington

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This ontological communion between Christ and the believer, who through faith is made righteous is in line with Luther’s very understanding of God, as well as creation. Luther endorsed the Augustinian stress on the ontological dependence of creation on the Creator (in whom Augustine, following the neo-Platonist line of reasoning, saw the true existence) and advocated creation as a continuous process (creatio continua). For the creation, including the rational creature, is not a static being-in-itself, but rather a continuous reception of being from God. Human beings exist only because they received God’s gifts from outside themselves such as life, being (esse), reason, intellect, nourishment, and clothing49. Ultimately, this communication of gifts lay at the core of Luther’s understanding of God who could not be but a self-giving God. According to the Reformer, “God is in his essence a pure, giving love whose motive was not to get good for himself, but to give good to that which lacks it in itself”50. Once again, Luther’s theological reasoning reveals a great indebtedness to Augustine. For Augustine, humans existed on account of their participation in the source of being which is God. Luther concurred. This portrayal of God as the source of esse which feeds and maintains human existence became evident in Luther’s understanding of presence of any sort of goodness in human beings, especially righteousness. For Luther, “esse in the proper sense of the word, S. JUNTUNEN explains well, is not something that comes from the one who participates; it is something that derived from him in whom one participates”51. Luther’s whole reasoning of the presence of goodness in human beings is based on his conviction that the only way such a goodness could indwell in humans was through participation in God’s goodness. God’s attributes are God Himself. So through the ontological communion which occurs via faith, humans are righteous on account of their participation in God’s righteousness; wise through the Wood, for instance, follows a very similar conclusions when analysing the relationship between justification and sanctification in young Luther, namely in Lectures on Romans. Wood argues that Luther’s doctrine of justification implies regeneration and sanctification and that, in order to maintain this line of argument, Luther revived the Pauline doctrine of union with Christ and defined justification of the sinner as a reality which goes far beyond the mere cloaking of sin. For Luther, Wood argues, Divine righteousness was positive and active. So justification has to be a real conversion which consists in the believer’s transition from death to life, from sin to holiness. “Here [in justification]”, Wood explains, “is no legal fiction. God renders righteous in regeneration; in forgiveness He imputes that real righteousness-which-is-to-be. Only so, indeed, can He remain just in justifying the ungodly. Luther revives the Pauline doctrine of union with Christ. The justified sinner is (em Wqisty. He dwells in Christ and Christ dwells in him. He is buried with Christ in his baptism; he rises with Christ into new life in which Christ becomes incarnate again in him. Justification, then, is not a mere cloaking of sin. It is a real conversion. The believer passes from death to life, from sin to holiness”. Wood, 1950, 116. 49 Juntunen, 1998, 138 – 139 50 Juntunen, 1998, 131. 51 Juntunen, 1998, 153

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participation in God’s wisdom, and so on and so forth. This participation is a strong one since it takes place through exchange of attributes. God’s goodness is no longer His own alone but belongs also to the justified sinner who participates in His goodness and the justified sinner’s wretchedness is no longer his but God’s. They are, then, one. To understand the theological scope of the ontological communion between Christ and the believer on account of justification by faith, it is crucial to take into account Luther’s theology of baptism as well. Luther’s doctrine of justification by faith was based on the notion of gift. Christ Himself is a gift to the Christians52. In baptism the believer receives Christ’s gifts, Christ Himself, since the gift should not be regarded as something separable from the giver. S. PEURA’s conclusions on the issue are certainly helpful here: The essential idea in Luther’s theology of baptism, the Finnish scholar writes, is a merciful and consoling union in which God joins himself with the sinner and becomes one with him or her. Thus the baptism is not just a covenant or an agreement between two partners bound together to function or act for the same purpose, the salvation of the baptized. It is much more: through the sacramental act of baptism God binds himself ontologically to a sinner and is one with him through his whole earthly life, if he adheres to Christ in faith53.

Luther’s notion of justifying faith was so Christologically oriented that he vehemently criticized the scholastic formula fides charitate formata, as he understood it. He suggested a sort of Fides Christo formata. Faith justifies because it contains the greatest of all treasures, Christ Himself54. According to Luther’s 52 Luther often used the image of marriage in which everything which is bride’s belongs to the bridegroom and vice-versa as he did in De libertate Christiana when discussing one of the benefit of faith, the union with Christ. “The third and incomparable benefit of faith is that it unites the soul with Christ as a bride is united to her bridegroom. By this mystery, as the Apostle teaches, Christ and the soul become one flesh [Eph. 5:31 – 32]. And if they are one flesh and there is between them a true marriage – indeed the most perfect of marriages, since human marriages are but poor examples of this one true marriage – it follows that everything they have they hold in common, the good as well as the evil. Accordingly the believing soul can boast of and glory in whatever Christ has as though it were its own, and whatever the soul has Christ claims as his own. Let us compare this and we shall see inestimable benefits. Christ is full of grace, life, and salvation. The soul is full of sins, death, and damnation. Now let faith come between them and sins, death, and damnation will be Christ’s, while grace, life and salvation will be the soul’s; for if Christ is a bridegroom, he must take upon himself the things which are his bride’s and bestow upon her the things that are his. If he gives her his body and very self, how shall he not give her all what is his? And if he takes the body of the bride, how shall he not take all that is hers?” LW 31, 351. 53 Peura, 1998a, 53 – 54 54 Mannermaa, 2005, 23 – 30; 1998b, 36 – 39. S. Peura is totally right when he claims that it is based on this same union with Christ which occurs in justification that could incorporate and teach sola gratia in his soteriology. Once again, in his reflection over Luther’s portrayal of Christ as grace and gift, Peura concludes: “[…] Luther’s interpretation of the relation be-

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understanding of the formula fides charitate formata, the true effect of justifying grace, that transformation the believer goes through when justified, was ultimately being underestimated. As S. PEURA explains, the scholastic definition of grace as created maintained that habitual grace, according to its ontological status, is a quality, an accident adhering to human considered as substance. This doctrine, the same author writes, did not go far enough to stress the ontological points that Luther wished to maintain. He preferred the interpretation of Peter Lombard, who claimed that the Holy Ghost himself is the love (charitas) of a Christian. This standpoint was very important for Luther’s view of justification55.

Thus, of crucial importance for understanding Luther’s doctrine of faith is to take into account that the personal union which occurs in faith, was regarded by Luther as real to the point, he argued, that in faith, Christ and the believer become one person. Faith is the participation in the “divine life” as lapidarly expressed in Gal. 2:20. As MANNERMAA, puts it “the ‘old-self ’ of the Christian dies and is replaced by the person of Christ. Christ “is in us” and “remains in us”. The life that the Christian now lives is, in an ontologically real manner, Christ himself”56. Thus, this participation in the divine life through faith, led the Reformer to the most polemical notion of divinization. Through faith, one becomes god, the Christian become a “divine human being”. This conclusion reveals that the idea of deificatio was intimately linked to Luther’s doctrine of justification57. After all these considerations on the nature of justifying faith, there can be no doubt that it is erroneous to associate Luther’s doctrine simul iustus et peccator tween grace and gift becomes understandable only from the point of view of that of a Christian is in Chrit and one with Christ. It is the idea of unio cum Christo that secures for Luther the principle of sola gratia in doctrine of salvation. That a Christian is really made righteous, although only partially so, is not his own achievement but is effected by Christ who indwells the Christian. This means that the presence of Christ is the permanent condition of the Christian’s effective righteousness”. Peura, 1998a, 59. 55 Peura, 1998a, 48. 56 Mannermaa, 2005, 39. 57 Mannermaa, 2005, 43 – 46. Elsewhere Mannermaa explains: “The notion of the presence of Christ as a favour and gift in faith is the essence of Luther’s concept of justification. At least on the level of terminology, the distinction drawn between justification as forgiveness and sanctification as divine indwelling, is alien to the Reformer. Forgiveness and indwelling are inseparable in the person of Christ, who is present in faith. In that sense, in Luther’s theology, justification and theosis as participation in God are also inseparable”. Mannermaa, 1998b, 38. S. Peura maintains that Luther portrays the triune God as essentially a self-giving God, and this makes secures the believer’s participation in the divine nature, a fact that, according to Peura, allows one to speak of salvation as theosis in a genuine Lutheran sense: […] “the threefold self-giving of God means that God reveals himself as the love that finally transforms us into God. God not only reveals his very nature to us, but he also gives himself to us as the triune God. The result is that we are made partakers of his divine nature and thus transformed into God. We can, therefore, speak about salvation as theosis in a genuine Lutheran sense of the word”. Peura, 1998b, 91

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with the denial of any sort of spiritual or moral progress inherent in justification. Thus it is also inaccurate to depict the Reformer’s doctrine of justification as an one-sided event consisting in the forgiveness of sins and a forensic imputation of righteousness. It is, in fact, hard to find a theologian who stressed the Christian life as continuous struggle as did Luther. The Reformer’s very notion of justification in its full meaning was based on a strong sense of struggle (pugna). For Luther, the gift of faith that the sinner receives is the weapon he/she needs to stand and fight. Faith is the great line of defence for a Christian in his/her earthly struggle. The gift of faith is the beginning of a long process. The righteousness imputed to the sinner is supposed to bring as close as possible to perfection while one peregrinated in this earthly life. MANNERMAA’s observation about the relationship between faith and the justification process may be useful here. According to Luther, he writes, there are two factors constituting “Christian righteousness”, namely the “faith in the heart” and the “imputation of God”. They relate to each other in the following way, to give a preliminary definition: faith is, in itself, a real righteousness (fides est iustitia formalis), even though it is, on the other hand, only initial righteousness. Namely, because faith is “weak”, believers still have much flesh in their “flesh”, in their “old Adam”. Because of these remaining sins it is necessary for justification that God “imputes” the righteousness of Christ to Christians. […] Thus, Luther’s fundamental idea can be expressed by saying that faith is the beginning of righteousness, while though imputation this initial righteousness is “perfected” as long as one lives in this age58.

Despite his insistence on the fact that the justified Christian remained a sinner, Luther’s doctrine of justification did not endorse a human remaining in sin without any prospect of ever leaving it. Like Augustine, he stressed rather the growth in spiritual life on account of justification. This would become intelligible if one takes into account that justification occurs through faith and that faith earns for the believer the merits of son-ship. For Luther, faith was nothing 58 Mannermaa, 2005, 55 – 56. Mannermaa is careful in his explanation. He clarifies a fundamental point concerning the roles of faith and Christ in the imputation. Luther, he stresses, is familiar with the forensic aspect of justification and, related to that, the idea of imputation of righteousness to the sinner for the sake of Christ. The Reformer’s view, however, was not simply and solely forensic. Faith is, then, in a certain sense, the basis for the imputation. This does not mean Luther maintained that human beings are not justified for Christ’s sake alone, but also by something which is within themselves. For Luther, Christ is both favor (favor) and gift (donum). “Christ as the ‘favor’ signifies the heart of God that is merciful to the human being, i. e., God’s forgiveness, and the removal of God’s wrath. The concept of ‘gift’ in turn, denotes the real presence of Christ, and thus it also means that through Christ the believer is made participant in the ‘divine nature’, that is, in righteousness, life, salvation (‘happiness’), power, blessing, and so forth. However, while being present, Christ is also at the same time God’s favor (favor), forgiveness. We are not justified for the sake of anything that originates ‘from us’, but for the sake of Christ, who is present in us in faith. Christ is our justification and sanctification”. Mannermaa, 2005, 56 – 57.

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short of a real union with Christ. Accordingly, the Reformer understood the justification process as a process in which Christ’s own virtues belong to His Christians. In this perspective, Luther’s doctrine of justification cannot accurately be understood as a mere forensic declaration of righteousness, and his understanding of Christian life could not have been but a continuous progress in virtue. He made this plain in Lectures on Galatians (1519) when he explained the meaning of adoption of the believers as sons by God59. In light of this and with II Cor. 4:16 in mind, Luther even spoke of the renewal of the mind day by day (Sed potius renouationem mentis de die in diem)60. and of the Holy Spirit’s action over the justified so that he/she might recognize the will of God (“Fides enim ipsa transformat sensum et ducit ad agnitionem voluntatis Dei”)61. As the sick man of the Parable of the Good Samaritan (also frequently used by Augustine) moved from sickness to health, in this life, the justified sinners began to be Christians whose life is of a continuous struggle, improving from good to better (“Hoc pro profectu dicitur. Nam loquitur iis, qui iam ince¸ perunt esse Christiani. Quorum vita non est in quiescere, sed in moueri de bono in melius velut egrotus de egritudine in sanitatem, vt et Dominus ostendit in homine Semiuiuo in curam Samaritani suscepto”)62. For Luther, a justified sinner was always a sinner, always a penitent, always righteous (Semper peccator, semper penitens, semper Iustus)63. A sinner like this, Luther perhaps would not hesitate to consider “perfect”, since he/she is under grace, and grace not only preserves but also moves one forward to perfection (“Gratia autem fidei in Christo potens est non modo servare, sed et ad perfectum promovere”)64. It may be hard to admit that Luther would even consider the possibility of a sinner reaching perfection. The truth, however, is that he did! Perhaps, not in the modern sense. Perfection here, it must be stressed, did not 59 WA 2, 536, l. 3: “Et ita vitam Christiani ne imagineris statum et quietem esse, sed transitum et profectum de vitiis ad virtutem, de claritate in claritatem, de virtute in virtutem, et qui non fuerit in transitu, hunc nec Christianum arbitreris, sed populum quietis et pacis, ad quos inducit propheta hostes eius”. This union with the Son is obviously a union with the whole trinity : “Observa: Apostolus, quia de filiis dei dixerat, ideo spiritum sanctum spiritum filii dei appellat, ut eundem spiritum fidelibus missum ostendat, qui in Christo est, filio dei. Manifeste autem sanctam trinitatem unum deum notat. Nam filius, cum sit verus deus, vivit spiritu suo, quo et pater sine dubio vivit, et quem alibi spiritum dei vocat, hic spiritum filii vocat. Ita et nos in deo sumus, movemur et vivimus: sumus propter patrem qui substantia divinitatis est, movemur imagine filii qui ex patre nascitur divino et aeterno velut motu motus, vivimus secundum spiritum in quo pater et filius quiescunt et velut vivunt”. WA 2, 536, l. 23. 60 WA 56, 443, l. 5 61 WA 56, 446, l. 5 62 WA 56, 441, l. 14. 63 WA 56, 442, l. 17. 64 WA 2, 539, l. 24

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mean that there is no need for progression. Much to the contrary! Like Augustine, for Luther, perfection was rather a deep consciousness regarding the need of such progress and the understanding of its contours. Luther’s concept of perfection relied on the Augustinian teaching according to which righteous was not him who is sinless, but him who has the consciousness of his own sinfulness and, thus, seeks mercy. In this life, Luther stressed, there is no one so perfect that they could not become more so. The perfect sinner would be aware of both the fact that his/her life will always have room for progress and that such progress is worked by God. This is perfection as Luther understood it. It was a perfection which is only the beginning of a process of which completion belongs to the heavenly life65.

4.3

Conclusions

According to Luther, though righteous by non-imputation of sin or by imputation of righteousness, the justified Christian remains sinner and is unable to fulfil the commandments despite the fact this is precisely what he/she wishes for. It is based on a Christ-centred approach Luther maintained the doctrine of simul iustus et peccator, but this Christological approach cannot be understood without the Pauline parallelism Christ-Adam (Rom. 5:12 – 19 and I Cor. 15:22). One is certainly not sinner on account of Christ. That responsibility is to be ascribed to Adam, to the burden of his sin that we all inherit. The justified sinner is righteous and sinner precisely because he/she carries a double gift: the concupiscence of the flesh from Adam and all the qualities of Christ, the second Adam. The qualities of Christ become those of his Christians on account of the communion with God which occurs through justifying faith. Adam was the type of one who was to come (Rom. 5:14), i. e. Christ, the second Adam. In Adam we are all evil, even the believers. In Christ, and only the believers are in Christ, all are good. The formulation of simul iustus et peccator became possible on account of a tiny line which decides and establishes imputation and non-imputation: faith. Faith brings righteousness, and the righteousness of faith is totally directed towards Christ, its source, to the point that the believer’s righteousness and Christ’s become one and the same, ineffably united with each other (“in Christum et nomen eius, quod est iusticia, fit, ut Christi et Christiani iusticia sit una eademque ineffabiliter sibi coniuncta”)66. Then it 65 WA 2, 456, l. 10: “Verum haec de perfectione sane intelligenda sunt. Nam nullus ita perfectus in hac vita est, ne Apostolus quidem, quin perficiendus sit magis: immo, ut Sapiens dicit, homo, cum consummaverit, tunc incipiet. Ad aliorum itaque comparationem alios perfectos dixeris: alioquin et ipsi cotidie incipiunt atque proficiunt”. 66 WA 2, 491, l. 14.

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follows that in the same way all became sinners on account of “another’s sin”. On account of “another’s righteousness” all became righteous. It is, on account of faith, that both Christ’s righteousness is imputed to the believer and Adam’s sin (which is also his/her) is not imputed67. This is due to the fact that in faith, Christ, who is truly sinless, becomes one with the believer and intercedes for him/her to the Father. Accordingly every one who believes in Christ is righteous, though not yet fully in point of fact, but in hope. The justified sinner is he who has begun to be justified and healed, like the man who is half-dead (Luke 10:30). Luther’s doctrine of simul iustus et peccator is essentially Augustinian. This becomes evident when analysing the way the Reformer approached the relationship between the doctrine of simul iustus et peccator and the doctrine of justification by faith. In his approach to this relationship, Luther reached a conclusion similar to that those reached by Augustine in his anti-Pelagian writings such as De spiritu et littera, De natura et gratia, among others. As for Augustine, for Luther, justification was a process which does not imply a total absence of sin. While a sinner is being justified and healed, sin remains in his flesh, though the same sin is not imputed to him. This is because Christ, who is entirely without sin, has now become one with His Christians and these become all that Christ is, including righteous. For Luther, a proof that justification does not imply total absence of sin lies in Paul’s declaration in Rom. 7:23. Paul, after having said that through the law of his members he was made captive to sin (Rom. 7:23), declared that there is no condemnation for those who hope in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh» (Rom. 8:1 – 4). The Apostle, Luther stressed, did not say “no sin”. Sin still remains but it not imputed for condemnation. In an apparent contradiction, Luther explained, Scriptures maintained both the sinfulness and righteousness of the sinner (cf. I John 1:18; 3:9; 5:18; Job 1:8; 9:20). This apparent contradiction, he maintained, would disappear if one pays attention to the theological scope of faith. The fulfilling of the Law and righteousness had come through faith and, for this reason, what was left of sin (that the righteous carried in their flesh) and what they failed to carry out in the commands of the Law, was not imputed to them. The role of faith is to blot out sin. The flesh, however, is still contaminated. Accordingly, if it is true that if one looks to faith one would see that Law had been fulfilled and sin destroyed, it is also true that if one looks to the flesh, one would be forced to acknowledge that those who were spiritually righteous on account of faith, are still sinners (WA 2, 497, l. 13). Thus, a perfect portrayal of a justified Christian then would be found in Romans 7 where Paul revealed his love for the Law which he recognized as good, 67 WA 2, 491.

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but yet he could not fulfil. A pious inner look would lead the sinner to realize his/ her real condition. Led, by the gift of faith, the justified sinner comes to the conclusion that what ultimately matters then is belief in God’s promise As R. SAARINEN observes, from Luther’s reading of Rom. 7, “one is almost compelled to view justification as a theocentric event that justifies human beings while leaving them sinners – unable to do the works of the law, believing only God’s promise in Jesus Christ. Thus Paul’s self- description of Romans 7 becomes a paradigmatic description of the individual introspection presupposed in the Lutheran doctrine of justification”68. Here in this life all that is required from the justified sinner is to struggle against the lust of the flesh, i. e. live in accordance with the gift of faith, but above all humbly trust God’s promise for the future.

68 Saarinen, 2006, 65.

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5. Confessio, humilitas and Luther’s doctrine of justification by faith alone

5.1

Justification as an act of confession

“‘Iustus primo est accusator sui [Prov. 18:17]’. O ignorata diu diffinitio iustitie! Quid est Iustitia? Est accusatio sui. Quare? Quia praevenit Iudicium dei & idem damnat, quod deus damnat, scilicet seipsum, ideo per omnia consentit cum Deo & eiusdem Iudicii, eiusdem voluntatis est cum deo ac per hoc, verax iustus, etc.”1. These words were written by Luther in a letter addressed to Georges Spalatin. It is a lapidary definition of righteousness (iustitia). Like many other passages recorded by the Reformer, it leaves no room for any sort of doubt that self-accusation was the backbone of Luther’s doctrine of justification by faith alone. Due to this fact, terms such as confessio, humilitas and fides are intimately connected and the net of relationship between them should not be neglected in the task of grasping Luther’s doctrine of justification. Thus, it is important to explore this same net of relationship among these three terms in young Luther’s doctrine of justification. In his fine and detailed work, Gloria Gratiae: Se Glorifier en Dieu, Principe et Fin de la Th¦ologie Augustinienne de la Gr–ce, P.-M. HOMBERT2 reaches an undeniable conclusion: humility and the sense of gratitude were the two great pillars of the Augustinian theology of grace. Luther was acutely aware of Augustine’s insistence on the fact that it is foolishness and presumptuous to attempt to attain charity without God’s help. This, Augustine remarked, would be the same as trying to have God without God. In other words, Luther knew that Augustine’s doctrine of grace, especially in his mature years, fused with the doctrine of Christian humility. Luther understood well that Augustine’s doctrine of justification through grace essentially came down to the following: there is no 1 Luther to Spalatin, February 15th 1518, WA Br 1, p. 145, l. 28sqq. 2 Published in 1996, is the finest study with which I am familiar on the relationship between Augustine’s doctrine of grace and Christian humility. I take the opportunity to thank Professor M. Lamberigts for bringing this study to my attention.

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justification or salvation without the abandonment of the self, without the acknowledgement of one’s unworthiness, which implies confessing God’s total goodness. In his doctrine of justification, Luther did not deviate from this Augustinian path. A good point of departure when studying Luther’s doctrine of justification by faith is to explore his teachings regarding the role of humility in justification. It is never too much to recall that for understanding Luther’s doctrine of justification by faith alone a very careful approach to the very notion of faith itself is required. What is faith, or what is belief ? In what does faith consist? What does it permit the believer to do? What are its implications in human-divine relationship? It is by posing these questions that one comes to understand the intimate relationship between confessio, humilitas and fides in the shaping of Luther’s doctrine of justification. The intimate relationship between the issue of humility and justification by faith alone in young Luther is based on what Luther understood to be the main goal of Paul’s epistle to the Romans, i. e. to extirpate self-righteousness. The Church would be fulfilling its duty if its magisterium focused on the central message of Paul’s epistle to the Romans. If guided by Paul’s concern, then the Church would be able to make a radical distinction and opposition between propria/domestica iustitia (the righteousness which is a fruit of human effort and the object of human complacence) and the externa et aliena iustitia, i. e. that righteousness bestowed upon us from outside through grace3. For Luther, to receive and acknowledge the externa iustitia as divine gift implies a radical abdication of our own works, to recognize ourselves as truly sinners in need of grace4. In other words, it requires a radical abandonment of the self and this abandonment of the self was, in great extent, what Luther understood by faith. It is in this context that humility and confession (with its double sense of confession of sins and praise of God) fuse with the very notion of faith in Lutheran

3 WA 56, 158, l. 10: “Deus enim nos non per domesticam, Sed per extraneam Iustitiam et sapientiam vult saluare, Non que veniat et nascatur ex nobis, Sed que aliunde veniat in nos, Non que in terra nostra oritur, Sed que de celo venit. Igitur omnino Externa et aliena Iustitia oportet erudiri. Quare primum oportet propriam et domesticam euelli”. 4 WA 56, 159, l. 12: “Idcirco in istis omnibus sic oportet se habere in humilitate, quasi adhuc nihil habeat, et nudam misericordiam Dei expectare eum pro Iusto et sapiente reputantis. Quod tunc facit Deus, Si ipse humilis fuerit et non preuenerit Deum Iustificando seipsum et reputando, quod aliquid sit, Vt 1. Corinth. 4.: ‘Neque meipsum Iudico. Qui autem me Iudicat, Dominus est, Ideoque Nolite ante tempus iudicare’ etc. Inueniuntur Sane multi, qui sinistraria bona i. e. temporalia propter Deum nihil reputent et bene perdant, vt Iudei et heretici. Sed qui dextraria i. e. bona spiritualia et opera Iusta velint nihil reputare propter Christi Iustitiam acquirendam, pauci sunt. Hoc enim Iudei et heretici non possunt. Et tamen nisi fiat, nemo saluabitur. Semper enim volunt et sperant ipsa coram Deo reputari et premiari. Sed stat fixa sententia: ‘Non est volentis neque currentis, Sed miserentis Dei’.

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phraseology. Accordingly, this is the reason why humility and confession were regarded by Luther as essential ingredients in the justification event/process. Luther was peremptory in his assertion according to which the confession of sins commends God’s righteousness. God’s righteousness is offered to the sinner not because the sinner had committed sins, but rather because he/she had acknowledged his/her sins and struggled to abandon it, embracing God’s righteousness and everything that comes from Him (such as truthfulness)5. At the core of this theological dialectic between confession of sins and the justification of the sinner, lies the concept of humility. Being a radical abandonment of the self and adherence to what comes from God, humility fuses with the very justifying faith in Luther’s terminology. The crucial role of self-accusation in the justification of the sinner is clear in Luther’s exegesis of verse 4 of the famous Psalms 516. No wonder that the young Luther’s doctrine of justification by faith was developed in an intimate connection with his understanding of the role of confession and the remission of sins in the salvation process. Only the grace of faith lead to confession which takes sin away. Here, Luther remarked, lies the very differences between the two Testaments. The Old Covenant could not extirpate sin but rather increased it, since human effort did not manage to take it away. The New Covenant, in its turn, is to be identified with the “grace through faith in Christ that takes away sin”. How are sins taken away? The answer to this question clarified the intimate relationship between confessio, remission of sins and Luther’s doctrine of justification by faith: God takes away sin when he bestows faith, for believers’ sins are forgiven. So when Paul mentioned the taking away of sin in Rom. 11:27 he intended to state that the New Covenant is the covenant of taking away and forgiving sins, an operation possible through God’s mercy alone. It is through faith that believers acknowledge that it is God who

5 WA 56, 216, l. 12: “Quod non ideo Iustitia Dei commendatur, quia ego Iniustitias facio, immo quia agnosco me iniustitias fecisse et cesso facere et sic Iustitiam Dei siue que ex Deo est, amplector, Cum etiam Iustitie? mee? apud illum sint Iniustitie?. vnde non gloriam, Sed ignominiam habeo apud Deum. Ac Sic In Iustitia, qua ipse me Iustificat, solus ipse glorificatur, Quia solus Iustificatur (i. e. Iustus esse agnoscitur). Ita et de veritate dicendum, Quod non ideo Veritas Dei glorificatur, quia mentior, Sed quia agnosco, quod sum mendax et cesso esse mendax, dum veritatem, que ex Deo est, amplector, vt per illam et non per meam verax efficiar, vt sic cesset gloriatio mea in me; Sed Deus solus glorificetur in me, qui solus verificauit me siue veracem fecit, Cum etiam veritas mea coram ipso sit mendacium”. See also WA 56, 221, l. 4. 6 WA 56, 219, l. 5: “Ideo satur veritate et sapientia sua non est capax veritatis et sapientie Dei, Que? non nisi in vacuum et inane recipi potest. Ergo dicamus Deo: O quam libenter sumus vacui, vt tu plenus sis in nobis! Libenter infirmus, vt tua virtus in me habitet; libenter peccator, vt tu Iustificeris in me; libenter Insipiens, vt tu mea sapientia sis; libenter Iniustus, vt tu sis Iustitia mea! Ecce hoc est, quod ait: ‘Tibi peccaui, vt Iustificeris in sermonibus tuis.’”.

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takes sin away and that it is foolish to think that one can accomplish such an achievement by oneself7. This abandonment to divine mercy is ultimately the faith that justifies. Hence confession out of true humility fuses itself with the very notion of justifying faith. Regarding the term “confession”, it has been said that in young Luther the noun confessio and the verb confiteor carried the Augustinian meaning, that is, expressing both confession of one’s sin and praise of God; it is a sense of acknowledgement and a proclamation. It expressed at once the recognition of one’s sin and miseries (accusatio sui) and proclaimed God’s greatness and wonders8. Although Luther recalled that the fundamental need for self-accusation is evident in Biblical passages such as Psalms 32:5; I John 1:10 and 199 ; it was the first verse of Psalms 51 that served as reference for the Reformer in the identification of justification of the sinner with sinner’s self-accusation. Luther’s exegesis of this Psalms reveals that, though his doctrine of justification is considered to have been based on the notion of non-imputation of sins/imputation of righteousness by God, the Reformer’s understanding of justification cannot be dissociated from the auto-imputation of one’s own sin, from an act of confession. It was precisely due to this fact that confessio, fides and humilitas meet at the crossroad of justification, as Luther understood it. The relationship between self-accusation and humility in Luther was very intensive. Only the humble self-accuses, i. e. confesses. Thus, for Luther, humility was the sine qua non condition and the very motor of the processus iustificationis. Luther’s theological equation on this matter was as follows: God can be justified by no one since He is righteousness itself. He also cannot be judged by anyone since he Himself is eternal law, judgement and truthfulness. It is, however, a different issue to say that God can be judged “in His words”. What does it mean? The answer to this question sheds much light upon the relationship between faith and humility in young Luther’s theology, especially regarding the the key-role assumed by these two concepts in the processus iustificationis as understood by Luther. For Luther, God is justified “in His words” when His Words are regarded and accepted as righteous and truthful. This only takes place when one has faith in God’s Words. None of this takes place without humility, 7 WA 56, 114 – 115. 8 WA 57 III, 137 – 138, 15: “Que confessio non tantum peccatorum, sed et laudis intelligitur, imo confessio peccatorum et laudis est una eademque confessio, nisi sit illorum Iudeorum, qui a Iuda Scharioth nominantur, i. e. desperatorum. Zachar i. e. merces Illa est enim vera confessio, qua homo dat Deo gloriam de iusticia, sapiencia, virtute cunctisque operibus, sibi vero nil nisi peccatum, stulticiam, infirmitatem, atque idipsum vero ore, corde atque opere”. Cf. Confessiones I, VI, 9; De Civitate Dei, V, 14, etc. 9 WA 56, 229 – 230.

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which is itself an act of confession in its already mentioned twofold meaning. Thus fides, humilitas and confessio fuse and run parallel. According to Luther, no one believes if he/she has not abandoned the self, that is if he/she was not humble. No one could be humble if he/she did not believe. To believe is to recognise God’s greatness and one’s miseries and sinfulness. Thus, to believe, according to Luther, was ultimately a genuine act of confessio. This intimate and dialectical relationship between humilitas/fides/confessio became clear in Luther’s exegesis of the expression “ut iustificeris” (That thou mayest be justified) quoted by Paul in Rom. 3:4. The expression here is not to be understood in the same sense as it is used in Psalms 51:4. Here the Apostle insisted on the need of confession of one’s sins. Though God is righteous, according to Luther, this truth is useless, it is not true in us until it is confessed10. Thus in Rom. 3:5 Paul was not talking about the righteousness by which God Himself is righteous. He was actually denying that the righteousness of God is commended by our unrighteousness. Psalms 51:4 did not say that our sin justifies God but rather that confession and the acknowledgement of sins humbled the proud and unrighteous man who trusts his own righteousness and, for this reason, mistreats the righteousness of God. Only the recognition of one’s unrighteousness glorifies God and commends us to Him11. In other words: Paul referred not to that righteousness by which God himself is righteous but rather of the imputation of righteousness by God to human beings, that is the righteousness by which He who is righteous makes sinner righteous. God Himself is righteous with respect to us since our unrighteousness had become truly ours, that is, acknowledged and confessed, which means to 10 WA 56, 214, 13: “Ista Authoritas hic non debet accipi secundum sensum et coherentiam, quem habet in suo loco, sc. Psalmso 50., Sed solum vt adducta pro huius dicti probatione, quod Deus sit verax in suis sermonibus. Illic enim alio respectu posita est. Quod tamen Apostolus non omittit, Sed obiter et incidenter ex eadem disputat secundum sententiam, qua in Psalmos ponitur, dicens: ‘Si autem iniquitas nostra’ etc. Ibi enim ponitur, vt Deus Iustificetur per confessionem peccati nostri. Quia licet sit in se Iustus et verax, tamen non in nobis, donec confessi dicamus: ‘Tibi soli peccaui’ etc.; tunc enim agnoscitur solus Iustus. Et ita in nobis quoque fit Iustus”. 11 WA 56, 214 – 215, 23: “Aliqui dicunt Iustitiam Dei commendari per nostram Iniustitiam, dum eam punit, quia tunc apparet esse Iustus, qui iniustos non sinit esse impunitos. Et vera est ista sententia. Sed nihil ad propositum Apostoli in hoc loco, quia non loquitur de Iustitia Dei, qua ipse Iustus est, Qui potius negat Dei Iustitiam per nostram iniustitiam commendari, Vel Si affirmat, secundum sensum Psalmsi affirmat, Qui dicit: ‘Tibi soli peccaui’ etc. Psalmsus autem non intendit, Quod peccatum nostrum Iustificet Deum, Sed Confessio et agnitio peccati humilians superbum Iustum, qui se Iustum confidit ac per hoc Deo Iustitiam derogat, cuius solius est Iustitia, Sicut et virtus et sapientia et omne bonum. Quare qui abnegat humiliter a se Iustitiam et peccatorem se coram Deo fatetur, vtique Deum glorificat, quod solus sit Iustus. Igitur Non Iniustitia nostra, quam semper odit Deus vt glorie sue hostem, Sed agnitio et confessio iniustitie nostre glorificat et commendat, quia necessariam et salutarem probat”.

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recognise God’s righteousness. So, in Luther’s eyes, justification was for the penitent only. Confession commends God’s righteousness since it humbles human pride and makes one bow before God and seek His righteousness alone12. Righteousness through imputation is thus the only righteousness by which a sinner is justified. In the righteousness by which He himself justifies the sinner, God alone is glorified since He alone is justified, i. e. acknowledged to be righteous. The same equation was applied by Luther to many other of God’s attributes, such as His truthfulness. God’s truthfulness is not glorified because one is a liar but rather because one acknowledges oneself as liar and abandons lies to embrace the truth which comes from God. So, through God’s truthfulness and not through one’s own truthfulness one may be then made truthful; a sinner’s self-glorification may then cease and God may be glorified in the same sinner. Accordingly, God alone renders or makes the sinner truthful since before Him even a sinner’s own truthfulness is nothing but a lie13. It was in this sense that Luther taught that faith leading to righteousness does not reach its goal of righteousness, i. e. salvation, unless it is an act of confession. Confession is thus the main work of faith by which one denies oneself and confesses God. One both denies oneself and confesses God to such an extent that one would deny one’s own life and all things rather than focus on self-affirmation14. A proof of all this is that there is also the reverse of this situation in which contrary realities operate and produce contrary outcomes: God is also judged in His words. This happens when His words are regarded as false and deceitful. This attitude is fuelled by unbelief, pride, love of the self15. Obviously, Luther claimed, 12 WA 56, 215 – 216, 16: “Vnde Non hic loquitur de Iustitia, qua ipse Iustus est, Sed qua Iustus est et nos Iustificat et ipse respectu nostri solus iustus; illam enim nostra iniustitia, si facta fuerit nostra (i. e. agnita et confessa), commendat, nos enim humiliat et Deo prosternit eiusque Iustitiam postulat, qua accepta Deum largitorem glorificamus, laudamus, amamus. Vbi Contra, Iustitia nostra vituperat, immo tollit ac negat Iustitiam Dei ac mendacem falsamque arguit, dum scil. verbis Dei resistimus nec Iustitiam eius necessariam reputamus et nostram sufficere credimus. Dicendum ergo est: ‘Tibi soli peccaui, vt Iustificeris’ (i. e. cum Laude et gloria solus Iustus et Iustificator noster prediceris) ‘in sermonibus tuis’ i. e. sicut promisisti et contestatus es”. 13 WA 56, 216, 16: “Ac Sic In Iustitia, qua ipse me Iustificat, solus ipse glorificatur, Quia solus Iustificatur (i. e.Iustus esse agnoscitur). Ita et de veritate dicendum, Quod non ideo Veritas Dei glorificatur, quia mentior, Sed quia agnosco, quod sum mendax et cesso esse mendax, dum veritatem, que ex Deo est, amplector, vt per illam et non per meam verax efficiar, vt sic cesset gloriatio mea in me; Sed Deus solus glorificetur in me, qui solus verificauit me siue veracem fecit, Cum etiam veritas mea coram ipso sit mendacium”. Likewise the same case is applicable to all other qualities and their contraries (omnibus aliis perfectionibus cum suis contrariis accipi debet) such as strength and weakness, wisdom and foolishness; innocence and sin”. WA 56, 216 – 217. 14 WA 56, 419. 15 WA 56, 212, 19: “Aliud siquidem est dicere Deum simpliciter ‘Iustificari’ et Deum ‘in ser-

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the last attitude is peculiar to those who rely on human wisdom and thus make of themselves heretics. Therefore, God is justified among those who humbly give up their own wisdom and believe Him, that is abandon themselves to His mercy. Accordingly, the justification of God by the believer turns out to be the believer’s own justification. It is then humilitas/fides/confessio which ultimately decides human fate (“Sic etiam Iustificatio Dei in sermonibus suis potius nostri est Iustificatio; Et Iudicatio siue condemnatio eius nostri potius est secundum illud: ‘Qui autem non crediderit, condemnabitur”)16. Justification, then, can not take place without self-accusation. Self-accusation is the attitude defining the very concept of righteousness. Thus it is it of utmost importance to understand Luther’s notion of imputation of righteousness, a crucial data in Luther’s doctrine of justification as a whole. For Luther, the saints of God are sinners but also righteous by God’s imputation of righteousness or by God’s non-imputation of sins, if one prefers. In other words: they are truly sinners, but on account of the acknowledgement of their sins, that is, by willingly confessing their sins, God regards them as righteous (“in veritate Iniusti sunt, Deo autem propter hanc confessionem peccati eos reputanti Iusti”). The award that followed the self-imputation of sins by the sinner is the imputation of righteousness or non-imputation of sins by God. This is to be justified: to acknowledge one’s sinfulness (which means to acknowledge God’s holiness) so that one’s sins are not imputed by God. A penitent sinner anticipates God in the condemnation of his/her sins. Self-accusation brings the sinner to union with God because he/she condemns what God condemns; he or she reveals that they are in line with God’s truth and judgement. Thus the saints of God are sinners in fact but righteous in hope (peccatores in re, Iusti autem in spe). Accordingly the shaping of a righteous human being starts with self-accusation. Righteous is he/she who accuses him/herself (Iustus in principio est accusator sui)17. monibus suis’ vel operibus ‘Iustificari’; Sic etiam Deum ‘Iudicari’ et ‘in sermonibus Iudicari’; Item Deum ‘vincere’ et ‘in sermonibus suis vincere’. Quia Iustificari Deus in seipso a nullo potest, cum sit ipsa Iustitia, Sic neque Iudicari, cum sit ipse e?terna lex et Iudicium ac veritas, Sed et vincit in seipso omnia nec opus est hoc ei optare et fauere. Sicut et Voluntas eius petitur fieri, cum tamen non possit impediri./ Sed tunc Iustificatur Deus in sermonibus suis, quando sermo eius a nobis Iustus et verax reputatur et suscipitur, quod fit per fidem in eloquia eius. Tunc autem Iudicatur in sermonibus suis, quando sermo eius vt falsus et mendax reputatur, quod fit per incredulitatem et ‘superbiam mentis cordis nostri’, Vt b. Virgo cecinit”. 16 WA 56, 213, 13. 17 WA 56, 269 – 270, l. 25: “Quia dum sancti peccatum suum semper in conspectu habent et Iustitiam a Deo secundum misericordiam ipsius implorant, eoipso semper quoque Iusti a Deo reputantur. Ergo sibiipsis et in veritate Iniusti sunt, Deo autem propter hanc confessionem peccati eos reputanti Iusti; Re vera peccatores, Sed reputatione miserentis Dei Iusti; Ignoranter Iusti et Scienter inIusti; peccatores in re, Iusti autem in spe. Et hoc est, quod dicit hic: ‘Beati, quorum remisse iniquitates et tecta peccata.’ Vnde sequitur : ‘Dixi: confitebor

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Adhaesio verbi Dei: defining the justifying faith

I now focus on the meaning and the nature of the justifying faith. Since Luther claimed that the sinner is justified by faith alone, he was accused of attempting to eliminate good works from the salvation process. It is curious because it seems the Reformer was doing exactly the contrary. He defined faith as the good work par excelllence, the first and most important of all good works. More: according to Luther, only in faith do all the other good works gain meaning in God’s sight. Faith is a sort of garden from which the flowers of good works spring. What is faith or what does it mean to believe? Luther’s definition of faith was based on the dichotomy between two attitudes: abandonment and adherence. It has been said that, for Luther, there could be no justification without a radical abandonment of the self. One can not glorify God unless one does what one does not wish. Even in the case of one’s own righteousness, the hate of self is recommended18. This is precisely why Luther’s doctrine of justification fused with his teachings on humility, faith (which is nothing less than the abandon of the self for the glory of God) and confession. According to Luther, abandonment and adherence were two vital components of faith. It would not be hard to notice that abandonment and adherence mark the lives of the saints. The patriarch Abraham, the prototype of all believers, Luther explained, is a good example. Abraham’s faith was a genuine one, a paradigm of the evangelical life because he abandoned all the plans he might have had for his personal life and blindly followed God’s Word. A genuine faith, as Luther understood it, is nothing more than a blind adherence or reliance upon God’s Word (fides nihil aliud sit quam adhaesio verbi Dei)19. The radical sense of abandonment and adherence had essentially to do with the fact that, despite the dangers, Abraham left his home and obediently followed God’s indications. He headed to an unknown land, putting himself totally in God’s hands20. The act of aduersum me Iniustitiam meam’ (i. e. in conspectu meo semper h[a]bebo peccatum meum, quod tibi confitear). Ideo ‘et tu remisisti impietatem peccati’, Non solum mihi, Sed omnibus. Vnde sequitur : ‘Pro hac orabit ad te omnis sanctus.’ Ecce omnis sanctus est peccator et orat pro peccatis suis. Sic Iustus in principio est accusator sui”. 18 WA 56, 449 – 450, 31: “Ita et [nos] non possumus clarificare Deum, Nisi dum facimus, que nolumus, etiam in Iustitiis nostris, immo maxime in Iustitiis nostris, in consiliis nostris, in virtutibus nostris. Et sic odisse animam suam Et velle contra proprium velle, sapere contra suum sapere, peccatum concedere contra suam Iustitiam, Stultitiam audire contra sapientiam suam, hoc est ‘crucem accipere’ […]”. 19 WA 57 III, 228, 17. 20 “Atque haec est gloria fidei, nescire scilicet, quo eas, quid facias, quid patiaris, et captivatis omnibus, sensu et intellectu, virtute et voluntate, nudam Dei vocem sequi et magis duci et agi quam agere. Et ita claret, quod Abraham hac obedientia fidei praestitit summum evangelicae vitae exemplum, quod relictis omnibus secutus est Dominum, verbum Dei omnibus praeferens, super omnia diligens, sponte peregrinus et omni hora periculis vitae et mortis subiectus fuit”. WA 57/ III, 236, 1. 1.

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believing, Luther pointed out, is a very hard one, since faith consists in giving up everything sensible to embrace the invisible and incomprehensible God (“Ideo arduissima res est fides Christi, quia est raptus et translacio ab omnibus, que sentit intus et foris, in ea, que nec intus nec foris sentit, scil. in invisibilem, altissimum, incomprehensibilem Deum”)21. From the theological point of view, this sense of abandonment and adherence is sincere only when it involves confession. In other words, for Luther, there can be no genuine faith when one refuses to acknowledge the evil one desires and abandon it in order to accept the goodness to which one adheres. What precisely, according Luther, did faith require sinner to abandon? Many things! All these things can, however, be encapsulated in one word: self. For Luther, faith and the the abandonment of the very self were a sort of equivalents. It is only from this perspective that one can grasp the centrality of humility in the justification of the sinner, as defined by Luther. The identification of abandonment of the self and the act of believing is among the most recurrent ideas in Luther’s doctrine of faith. Before proceeding with an explanation regarding the relationship between humility and justification in young Luther’s theology, a summary consideration is needed here. Humility is a central issue in Luther’s theology and he maintained that the issue should be at the core of the magisterium of the Church. After all, the whole Scripture teaches nothing else but humility (Quid enim aliud tota Scriptura docet quam humilitatem?)22. Luther’s insistence on the issue of humility becomes understandable when one bears in mind that the Reformer was deeply convinced that he was fighting against a theological paradigm which promoted self-righteousness (iustitia propria/privata). This explains why Luther’s understanding of salvation laid a special stress on the corruption of human nature. Luther’s theological anthropology is clear in one aspect: it echoes the old Augustinian teaching according to which all good in us has an external origin, and any benefit for the human race can only come from God and never from humans (“Ideo Recte dixi, quod Extrinsecum nobis est omne bonum nostrum, quod est Christus. Sicut Apostolus dicit: ‘Qui nobis factus est a Deo Sapientia et Iustitia et sanctificatio et redemptio.’ Quae¸ omnia in nobis sunt non nisi per fidem et spem in ipsum.”)23. Understanding Luther’s doctrine of justification by faith requires that one pay attention to a series of prerogatives that the Reformer regarded as exclusive to faith. Faith alone attains purification, brings the knowledge of God and permits union with Him. From this it is easy to understand Luther’s claim according to 21 WA 57 III, 144, 10 22 WA 56, 199, 30. 23 WA 56, 279, 22.

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which one is justified by faith alone. Luther’s meditation over the notion of faith never deviated from the christological understanding of Luther’s own doctrine of justification. Christ alone is the architect of the entire salvation process, starting with the remission of sins. This is very clear in Luther’s exegesis of Heb. 1:3 (When He made purification for sins; Purgacionem faciens peccatorum). These words, according to Luther, clearly stressed the centrality and exclusivity of Christ’s redemptive mission. They nullify all the alleged righteousness coming from human deeds and penitence. What is important is Christ’s’ great mercy. He and He alone makes “purification for sins” not through us but through Himself, not for the sins of others but for our sins. Accordingly, Luther insisted, it is upon Christ’s mercy and not upon our penitence that one should rely. Our repentance is preceded by His forgiveness. Better said, first His very purification produces penitence in us, just as His righteousness produces our righteousness24. But why are we justified by faith alone? In order to answer to this question, one must have present the question formulated in the opening of this paragraph: in what does faith consist? According to Luther, faith consisted in a radical transformation of human being leading it to union with God. Then it becomes obvious: justification comes by faith alone for the simple fact that, faith, and faith alone, can carry out such transformation. Faith is the adherence to God’s Word and only the trust in God’s Word transforms the sinner who is justified by faith. Only God’s Word is the “staff of rectitude”. Absolutely no doctrine of human inspiration (be it civil, ecclesiastical, philosophical, etc.), can direct humans and make them righteous, since these lead only so far that they establish good behaviour, while man remains “old man”. Accordingly, human ethics necessarily produces only pretenders and hypocrites. Human ethics can not eliminate the love of self, since it does not uproot the vices of the old man/nature. Therefore humanly inspired doctrines can accurately be called evil because they are not able to offer rectitude. The rebirth by water and the Spirit which John 3:5 mentioned as the only gateway to the kingdom of heaven was accomplished by the Gospel alone. This is so because the adherence to the Gospel annihilated the old man, preserving nothing of him. Thus, the adherence to God’s Word makes 24 WA 57 III, 101 – 102, 16: “Hoc verbo breviter omnes prorsus iusticias et penitencias hominum inutiles facit, summam vero misericordiam Dei commendat, videlicet, quod non per nos, sed ‘per semetipsum’, non aliorum, sed ‘nostrorum peccatorum purgacionem fecit’. Desperandum itaque est de nostra penitencia, de nostra purgacione peccatorum, quia antequam penitemus nos, remissa iam sunt peccata, imo primo ipsa eius purgacio demum operatur et in nobis penitenciam, sicut iusticia eius nostram iusticiam operatur. Hoc est, quod Isaiae 53. dicit: ‘Omnes nos quasi oves erravimus, unusquisque in viam suam declinavit, et posuit Dominus in eo iniquitates omnium nostrorum’”.

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believers new by uprooting the love of self, fuelling the hatred of him/herself through faith in Christ25. For Luther, faith alone justified sinner because the knowledge of God is reserved to the believers. That is, faith alone brings humans to the knowledge of God. The fact that in the epistle to the Hebrews, Paul (by the time Luther held his Lectures on Hebrews – 1517 – 1518, he believed it was authored by Paul) stressed Christ’s humanity before His divinity, the Reformer explained, was not without a purpose. The purpose was to emphasize the rule according to which only through faith one comes to the knowledge of God (“Notandum quoque, quod prius humanitatem Christi quam divinitatem recitet, ut eo ipse regulam illam approbet Deum fideliter cognoscendi”).

5.3

Justification through humility

The use of the phrase “justification through humility” as the title for the present discussion on the role of humility in justification, as Luther understood it, is not a mere coincidence. I assume that every Lutheran scholar is aware of the crucial role of humility in Luther’s doctrine of salvation. Yet, I think some of these scholars give clear signs that they do not fully grasp how crucial humility was in Luther’s doctrine of justification. When reading Ernst BIZER’s Fides ex auditu one is left with the impression that, according to the author, Luther first came to a theology of humility (humilitas) and only later (after 1518) came to discover the “Word”, the Gospel of grace which defined his understanding of faith and became his reformation flag26. The thesis is a contra-sense in itself. As far as I know, 25 WA 57 III, 109, 2: “Dicitur autem ‘virga equitatis’, id est rectitudinis seu, quod idem est, ‘direccionis eque’ Hebreo ideomate, quod Latine diceretur virga equa, recta, directa etc., sicut ps. 20.: ‘in benediccionibus dulcedinis’, quod Latine diceremus ‘in benediccionibus dulcibus’. Igitur ad differenciam omnium aliorum regnorum, eciam Sinagoge, licet legem Dei habuerit, dicitur ‘virga regni tui’ non sicut aliorum regnorum, quorum virge sunt curvitatis seu iniquitatis, tui autem solius ‘virga rectitudinis’, quia nulla prorsus doctrina sive civilis sive canonica sive Philosophica et quocunque modo humana potest hominem dirigere et rectum facere, siquidem eo usque tantummodo ducit, ut homine servato in vetustate bonis instituat moribus. Et ita necessario facit non nisi simulatores et hipocritas, quia remanet illa fex cordis et sentina veteris hominis, scil. amor sui ipsius; ideo merito est doctrina iniquitatis, cum rectitudinem prestare non possit. Evangelium vero dicit: ‘Nisi quis a renatus fuerit ex aqua et spiritu denuo, non potest intrare regnum celorum’, ac sic nihil reservat veteris hominis, sed totum destruit et facit novum usque ad odium sui eradicans penitus amorem sui per fidem Christi. Frustra itaque est omnis iactancia erudicionis, sapiencie et sciencie, quia nemo illis efficitur melior, quantumlibet sint bona et laudabilia dona Dei. Imo ultra hoc, quod non faciunt bonum, fiunt operculum iniquitatis et velamen morbi nature, ut sint incurabiles, qui sibi in illis placentes sibi boni et salvi videntur”. 26 Bizer, 1958.

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reading the pages of Luther’s Lectures on Romans (1515 – 1516)as well as the Lectures on Hebrews (1518) and the Lectures on Galatians (1519), it is impossible to oppose humility and faith in Luther. My discussion on this paragraph will be based on what I consider of paramount importance to grasp the full meaning of young Luther’s doctrine of justification by faith: for young Luther, the commentator of Paul, genuine humility and faith are two sides of the same thing. It is not without reason that Luther insisted much on the difference between the humility of pagans and that of genuine Christians. For Luther, faith was the grace of genuine humility that allows a sinner to empty him/herself and abandon him/herself to God’s mercy alone. This act that reflects faith/humility brings the sinner to the union and knowledge of God. To have faith is to know God, but no one knows God if full of self. This knowledge of God becomes possible only when one is empty of oneself. This was why Luther understood faith as a radical abandonment of the self. The nature of faith and humility also regards the issue of obedience. For Luther, faith was an unconditional obedience driven by a desire that God’s will to be done. This spirit of obedience does not raise one out of nature but is only from the Holy Spirit. Thus, Luther argued that those who truly love God with a filial love and friendship, desire nothing but God’s wish to be done. Unconditional obedience, as Luther understood it, is in perfect harmony with the definition of faith as abandonment of the self. Those who believe God unconditionally obeys and thus freely offer themselves to the entire will of God, even to hell and eternal death, if that is what He wills, so that His will may be fully done. Therefore the obedient/humble/believers seek absolutely nothing for themselves. This is, after all, a typical attitude of the justified Christian. The justified sinner, according to Luther, performs good deeds perfectly conscious that the good works are pleasing to God, but that they are pleasing to God only when the doer realise that these works per se are absolutely nothing in God’s sight, even though the good works are done out of obedience. In other words, it is the spirit of humility and restraint that motivate the truly good works. Ultimately, humility is what makes a sinner pleasing to God. It is just impossible for one to remain outside of God’s grace if one has so completely thrown oneself upon the will of God. For Luther, when this is the case, there is a strong harmony and unity between God and the sinner. There is a communion of wills. The sinner wills what God wills, thus the sinner pleases God. By pleasing God the sinner is loved by Him, and, if loved, then saved27. 27 WA 56, 391, 7: “Iis autem, qui vere Deum diligunt amore filiali et amicitie?, qui non est ex natura, Sed spiritu sancto solum, sunt pulcherrima ista verba et perfectissimi exempli testimonia. Tales enim Libere sese offerunt in omnem Voluntatem Dei, etiam ad infernum et mortem e?ternaliter, si Deus ita Vellet tantum, vt sua Voluntas plene fiat; adeo nihil querunt,

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It is here that humility reveals itself as an ingredient of faith, if not faith itself. Luther’s doctrine of humility and the role it plays in justification of the sinner should not be dissociated from his attitude towards Scholasticism. It has been said that, in Luther’s eyes, the Scholastic soteriology was defined by a general trend to deny or to minimize the real effects of Original Sin upon mankind. This trend, according to Luther, was to be vehemently opposed because it was driven by presumption and pride. This conviction largely determined Luther’s doctrine of humility and it’s intrinsic relationship with faith. Luther’s doctrine of simul iustus et peccator provides important clues regarding the importance of humility in the shaping of Luther’s opposition to Scholastic soteriology as he understood it. By insisting that the justified man is at once sinner and righteous, Luther attacked the teaching according to which Original Sin is entirely removed (a teaching that he ascribed to Scholastic tradition), stressing that such teaching is in contradiction to the Scriptures and the Fathers (mainly Ambrose and Augustine). The schoolmen, Luther claimed, followed the Aristotelian ethical pattern defining sin and righteousness based on works, both their performance and omission. Unlike them, Augustine, Luther recalled, referring to De nuptiis et concupiscentia I, 25, taught that sin or concupiscence is forgiven in baptism not in the sense it no longer exists, but rather in the sense it is not imputed28. In his que sua sunt. Veruntamen sicut seipsos ita pure conformant Voluntati Dei, Sic est impossibile, vt in inferno maneant. Quia impossibile est, vt extra Deum maneat, qui-in voluntatem Dei sese penitus proiecit. Quia Vult, quod vult Deus; Ergo placet Deo. Si placet, ergo est dilectus; Si dilectus, ergo Saluus”. Luther stresses that God’s gifts do not fit with self-oriented behaviours. This is quite clear in his explanation of the peace humans enjoy when standing in God’s presence. God’s grace brings peace to those it covers, but not without consequences: as soon as one enjoys the peace offered by divine grace, one loses the peace of the world, of men,of oneself, since he/she does what pleases God, which is to go against the self. God’s gifts, grace, then necessarily brings war to the one who enjoys it: Discernit Apostolus hanc gratiam et pacem ab ea, quam mundus vel ipse homo sibi dare potest. Gratia enim dei patris et domini nostri Iesu Christi aufert peccata, cum sit spiritualis et occulta. Sic pax dei serenat, quietat ac laetificat cor hominis coram deo in absconditis. Et, ut alibi dictum est, Gratia culpam, pax poenam aufert, ut sic iusticia et pax osculentur et conveniant. Verum, quando haec fiunt, mox amittitur gratia et pax hominum, mundi, carnis, id est suiipsius et diaboli, concitatur autem ira et turbatio omnium. Nam qui in gratia dei est, operatur, quae deo placent: ideo mox displicet diabolo, mundo et carni suae, et dum deo iustus est, carni et mundo peccator est. Et ita oritur bellum, bellum foris, pax intus: intus, inquam, non sensibiliter et experimentali suavitate, saltem semper, sed invisibiliter et per fidem: nam pax dei exuperat omnem sensum, id est, incomprehensibilis est nisi fide. Sic contra qui in gratia mundi est et sua ipsius et placet sibi, statim peccat coram deo et iram incurrit. Qui enim, ait Iacobus, amicus huius mundi esse voluerit, inimicus dei constituitur. Ideo sequitur et hic mox bellum, bellum intus cum deo, pax foris […]”. WA 2, 456 – 457, l. 31. 28 WA 56, 273 – 274, 3: “Que cum ita sint, Aut ego nunquam intellexi, aut non bene satis de peccato et gratia theologi scolastici sunt locuti, Qui Originale totum auferri somniant sicut et actuale, quasi sint quedam amouibilia in ictu oculi, sicut tenebre per lucem, Cum Antiqui sancti patres Augustinus, Ambrosius multum aliter sint locuti ad modum Scripture, illi

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constant struggle against the promotion of self-righteousness, Luther adopted the Augustinian portrayal of fallen mankind and an anti-meritocratic framework of the processus iustificationis29. To attribute to sin its proper magnitude was, according to Luther, the only way to prevent self-righteousness and promote humility. For Luther, it was never too much to recall how grave are the damages that sin causes in us. Only by stressing this fact will one be able to realise the wonders and the real importance and value of God’s redemptive plan, and then, grasp the central importance of promoting humility. Paul’s aim, Luther explained, was magnifying sin. To realise this concern of the Apostle it would suffice to pay attention to his epistle to the Romans. The epistle to the Romans, Luther explained, is divided into two parts. Up to chapter twelve the Apostle emphasised sin; in the remaining chapters he limited himself to showing us how to lead our lives once having acquired the righteousness of Christ. Paul magnified sin so that he could show us the true gravity of sin and the true nature and way to salvation. Paul intended to make it clear that righteousness does not come as the result of any virtuous practice of ours (as some application of the Aristotelian statement in Nicomachean ethics would suggest), but righteousness finds its origin in God’s righteousness which precedes it30. This was why, referring to the goal of the Epistle to Romans, Luther stressed in the opening of shcolia that Paul’s main aim was to destroy (destruere), to uproot/pluck out (euellere) all sorts of wisdom and righteousness of the flesh (omnem sapientia et Iustitiam carnis) and to

autem ad modum Aristotelis in ethicorum, Qui peccata et Iustitiam collocauit in opera et eorum positionem et priuationem similiter. Sed b. Augustinus preclarissime dixit ‘peccatum concupiscentiam in baptismate remitti, non vt non sit, sed vt non imputetur’. Et b. Ambrosius ait “Semper pecco, ideo semper communico”. 29 In fact he did not limit himself in making this point in his lectures, but also brought the issue to public debates. For instance, the first two theses of Disputatio contra Scholastican theologian reveal the Reformer’s particular interest in emphasising the consequences of the Adamic sin for human nature. Indeed, both during is early ages as Reformer and in his maturity, Luther had always opposed any sort of attempt to minimize sin, trend with which he identified the late-Medieval theologians and Philosopher’s approach to the matter (hence his firm stand that the anti-Pelagian theology of Augustine consists in a valid theology with which the Church must learn to live). 30 WA 56, 3 – 4, 1: “Summa et intentio Apostoli in ista Epistola est omnem Iustitiam et sapientiam propriam destruere et peccata atque insipientiam que non erant (i. e. propter talem Iustitiam non esse putabantur a nobis), rursum statuere, augere et magnificare (i. e. facere, vt agnoscantur adhuc? stare et multa et magna esse) ac sic demum pro illis jvere destruendis Christum et Iustitiam eius nobis necessarios esse. Et hoc facit vsque ad c. 12.; ab hoc autem vsque ad finem docet, que et qualia operari debeamus ex ipsa Iustitia Christi accepta. Quia Coram Deo non ita res se habet, Vt quis agendo Iusta fiat Iustus, (vt stulti Iudei, Gentes et omnes Iustitiarii superbe confidunt), Sed existendo Iustus facit Iusta, Sicut scriptum est: ‘Respexit Dominus ad Abel et ad munera eius’, non prius ad munera”.

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firmly and sincerely emphasise the magnitude of sin (plantare ac constituere et magnificare peccatum)31. It is hardly necessary to say that an emphasis on the magnitude of sin is of utmost importance for understanding Luther’s doctrine of justification. It is an effective way to stress the need for humility. By ascribing to sin its proper magnitude one ends up placing both mankind and God in their respective places (by ascribing to them their proper roles) in the processus salvationis. If this is rightly done, Luther claimed, the evil of self-righteousness would be easily avoided. Self-righteousness is a constant term in Luther’s treatment of humility. In the categorization of sins, Luther established differences between unrighteousness and iniquity. Unrighteousness is the sin of unbelief, the absence or the lack of righteousness that comes from faith (Iniustitie et iniquitatis hec differentia, Quod Iniustitia est peccatum incredulitatis siue absentia Iustitie eius, que ex fide est). Iniquity is the sin of self-righteousness through which mankind chooses itself in its foolish zeal (Iniquitas autem dicitur peccatum proprie Iustitie stulto zelo pietatis electe)32. As a matter of fact, it was the idea of self-righteousness that inspired Luther’s definition of the levels of perdition (gradus perditionis). The first level is ingratitude or the absence of the spirit of gratitude (ingratitudo seu omissio gratitudinis). The root of the sin of ingratitude is self-satisfaction (it was on account of ingratitude towards its Creator that Lucifer met his fall). The second level is vanity (vanitas), when one seeks oneself, i. e. one’s own glory, profit, and advantage. The third level is blindness (excecatio), that is, the stage in which one deserts God’s truth and acts out of emerges in one’s own affections, thought and knowledge. The fourth level is the stand against God that defines the idols’ 31 WA 56, 157, 1: “Summarium huius Epistole Est destruere et euellere et disperdere omnem sapientiam et Iustitiam carnis (id est quantacunque potest esse in conspectu hominum, etiam coram nobis ipsis), quantumuis ex animo et synceritate fiant, Et plantare ac constituere et magnificare peccatum (quantumuis ipsum non sit aut esse putabatur). Unde b. Augustinus c. 7. de spi. et lit. ait: Paulus Apostolus ‘multum contra superbos et arrogantes ac de suis operibus presumentes dimicat’ etc »”. 32 WA 56, 186, 19: “Plenos Iniustitia, sic enim Grecus habet et non ‘iniquitate’. Est autem in Scripturis Sanctis (si vbique seruaretur translationis consonantia cum Hebreo) Iniustitie et iniquitatis hec differentia, Quod Iniustitia est peccatum incredulitatis siue absentia Iustitie eius, que ex fide est, Vt Iustus est, qui credit, Iniustus, qui non credit, Ro. 1., Marc. vltimo et multis locis. Qui enim non credit, non obedit, Et qui non obedit, Iniustus est. Inobedientia enim tota Iniustitia et totum peccatum est secundum Ambrosium dicentem: ‘Peccatum est inobedientia celestium. mandatorum.’ Iniquitas autem dicitur peccatum proprie Iustitie stulto zelo pietatis electe. De quibus Matt. 7.: ‘Discedite a me, omnes operarii iniquitatis’, cum tamen ibidem allegentur eorum virtutes in nomine Christi facte. Quare triuialiter loquendo: Iniquitas est neglecto, ad quod teneris, facere, quod tibi rectum videtur, Sicut Equitas econtra neglecto, quod tibi rectum videtur, facere, quod debes”.

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worshippers33. In a sort of snowball effect, ingratitude brings with it the love of vanity which produces blindness, and this in its turn results in idolatry, leading to a whirlpool of vices. Gratitude leads to the very contrary process. It increases the love towards God and thus the heart remains in communion with Him. Then one worships only the one true God and finds oneself in a chorus of virtues (chorus virtutum)34. Then the relationship between humility and Luther’s doctrine of justification becomes clear. The process through which humankind is justified does not have its origin in humankind, but rather in God. Justification is about the imputation of an external righteousness (extraneam iustitiam) and not the acknowledgement by God of an alleged righteousness of our own (domesticam). Thus, the righteousness of our own must be plucked up so that mercy can operate. The extraneam iustitiam is a product of divine mercy35. The external righteousness comes from Christ. Accordingly it is not a Christian attitude to boast upon one’s own righteousness36. Justification is about 33 WA 56, 178 – 179, 24: “Vide ergo ordinem et gradus perditionis. Primus est Ingratitudo seu omissio gratitudinis. Sic enim Lucifer ingratus fuit Creatori suo, antequam caderet. Quod facit ipsa complacentia sui, qua in acceptis non vt acceptis delectatur pretermisso eo, qui dedit. Secundus Vanitas, Quia scil. in seipso et in creatura pascitur et fruitur vtibili et ita necessario vanus fit ‘in cogitationibus suis’ i. e. omnibus consiliis, studiis et Industriis. Quia quiquid in iis et per hec qurit, totum vanum est, cum non nisi seipsum querat i. e. gloriam, delectationem et vtilitatem suam. Tercius est excecatio, Quia euacuatus veritate et immersus vanitati toto affectu et omnibus cogitationibus necessario cecus fit, cum sit penitus auersus. Tunc iam in tenebris positus Quid aliud agat, nisi quod sequitur errans et insipiens? Quia Cecus facillime errat, immo semper errat. Ideo Quartus est Error erga Deum, qui est pessimus, qui facit idolatras. Huc autem venisse est in profundum venisse. Quia amisso Deo nihil iam restat, quam quod sit traditus in omnem turpitudinem secundum voluntatem diaboli. Tunc sequitur istud diluuium malorum et fluxus sanguinis, vt infra prosequitur Apostolus”. 34 WA 56, 179, 13: “Ingratitudo enim et amor vanitatis (i. e. sui sensus et proprie Iustitie siue, vt dicitur, bone intentionis) vehementer excecant, ita vt sint incorrigibiles nec aliter credere possint, quam se eximie agere et Deo placere. Ac per hoc Deum sibi propitium formant, cum non sit. Et ita phantasma suum verius colunt quam Deum verum, quem similem illi phantasmati credunt. Et hinc‘mutant eum in similitudinem imaginationis sue’ carnaliter sapientis et corruptibilis affectus existentis. Ecce ergo quantum malum ingratitudo, que amorem vanitatis mox secum trahit, et hic cecitatem, hec autem Idolatriam, hec autem vitiorum gurgitem. Econtra gratitudo conseruat amorem Dei et sic manet cor in eum directum. Quare et hinc illuminatur, Illuminatum vero non nisi verum Deum colit Et huic cultui adheret mox omnis chorus virtutum”. 35 WA 56, 158, 10: “Deus enim nos non per domesticam, Sed per extraneam Iustitiam et sapientiam vult saluare, Non que veniat et nascatur ex nobis, Sed que aliunde veniat in nos, Non que in terra nostra oritur, Sed que de celo venit. Igitur omnino Externa et aliena Iustitia oportet erudiri. Quare primum oportet propriam et domesticam euelli”. 36 WA 56, 159, 2: “[…] Sed nec de ipsa externa, que ex Christo in nobis est, Iustitia, gloriari coram hominibus debeamus neque de passionibus et malis, que ex ipso nobis inferuntur, deiici. Sed omnino Christianus verus ita debet nihil proprium habere, ita omnibus exutus esse, vt per gloriam et ignobilitatem idem sit Sciens, Quod gloria sibi exhibita non sibi, Sed

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God’s naked mercy (nudam misericordiam Dei) in operation and it operates only in the humble ones who wait for God to recognize them as wise and righteous instead of proceeding with an act of self-justification37. Thus, Paul declared himself “servant of Jesus Christ”, meaning that all the good works he himself had done are are all God’s works rather than his own38. More: humility lies at the very core of Luther’s understanding of Christian ethics. For Luther, humility was not only the beginning of good works, but defined their very essence. Like Augustine, Luther maintained that pride (superbia) is a sin which can be present even when one performs works considered good to human eyes (“Quia homo non potest, nisi que sua sunt, querere et se super omnia diligere. Que est summa omnium vitiorum. Vnde et in bonis et virtutibus tales querunt seipsos, sc. Vt sibi placeant et plaudant”)39. So, from a theological ethics point of view, it is humility and humility alone that defines the goodness of a human act. For instance, Luther insisted that many are those who perform good works in humans’ eyes but their dispositions reveal that their good works to be not from God but are done on the basis of human righteousness (humana iustitia). This is the case when one does good things because one seeks esteem and flees from being attacked, slandered and hated on account of them. Such good deeds are not performed out of love and humility (et sic patet euidenter, quod non ex charitate et humilitate). In other words, those works are not performed for the glory of God, but rather for one’s own sake and for the sake of one’s own reputation. Ultimately, the intention behind this kind of works is to serve a hidden pride and love of self (occulta superbia et amore sui)40.

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Christo exhibetur, cuius Iustitia et dona in ipso lucent, Et ignominia sibi irrogata et sibi et Christo irrogatur. Sed multis opus est (seclusa speciali gratia) ad hanc perfectionem experimentis”. WA 56, 159. WA 56, 162, 3: “Ita terribile et magnificum verbum est dicere ‘Seruus Ihesu Christi’. Credo quod ‘seruus’ hoc loco nomem sit oficii et dignitatis, non autem proprie culture et subiectionis, hoc est Credo, quod Apostolus per hoc verbum non velit efferre personalia sua opera, quibus priuatim Deo seruit et singulariter. Quia hoc exemplum esset arrogantie. Quis enim tuto ac definite audet dicere: ego sum seruus Dei, cum nesciat, an omnia fecerit, que Dominus ab eo requirit? Sicut ipsem et dicit 2. Corinth. 4.: ‘Sed neque me ipsum Iudico’.’ Solius enim Domini est id Iudicare et diffinire, an quis sit seruus vel inimicus. Sed omnino Seruum se dicit, vt dictum est, quia acceptum officium confitetur a Deo super alios, q. d.: Ego quidem euangelium predico et Ecclesiam doceo, baptiso et alia opera facio, que sunt Dei solius opera”. WA 56, 237, 12. WA 56,194 – 195, 16: “Qui querulantur et impatientes sunt, dum benefacientes patiuntur, ostendunt Vel hoc eorum benefacere non ex Deo esse, Sed ex humana Iustitia assumptum, qua homo propter se facit bonum, quia querit reputari et honorari per illud, Quia fugit et odit calumniari et diffamari et odiri propter ipsum. Et sic patet euidenter, quod non ex Charitate et humilitate propter solum Deum benefecerit, Sed propter se et suam opinionem ex occulta superbia et amore sui. Qui enim ex charitate et humilitate propter Deum operatur, si ex hoc laudatur, dicit: Propter te, o laus, non incepi, ideo propter te nec perficiam. Si vituperatur,

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These were the main reason Luther rejected the ancient Greek-Roman pattern of ethics. He did not hesitate to identify the ancient Greek-Roman ethics with a self-oriented ethics. So, he explained, this sort of ethics contradicts the very essence of Christian virtue. The Christian understanding of virtue is rooted in humility and runs the track of patience, grows in tribulation/suffering and adversity (Christianorum vero virtus vituperata et passa crescit). Christian virtue is destroyed if the heart takes pleasure in adulation. Only carnal virtue increases by praise since it is praise it seeks (igitur hominum virtus laudata crescit, quia querit laudem). Thus carnal virtue cannot endure criticism and if it faces criticism it turns into wrath and despair (furiam vel desperationem). These are some arguments Luther developed to call attention to the danger of the Ciceronian statement according to which “virtue grows when it is praised”41. It was also the struggle against self-righteousness that led Luther to refuse any correlation between legalistic understanding of “righteousness of the lawyers” and a Christian notion of righteousness. There is no race of men upon the earth, he declared, who are more ignorant about righteousness of God than the lawyers, good-intentioners, and the intellectuals. Luther’s accusation was based on the fact that their understanding of righteousness excluded the notion of Christian humility. The only complete and true righteousness lies in humility42. dicit: Propter te, o Vituperator, non incepi, propter te non omittam. Et sic amore Dei inceptum prosequitur feliciter munitus a dextris et sinistris. Vnde Iac. 1.: ‘Patientia perfectum opus habet’ q. d. Alia virtus quidem bonum opus habet, Sola autem patientia perfectum bonum, sc. quod nullo vicio infectum est nec amore laudis vel suiipsius inceptum nec timore vituperii dimissum, Sed amore Dei vsque in finem perfectum. Patientia enim vobis necessaria est, vt voluntatem Dei facientes reportetis repromissiones’, Heb. X”. 41 WA 56, 195, 3: “Verbum gentile Ciceronis sc. ‘Virtus laudata crescit’ Iustissime calumniatur et redarguitur in Ecclesia Dei. Quia Contraria dicit Apostolus: ‘Virtus in infirmitate perficitur’ i. e. Bona opera in patientia perfecta fiunt. ‘Cum enim infirmor’ (patior), ‘fortior sum’. Igitur hominum Virtus laudata crescit, quia querit Laudem, Christianorum vero virtus vituperata et passa crescit Et laudata (si laus placeat) nihil fit, Psalmso 52.: ‘Deus dissipauit ossa’ (virtutes) ‘eorum, qui hominibus placent; confusi sunt, quoniam Deus spreuit eos.’ Si autem Virtus hominum laudata crescit, quid facit Vituperata? An decrescit? ita certe, quia vertitur in furiam Vel desperationem. Denique et ii, quos propter defectum patientie hic vocat ‘ex contentione esse’, vtique et ipsi bona fecerunt. Sed quia patientiam ignorauerunt et estimari in illis voluerunt, facti sunt increduli veritati et in propriam abierunt sapientiam statuentes bona, que sunt mala, i. e. Iustitiam, in qua placentiam et gloriam apud se et apud homines querunt. Ideo minatur eis ‘iram et indignationem’”. 42 WA 56, 449, 1: “Inde (Vt de me loquar) Vocabulum istud ‘Iustitia’ tanta est mihi nausea audire, Vt non tam dolerem, si quis rapinam mihi faceret. Et tamen sonat Iuristis semper in ore. Non est gens in mundo in hac re indoctior quam iuriste et boneintentionarii seu sublimate rationis. Quia et ego in me et multis expertus sum, Vbi Iusti eramus, Quod Deus irrisit nos in nostra Iustitia. Et tamen audere audiui homines: Scio, quod Iustitiam habeo, Sed non aduertit. verum est, Sed particularem; Sed hanc Deus, sicut vere est, Nihil curat. Vniuersalis ergo Iustitia Est humilitas; hec subiicit omnes omnibus ac per hoc reddit omnibus omnia, Vt Christus ait ad Iohannem: ‘Sic oportet nos implere omnem Iustitiam. » [Math. 3 :15]”.

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S. PEURA rightly observes that “Luther’s entire theological work can be viewed as an attempt to solve the problem of self-serving love” and that “he was convinced that the problem of the true love can be solved only through faith in God”43. This insistence on the humilitas fidei as self-abandonment obviously reached Luther’s theology of love. The great distinctive of an impure love is its self-oriented feature. In other words, it is not a pure love when one loves in order to promote one’s own ends. This is the case when one thinks that one must believe for the sake of advantages that may come on account of it, such as better earthly life, and avoidance of eternal punishment. Here, the act of belief has a use, but such faith is self-oriented and is not in harmony with pure love. In this case, the love for God ultimately aims to the good God provides, not toward God Himself. This alleged love tends to seek the benefit of the lover and not that of the beloved. The goal here is to use the beloved for selfish purposes44. Thus, Luther identified the meaning of true human love with self-condemnation. He evoked John 12:25 to support his claim (in fact he also identified the love of neighbour with the abandonment of the self)45. Only through faith is a pure and unselfish love communicated by God to the believer. It is God’s presence in His attributes that makes the difference. By giving love, God gives Himself to the believer, is and remains present in him/her, since love has an effective power. Love is received in such way that those who receive it begin to love God as well, since love transforms human hearts and brings them into the union with God’s love. This love is, then, a “unifying power that tends to change the loving person into what is loved”46. This transforming love, inherent in faith that humbles the heart of the believer is the cornerstone of Luther’s doctrine of justification by faith. To explain this assertion it is sufficient to recall Luther’s definition of faith: true faith is nothing more than a radical denial of the self, a true act of humility. True faith is the abandonment of the self. The Word of Christ cannot be accepted unless all other things are denied and cut off, that is, that the intellect must be taken captive and every thought be given in humble submission47. After all, faith, Luther pointed 43 44 45 46 47

Peura, 1998b, 78 Peura, 1998b, 77 WA 56, 517 – 518 Peura, 1998b, 81 WA 56, 408 – 409, 23: “Quia Verbum Christi Non potest suscipi Nisi abnegatis et precisis omnibus i. e. etiam intellectu captiuato et omni sensu humiliter submisso. Sed Quia plurimi persistunt in superbia sua Et verbum non capiunt, immo verbo non capiuntur, ideo vix reliquie? saluantur, Et abbreuiatur in illis, qui pereunt, Sed Consummatur in iis, qui credunt. Et hec est abbreuiatio et Consummatio allegorica i. e. Literalis significatio spiritualis verbi. Sed tamen venit ex Morali. Quia enim Verbum spiritus abnegat omnem superbiam ac sensum proprium, ideo pariter necesse est abneget et prescindatur ab omnibus quoque superbis ac proprie sapientibus. Et sic Breuiatio tropologica infert allegoricam. Quia vero Consummat

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out, is nothing else than obedience to the Spirit (Quia fides nihil aliud est quam obedientia spiritus)48. Reliance on self, Luther claimed, is the sole opponent of faith. It resists obedience, it produces a stiff-necked and incorrigible person. This is the reason why heresies and division springs up in the Church. As if it would be impossible for them to make mistakes, heretics and schismatics stand firm and rely upon their own good intentions49. For justification to take place, the sinner has really to become sinner, that is recognise himself as such. Righteous is he/she who self-accuses. Human selforiented behaviour makes of self-accusation a very rare attitude. This was the reason why Paul declared in Rom. 3:10: “None is righteous”. One avoids deep analysis of oneself to the point of recognizing the weakness in one’s will, or rather the disease of sin. Accordingly, one rarely humbles oneself to the point of seeking divine grace in the right way. Those who are righteous not only sigh and plead for divine grace because they see that they have an evil inclination and thus are sinful, but also because they can never grasp how deep is the evil of their will and how far it extends. In sum: the righteous are the humble ones50. No wonder Luther identified justification with the abandonment and destruction of one’s way of reasoning. According to one’s own way one tenaciously believes that one is living, speaking, acting in a pious and righteous way. In other words, selfaccusation is the gateway to justification or is justification itself51.

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et perficit humilitatem et sensum subiectionis, ideo consummat quoque et perficit omnes humiles et submissi sensus homines. Ac sic Moralis quoque Consummatio infert allegoricam”. WA 56, 451, 25. WA 56, 413, 3. WA 56, 235, 26: “Rarus enim est Iustus, quem hic Apostolus querit. Quod ideo fit, Quia raro nos ita discutimus profunde, vt hanc voluntatis infirmitatem, immo pestem agnoscamus. Ideoque raro humiliamur, raro gratiam Dei recte querimus, quia non intelligimus, vt hic dicit. Adeo enim subtilis est ista pestis, vt etiam a spiritualissimis viris non possit plene attingi. ideo qui Iusti sunt vere, non solum gemunt et implorant gratiam Dei, quia se vident habere voluntatem malam ac per hoc peccatum coram Deo, Sed etiam, Quia vident se nunquam posse plene videre, quam profunde et quousque mala sit eorum voluntas. ideo credunt semper se esse peccatores, Velut voluntatis male infinita sit profunditas. Sic humiliantur, sic plorant, sic gemunt, donec perfecti sanentur, quod fit in morte. Hinc denique fit, Quod semper peccamus”. WA 56, 233, 14: “Ergo fieri peccatorem est hunc sensum destrui, quo nos bene, sancte, Iuste viuere, dicere, agere pertinaciter putamus et alium sensum (qui ex Deo est) induere, quo ex corde credimus nos esse peccatores, male agere, dicere, viuere, Errare, Ac sic nos accusare, iudicare, damnare et detestari”. Humility’s key role in Luther’s understanding of processus iustificationis is also evident in the image of the sick man who refuses to acknowledge himself as such and, thus, regards the doctor as a fool trying to cure a healthy man. When this is the case, against the resistance of the patient, the doctor cannot do anything, namely to use his medical skills in order to extirpate the disease. But if the patient comes to the doctor acknowledging himself to be sick and in need for medicine, then the doctor’s task would become much easier (Et est simile, Vt Persius, Sicut Medicus volens sanare egrotum Inueniat hominem, qui neget se egrotum esse et stultum proclamet medicum et peius egrotum, quam

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The key-role of humility in Luther’s doctrine of justification is also revealed by the Reformer’s association of abandonment of the self with the crush of the vetus homo. According to Luther, one could not prefer anything else above oneself unless one were humble (“Hunc autem honorem Non potest exhibere alteri, Nisi abneget sibi et confusione se dignum, quoslibet autem alios honore dignos pre seipso Iudicet; hoc est, Nisi humilis sit, non preuenit honore alium”)52. Humility alone crushes the old man, destroys the sapientia carnis. Only in humility is one provided with docility so that one may listen and realise that God does not wish for spectacular and great visible works, but rather the mortification of vetus homo. Only humility of faith (humilitas fidei) enables one to humble, abandon the self, one’s wisdom, etc, and submit to someone else, i. e. God53. When one is not humble one remains curved upon one’s own understanding of things (perseuerant curui in sensum suum)54. Besides, faith alone is without sin, since the work of faith is the one which comes from faith. A “work of faith” in Luther means simply a work performed in humility. Apart from faith there can be no work of faith (i. e. it is always performed out of pride), no good work can be performed, since he who does not believe, sins even performing “good” work (to human eyes). For Luther, only a work performed in humility is a good work55. Justification by faith is then to be

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ipse sit, vtpote qui sanum hominem presumat curare. Per huius ergo resistentiam Medicus non potest peruenire ad commendationem sue? artis et medicine. Perueniret autem, si ille egrotus confessus egritudinem sineret ipsum mederi Et diceret: Vere ego sum egrotus, vt tu lauderis, sanus sis et dicaris, scil. cum me sanaueris”.) WA 56, 217, 8. For Luther, the image of the sick man who refuses to acknowledge his disease to the doctor portrayed well the situations of the proud iniquitous human beings who are, indeed, sick to God’s eyes but regard themselves as perfectly healthy. Once again, it is to be recalled the importance of confessio with its double sense (which means recognizing the disease and doctor’s ability to extirpate it) to understanding Luther’s doctrine of justification. The proud who denies his disease to the doctor trying to cure him, automatically regards the very same doctor as stupid and liar and the cure becomes impossible (“Ita isti impii et superbi, cum sint egroti coram Deo, sibiipsis sanissimi videntur. Ideo Deum medicum non solum repellunt, Sed etiam stultum et mendacem ac peius egrotum putant, Vtpote qui eos sanissimos sanare presumat, quasi sint ergoti”). cf. WA 56, 217, 16.The cure only becomes possible when, in humility, the patient acknowledges the doctor’s ability to cure him and abandons himself to the doctor’s good care. WA 56, 462, 19. WA 56, 416, 5: Hoc autem Non prestat Nisi fides, Que excecat omnem sapientiam carnis faciens Nihil sciri, paratum doceri ac duci et promptum audire et cedere. Quia Non Magnitudinem operum, Sed mortificationem veteris hominis requirit Deus. Non autem Mortificatur Nisi per fidem, que humiliat sensum proprium et subiicit alterius. Tota enim Vita veteris hominis stat in sensu seu mente seu sapientia et prudentia carnis Sicut Serpentis vita in capite. Contrito itaque capite isto totus homo vetus mortuus est. Quod facit, vt dixi, fides verbi Dei”. WA 56, 433, 22 WA 56, 512 – 513, 20: “An Impius tunc peccet, qui non credit, quia non agit ex fide, Ergo nec contra conscientiam, Immo credit false; Ergo ex fide huiusmodi falsa agens non peccat?

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identified with the rejection or abandon of the self. In Lutheran, phraseology justification by faith can perfectly be called justification through or in humility without any sort of dogmatic or doctrinal alteration of Lutheran understanding of justification56.

5.4

Conclusions

In young Luther’s writings, fides, confessio and humilitas meet and fuse at the theological crossroad which is the justification of the sinner. Though God is absolutely wise, unable to do any sort of evil, when it comes to the process of justification none of this is true, or does count as true until it is confessed by the sinner. In other words, according to young Luther, justification required the justification of God “in His words”. So, justification reveals itself through an act of confession which implies that the sinner, acknowledging his/her sinful condition, confesses that God is truthful, pure, wise, etc. The cure comes through sinner’s humble act of confession, which is also an act of faith and humility. The proud person clings to self-justification and condemns God, thus receiving condemnation. The humble clings to self-condemnation, proclaiming God’s Respondetur : Illa authoritas: ‘Omne, quod non ex fide est, peccatum est’ Sic intelligitur, Quod necesse est omnem, qui non vult peccare, vt credat. Sola fides enim sine peccato est. Ergo Qui facit, quod non credit, peccat. Vt Qui manducat, quod commune putat, non adeo peccat, Quia contra suum putare peccat, quam quia fide caret, Qua illud sciret non esse commune. Infirmitas itaque fidei, que adest, et fortitudo fidei, que deest, facit, quod peccat, dum manducat. Ergo non debet manducare i. e. opus fidei facere, qui fidem non habet. Quia opus fidei ex fide debet procedere, alioquin peccat, Quia non licere, Sed Iudicat illicitum (hoc est fidei absentia) Et sic contra conscientiam agit. Corollarium. Omnis, qui caret fide, dum bene facit, peccat. Hec enim est mens huius dicti”. 56 WA 56, 419, 6: Verum in Iustitia Dei Homo nulli non debet, Quia ‘factus est omnium reus’. Offenso enim Creatori debet gloriam et Innocentiam suam, Creature vero bonum vsum et cooperationem seruitutis Dei. Ideo non soluit, Nisi iis omnibus subiectus humiliet se in nouissimum locum, Nihil sibi in omnibus querens. Sicut Iuriste dicunt: ‘Qui cedit omnibus bonis, satisfecit’; Ita qui cedit Deo creaturis, etiam seipso et libens ac volens it in nihilum et mortem ac damnationem sponte confitens Nec dignum sese arbitrans aliquid horum sese participare, hic sane Deo satisfecit et Iustus est. Quia nihil retinuit sibi, omnia cessit Deo et creaturis. Hoc fit per fidem, Qua homo sensum suum captiuat in verbum crucis et abnegat se et a se omnia, mortuus sibi et omnibus. Et sic soli Deo viuit, ‘cui omnia viuunt’, etiam mortua.” WA 56, 419. Thus Luther endorses the Augustinian stress (by quoting, for instance Contra Julianum IV, 3, 24) upon the fact that faith is the basis of virtue and nothing can be virtuous unless done in faith. This teaching, Luther explains helps one to understand what is to be justified by faith since to believe God is to confess God’s greatness and this is the humilitas fidei bringing righteousness: “Vide b. Augustinum li. 4. contra Iulia?num c. 3., litera F. Apostolus hic generalissime loquitur de fide, eoipso tamen alludens ad Singularem illam fidem, que est in Christum, Extra quam non est Iustitia, Sed tantum peccatum. Est autem fides in Deum, Est fides in proximum, Est fides in seipsum. Ac fide in Deum Iustus quilibet efficitur, Quia Deum verificat, cui credit et confidit”. WA 56, 512, 4.

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greatness and truthfulness through confession. The justification of the sinner starts precisely here, when pride is broken for the glory of God57. The justification of the sinner implies that God be justified in His words and this can not take place without humility, the great antidote of pride. In other words, God’s attributes such as wisdom, righteousness, truthfulness, strength and goodness are of no value, are not true, unless the sinner believes Him through confession, acknowledges him/herself to be foolish, unrighteous, liar, weak and evil58. That is why only the work of humility pleases God59. Only humility (which fuses with faith, since faith is an act of humility and humility is an act of faith) enables the sinner to empty him/herself inwardly so that he/she might become nothing and recognize his/her sins by saying as the prophet says.“Against Thee, Thee only have I sinned, so that Thou art justified in Thy words”60. For Luther, this is the central teaching of Psalms 51:4; that one should declare God to be one’s wisdom, righteousness, etc. This is justification: when God is justified in the sinner (that is, when the sinner accepts God as his/ her righteousness) the sinner is immediately justified61. 57 WA 56, 217, 19: “Non autem Deum ipsum absolute sic arguunt in sua essentia (quoniam hoc nulla creatura, immo nulla malicia potest facere), Sed in suis sermonibus. Vnde pulchre addidit: ‘Vt Iustificeris in sermonibus tuis’. Sermones enim Dei ab ipso ad eos missi, quasi non sint Dei, stulti, mendaces et insipientes reputantur. Per sermonem enim suum eos curare instituit. At illi se egrotare negantes, stultum et peius egrotum illum reputantes ei resistunt, contradicunt, Iudicant, condemnant. Sed frustra. Quia vincunt, cum sic Iudicantur, siue Deus vincit in suis eiusmodi sermonibus, cum ab eis Iudicatur in illis. Per hoc enim, Quod repellunt eum, manifeste patet, quod stultum et insipientem, infirmum reputent, cum ipsi profiteantur se non nisi sapientiam, virtutem et veritatem amare, quasi dicant: Nunquid iste est sapiens, qui nos insipientes arguit? immo insipiens, quia nos sapientiam tenemus et sequimur. Sic de aliis omnibus.* Nunquid iste (sc. Deus Vel sermo eius) est verax, Iustus, fortis etc., qui nos mendaces, iniustos, infirmos arguit, cum teneamus veritatem, Iustitiam, virtutem? Immo ipse potius talis est, quia non nobiscum sapit, Vbi solum ista bona sunt”. 58 WA 56, 218. 59 WA 56, 370, 17: “Confidis autem ea esse grata, quando sentis te [per] ea opera nihil esse coram Deo, licet bona sint et in obedientia facta, Quia non facis ea, que sunt mala. Et ista humilitas et compunctio in bonis operibus facit ea esse grata. ‘Sic et de vita e?terna non satis est credere, Quod ipse eam gratis donet, Sed testimonium spiritus habeas necesse est, quod ad eam diuino munere sis peruenturus”. 60 WA 56, 218, 13: “Ergo humilitate et fide opus est. Que et sola istis verbis queritur et statuitur, Vt penitus nihil fiamus, omnibus euacuemur, exinaniamus nosipsos. Et cum propheta dicamus: ‘tibi soli peccaui, vt Iustificeris in ser monibus tuis’. Tibi Insipiens sum et infirmus, vt tu sapiens et fortis sis in sermonibus tuis. Quia sic omnis creatura docet. Vbi ‘non est opus medico nisi male habentibus’, Non queritur ouis nisi que? periit, Non liberatur nisi captiuus, Non locupletatur nisi pauper, non Roboratur nisi infirmus, non exaltatur nisi humiliatus, Non impletur nisi quod vacuum est, Non construitur nisi quod inconstructum est”. 61 WA 56, 219, 3: “Cum ergo sic omnis creatura loquatur, Non potest fieri, vt plenus Iustitia sua repleatur Iustitia Dei, Qui non implet nisi esurientes et Sitientes. Ideo satur veritate et sapientia sua non est capax veritatis et sapientie Dei, Que? non nisi in vacuum et inane recipi potest. Ergo dicamus Deo: O quam libenter sumus vacui, vt tu plenus sis in nobis! Libenter

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Thus, Luther declared that God is justified in three ways: first when he punishes the unrighteous showing himself to be righteous. The second refers to an incidental or relative way, when the opposites are placed side by side (associated with internal and formal righteousness of God, iustitia Dei interna et formalis). The third is that justification of God carries with it the justification of sinner, that is when He justifies the ungodly by shedding his grace upon him/her, or when He is acknowledged to be righteous in His words. Through such belief He justifies the sinner, i.e He accounts him/her righteous. That is why this is called righteousness of faith and the righteousness of God (“Tertio, Quando Impios Iustificat et gratiam infundit siue quando Iustus esse in suis Verbis creditur. Per tale enim Credi Iustificat i. e. Iustos reputat. Vnde he¸ c dicitur Iustitia fidei et Dei”.)62. This is the effective righteousness of God63. For Luther, to be justified was to believe (Quia Iustificari hoc est credere)64. The justification of God and trust in God were one the same thing (Iustificatio Dei et credulitas in Deum idem est)65. Psalms 51:4, Luther pointed out, exhorted the sinner to make God just and true in His words (or to accept His words as just and true). This is to believe, this is to abandon the self for the glory of God since it only takes place when pride, the great barrier to faith, is broken66. Accordingly,

62 63

64

65 66

infirmus, vt tua virtus in me habitet; libenter peccator, vt tu Iustificeris in me; libenter Insipiens, vt tu mea sapientia sis; libenter Iniustus, vt tu sis Iustitia mea! Ecce hoc est, quod ait: ‘Tibi peccaui, vt Iustificeris in sermonibus tuis”. WA 56, 220, 9. WA 56, 221, 15: “Tertio effectiue, i. e. quando nos ex nobis Iustificari non possumus Et ipsum accedimus, vt ipse nos Iustos faciat confitentes, quod peccatum exuperare non valeamus. Hoc facit, quando verba eius credimus; per tale enim credere nos Iustificat i. e. Iustos reputat. Vnde dicitur Iustitia fidei et Iustitia Dei effectiue”/ WA 56, 225, 10. The confession of faith has to reach an intimate and personal status. It is necessary, Luther insisted, that each one believes that Christ was delivered for his/her sins, not only for the others. To believe that Christ was handed over for the others, he recalled, both ungodly and demons do believe. The justifying faith i. e. that faith by through which Christ dwells, lives and reign in the believer is the faith through which one confesses that Christ was delivered for one’s sins. It is the faith which brings upon the believers the status of sonship (Rom. 8:16). This confession however is always made out of humility, since such a feeling is not in the believer because of his strength. Thus it must be acquired through a spirit that is humble and despairs of itself. Humility only is the path to and the proof and the fruit of true faith: “Verum id pronomen ‘nostris’ ne contemptim praetereas. Nihil enim tibi profuerit credere, Christum esse pro peccatis sanctorum aliorum traditum, pro tuis autem dubitare. Nam hoc et impii et demones credunt. Verum constanti fiducia praesumendum est tibi, quod et pro tuis et unus sis illorum, pro quorum peccatis ipse traditus est. Haec fides te iustificat, Christum in te habitare, vivere et regnare faciet. Haec est testimonium spiritus, quod reddit spiritui nostro, quod simus filii dei. Quare facile senties, si advertas, hunc affectum ex tuis viribus in te non esse: impetrandus ergo per humilem et in seipso desperatum spiritum”. WA 2, 458, l. 20. WA 56, 226, 1. WA 56, 226, 4: “Iustificari Deum in sermonibus’ Est ipsum Iustum et verum fieri in sermonibus suis siue sermones eius Iustos et veros fieri. Hoc autem fit credendo et eos susci-

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iustificatio Dei, iustificatio nostri, when one justifies God, one is justified. This passive justification of God by which He is justified by us is our active justification by God. For He regards that faith which justifies His words as righteousness, as it says in Romans 4:5 as well in 1:17. On the contrary, the condemnation of God by which He is judged by unbelievers is their own condemnation. God, Luther explained, rejects as unrighteousness worthy of damnation the unbelief by which He is judged and condemned in His words67. God makes us righteous and truthful when we believe His words are righteous and true. There is a great similarity between the Word and the believer. As the Word, the Christian who believes the Word, becomes righteousness and truthful. Therefore when God is justified, He justifies, and when He justifies, He is justified. In order to state the radical gratuity of the justification of a sinner, Luther clarified that the passive and active justification of God and the faith or belief in Him are the same thing. The fact that we declare His words righteous is His gift, and because of the same gift He Himself regards us as righteous, that is He justifies us (“Iustificatio Dei passiua et actiua et fides seu credulitas in ipsum sunt idem. Quia Quod nos eius sermones Iustificamus, donum ipsius eius, ac propter idem donum ipse nos Iustos habet i. e. Iustificat”)68.

piendo et pro veris ac Iustis tenendo. Huic autem Iustificationi sola resistit superbia cordis humani per incredulitatem. Hec enim non Iustificat, Sed condemnat atque Iudicat”. 67 WA 56, 226, 23: “Per hoc autem ‘Iustificari Deum’ Nos Iustificamur. Et Iustificatio illa Dei passiua, qua a nobis Iustificatur, Est ipsa Iustificatio nostri actiue a Deo. Quia illam fidem, que suos sermones Iustificat, reputat Iustitiam, Vt c. 4. dicit Et 1.: ‘Iustus ex fide viuit.’ Et econtra: Iudicatio Dei passiua, qua Iudicatur ab incredulis, est ipsa damnatio suiipsorum. Quia illam incredulitatem, qua suos sermones iudicant ac damnant, reputat iniustitiam et damnationem”. 68 WA 56, 227 – 228, 18.

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6. Law, Gospel and grace in Luther’s doctrine of justification

6.1

The problem of Natural Law (Rom. 2:12 – 16)

Luther always showed a great reluctance regarding the reliance on anything human or natural for the purpose of salvation. For this reason, it may be a temptation to conclude that the Reformer’s soteriological discourse was based upon a sentiment of despising the natural Law. That was not the case. In fact, one finds throughout young Luther’s writings some sympathetic or even enthusiastic approaches to natural Law. The Golden Rule was considered by Luther as the law of pure and uncontaminated nature, which is identical to love1. He often distinguished the obiective and formaliter as the two ways the natural law can be written in hearts2. It is true that one would look in vain for a systematic account of natural Law in young Luther’s writings. He was, however, certainly not indifferent to the issue. It is clear that Luther’s concept of the natural Law (which he intimately connected with the so-called Golden Rule, as stated in Mt 7:12), lies at the core of his understanding of Christian ethics. The goal here is not to explore Luther’s doctrine of natural Law, but only to provide a summary account on the issue within the context of his doctrine of salvation. The second chapter of Paul’s epistle to the Romans is among the most used Biblical support when it comes to the issue of natural Law. In Rom. 2 Paul made some intriguing statements such as that according to which Gentiles sin and perish without Law (Rom. 2:12) and that “the Gentiles who do not have Law by nature observe the prescriptions of the law, they are law for themselves even though they do not have the law” (Rom. 2:14). The Apostle’s assertions seem to ascribe a broader scope to the Law than traditionally ascribed by his contemporaries. Paul seems to refer to the Law as more than the mere codes of the 1 WA 1, 502, l. 16 2 WA 57 III 195, l. 20; 196, l. 19; WA 56, 199, l. 34; 200, l. 2; WA 56, 518, l. 4; WA 2, 581, l. 2; WA 56, 482 – 483, l. 28.

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Mosaic Law. He went further to an inner dimension of the Law which surpassed the religious nationalism of the Jews. That’s why, he said that, by following the prescriptions of the Law, even though without the Mosaic Law, the Gentiles “show that the demands of the Law are written in their hearts” (Rom. 9:15). The deep theological meaning Luther acknowledged in the statement of Rom. 9:15 becomes clear in his claims according to which this is the equivalent or has to be understood in light of Rom. 5:5: “the love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us”. From this, the first conclusion one reaches is that, for Luther, the natural Law was to be identified with a spiritual state, a spiritual state fuelled by love, the inner disposition in relation to God’s commandments; a gift of and through Holy Spirit which turns out to be the the fulfilment of the Law of Christ and of the Mosaic Law (“Vnde puto, Quod ‘legem scribi in cordibus’ sit ipsam ‘charitatem diffundi in cordibus per spiritum sanctum’, que¸ proprie est lex Christi et plenitudo legis Mosi”). Luther seems to have considered natural Law as a more complex and comprising law. It is a law without a law, without measure, without end, without limit; a law reaching far beyond everything that a written law commanded (“immo est lex sine lege, sine modo, sine fine, nesciens limitem, Sed superextenta super omnia, que lex precipit aut precipere potest”)3. Written law, after all, provides only the knowledge of the works to be done, not the grace to fulfil it. In his interpretation of Rom. 2, Luther explained that Law was to be understood as the Mosaic Law (’Lex’ hoc Loco i. e. toto capitulo tota lex Mosi intelligitur). “Without law” means without the orally transmitted or written law (tradita vel scripta); “without the cooperation of the Law, or without Law’s giving opportunity for sinning (Vel ‘sine lege’ i. e. sine cooperatione legis siue non dante occasionem peccato)”. The Gentiles, did not receive the Mosaic Law so they could not be bound to it, or sin by not following it, as Jews could and have done. However, the Gentiles received a spiritual law present in the moral sense of the rites and ceremonies of the Mosaic Law (which after all symbolized Christ). This law, Luther explained, is impressed upon all people, either Jews or Gentiles and everybody is bound to it. Luther identified the spiritual Law with the so-called Golden rule, emphatically expressed in Mt 7: 12 (Do to the others whatever you would have them do to you). So, according to Luther, the whole transmitted law is nothing but the natural Law known to all and to which all are bound. There could be, then, no excuses! With the phrase “They will perish without the Law”, Luther pointed out, Paul simply meant “they will perish without having received the Law [of Moses]”. They will not perish because they have not kept a Law they had not received (as the Jews received and did not

3 WA 56, 203, l. 8.

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The problem of Natural Law (Rom. 2:12 – 16)

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keep), but because the same law they had not received, they had learned to know in a different way and yet they had not kept it4. One should not overlook the weight natural Law or the Golden Rule had in young Luther’s theology. At the core of Luther’s teaching regarding natural Law lay the abandonment of the self as the great pre-requisite for genuinely love. The natural Law or the Golden Rule, according to Luther, is the hardest of the commandments. The natural Law is the equivalent of the pure law of love, which is the opposite of a self-oriented, human sense of love. Natural law or the Golden Rule, Luther concluded, is the law of divine nature. To make this plain, a summary consideration of Luther’s reading of Rom. 13:10 would suffice. Reflecting on the words Plenitudo legis est dilectio (“Love is the fulfilment of the Law”), the Reformer immediately connected it with Mt 19:19 (and Leviticus 19:18) stressing that what Jesus said to the young man was to be understood that one is commanded to love one’s neighbours, using the love for oneself as example or reference. This, Luther insisted, is a good explanation since humans, in their sinfulness, naturally love themselves above all others. The canalization of love for the self towards the neighbours was, then, regarded by the Reformer as the most profound of the commandments. The key to understanding why this is so, Luther explained, is the term “as yourself”. The use of this term excludes every pretence of love (per hoc verbum ‘Sicut teipsum’ excluditur omnis Simulatio dilectionis)5. It is, thus, if one thinks about it, the hardest of all commandments since one naturally does not wish any harm for oneself, but does not feel the same way also about one’s neighbour. It is precisely for this reason, Luther explained, that this commandment comprises

4 WA 56, 197 – 198, l. 15: “Quamquam enim ritus et ceremonias legis Mosi Gentes non acceperint nec eis sint tradite?, vnde nec ad eas obligabantur nec eas omittentes peccauerunt sicut Iudei, qui eam susceperunt et per eam pactum cum Deo fecerunt ac promissionem Christi in ea acceperunt, Acceperunt tamen legem spiritualem, quam ritus et ceremonie? vltra quod Christum figurabant) moraliter significabant, que est impressa omnibus, sc. Iudeis et Gentibus, ad quam quoque omnes obligantur. Vnde Dominus Matt. 7.: ‘Omnia, que cunque vultis, vt faciant vobis homines, et vos facite illis. Hec est enim lex et prophete?.’ Ecce quomodo tota lex tradita nihil aliud est quam hec lex naturalisque nulli potest esse ignota, ac per hoc nullus excusabilis est. Sensus ergo Apostoli est, vt apertissime dicatur : ‘Sine lege peribunt’ i. e. sine acceptione legis peribunt i. e. non ideo peccauerunt, quia legem acceperint, quam non seruauerint sicut Iudei, Nec ideo peribunt, quia legem non seruauerint, Sed alia causa est, quia eandem legem, quam non acceperunt, alias cognouerunt et tamen non custodierunt. Iudeos sane etiam acceptio legis Iudicabit, Vt Act. 7. S. Stephanus eis expressit dicens: ‘Qui accepistis legem et non custodistis.’ ‘Sine lege peribunt’ i. e. traditio et acceptio legis non damnabit eos, ideo sine eiusmodi lege peribunt, licet non sine lege, que eadem est cum illa, nisi quod non est Scriptaliter eis tradita, et in ea contenta et significata”. See also WA 56, 200. 5 WA 56, 482, l. 29.

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and reflects the Golden Rule as stated in Mt 7:12, and thus, if applied to particular cases, provides sound teachings for Christian’s quotidian6. Great evils in the society as well in the Church would be easily uprooted if the Golden Rule would be taken into account and followed. The question all are invited to ask is “what do you wish to be done to you by him”. In other words, when one replaces the self with the neighbour every detraction and dissension will cease, virtues will flourish. This, Luther concluded, is the very fulfilling of the Law7. Antti RAUNIO is thus right when he observes that “in Luther’s thought the application of the Golden Rule in concrete life is organically connected with the content and reality of the Christian faith”8. All this becomes more evident in Luther’s attempts to argue for the unity of the Law. In this endeavour he left no doubts about his position regarding the theological range of natural Law. In his Lectures on Galatians, for instance, the Reformer maintained the unity of the law stressing that the Golden Rule comprises natural Law (legis naturae), written law (legis scriptae) and the law of the Gospel (legis evangelicae). According to Luther, all these laws echoed the precept “you shall love your neighbour as yourself” statement which is in total harmony with the commandment of Mt 7:12 (Do to others whatever you would have them do to you). Both precepts, Luther taught, pointed to the need of one to love the others as oneself, and, he concluded, this is the essence of what the Gospel teaches. Thus he wrote No less carefully must one understand that very popular distinction which is made among natural law, the written law and the law of the Gospel. For when the apostle says here that they all come together and are summed up in one, certainly love is the end of every law, as he says in I Tim. 1:5. But in Matt. 7: 12 Christ, too, expressly equates the natural law, as they call it – “Whatever you wish that men would do to you, do so to them” – with the Law and the prophets when he says: “For this is Law and the prophets”. Since He Himself, however, teaches the Gospel, it is clear that these three law differ not so much in their function as in the 6 WA 56, 483, l. 9: “Nullus tam nihil, Quin seipsum diligat et alios non ita diligat. Ideo istud preceptum arduissimum est, si recte ruminetur. Igitur Nullus vult sibi furari, le?di, occidi, adulterari, mentiri, periurari, sua queri. Quod si non ita et proximo vult, iam reus precepti huius est. Quare hoc preceptum in se continet illud Matt. 7.: ‘Omnia, que? vultis, vt faciant Vobis homines, et vos facite illis; hec est enim lex et prophete?.’ Quare licet hoc preceptum superficie et in genere conspectum exiguum videatur, Si tamen ad particularia applicatur, infinitas doctrinas saluberrime effundit Et in omnibus dirigit fidelissime”. 7 WA 56, 484, l. 5: ”Qui autem vult ruminare et applicare hoc preceptum, Non debet niti in actus suos elicitos ab intra, Sed omnia opera, dicta, cogitata totius vite sue? ad illud preceptum Velut mensuram suam conferre Et semper dicere sibi de proximo suo: Quid velles tu ab illo tibi fieri? Quod cum viderit, incipiat et faciat similiter et illi, Et statim cessabit contentio, detractio, dissensio Et erit presens totum virtutum collegium, omnis gratia, omnis sanctitas Et, vt hic dicit: ‘plenitudo Legis.’”. 8 Raunio, 1998, 109.

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interption of those who falsely interpret them. Consequently, the written law, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” says exactly what the natural law says, namely, “Whatever you wish that men would do to you [this, of course, is to love oneself], do so to them [as is clear, this means to love others as oneself]”.But what else does the entire Gospel teach? Therefore there is one law which runs through all ages, is known to all men, is written in the hearts of all people, and leaves no one from the beginning to end with an excuse, although for the Jews ceremonies were added and the other nations had their own laws, which were not binding upon the whole world, but only this one, which the Holy Spirit dictates unceasingly in the hearts of all [translation JUNGKUNTZ, LW 27, 354]9. This identification of the natural Law with the very legis evangelicae some would argue has to do with the fact that Luther spoke of natural Law meaning not the law of nature stricto senso but to a divine command that one can decide to obey or to disobey. Thus, in Luther, natural Law would be separated into two parts: the divine law and the human or the worldly natural law10. Antti RAUNIO maintains that, in Luther’s case, one should not distinguish between the natural law of reason and the natural Law of Christian love. “More precisely”, the Finnish scholar argues, “the distinction between a ‘worldly natural law’ and a divine natural law of love does not belong at all to Luther’s theology. For Luther, natural law is always the law of divine love, and it is satisfied with nothing less than that”11. Creation, RAUNIO recalls, is, for Luther, an “order of love” and the aim of natural law is that fallen humankind regains participation in this order of creation. What makes creation an order of love is the fact that its maker is a selfgiving God who continuously gives His good through creatures. Thus, though affected by sin, humankind and all creation reflect God’s nature. “God’s nature

9 WA 2, 580, l. 7: “Nec minus caute intelligenda est vulgatissima illa distinctio legis naturae, legis scriptae, legis euangelicae. Cum enim Apostolus hic dicat, omnes in uno et in summa convenire, certe charitas omnis legis finis est, ut i. Timo. i. dicit. Sed et Christus Matt. vij. illam legem naturae, ut vocant, ‘omnia quae vultis ut faciant vobis homines, et vos facite illis’, expresse eandem facit cum lege et prophetis dicens ‘haec enim lex est et prophetae’. Cum autem ipse euangelium doceat, clarum est, tres has leges non tam officio quam falso sensu intelligentium differre. Proinde haec lex scripta ‘diliges proximum tuum sicut teipsum’ prorsus idem dicit quod lex naturae ‘Quae vultis ut faciant vobis homines (hoc enim est seipsum diligere), eadem facite vos illis (hoc certe est, sicut seipsum ita diligere et alios, ut claret)’. At quid aliud totum euangelium quoque docet? Igitur una est lex, quae transit per omnia secula, omnibus nota hominibus, scripta in omnium cordibus, nec excusabilem relinquit ullum ab initio usque in finem, licet Iudaeis accesserint ceremoniae, tum aliis gentibus suae propriae leges, quae non universum mundum obligabant, sed haec sola, quam spiritus dictat in cordibus omnium sine intermissione”. 10 Raunio, 1998, 97 – 98. 11 Raunio, 1998, 103

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as Giver of everything good, RAUNIO explains, is also the foundation of Luther’s understanding of natural law”12. A central detail for understanding the theological implications of Luther’s doctrine of natural Law is the orientation of love. I already have argued on Luther’s struggle against self-love. His approach on natural Law is not indifferent to the issue. Unlike some may argue, Luther’s understanding of natural Law did not find its basis on the idea of reciprocity, according to which, in one way or another, self-benefit turns out to be the end of an act. I follow RAUNIO’s explanation according to which “the modern concept of rationality and of the rational moral agent, which developed at the beginning of the modern era, has greatly confused the understanding of Luther’s thought about rational moral law” since “he never connected the content of the Golden Rule with rationality in the modern sense, that is, as a moral action taken in order to ensure finally one’s own benefit”13. This becomes clear in the ethical orientation Luther understood to be inherent in natural Law. The Golden Rule, Luther remarked, is followed on account of that iustitia fidei received in justification. According to Luther, iustitia fidei, was a righteousness not confined to its declarative/analytic dimension, but resulted from the ontological union between Christ and His Christian. The process of justification makes God the Lord of human hearts. The heart of justified Christians live only for God and one’s neighbours and not for self. For us to love ourselves, Luther explained, we need no commandments. It is intrinsic to our nature to love ourselves. Thus the Golden Rule is given to sinners who already love themselves and wish good both from God and the others. It is precisely here that the Golden Rule finds its ground of operation, namely in reorienting the love of sinners, leading them to love God and neighbours as much as themselves14. The change has to be a radical one. The Golden Rule “demands and instructs us 12 Raunio, 1998, 103 – 104. Raunio’s words on the issue are worth quoting here: “The common dualistic interpretation of Luther’s understanding of natural law does not hold true. He does not intend the concept of “natural law” to mean something less than the requirement of the divine love, but rather stresses that the demand of the divine selfless love is written in the whole of creation as well in human hearts. His view concerning the structure of creation clarifies this matter. […] We have largely forgotten or failed to take into consideration adequately that for Luther the whole creation is an “order of love”. In this order nothing exists for itself but all things exists for others. The sun shines, water flows and tree produce fruits for others and not for themselves. Nature follows this law, and the aim of the natural is that fallen humankind, too, regains participation in this order of creation./ Creation is an “order of love” because God himself continuously gives his good through creatures. Thus, in spite of the sin of humankind, the whole creation reflects God’s nature. “To be God is to give, no to take”, is Luther’s description of God. God’s nature as the Giver of everything good is also the foundation of Luther’s understanding of natural law”. pp. 103 – 104. 13 Raunio, 1998, 105. 14 WA 56, 518, l. 4.

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in a love that is not directed just to good, the beautiful, and the pleasant people who in some way are useful for the lover. It demands the love of those who do not seem worthy of loving. The rule commands love to every neighbour, even those who are ‘the most difficult and unappealing’”15. Luther’s concept of Natural law is not to be confused with the abilities and orientation of the human reason. This detail is a crucial one since, once again, Luther’s struggles against the excessive influence of classical anthropological teachings over the late-Mediaeval theology and his struggle against self-love were connected to his discussions regarding the natural Law. The natural Law which is to be identified with the Golden Rule has, in fact, to be distinguished from the orientations of human reason. It is certainly true, the Reformer admitted, that the law of nature is known to all men and that our reason does speak for the best of things (Nicomachean Ethics, I, 1102b, “The rational principle urges them on to the best objectives”). Here, however, the “best things”, Luther insisted, had to be duly contextualized. To what sort of of best things, then, human does reason speak? What is the nature of these best things as taught by Aristotle? It speaks for the best, Luther explained, not according to God, not coram Deo, but coram hominibus, that is, for things are good in an evil way. For it seeks itself and its own in all things, but not God. This only faith could do in love. Hence, according to Luther, knowledge and virtue and whatever good things were desired, sought, and found by natural capacity were good in an evil way. They were not brought into relation to God but to the creature, that is, to oneself. Unless faith gives the light and love makes us free, no man could either have or do anything good, but only evil, even when he performs the good16. Accordingly, Luther argued that what Augustine asserted in Espositio ad Romanos 48, about the Law is to be understood as something which takes place when the Law is observed out of fear of punishment or love of some advantage. For this reason the heart and the will are not engaged in the action itself. The action is performed not because as God so willed and commanded but because of the promises of good things, preventing evils or any other rewards expected from the performance of good. Only the completely free love of willingness so acts or does not act because it is pleasing to God, without any concern 15 Raunio, 1998, 107. 16 WA 56, 355, l. 15: “Verum est sane, Quod lex nature? omnibus nota est et quod ratio ad optima deprecatur. Sed que?? Non secundum Deum, Sed secundum nos, i. e. male bona deprecatur. Quia se et sua in omnibus querit, Non autem Deum, Quod sola fides in charitate facit. Vnde et Scientie? et virtutes et quecunque bona naturaliter cupita, quesita, inuenta male bona sunt. Quia non in Deum referuntur, Sed in creaturam i. e. in seipsum. Quomodo enim in Deum referret, quem non super omnia diligit? Quomodo diligeret, quem non nouit? Quomodo nosset, qui vitio peccati primi in tenebris et vinculis quoad intellectum et affectum est? Igitur nisi fides illucescat et Charitas liberet, non potest homo quicquam boni aut velle aut habere vel operari, Sed malum tantum, tunc etiam, quando bonum operatur”.

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for any other good or fear for any evil apart from doing the will of God. Nature does not have this ability, but grace, which is given through faith in Christ and through the Holy Spirit, does have it. All this, Luther pointed out, should lead us to learn from the perfect knowledge that we are weak, and see how absolutely necessary Christ is the bestower of the Spirit and of grace. (Discamus itaque ante omnia Infirmitatem nostram ex perfecta legis cognitione et videbimus, quomodo simpliciter necessarius fuerit Christus, largitor spiritus et gratie)17. By the merit of His death Christ merited for us that the Holy Spirit be given to us and that “the wisdom of the flesh” be taken from us. The Spirit kills the “wisdom of the flesh” and makes the inner man alive and causes men to despise death and give up life and to love only God above all things. For the fact that we now hate and condemn concupiscence and choose love is not our doing but the gift of God. Therefore the Apostle says that God has damned and destroyed the sin in our flesh, but he causes us to destroy it through His Spirit, who is poured out by faith into our hearts18.

The expression “What the Law could not do” (Quod erat Impossibile Legi. Rom. 8:3), Luther stressed, was addressed primarily against those who trust in the powers of their own nature and think that no other help is necessary for righteousness and good works than mere knowledge of the Law. The goodness and limitations of the Law in the salvation process are to be compared to the sick and foolish man’s attitude towards a doctor’s recommendations: if a sick man wants to drink some wine because he foolishly thinks that the wine will cure his disease, the doctor, without any criticism of the wine, says to him that it is impossible for wine to cure him and it would rather make him sicker. The doctor is not condemning the wine but only the foolish trust of the sick man in it. The sick man needs a different sort of medicine to get well. Then he can drink his wine. The same equation applies to fallen human nature. Our corrupted nature needs another kind of medicine than the Law. The proper medicine here is the

17 WA 56, 358. 18 WA 56, 359 – 360, l. 24: “Quomodo ergo ‘damnauit de peccato peccatum’, seu quomodo morte sua fecit mortem non timeri et distinxit ‘prudentiam carnis’ ab hominibus? Vtique per meritum mortis sue?, qua nobis meruit spiritum dari et aufferri ‘prudentiam carnis’. Spiritus enim occidit ‘prudentiam carnis’ et viuificauit hominem interiorem facitque mortem contemni et vitam prodigi ac Deum solum super omnia diligi […] mors dilectio et dura sicut infernus emulatio’; et concupiscentiam damnari in nobis. Quod enim nos odimus et damnamus nunc concupiscentiam et eligimus charitatem, non nostrum est, Sed Dei donum. ideo dicit, quod Deus damnauit et destruxit in carne peccatum Et nos destruere facit per spiritum suum per fidem Christi diffusum in cordibus nostris”.

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grace of faith (which is essentially to acknowledge that Christ has fulfilled the Law for us) by which one can regain good health so that the Law can be fulfilled19. The matter is clearer in Luther’s teaching on the prudence of the flesh versus prudence of the Spirit. Prudence is involved in choosing good and avoiding evil. These things are twofold and therefore he described two kind of prudence here: the prudence of the flesh and the prudence of the Spirit. The prudence of the flesh is hostile to God. It chooses what is good for oneself and avoids what is advantageous for the others. It consists in the rejection of common good and promotion of what is harmful for the community. This is the prudence which directs the flesh, that is, our concupiscence. Self-will, which enjoys itself and uses everyone else (including God Himself), in all matters looks out for itself and its own interests. This prudence makes man feel that he himself is the final and ultimate object in life, an idol, on whose account he does, suffers, attempts, plans and says all things. […]. This crookdness, this depravity, this iniquity is condemned over and over in Scripture under the name of fornication and idolatry […] something most profound in our nature, indeed, it is our very nature itself, wounded and totally in ferment, so that without grace it becomes not only incurable but also totally unrecognisable.

The prudence of the flesh tends to all God-given good, and clothes us as with a garment (external goods; physical goods as health, strength; beauty ; spiritual goods such as talent, memory, intellect, prudence; knowledge and skills, etc). The prudence of the Spirit represents the choice of common good, and the avoidance of common evil; it is the rejection of choosing one’s own personal good and the patient acceptance of of one’s earthly misfortunes; for this prudence aims at the love which seeks “not its own” (I Cor. 13:5) but the things of God and of all creatures20. It was the nature of the spiritual prudence that, ultimately, determined Luther’s insistence on reading Mt 12:33 against the application of Aristotelian Ethics to Christian theology. The tree, Luther recalled, does not come from the fruits, but the fruits from the tree; thus virtue does not come from acts and works as Aristotle taught; rather, acts come from virtues as Christ taught. To Luther’s 19 WA 56, 360 – 361, l. 28: “Lex autem in se optima est. Sicut si e?groto volenti vinum bibere et stulte sanitatem ex eo prouenturam opinanti Medicus sine omni vituperio vini diceret: Impossibile est vino, vt te sanet, Sed potius morbum augebit. In quo non vinum, Sed stultam fiduciam egroti vituperat. Sed alio opus remedio erit, quo perueniat ad sanitatem, vt vinum bibere possit. Ita et alia quam lege medicina opus est nature corrupte, qua perueniat ad sanitatem, vt legem implere possit”. 20 “Prudentia spiritus” Est Electio boni communis et vitatio mali communis, Reprobatio boni proprii et electio mali proprii. Quia dirigit Charitatem, que? ‘non querit, que sua sunt’, Sed que Dei et omnium creaturarum. Et ea sola reputat bona, que Deo et omnibus sunt bona, et ea mala, que Deo et omnibus sunt mala »”. WA 56, 362, l. 28.

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eyes, there was no virtue superior to genuine humilitas fidei without which there could be no genuine Christian life.

6.2

Law, Gospel and grace in Luther’s doctrine of justification

Law is the backbone of the Jewish religious tradition. At the dawn of Christian era, Law, to the Jews’ eyes, was what distinguished them from the Gentiles (as the Roman Law and Latin language would be seen by the Romans as distinctive between themselves and those they called barbarians). Thus, within the Jewish religion, Law plays a crucial role in human-God relationship and in the whole salvation process. By the time Saint Paul wrote his letters, any attempt to minimize the role of Law in justification, a decisive step in the salvation process, would certainly have been a controversial motive. Saint Paul, as a Christian converted from Judaism, was aware of that fact. Paul’s own approach to Law and its role in salvation is a complex issue, indeed, a puzzling one. On one hand, he made the intriguing declaration according to which it is not those who hear the Law but those who observe it that will be justified (Rom. 2:13). On the other hand, his entire corpus is flooded with warnings against the excessive value ascribed to the Law for the purpose of salvation by his Jewish contemporaries. How explain Saint Paul’s positions? To start with, Luther recalled the two possible interpretations of this passage as presented by Augustine in De Spiritu et littera XXVII-29, 47 – 50. The first, Luther explained, pointed to a transformation through justification in which the justified will be made or become what they were not before. The second possibility is that “will be justified” meant a declaration or imputation of righteousness. The doers of the law will be looked upon and thought of as righteous21. Since both Jews and Gentiles are under sin and have need of God’s grace and mercy, justification consisted in the merciful act of imputation or declaration of righteousness. Such a declarative dimension of justification, as it has been stressed, however, did not complete the whole process. According to Luther, 21 WA 56, 201, l. 10: “Hoc B. Augustinus c. 26. de spi. et lit. dupliciter. Primo sic: ‘Factores legis Iustificabuntur’ i. e. per Iustificationem fient siue creabuntur, vt sint factores, quales ante Iustificationem non fuerunt. Secundo et melius ‘Iustificabuntur’ i. e. Iusti habebuntur et deputabuntur, vt in glosa dictum est. Et satis patet ex precedenti. ‘Non enim auditores legis Iusti sunt apud Deum’, Vt, si quereres: Qui ergo alii* sunt apud Deum, si non auditores? Respondeatur : factores ipsi Iusti erunt i. e. Iustificabuntur i. e. iusti reputabuntur. Sic Psalmso 142.: ‘Non Iustificabitur in conspectu tuo omnis viuens’ i. e. non reputabitur Iustus. Et infra 3.: ‘Ex operibus legis non Iustificabitur coram illo omnis caro.’ Et Luc. 10.: ‘Ille autem volens se Iustificare’ (i. e. declarare, decernere, quod esset Iustus, et excusare a peccato, vt qui nesciret, quis esset proximus suus, quem diligere preciperetur) multisque aliis locis similiter”.

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justification implied the ontological communion between Christ and the believer, a process in which all that is Christ’s (including His justice) comes to belong also to his Christians. One of the questions that must be posed in order to understand the young Luther’s soteriological insights regarding the roles of Law and Gospel in salvation is the following: how did the Reformer interpret the late-Medieval doctrine of salvation? When looking to the late-Mediaeval doctrine of salvation Luther basically saw a chaotic puzzle, a puzzle with misplaced pieces. Luther’s view on late-Mediaeval soteriology was that, when it came to the issue of salvation process, the concepts were totally misapplied; their roles misapprehended; their theological scope miscalculated. Luther’s treatment of the roles of Gospel/faith and Law/works in salvation process would be a perfect example for understanding what has been just said. Luther’s approach to Law, for instance, may often suggest disdain for the same Law or denial of its usefulness in the process of salvation. Such a reading would be to misunderstand Luther’s exegesis regarding Law. To prove this, Luther’s Lectures on Galatians (1519) would be enough. The Reformer’s position was basically the recuperation of the Augustinian teaching according to which Law/ its observation was not bad or harmful (since it serves to practice love for God and one’s neighbours), but the reliance upon it for the purpose of justification and salvation was simply outrageous and foolish22. The reliance upon the Law, Luther identified with “servitudo”. Being under servitude in this particular context, Luther explained, means to perform the works of the Law motivated by fear of threats or in order to obtain righteousness23. This is to ascribe to the Law a range that does not belong to it. According to Luther, Law prescribed good work to be done, but what defines a good work is not the performance of the percepts of the Law tout court, it was rather the inner disposition with which such work was done. To make it plain: works of the Law can be performed without love for the Law. They can be performed out of fear of punishment or desire for rewards. In this case, not being motivated by faith, the works of the Law are done, but the Law not fulfilled (“quicunque extra fidem sunt, operantur quidem opera legis, sed legem non implent”)24. In other words, the works under consideration are intrinsically

22 See, for instance, C. duas ep. Pel. III, 10 – 11 23 WA 2, 539, l. 32: “Servare legalia non est malum, sed servire legalibus malum est. Servit autem, qui timore, ut iam saepe dictum est, minarum eadem facit coactus velut necessaria, quibus mereatur iustificari. Libere autem facta nihil obsunt. Sic prophetae ea observaverunt non pro iusticia obtinenda, sed pro charitate dei et proximi exercenda, ipsi ex fide iustificati”. 24 WA 2, 513, l. 32.

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evil, since performed outside of faith, which means they are not performed in innocence and purity of the heart. So they are not work of righteousness25. For Luther, faith alone fulfilled the commands of the Law. Luther understood “to fulfil” to mean simply believing Christ, the Fulfiller, and not the the satisfaction rendered to the Law through works (“implere non intelligunt credere purissimum (in Christum, legis impletorem), sed operibus multiplicatis legi satisfecisse”)26 This is why faith alone justifies and performs good works since faith feeds love for the Law. Accordingly, only faith can thus carry out the commands of law out of love, which means such works are not of Law, but of faith. Here, in fact, according to Luther, lay the very distinction between works of Law and works of Love. The following passage of Luther’s Lectures on Galatians is very eloquent regarding such a distinction: The whole difference, however, lies in the opinion, the intent, the conscience, the purpose, the motive, etc. Hence the works of the Law are done out the feeling that righteousness is gained by them, one turns aside in the counsel of the ungodly and stands in the way of sinners (cf. Ps. 1:1); and he who teaches this is sitting in the seat of pestilence. But if they are done on devout love, in trust, and in freedom, they are merits of the righteousness that has already been gained through faith. Now they are done in devout love when they are done with a view to the need or the will of another person. For then they are not works of the Law; then they are works of love. Nor are they done on account of the Law, which commands; they are done on account of the brother, who wants or needs them, just as the apostle himself did them (translation JUNGKUNTZ, LW 27, 329)27

25 WA 2, 516, l. 14: “Si homo, inquiunt, teneretur ad intentionem legis, sequeretur, quod existens extra gratiam assidue peccaret non occidendo, non moechando, non furando & c. Respondeo: non peccat non occidendo & c. sed peccat intus odiendo, concupiscendo, cupiendo latenter et irritatus evidenter. Ista enim immundicia occulta cordis et carnis non tollitur nisi fide per gratiam Christi. Non est ergo intentio legis, ut in gratia servetur, tanquam sit gratia exactio quaedam. Sed intendit lex, ut servetur : servari autem non potest sine gratia, ideo cogit quaerere gratiam. Itaque omneis sub legis maledicto sumus, qui sine gratia fidei sumus, ut iam satis est dictum. Cum enim solum ex fide iustus vivat, patet maledictio legis in incredulos, ne Christi redemptionem frustremus aut tantum ad ceremonialia referamus, a quibus et homo potuisset nos redimere. Denique opera legis fieri ex nobis potuerunt. Reliquum ergo est, ut ab ira, impietate, concupiscentia et aliis malis in corde et carne per Adam et Evam plantatis redemerit, quibus facti immundi omnes nos iusticias pollutas operabamur, et ita nihil implebamus de lege, quare iuste maledictioni et damnationi deputabamur”. 26 WA 2, 561, l. 37 27 WA 2, 563, l. 29: “Tota autem differentia in opinione, mente, conscientia, consilio, dictamine & c. consistit. Quare si opera legis fiant conscientia necessitatis et fiducia iusticiae adipiscendae, abitur in consilio impiorum, statur in via peccatorum, et qui hoc docet, sedet in cathedra pestilentiae. Si autem fiant pietate charitatis et fiducia ac libertate, iam per fidem adeptae iusticiae merita sunt. Fiunt autem pietate charitatis, quando ad necessitatem vel voluntatem alterius fiunt. Tunc enim non sunt opera legis, sed opera charitatis, nec propter

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This is why, Luther stressed, it is a nonsense to speak of a merito de congruo which allegedly obtains grace. Only faith in God’s Word is the vehicle of God’s grace28. Abraham, Luther explained, received circumcision as sign of righteousness which he obtained on account of faith in God’s Word when he was still uncircumcised29. Faith is our righteousness. Righteousness comes with, not before it; faith is what makes us righteousness coram Deo30. The way Luther put it, the works of Law can be properly performed by the righteous, but no godless person can possibly be justified through them. If it happens that a righteous person presumes to be justified by those works, he/she would loose righteousness and fall from grace through which he/she had been justified. One can say such a person had been cast from a good land to an infertile one31. After all this, a few questions become inevitable: what is then the purpose of Law in the process of salvation? If works of Law count nothing for the justification of a sinner why was the Law given to human beings? Do humans find any useful aid in the Law? Luther’s answer to these questions made it clear that Law occupied an important place in his understanding of human salvation. It is true that Luther insisted on the fact that good works count nothing for justification. He argued that good works are not the primary factors for acquiring righteousness, since they are nothing but the result of an already acquired righteousness. The Reformer acknowledged, however, that good works aided in increasing the righteousness (opera non esse iusticiae parandae principia sed iam parte officia et augendae ministeria)32. In the footsteps of Augustine33, Luther reserved for the Law an important role: the breaking of human pride, and teaching humans that for which they should

28

29 30

31 32 33

legem imperantem sed propter fratrem volentem vel indigentem, sicut Apostolus ipse eadem fecit”. WA 2, 509, l. 13: “Si vis gratiam consequi, id age, ut verbum dei vel audias intente vel recorderis diligenter : verbum, inquam, et solum verbum est vehiculum gratiae dei. Nam quae tu opera congrui vocas, aut mala sunt aut gratiam iam venisse necesse est, quae illa operetur : stat fixa sententia, ex auditu fidei accipi spiritum. Hoc modo acceperunt spiritum, quicunque acceperunt. Tu ergo ne tibi propriam fabrices machinam consilii, reiecto consilio dei”. WA 2, 510sqq. WA 2, 516, l. 1: “Non est iustus ullus ante fidem, sed gratis iustificatur et bonum pro malo accipit. Apostolus enim vult, hominem ex lege vivere apud homines, sed iustum hominem ex fide apud deum, hoc est, quod iusticia, vita et salus hominis apud deum sit fides, non iusticia prior fide sed per fidem iusticia et vita”. WA 2, 564, l. 11: “Fieri opera legis bene possunt a iustis, sed iustificari in illis nullus impius potest. Deinde et iustus, si illis iustificari praesumat, amittit potius quam habet iusticiam, et excidit a gratia qua iustificatus erat, translatus videlicet e bona terra in sterilem”. WA 2, 564, l. 17. See spir. et litt. XII, 22, p 175, l. 21: “ac per hoc lege operum dicit deus ’fac quod iubeo’, lege fidei dicitur deo: ’da quod iubes’. Ideo enim iubet lex ut admoneat quod faciat fides, id est ut cui iubetur, si nondum potest, sciat quid petat; si autem continuo potest et oboedienter facit, debet etiam sciere quo donante possit”.

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really ask. It makes sense, Luther argued, if one contextualized Scripture and the very economy of salvation. Scripture, he stressed, is divided into two parts, namely commandments and promises. Even though the commandments teach good things they do not provide anyone with the power to accomplish what is prescribed to be done. The purpose of the commandments was, then, to increase human self-knowledge, to bring to light human misery and make humans despair of their own inability. This why it was called and constitutes the Old Testament. Once conscious of their own misery, human beings will not turn to themselves looking for anything in them which they may be justified and saved. It is precisely at this point, Luther explained, that the second part of the Scripture came to our aid declaring that all we wish to accomplish required only our belief that Christ had accomplished it for us. Thus, whoever believes possesses everything, and whoever does not believe lacks everything. Accordingly, echoing Augustine’s motto “command what you give and give what you command”, Luther concluded, that “the promises of God give what the commandments of God demand and fulfil what the law prescribes so that all things may be God’s alone, both the commandments and the fulfilling of the commandments”34. This assessment is crucial for understanding Luther’s doctrine of salvation. It is one more important point that shows that Luther’s doctrine of justification in particular, and of salvation in general, was deeply inspired by the Augustinian doctrine of grace, by the Augustinian teaching according to which both beginning and completion of the salvation process belongs to God and to God alone. According to Luther, since God’s promises are truthful, righteous, free, etc., the believer becomes all what the promises he/she believes in are. I have amply treated the role of humility in Luther’s notion of faith and justification process. The consciousness of nothingness, misery and human inability was stung by Law. The Law was given for this very purpose, i. e. to bring humans to the awareness of how much they need God’s grace, in order that they may feel the “thirst for mercy” (to use Luther’s own words) for their own sake. In fact this role of Law, Luther explained, was intimately connected with the very meaning of what it means to be justified by faith, which is nothing else than to despair of one’s knowledge and abilities, and humbly implore Christ’s mercy, acknowledging Him as the Mediator through whom one obtains grace. The Apostle taught that Law increased sin. How explain this statement? Besides fuelling the human trend toward transgression, Law made sin evident. It is in this sense, Luther explained, that Law increased sin. It was precisely in its function of revealing sin that Law found its proper role within the salvation process. For Luther, Law was a custodian (paedagogus) on the pathway to the 34 LW 31, 349.

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promised inheritance which came in the fullness of the time, through faith. In Christian soteriological language, if rightly understood, this means that by increasing sin (making it evident), Law worked for the sake of the promise. This is because it revealed not only sin, but also the impossibility of reaching justification through the works of the Law. So Law pointed out the way ; it is fair to say it prepared for grace. This leads to the conclusion that justification comes only through God’s mercy as Luther explained in many passages of his Lectures on Galatians, such as in his reading on the verse 21 of chapter 3 After answering one question in this way he has raised another question for himself. For if the Law increases transgressions, it now seems to render ineffectual the goodness of Him who gives the promise. This would be true if the promise of the blessing rested on the Law or on our righteousness in the Law. Now, however, it rests solely on the truthfulness of Him who gives the promise. For this reason the Law is not against the promises of God. How? Because while the Law reveals sin and proves that no one can be justified through it – it compels that the fulfilment of the promise be sought, prayed for, and awaited all the more as much more necessary than when there was no Law. Therefore it is so far from being against the promises that it commends them vigorously and makes them most desirable to those whom it has humbled by the knowledge of their sins (translation JUNGKUNTZ, LW 27, 272)35. 35 WA 2, 524 – 525, l. 22: “Sic enim soluta una quaestione aliam sibi suscitavit. Si enim lex transgressiones auget, iam irritare promittentis bonitatem videtur. Hoc verum esset, si promissio benedictionis inniteretur legi aut iusticiis nostris in lege: nunc vero soli veritati promittentis nititur : ideo lex non adversus promissa dei, immo pro promissis dei. Quomodo? Quia dum peccata ostendit et convincit, non posse per eam quenquam iustificari, quin et augeri peccatum per eam contingit, iam eo magis promissionis impletionem quaeri, invocari, expectari cogit ut multo magis necessariam, quam dum lex non esset: tantum ergo abest, ut contra promissa sit, ut eadem vehementer commendet et optatissima reddat iis, quos suorum peccatorum cognitione humiliavit Si enim data esset lex, quae posset vivificare, vere ex lege iusticia esset. Id est, non est adversus promissa, quia data est, ut occidat et peccatum augeat, hoc est, ut per legem homo agnoscat, quam vehementer promissionis gratia indigeat, dum per legem bonam, iustam, sanctam non nisi peior efficitur, ut sic non in lege nixus fiducia operum legis securus fiat, sed longe aliud et melius a lege quaerat, id est promissionem. Si enim lex vivificare potuisset, iusti essemus: at nunc occidit potius et peccatores amplius facit atque hoc ipso pro promissis facit, dum ea fortius optari cogit et omnem iusticiam operum funditus destruit. Si enim non destrueret, promissionis gratia non quaereretur, ingrate susciperetur, immo repudiaretur, sicut fit in iis, qui legem non recte intelligunt. Non destrueret autem, nisi non solum non iustificaret aut vivificaret, sed occasio quoque fieret plurium peccatorum et magis occideret. Nam prohibita concupiscentia semper irritatur et maior fit. Iccirco, etsi adversus promissa videatur lex esse, dum auget pecca apud eos, qui peccatum per legem non agnoscant, hoc tamen legis vitio non fit, quia ne lex quidem est, ubi non recte intelligitur, tunc autem recte intelligitur, quando peccatum per eam cognoscitur”. See also WA 2, 532, l. 15 (where Luther establishes the parallelism between Ishmael, the son of slave woman, and Isaac, the son of a free woman, symbols of Old and New Testaments respectively : “ita et nos, quando citra gratiam in lege sumus, opera legis facimus serviliter, hoc est, aut timore poenarum coacti aut temporali mercede allecti. Quibus tamen omnibus ita erudimur, ut ad haereditatem, id est fidem et gratiam, suspiremus, qua de

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He also wrote: Accordingly, just as remission is there for the sake of salvation, so transgression is there for the sake of of remission, and so the Law is there for the sake of transgression. The Law sets up sin, sin sets up remission, remission sets up salvation. All this is so because without the Law sin is dead and is not recognised (Rom. 5 and 7). Sin was in the world, but until Moses it was not imputed. The meaning, then, is this: The Law was laid down for the sake of transgression, in order that transgression might be and abound, and in order that thus man, having been brought to knowledge of himself through the Law, might seek the hand of a merciful God. Without the Law he is ignorant of his sin and considers himself sound (translation JUNGKUNTZ, LW 27, 269)36 :

a few lines after, he writes […] Paul’s phrase “through an intermediary”, it is in my opinion that he says this because the Law was not put in our hands to fulfil, but that it was put in the hands of the Christ who was to come for Him to fulfil. Accordingly, it was laid down, not in order to effect justification but rather to accuse sinners and to require the hand of an intermediary. For man’s pride had to be opposed, lest he believe that God’s Son was made man because of his merits and thus becomes ungrateful for such great mercy. But now, having fallen into guilt because of the Law, we love God. The greater our unworthiness is, the greater is the love He has shown. For we can have knowledge through the Law, but Christ alone fulfils and achieves it (translation JUNGKUNTZ, LW 27,270)37

To the Law, however, Luther even ascribed a sort of spirituality, since behind the “sounds of the letter” lies its spiritual meaning, which is the very love and the Spirit by which the Law itself is fulfilled. Recalling the traditional four senses of the Scriptures, Luther explained that the spiritual interpretation of Law did not lay in the mystical or anagogical understanding of it, but rather Law as it is put into practice. The Law had been written in souls by God’s finger through grace; it means the very spirit required for the fulfilment of Law. Law is reduced to the mere “letter” when grace which fulfils it is absent. When this is the case, Law is servitute hac erepti libertate spiritus legem impleamus, non iam timentes poenam aut cupientes mercedem, id est non amplius servientes”. See WA 2, 534, l. 4. 36 WA 2, 522, l. 22: “Proinde, ut remissio propter salutem, ita praevaricatio propter remissionem, ita lex propter transgressionem. Lex ponit peccatum, peccatum remissionem, remissio salutem. Hoc totum, quia sine lege peccatum mortuum est et non cognoscitur, Rho. v. et vij. Peccatum erat in mundo, sed non imputabatur usque ad Mosen. Est ergo sensus: lex propter transgressionem posita est, ut transgressio sit et abundet, atque sic per legem homo in sui cognitionem perductus quaerat manum miserentis dei, qui sine lege peccatum ignorans sibi sanus videtur”. 37 WA 2, 523, l. 8: “Quinto, quod dicit ‘in manu mediatoris’, quod meo iudicio dicit, quia lex non sit posita in manu nostra, ut nos eam impleamus, sed in futuri Christi eam impleturi. Qua re non ut iustificaret, posita est, sed magis peccatores argueret et manum mediatoris requireret. Resistendum enim fuit humanae superbiae, ne filium dei suis meritis incarnatum crederet et tantae misericordiae ingrata fieret. Nunc lege in demerita lapsi tanto fideliorem et misericordiorem deum amamus, quo indignioribus tantam charitatem exhibuit. Nobis enim per legem cognitio, soli autem Christo impletio et operatio”.

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“letter” for the interpreter, especially when understood in the sense that grace is not necessary for its fulfilment38. Law was called “letter” for the simple fact that it was not able to give what it signifies (teachings that Luther rightly claims to have taken from Augustine’s De spiritu et littera). Thus, the Reformer writes: We conclude, therefore, that in itself the Law is always spiritual; that is, it signifies the spirit which is its fulfilment. For others, however, though never for itself, it is a “letter”. For when I say : “You shall not kill”, you hear the sound of the “letter”. But what does it signify? Surely this, that you should not be angry ; that is, the very essence, which is gentleness and kindness toward one’s neighbour. This, however, is love and the spirit by which the Law is fulfilled. From the fact that it signifies the thing that is truest and solely spiritual the Law is also called spiritual, because it always has this significance. But because it does not give us what it signifies, and it unable to give it, for us it is also called a “letter”, no matter how spiritual it itself is. Since no work is done well without love, however, it is clear that every law that commands a good work signifies and requires a good work, that is, a work of love, and that on this account it is spiritual. Hence we rightly call the spiritual understanding of the Law the understanding by which one knows that the Law requires the spirit, and which convinces us that we are carnal. But we rightly call the literal understanding by which one thinks, yes, mistakenly believes, that the Law can be fulfilled by our own works and strength without the spirit of grace. For all this reason the “letter” kills (II Cor. 3:6), because it is never rightly understood so long as it is understood without grace, just as it is never rightly kept so long as it is kept without grace. In both cases it is death and wrath. These thoughts have been taken from St. Augustine’s book against the Pelagians (translation JUNGKUNTZ, LW 27, 313 – 314)39.

38 WA 2, 551 – 552, l. 31: “Unde spiritualis intelligentia non dicitur, quae est mystica vel anagogica, qua et impii praestant, sed ipsa proprie vita et experimentalis lex in anima per gratiam digito dei scripta, et omnino totum illud impletum, quod lex praecipit ac requirit. Nam et decalogum Rho. vij. vocat spiritualem legem, cum tamen sit litera ‘Non concupisces’. Quod si intelligentia spiritualis dicitur, quia spiritum significat, quem lex requirit, ut impleatur, nulla lex est quae non sit spiritualis. Tunc autem solum est literalis, quando gratia quae impleat non adest tunc non sibi sed mihi est literalis, maxime vero, si sic intelligatur, quod gratia non sit necessaria”. 39 WA 2, 552, l. 3: “Concludimus ergo: Lex in se semper est spiritualis, id est spiritum significans, qui est plenitudo eius: aliis autem, non sibi unquam, est literalis. Nam quando dico ‘Non occidas’, literam audis sonantem. Sed quid significat? nempe, ne sis iracundus, hoc est, rem ipsam, quae est mansuetudo suavitasque erga proximum: haec est autem charitas et spiritus, quo impletur. Ab bac significatione rei verissimae et solius spiritualis lex quoque spiritualis dicitur, quia semper hanc significat: sed quia nobis hanc non dat nec dare potest, nobis litera dicitur, quantumlibet spiritualis ipsa sit. Cum autem nullum opus sine charitate bene fiat, claret, omnem legem, quae opus bonum praecipit, bonum opus, id est charitatis, significare et requirere ideoque spiritualem esse. Quare spiritualem intelligentiam legis recte appellamus eam, qua scitur lex requirere spiritum et nos carnales convincere, literalem autem eam, qua putatur, immo erratur, legem posse impleri operibus et viribus nostris citra spiritum gratiae: ideo litera occidit, quia nunquam recte intelligitur, dum sine gratia intelligitur, sicut nunquam recte habetur, dum sine gratia habetur, utrobique mors et ira est.

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Approaching Law and Gospel in the context of young Luther’s doctrine of justification by faith requires taking into consideration that his doctrine of justification by faith was based on what he called evangelical righteousness (the righteousness that comes from the belief in God’s Word). This is what lies at the core of Luther’s insistence on sola fides. For Luther, the righteousness of faith had its source in the belief in God’s Word, namely that Christ was handed over for one’s sins. It is true that Law is good and is not opposed to faith, but without this belief Law is simply useless, since it cannot be fulfilled without faith. So, without faith in Christ’s redemptive sacrifice, any kind of human moral/ethical engagement through free will was also rendered useless (legem et arbitrium humanum prorsus nihil esse, nisi Christus credatur traditus pro peccatis nostris) 40 . It was through the death of the Son that we came to be reconciled with the Father (Rom. 5:10). This was a free self-sacrifice and not any sort of reward for something worthy we may have done. Outside of this belief, according to Luther, any virtue was nothing more than a veil of iniquity, not only ceremonial law, but even the precepts of the Decalog when done apart from faith, were not only insufficient. They also fed hypocrisy41. To seek one’s own righteousness and trust the works of Law and the abilities of the free will is nothing more than denying Christ, rejecting grace and, ultimately making an idol of oneself. Salvation depends totally on God and comes only from Him. When one relies on the the Law it is as if salvation depends on oneself. In the Gospel alone is the righteousness of God. It is through faith alone, by which one believes the Word of God, that righteousness takes place (cf. Mk 16:16). Luther’s approach to Law is, then, to be understood in light of the emphasis he placed on the divine revelation through Gospel. For Luther, faith in the Gospel or the adherence to God’s Word was the very fulfilment of the Law42. Haec ex beato Augustino in lib. adversus Pelagianos exucta sunt.[see De spiritu et littera XIV, 24]”. 40 WA 2, 457, l. 38 41 WA 2, 458, l. 6: “O dignatio et charitas dei in nos, quam eximiis et observatis apte verbis commendat et dulcissimam nobis reddit misericordiam dei patris! Ubi sunt nunc superbi iactatores liberi arbitrii, ubi eruditio moralis Philosophiae, ubi legum tam sacrarum quam prophanarum virtus, si tanta sunt peccata nostra, ut non nisi dato tanto precio potuerint tolli? Quid facimus, dum arbitrio, legibus ac doctrinis nos iustos facere conamur, nisi quod peccata nostra tegimus falsa iusticiae seu virtutis specie ac hypocritas incurabiles facimus? Quid prodest virtus, si peccata manent? Desperandum itaque est de iis omnibus, et ubi non fides Christi docetur, omnem virtutem non aliter habeamus quam velamen nequitiae et operculum omnis spurcitiae, sicut Phariseos Christus describit. Nihil ergo sunt gentium virtutes nisi fallaciae, nisi otiose Christum pro peccatis nostris traditum contendas, ut, quod nostris viribus potuimus, tanto impendio frustra sibi voluerit constare”. See also p. 492. 42 This Christocentric approach to salvation, i. e. the crucial importance of faith in God’s redemptive promises constitutes the very basis of Luther’s understanding of genuine Christian morality. The need for an unshakable reliance on God’s mercy, without which there can be no salvation, is certainly the key detail for understanding Luther’s ferocious criticism

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In his Lectures on Galatians Luther dedicated a few pages to the issue of proper place of Law and Gospel in salvation. One of the contextual backgrounds he chose for the discussion is the alleged argument between Paul and Peter in the Acts of the Apostles. After the Gospel, the works of the Law, Luther explained, are to be compared to the ancient rite of circumcision. In the context of the first Christian communities this was permissible but not necessary. The works of the Law were not annihilated by Christ’s redemptive sacrifice on the Cross so that one may not perform them at all. That is why Paul did not reject the Law but only the reliance upon it. In other words, Paul did not deny the importance of the Law, he just denied that justification comes through the works of Law. Christ’s sacrifice made clear that salvation takes place in Christ alone, apart from the Law. The Law itself was established having the advent of Christ in perspective. It was in Christ that the Law was fulfilled43. Thus, Law was fulfilled through faith, not works. The main difference, then, between the old and the new Law is the following: the Old Law said to the proud in their own righteousness “You must have Christ and His Spirit”. The new Law said to those who humbly admit their spiritual poverty and seek Christ, “Behold here is Christ and His Spirit”. How the Gospel differs from the Law is that the Law proclaimed what must be done and left it undone; or better, it proclaimed what deeds have already been committed and omitted, and also the possible things done and left undone. Thus it only provided of what he considered to be the moralistic trend of the monasticism of his own time: the engagement in the struggle for perfection in order to, ultimately, deserve something from God. Luther’s harsh approach to monasticism is, thus, above all motivated by theological concerns. As Luther understood it, any Christian is invited to lead his life as if he/she lives in a monastery, but this monastery is the world, so to say. Those who enter the monastery committed to give their best so they may earn any sort of benefit from God are doing nothing but betraying the Christian faith. The spirit of monasticism of his time, as Luther understood it, was nothing but the path of pride, the very contrast to Christian humility, i. e. faith. Faith alone is indispensable for salvation. The reliance upon works does nothing but destroy the freedom mankind received from Christ, and leads to slavery. This is why the Reformer compared monasticism to Babylon. As D. WENDEBOURG puts it, according to Luther, “Instead of being understood as the free response to God’s free gift of love in Jesus Christ, monasticism is perceived as being instrumental in earning and intensifying his love. Instead of being consequence of salvation, it is considered to be the best way of earning it. Monastic life was being chosen because it was believed to be specially conducive or even indispensable for winning God’s grace and becoming acceptable in his sight, because it was believed to be singularly meritorious because it was expected it would reap unique rewards. […] Thus, instead of being an expression of the freedom that humanity has received in Christ, monasticism leads straight into slavery. […] monasticism, if conceived as a means of salvation, destroys the freedom that is intrinsic to the Christian faith, being free from the obligation to fulfil certain conditions in order to be accepted by God”.[…] Suddenly Christian freedom is no more, or, put differently, certainly is no longer established by the fact that it suffices to rely on Jesus Christ alone”. Wendebourg, 2005, 134 – 135. 43 WA 2, 476.

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the knowledge of sin. Gospel, on the other hand, proclaimed that sin had been remitted and that all things had been fulfilled and done. The Law said “pay what you owe”, but the Gospel said “Your sins are forgiven to you”44. After Christ, thus, Luther explained, the works of Law are like wealth, honour, power, civic righteousness, among other temporal goods: if one has them one is not better in God’s sight on account of that; if one lacks them, that does not make one worse in God’s sight. What Luther considered outrageous is to claim that the performing of the works of Law per se makes one pleasing to God45. Paul fought compulsion in order to state freedom: all that is required for righteousness is faith in Christ. Everything else is without restriction, no longer either commanded or forbidden. Thus if Peter had observed both customs, this fact was not censurable46 All this has to be explained. Luther’s treatment of Law and Gospel in the context of the Christian doctrine of justification cannot be grasped unless one takes into account that the Reformer’s notion of justification is above all a Christologically oriented one. In the opening of his Lectures on Galatians, short after having identified the main purpose of that Pauline letter47, the Reformer 44 WA 2, 466, l. 3: “Euangelium et lex proprie in hoc differunt, quod lex praedicat facienda et omittenda, immo iam commissa et omissa ac impossibilia fieri et omitti (ideo solam peccati ministrat cognitionem), Euangelium autem remissa peccata et omnia impleta factaque. Lex enim dicit ‘Redde quod debes’, Euangelium autem ‘Dimittuntur tibi peccata tua’. Sic Rhoma. iij. per legem cognitio peccati, et iiij. Lex iram operatur : ubi enim non est lex, nec praevaricatio. At de euangelio dicit Lucae ultimo: Sic oportuit Christum pati et a mortuis resurgere et praedicari in nomine eius (nota insigniter ‘in nomine eius’, non ‘nostro’) poenitentiam et remissionem peccatorum in omnes gentes. Ecce praedicatio remissionis peccatorum per nomen Christi, hoc est Euangelium. Et Rhoma. x. Quam speciosi pedes euangelisantium pacem, annunciantium bona, id est remissionem peccatorum et gratiam, legis plenitudinem per Christum. Inde iustificatus per gratiam, a lege ad euangelium fugiens, dicit ‘Dimitte nobis debita nostra’”. 45 WA 2,478, l. 23: “Circumcidi malum non erat: sed iam Christo solo nos per gratiam iustificante cogi ad circumcisionem tanquam necessariam, ut iustificeris, hoc impium erat et in Christi iustificatricem gratiam contumeliosum. Quare legis opera sunt post Christum sicut divitiae, honor, potestas, iusticia civilis ac quaecunque alia res temporalis: quas si habeas, non ideo melior es coram deo, si careas, non ideo peior : esses autem pessimus, si eas necessarias assereres, quo deo placeres”. 46 WA 2, 485, l. 22: “Agitur contra necessitatem pro libertate pugnat Paulus. Sola enim fides Christi necessaria est, ut iusti simus: caetera omnia liberrima, neque praecepta amplius neque prohibita. Si ergo Petrus recta fronte utraque fecisset, non fuisset reprehendendus, sicut Paulus utraque cum fiducia fecit”. 47 It is basically the same purpose behind the epistle to the Romans. Here Paul’s main purpose, Luther reiterates, is to stress the meaning and nature of the sound faith by alerting against the danger of the trust in one’s work or in the legalistic righteousness: Galatiae primum ab Apostolo sanam fidem, id est in solum Iesum Christum, non in suas aut legis iustitias fidere, docti post per pseudoapostolos rursum deturbati sunt in fiduciam operum legalis iusticia […]. Neque enim in omni vita mortalium quicquam fallacius est superstitione, hoc est, falsa et infoelice imitatione sanctorum”. WA 2, 451, l. 1

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recalled the point that defined his whole understanding of Christian discourse of salvation: to maintain that righteousness comes by works is to empty Christ’s resurrection of its meaning, making it ridiculous and useless. After all, Luther remarked, Christ was put to death for our sins and resurrected for our justification. It is to believe that this means to die with Christ for sin and, in the same faith, to rise with Him. Christ’s resurrection is, thus, our righteousness. Apart from His resurrection no one can resurrect no matter how many good works he/ she may have done48. Christ alone is the source of righteousness. It is hardly necessary to say that all these insights are fully Augustinian. The Evangelical righteousness, the very cause of salvation, is to be identified with the divine imputation. When declared that the righteousness of God has been revealed (Rom. 1:17) he was not speaking of the righteousness by which God Himself is righteous, but rather the one by which we are made righteous by God and this happens only through faith in the Gospel49. This righteousness, Luther recalled, was stated to distinguish it from that human righteousness that has its roots in works. Human righteousness, according to Luther, is to be identified with the righteousness of works, the Aristotelian concept of righteousness where works precede and originate righteousness, the very contrary of what happens in the justification of sinners. In the justification of sinners, righteousness comes before works. The scholastic approach to justification, as Luther criticized it, was legalistic, while his own he considered genuinely based on the Gospel. He, then, pointed out the difference between the two ways of being justified. The one to be identified with the righteousness of the Law/works is described in the following terms: In the first place, there is the external way, by works, on the basis of one’s own strength. Of such a nature are human righteousness which are acquired by practice (as it is said) by habit. This is the kind of righteousness Aristotle and other philosophers describe – the kind produced by the laws of the state and of the church in ceremonies, the kind produced at the behest of reason and by prudence. For they think that one becomes righteous by doing righteous things, temperate by doing temperate things, and the like. This is the kind of righteousness the Law of Moses, even the Decalog itself, also brings about, namely when one serves God out of fear of punishment or because of the 48 WA 2, 455, l. 15: “Qui enim tales sunt necesse est, ut resurrectionem Crhist negent, immo irrideant. Nam Rho iiij. Christus, inquit, mortus est propter peccata nostra et resurrexit propter justificationem nostram. Ideo, qui alia via praesumit iustus esse quam credendo in Christum, hic Christum a se reiicit et otiosam eius passionem et ressurectionem ducit. Qui autem in Christum morientem credit, simul et ipse moritur peccato cum Christo, et qui credit in resurgentem et viventem, eadem fidem ipse resurgit et vivit in Christo et Christo in eo. Ideo resurrectio Christi est iustitia vitaque nostra, non tantum exemplo sed et virtutute. Sine resurrectione Christi nemo ressurgit, quantumlibet operetur bona : rursum per resurrectionem quilibet resurgit, quantumlibet operatus sit mala […]”. 49 WA 56, 271.

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promise of reward, does swear God’s name, honors one’s parents, does not kill, does not steal, does not commit adultery, etc. This is a servile righteousness; it is mercenary, feigned, specious, external, temporal, worldly, human. It profits nothing for the glory to come but receives in this life its reward, glory, riches, honor, power, friendship, wellbeing, or at least peace and quiet, and fewer evils than those who act otherwise. This is how Christ describes the Pharisees […] To their kind belong also those who deceive the soul today, who in reliance on their free will make a good resolution (as they say) and, after eliciting from their natural powers the act of loving God above all things, at once take for granted in the most shameful manner that they have obtained the grace of God. These are the people who strive to cure the woman with an issue of blood (that is, a guilt of conscience) by means of works and, after exhausting her resources, makes her worse (Mark 5:25 – 26) (translation JUNGKUNTZ, LW 27, 219)50.

Regarding the justification which means the righteousness of Gospel/faith, he wrote: In the second place, there is the inward way, on the basis of faith and of grace, when a man utterly despairs of his former righteousness, as though it were the uncleanness of a woman in menstruation, and casts himself down before God, sobs humbly,and, confessing he is a sinner, says with the publican: “God, be merciful to me a sinner!” (Luke 18:13) “This man” says Christ, “went down to his house justified (v. 14). For this righteousness is nothing else than a calling upon the name of God. Now the name of God is mercy, truth, righteousness, strength, wisdom and the accusation of one’s own name. On the other hand, our name is sin, falsehood, vanity, and folly, as is written: “All men are liars” (Ps. 116:11) and “Every man walks in a vain show” (Ps. 39:6) (translation JUNGKUNTZ, LW 27, 220)51 50 WA, 2, 489 – 490, l. 21: “In primis itaque sciendum, quod homo dupliciter iustificatur et omnino contrariis modis. Primo ad extra, ab operibus, ex propriis viribus. Quales sunt humanae iusticiae, usu (ut dicitur) et consuetudine comparatae. Qualem describit Aristoteles aliique Philosophi. Qualem leges civiles et ecclesiasticae in ceremoniis, qualem dictamen rationis et prudentia parit. Sic enim putant, operando iusta iustum fieri, temperando temperatum, et similia. Hanc facit et lex Mosi, ipse quoque decalogus, scilicet ubi timore penae aut promissione mercedis servitur deo, non iuratur per nomen dei, honorantur parentes, non occiditur, non rapitur, non adulteratur & c. Haec est iusticia servilis, mercennaria, ficta, speciosa, externa, temporalis, mundana, humana, quae ad futuram gloriam nihil prodest, sed in hac vita recipit mercedem, gloriam, divitias, honorem, potentiam, amicitiam, sanitatem aut certe pacem ac tranquillitatem minusque malorum quam ii, qui secus agunt, sicut Christus Phariseos […]. Ex horum genere sunt et hodie mentium illi deceptores, qui libero freti arbitrio bonam (ut aiunt) formant intentionem et actum diligendi deum super omnia ex naturalibus elicitum habentes mox gratiam dei sese obtinuisse perditissime praesumunt. Hi sunt, qui haemorrhoissam (id est peccatricem conscientiam) operibus sanare laborant et consumpta substantia peius habere faciunt”. 51 WA 2, 490, l. 9: “Secundo ab intra, ex fide, ex gratia, ubi homo de priore iusticia prorsus desperans tanquam ab immundicia menstruatae proruit ante deum, gemens humiliter peccatoremque sese confessus cum publicano dicit: Deus, propitius esto mihi peccatori. Hic, inquit Christus, descendit iustificatus in domum suam. Haec enim est aliud nihil quam invocatio nominis divini. Nomen autem dei est misericordia, veritas, iusticia, virtus, sapientia, suique nominis accusatio. Est autem nomen nostrum peccatum, mendacium, va-

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For all these reasons, Luther concluded, the righteousness of the works is false, just as the works of a person that performs the functions of a priest or bishop without being either priest or bishop52. Besides the righteousness of works, as Luther understood it, lacks a fundamental point – it fails to purify the heart. This is at the range of faith alone. Hence, that is the reason why it is impossible for human righteousness to be truthful (“Sine hac iusticia impossibile est, cor mundum esse: ideo impossibile est, iusticiam hominum veram esse”)53. This is because the righteousness of Law fails to effect the ontological communion between God and the believer, as it also fails to create the bond of son-ship as faith does. For Luther, to believe is to become one with the Son, thus all believers are sons along with Him (Christus filius est: quare in ipso quoque credentes filii cum eo sunt.)54. This was precisely why Luther claimed that true virtue comes from faith, and that is the reason why truly good works can only be produced in faith. Luther, as it has been said, understood that God is really present in faith. A genuine calling upon God’s name is a clear sign that the believer’s heart and God’s has become one and tend to each other. Thus there is no way that the believer’s heart does not share all the virtues that shape the divine essence, the very substance of God’s name55.

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nitas, stulticia, iuxta illud: Omnis homo mendax, vanitas omnis homo vivens & c.. A point of clarification may be needed here. With Gospel Luther means, the Good News, namely the proclamation of the remission of sins through grace. Accordingly the word Gospel here is comprehensive to writings of the Apostles, to the New Testament in General: (Proinde Epistolae Pauli, Petri, Ioannis omnino sunt et vere euangelia, Nec Paulus Lucae aut ullius euangelium praedicavit, sicut hic expresse dicit Euangelium a se praedicatum nec ab homine nec per hominem sed a solo Iesu Christo sibi revelatum, sicut et infra: Revelaret filium suum in me, ut euangelisarem illum in gentibus. Ecce euangelium est doctrina de filio dei Iesu Christo”. WA 2, 467, l. 18. WA 56, 172, l. 8: “Et dicitur ad differentiam Iustitie hominum, que ex operibus fit. Sicut Aristoteles 3. Ethicorum manifeste determinat, secundum quem Iustitia sequitur et fit ex actibus. Sed secundum Deum precedit opera et opera fiunt ex ipsa. j Sicut in simili opera Episcopi Vel sacerdotis nullus potest facere, nisi sit prius consecratus et ad hoc sanctificatus, Et opera Iusta nondum Iustorum sunt sicut opera hominis facientis opera sacerdotis et episcopi nondum ipse sacerdos i. e. stulta et ludicra et circulatorum similia”. WA 2, 491, l. 4. WA 2, 535, l. 25. WA 2, 490 – 491, l. 17: “Invocatio autem nominis divini, si est in corde et ex corde vere facta, ostendit, quod cor et nomen domini sint unum simul et sibi cohaerentia. Ideo impossibile est, ut cor non participet eiusdem virtutibus, quibus pollet nomen domini. Cohaerent autem cor et nomen domini per fidem. Fides autem per verbum Christi, quo praedicatur nomen domini […] Sicut ergo nomen domini est purum, sanctum, iustum, verax, bonum & c., ita si tangat tangaturque corde (quod fit per fidem) omnino facit cor simile sibi. Sic fit, ut credentibus in nomine domini donentur omnia peccata et iusticia eis imputetur ‘propter nomen tuum, domine,’ quoniam bonum est, non propter meritum ipsorum, quoniam nec ut audirent meruerunt. Iustificato autem sic corde per fidem, quae est in nomine eius, dat eis deus potestatem filios dei fieri, diffuso mox spiritu sancto in cordibus eorum, qui charitate dilatet eos ac pacatos hilaresque faciat, omnium bonorum operatores, omnium malorum victores,

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According to Luther, a troubled conscience seeking righteousness, has no way out but turning to God, since faith in His name alone is the understanding of Law and absolutely all in all56. The result, Luther concluded, is that the virtues as defined by philosophers, jurists, and theologians, are virtues in outward appearance, but vices in reality57. One does not become righteous by doing righteous deeds. One only performs righteous deeds after becoming righteous. Righteousness and fulfilment of the Law precede works, and this is so because works flow from righteousness and not the other way around. The Commandments are necessary not in order that one might be justified by performing its works, but rather for already righteous people to find an easier way to master the flesh through spiritual mortification and putting it in check and avoiding rebellion58. This was the reason why Paul distinguished “works of the Law” from the works of grace or works of God59. The works of Law, according to Luther, are

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etiam mortis contemptores et inferni. Hic mox cessant omnes leges, omnium legum opera: omnia sunt iam libera, licita, et lex per fidem et charitatem est impleta”. WA 2, 490 – 491, l. 34: “Ecce hoc est, quod Christus nobis meruit, scilicet praedicari nomen domini (id est misericordiam, veritatem dei), in quod qui crediderit salvus erit. Igitur si te conscientia vexat et peccator es et quaeris fieri iustus, quid facies? An circumspicies, quaenam opereris aut quo eas? Non. Sed vide, ut nomen domini vel audias vel recorderis, hoc est, quod deus est iustus, bonus, sanctus, et mox huic adhaere, firmiter credens, eum esse tibi talem, et simul tu iam talis es, similis eius. Verum nomen domini nusquam clarius videbis quam in Christo: ibi videbis, quam bonus, suavis, fidelis, iustus, verax sit deus, ut qui proprio filio suo non pepercerit. Hic te per Christum trahet ad seipsum. Sine hac iusticia impossibile est, cor mundum esse: ideo impossibile est, iusticiam hominum veram esse. Hic enim assumitur nomen domini in veritatem, illic assumitur in vanitatem, quia hic deo gloriam, sibi confusionem, illic sibi gloriam, deo contumeliam reddit homo. Haec est vera cabala nominis domini, non tetragrammati, de quo Iudei superstitiosissime fabulantur. Fides, inquam, in nomen domini est intelligentia legis, finis legis et prorsus omnia in omnibus”. WA 57/III, 110, l. 2: “Apte hoc verbum sequitur ‘virgam direccionis’, ipsa enim facit hanc iusticie dileccionem et odium iniquitatis. Igitur nulli nisi Christo competit iste versus, quia nullus diligit iusticiam nisi unus Christus, ceteri omnes aut pecuniam aut voluptatem aut honorem aut de his contemptis saltem gloriam, aut si sunt omnium optimi, diligunt se ipsos supra iusticiam. Unde Micheas 7.: ‘Periit sanctus de terra, et rectus in hominibus non est, qui optimus in eis, quasi paliurus, et qui rectus, quasi spina de sepe.’ Et racio ibidem sequitur, quia ‘malum manuum suarum dicunt bonum’. Permanente itaque amore sui non potest fieri prorsus, ut homo diligat, loquatur, operetur iusticiam, licet hec omnia possit simulare. Consequens est, quod omnium Philosophorum virtutes, imo omnium hominum sive iuristarum sive theologorum, specie quidem sunt virtutes, re vera autem vicia”. WA 2, 498, l. 10: “Igitur necessaria sunt praecepta, non ut per opera eorum iustificemur, sed ut iam iusti sciamus, qua ratione spiritus noster carnem crucifigat et in rebus huius vitae dirigat, ne caro insolescat et ruptis frenis sessorem spiritum fidei excutiat. Non equiti sed equo frenum debetur”. Luther distinguishes 4 types of works. Works of sin are performed under the domination of lust, without any resistance of grace. Works of Law are performed when lust is outwardly/ apparently dominated but strongly acts inwardly in the hatred of Law, thus such works are apparently good, but evil in their nature. Works of grace are performed against the resistance of the lust, i. e. when spirit triumphs over it. And, finally, works of peace and perfect well-

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not ours, they are done not on account of our will, but under threats of Law or its promises. What is done out of fear is not of him who did it, but of him who requires it. The works belong to him at whose command they were done. In this case, they belong not to the pleasure and consent of one’s will, but to the command of the Law. If one would be free from such a command, free to live without Law, then one would never do the works of the Law of one’s own accord60. Luther identified the Law of the Spirit with the Pauline statement in Rom. 5:5 according to which God’s love had been poured out into our hearts through Holy Spirit. The Law of the letter he associated with the legalistic tradition, the Law of wrath61. Faith alone fulfilled the Law because through Law (law of letter and being which are done with the fullest comfort when lust is no more, as it will be in the life to come: “Haec intelliges, si quatuor ordines operum disposueris: Opera peccati, quae dominante concupiscentia fiunt sine resistentia gratiae. Opera legis, quae foris coercita concupiscentia fiunt, tamen intus eo magis fervente et legem odiente, id est quae sunt bona in specie, mala in corde. Opera gratiae, quae repugnante concupiscentia, victore tamen spiritu gratiae fiunt Opera pacis et perfectae sanitatis, quae, extincta concupiscentia, plenissima facilitate et suavitate fiunt, quod in futura vita erit, hic incipitur”. WA 2, 492 – 493, l. 36. 60 WA 2, 492, l. 17: “Apostolus constanter negat impleri legem per opera, sed per solam fidem. Quia impletio legis est iusticia, sed haec non est operum, immo fidei, ideo per opera legis non potest intelligere ea, quibus satisfit legi. Quid ergo? Regula Apostoli est haec: Non opera implent legem, sed impletio legis facit opera. Non iusta faciendo iustus fit, sed factus iustus facit iusta. Prior est iusticia plenitudoque legis, antequam fiant opera, cum haec ex illa fluant. Ideo opera legis appellat ad differentiam operum gratiae seu operum dei, quia opera legis vere legis sunt, non nostra, cum non fiant voluntate nostra operante, sed lege per minas ea extorquente vel per promissa eliciente. Quod autem nostra voluntate libere non fit, sed alio exigente, iam non nostrum sed exactoris potius opus est. Eius enim sunt opera, quo imperante fiunt. Sed fiunt imperante lege, non lubente voluntate. Quod satis patet: si cui liberum esset sine lege vivere, nunquam sua sponte faceret opera legis”. 61 WA 2, 499 – 500, l. 20: “Lex spiritus est, quae nullis prorsus scribitur literis, nullis profertur verbis, nullis cogitatur cogitationibus: sed est ipsa viva voluntas vitaque experimentalis, res quoque ipsa quae scribitur digito solo dei in cordibus. Rho. v. Charitas dei diffusa est in cordibus nostris per spiritum sanctum. De qua et Iere. xxxi. ut Heb. viij. et x. adducit Apostolus: Dabo leges meas in mentes eorum et in corda eorum superscribam eas. Haec, inquam, intellectualis lux mentis et flamma cordis est lex fidei, lex nova, lex Christi, lex spiritus, lex gratiae, iustificans, omnia implens et carnis concupiscentias crucifigens. Ita et beatus Augustinus pulchre hoc loco dicit: Ipsam quodammodo legem vivit, qui cum dilectione iusticiae iuste vivit. Nota ‘cum dilectione iusticiae’: hanc enim natura nescit, sed fides eam impetrat. Sic ij. Corin. iij. Epistola estis Christi, ministrata a nobis, scripta autem non atramento sed spiritu dei vivi, non in tabulis lapideis sed in tabulis cordis carnalibus. Lex literae est quaecunque scribitur literis, dicitur verbis, cogitatur cogitationibus, sive sit tropologia, allegoria, anagogia aut cuiuscunque tandem mysterii doctrina. Haec est lex operum, lex vetus, lex Mosi, lex carnis, lex peccati, lex irae, lex mortis, damnans omnia, reos faciens omnes, concupiscentias augens, et occidens, eoque magis, quo fuerit spiritualior, sicut est illa ‘Non concupisces’: haec enim plures reos facit quam illa ‘Non occides’ aut illa ‘Circumcidite praeputia vestra’ aut similis ceremoniae, quia sine lege spiritus nullum opus bene fit sed semper simulatur. Consequens est, quod lex spiritus est id, quod lex literae requirit, voluntas, inquam. Psal. i. sed in lege domini voluntas eius, id est charitas. Rho. xiij. plenitudo

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works) the hatred of Law was raised. Through faith, however, the love for the Law was infused. Accordingly, the doer of the Law, though observing the Law, hates it, hence its performance was merely outward. It is something the same individual hates inwardly, i. e. his/her deeds are fake. The spirit of faith, in its turn, follows the Law with joy, and fulfils it62. This, in Luther’s eyes, defined the very essence of Christian freedom. Christian freedom as understood by Luther, follows the old Augustinian reasoning. Humans are truly free when transformed by the divine grace so that their free will, once filled with hatred of the Law, comes to love the Law. This happens on account of the love poured out by the Spirit into their hearts63. Once a sinner goes through this process he/she relies on nothing but God’s mercy and seeks only His path. This is justification by faith through grace. Luther was vehemently opposed to the application of iustitia distributiva. He insisted on defining it as a concept of pagan Philosophy mistakenly used by theologians. This detail is important for understanding the Reformer’s approach to the role of Law and Gospel in salvation. Once again the shadow of Aristotelian influence over the late-Mediaeval theology determined Luther’s reasoning. The idea of Christian righteousness, he insisted, is to be regarded not only as different, but also contrary to human righteousness, since this comes from works, while Christian righteousness states that works come from righteousness (“iusticiam Christianam et humanam esse prorsus non modo diversas, sed contrarias quoque, quia haec ex operibus fit, ex illa fiunt opera”)64. For the rightlegis dilectio. Et i. Timo. i. finis legis charitas. Atque ut planissime ac vulgariter dicam: Lex literae et lex spiritus differunt, sicut signum et signatum, sicut verbum et res. Ideo obtenta re iam signo non est opus: itaque neque iusto lex est posita. Habito autem solo signo docemur rem ipsam quaerere”. 62 WA 2, 499, l. 22: “Manifeste itaque duplicem legem tangit: una est spiritus et fidei, qua vivitur deo victis peccatis impletaque lege, ut satis dictum est: altera lex literae et operum, qua vivitur peccato, nunquam impleta lege, sed simulata impletione. Per legem enim suscitatur odium legis, sed per fidem infunditur dilectio legis. Ideo legis operator legem servat cum odio legis, id est, pessime omittit, dum aliud intus optat, aliud foris simulat: fidei autem spiritus legem servat cum dilectione legis, hoc est, optime legem implet, et tamen foris cum peccatis suis pugnans ostendit se peccatorem esse”. 63 WA 2, 560, l. 21: “Libertas enim humana est, quando non mutatis hominibus leges mutantur. At christiana libertas est, quando non mutata lege mutantur homines, ut lex eadem, quae prius libero arbitrio odiosa fuit, iam diffusa per spiritum sanctum charitate in cordibus nostris iucunda fiat. Hac libertate fortiter et pertinaciter standum docet, quia Christus, pro nobis legem adimplens et peccatum exuperans, spiritum charitatis in corda eorum, qui credunt in eum, mittit quo efficiuntur iusti et legis amatores, non suis operibus sed gratuita Christi largitione. A qua si recedas, et ingratus es Christo et superbus in teipso, volens teipsum sine Christo iustificare et a lege liberare”. 64 WA 2, 493, l. 6. Luther argued that, because many theologians fail to understand the Pauline theology they erroneously maintain that Aristotelian ethics and the Christian doctrine are in harmony. The truth, Luther stressed, is that those theologians fail to understand both Aristotle and the Christian faith and they invert the process of Christian justification: “Inde nihil mirum, quod theologia Paulina penitus ceciderit nec intelligi potuerit, postquam ii

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eousness of man always remains incomplete, since it renders to everyone what is is due, namely, in money, possessions, honours, etc., but does not give to others their own things and at least covets the things of others for itself. Then, what is worse, it never renders glory to God. Hence the need to convert and turn to God. It is in the nature of Christ alone to love righteousness and to hate lawlessness, but is the nature of man to love lawlessness and hate righteousness. It is the nature of a Christian man, however, to begin to hate lawlessness and love righteousness. He does not love it except through Christ, that is because Christ who loves righteousness, completes our incipient love with His love65. Thus, the Gospel is to be identified with grace, the fulfilment of the Law. Gospel is the Word of the Spirit, a spiritual teaching, the Word of grace and the clarification of the words of the ancient Law and a knowledge that is hidden in a mystery, because in the Gospel is taught where and whence we may obtain grace and love, namely in Jesus Christ, whom the Law promised and the Gospel revealed. The Law commanded us to have love and Christ, but the Gospel offers and presents them both to us66. Those who do not understand the role of Gospel to be such, did not understand the Gospel. They are the same as those who turned Gospel into Law and made Christ a Moses for Christians67. The grace of coeperunt Christianos docere, qui Aristotelis moralia prorsus convenire mentiti sunt cum Christi Paulique doctrina, prorsus nec Aristotelem nec Christum intelligentes. Nostra enim iusticia de coelo prospicit et ad nos descendit. At impii illi sua iusticia in coelum ascendere praesumpserunt et veritatem illinc adducere, quae apud nos de terra orta est”. See also WA 2, 493, l. 8 65 WA 57/III, 110, l. 15: “Sciendum tamen, quod hec iusticia intelligitur Dei iusticia, non iusticia hominum. Hominum enim iusticia semper manet particularis, dum reddit unicuique, quod suum est, scil. in pecuniis, rebus et honoribus etc., non autem tribuit sua aliis, et saltem concupiscit alia sibi. Deinde, quod maximum est, nunquam reddit Deo gloriam, iusticia autem Dei reddit et tribuit Deo et hominibus seipsum et omnia sua. Igitur Christi est solius diligere iusticiam et odisse iniquitatem, hominis autem est diligere iniquitatem et odisse iusticiam. Christiani autem hominis est incipere odisse iniquitatem et diligere iusticiam, nec diligit nisi per Christum, hoc est, quod Christus, dilector iusticie, sua dileccione supplet incipientem dileccionem nostram. Unde Iob 15.: ‘Abominabilis et inutilis homo, qui bibit iniquitatem sicut aquam.’ Item ps. C15.: ‘Omnis homo mendax’ etc. De Christiano vero homine dicit Iacobi 1.: ‘Ut essemus initium aliquod creature eius’”. 66 WA 56, 338, l. 14: “Quare Euangelium vocetur verbum spiritus, Spiritualis doctrina, verbum gratie et declaratio sermonum veteris legis et intelligentia in mysterio abscondita etc. Respondetur, Quod ideo proprie, Quia docet, vbi et vnde gratia seu charitas habeatur, Scil. Ihesum Christum, quem lex promisit, Euangelium Exhibet. Lex precipit Charitatem et Ihesum Christum habendum, Sed Euangelium offert et exhibet vtrunque”. Ideo dicit Psalmso 44.: ‘Diffusa est gratia in labiis tuis.’ Ideo Euangelium, si non recipiatur, vt loquitur, similiter est Litera. Et proprie. Euangelium est, Vbi Christum predicat; Vbi autem *arguit et reprobat aut precipit, nihil aliud facit, quam quod presumentes de propria Iustitia destruit, vt gratie locum preparet, vt sciant non ex viribus suis, Sed per Christum solum legem impleri, qui diffundit spiritum in cordibus nostris”. 67 WA 56, 338 – 339, l. 27: “Hec est rata differentia veteris et noue legis, Quod vetus dicit superbis in sua Iustitia: tu debes habere Christum et spiritum eius; Noua dicit humiliatis in sua

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faith alone could fulfil the Law. One could not fulfil the law through one’s power. It is of no value to say that we can fulfil the Law according to the substance of the deed but not according to the the intention of the Lawgiver, as if we had the power to will and to be able. This is not in the way God wills it, namely in grace. Such conclusions, according to Luther, were reached by the recentiores doctores because their reasoning were ad modum Aristotelis which usually understood grace as useful but not necessary for salvation68.

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The doctrine of predestination and young Luther’s approach to salvation

The issue of predestination remains one of unsolved matters in Christian doctrine. Like many other themes of Christian doctrine (such as the doctrine of Trinity), the scriptural basis of predestination is feeble. The Old Testament is practically silent about the issue and the New Testament only had spoken vaguely of it. However, especially since Augustine and his Pelagian opponents, predestination made its way to the group of the most debated issues in Christian doctrine. In the development of doctrine of predestination, since Augustine, the most prominent Christian theologians in the Middle Ages and Reformation period (Aquinas, Luther, Calvin, to mention but some) had one thing in common: they all admitted that predestination is basically God’s business and out of the scope of human reasoning. All these theologians, however, seem to know too much of divine predestination. Perhaps the first step to solve the controversy over predestination is to solve this grave contradiction in Christian tradition. Looking to the development of Christian doctrine, one realises that predestination is a concept that Christianity can hardly afford to get rid of. To start with, the very notion of God as defined within the mainline of Christian tradition, implies the admission of predestination. Most theologians admit that God eiusmodi paupertate et Christum petentibus: Ecce hic est Christus et spiritus eius. Ideo qui aliter ‘Euangelium’ quam ‘bonum nuncium’ interpretantur, non intelligunt Euangelium, vt faciunt, qui ipsum in legem potius quam in gratiam mutauerunt et ex Christo nobis Mosen fecerunt”. 68 WA 56, 355, l. 2: “Vbi nunc est liberum arbitrium? Vbi sunt, qui ex naturalibus nos posse elicere actum diligendi Deum super omnia [affirmare conantur]? Ego si dicerem Impossibilia nobis precepta, maledicerer. Nunc Apostolus dicit Impossibile fuisse legi peccatum damnare, immo ipsam infirmitatem per carnem. Hoc est, quod supra sepius dixi, simpliciter esse impossibile legem implere ex nobis, Et non valere, Quod dicitur, quia preceptum secundum substantiam facti, Sed non ad intentionem legislatoris possimus implere, quasi scil. ex nobis quidem velle et posse sit, Sed non modo, quo vult Deus, sc. in gratia. Ac per hoc Vtilis quidem, Sed non necessaria est gratia, Nec per peccatum Ade vitium nature incurrimus, Sed integri in naturalibus sumus. Ita olet Philosophia in anhelitu nostro, quasi ratio ad optima semper deprecetur, et de lege nature multa fabulamur””.

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is eternal and unchangeable in His nature, and so is His will. If God is eternal it means there is no past and no future in God. He is beyond time. Yet, God is the Lord of History and He ignores nothing that has happened in the past or is about to happen in future. What will happen in the future has, somehow, already “happened” in God’s foreknowledge. If God’s will does not change, it means that His decisions of saving or condemning humans are also taken ab aeterno. God’s plans do not depend on what humans do or fail to do. Humans are, so to say, predestined beforehand to salvation or to condemnation and the only basis for this is an inscrutable will of God. On the other hand, if one thinks carefully, the very idea of an immutable God denies predestination. Something is predestined in the present to take place in future. But there is no future in God. So God does not predestine, God knows. The issue is, however, very complex and out of the scope of this work. I focus on young Luther’s treatment of predestination. The young Luther’s theological discourse was radically based on concepts such as the gift of faith. For Luther, faith was a gift of which bestowal depended exclusively on God’s arbitrary mercy and will, not on any sort of human collaboration. Almost paradoxically, Luther’s early Pauline commentaries did not provide any systematic account of the issue of predestination. It is not my aim to open here any extensive discussion on the issue, but rather to present some hints for the debate69. It is important to stress the fact that the intricate problem of predestination almost fades in young Luther’s early Pauline commentaries. This does not necessarily mean it is not present in his theological reasoning during those early years. Although it may not seem so to the unprepared reader, predestination lay at the core of Luther’s understanding of the salvation process. It could hardly be different. Luther had several interests in the adoption of the concept of predestination and its incorporation in his own discussion on Christian soteriology. Predestination served well the Reformer’s constant attack against the meritoriented understanding of the salvation process which he understood to have characterised the soteriology of his own time. The concept of predestination, by its nature, points to an unmerited beforehand separation operated by God, which consists in choosing some people and separating them from the rest of the mass of condemned (to use Augustine’s expression) and preparing them for something great, namely the the divine call for a specific mission. According to Luther, Paul’s call (as expressed in Gal. 1:15 – 16and in the Rom. 1:1sqq) as well as Jeremiah’s (Jer. 1:5) are some examples of these kinds of situations70. That is why the words “sanctify”, “separate” and “set apart” carry 69 For a detailed account on Luther’s doctrine of predestination, see Brosch¦, 1978. 70 WA 56, 164 – 165sqq; WA 2, 470, l. 7: “Mihi omnino videtur de praedestinatione sui loqui, sed breviter et obscure pro captu Galatarum,sat habens, quod Iesum Christum filium dei sim-

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the same meanings in the Scriptures (“Nam verbum ‘Sanctificare’ et ‘separare’ et ‘segregare’ fere idem significant in Scripturis”)71. The idea of predestination (which implies things being defined beforehand and based on God’s beforehand promises), the Reformer claimed, serves some important purposes, especially to nullify the language of merit in Christian soteriology. God’s free predestination refutes the idea according to which any gifts of those which point to specific missions were given based on merits, since it becomes evident that such things were defined even before we existed. More, for Luther, predestination is a theological reality which clearly shows that Christian religion distanced itself itself from the fatalism of paganism. Predestination shows that Christian religion is not based on fate, determined by stars, but rather God’s predefined plan that it should be so (“Vt non temere venisse aut ex fato stellarum (vt multi vani presumpsere) religio Christi, Sed certo consilio et premeditata ordinatione Dei sic futura fuisse cognosceretur”)72. Regarding the claim that predestination brought about fundamental differences between Christianity and paganism is, at least ironic. Both in Augustine and Luther, predestination can hardly be dissociated from fatalism. Commenting on the last verses of Romans 8, Luther provided some important data regarding his understanding of predestination. Though in some other places he acknowledged that predestination was too deep a theological issue to be grasped by human reason, here he seems to regard it as something far clearer in light of the Christian faith. The issue of predestination (and election), he started by noticing, were not as deep an issue as commonly thought. It turns out to be a wonderfully sweet thing for those who posses the Spirit, and a bitter one and the harsher among all things for those guided by the prudence of the flesh (“materia predestinationis et electionis disserere, que¸ non tam est profunda, vt putatur, Sed potius dulcissima electis et iis, qui spiritum habent, amara vero et dura prudentie¸ carnis super omnia”)73. Luther had no doubt that the immutable predestination which determines human salvation can be found in several passages of the Scriptures. He stressed that the case of Jacob and Esau (Rom. 9:8sqq) clearly demonstrated that election (electio) is the only thing that distinguishes humans (non nisi electio distinxit). Passages such as Rom. 9:15 and 17 – 18, or those from the Gospel such as John

pliciter asseruerit non ex se nec aliis sed ex revelante patre sibi cognitum et a sese doctum et euangelisatum, ut sic divina sese didicisse ex Paulo scirent. Iam sequitur, et simplici narrationi historiam addit, demonstraturus, non ex hominibus eruditum aut humana docuisse”. 71 WA 56, 164, l. 28. 72 WA 56, 166, l. 9. 73 WA 56, 381, l. 17.

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10:29, 13:18; 6:44 are also some of of references to which he pointed as Scriptural proof of election and predestination74. As it has been said, the reality or the idea of predestination served Luther’s purpose in his radical opposition to any interpretation tending to include point human merit as an ingredient of the salvation process. It is clear that the young Luther on several occasions brought the issue of predestination to the debates regarding salvation, aiming only at refuting of what he considered the Scholastic trend to ascribe human moral engagement, through the good use of free will, as an active role in the salvation process. According to Luther, the Scholastic theologians placed salvation, a divine gift, under a sort of a consequence of contingency. But, in God, the Reformer stressed, there is no contingency and everything depends exclusively on His immutable will75. This, Luther argued, becomes clear when signs of divine predestination are seen in God’s own works: for instance, the way God treated Ishmael and Esau; Pharaoh and the Egyptians. 74 WA 56, 384 75 WA 56, 382 – 383, l. 16: “Vbi ergo Nunc est Iustitia nostra? Vbi sunt opera bona? Vbi sunt libertas arbitrii, contingentia rerum? Nempe sic predicandum est, hoc est recte predicare, Hoc est ‘prudentiam carnis’ Iugulare. Siquidem hucusque Apostolus precidit ei manus et pedes et linguam, Hic autem Iugulat penitus et occidit eam. Quia Nunc Videt, quod in se nihil est, Sed tantum in Deo totum suum bonum. Sane nostri theologi, velut acutuli nescio quid magnum sibi effecisse Videntur, quando suum contingens adduxerint, dicentes Electos saluari necessario, Necessitate scil. consequentie?, Sed non consequentis. Hec tantum vacua verba sunt, presertim cum hoc ‘consequentis contingere’ velint intelligere aut saltem occasionem intelligendi dant, quod nostro arbitrio fiat Vel non fiat salus. Sic enim ego aliquando intellexi. Istud enim ‘Contingens consequentis’ impertinens est ad propositum Et nihil queritur, an illud consequens sit contingens, quasi scil. necessarium esse possit, cum solus Deus sit ita necessarius. Ideo est ridicula additio, Ac si dicas: Electi saluantur necessario, necessitate consequentie? Sed non necessitate consequentis, i. e. consequens non est Deus, Vel quia non est Deus, ideo saluatur necessitate consequentie?. Quid enim est aliud ‘Esse contingens’ quam esse creaturam et non Deum?* Sic torquent intelligentiam de necessitate euentus in necessitatem essentie rei. Que equiuocatio hic non habet locum. Quia nullus querit aut dubitat, an res creata sit contingens in esse suo i. e. mutabilis, Et non Deus seu immutabilis, Sed queritur de necessitate sequele, An fiat necessario, quod Deus predestinauit, Et concedunt, quod sic. Et tamen addunt hanc additionem superfluam, postquam totam responsionem dederunt. Si enim scis, quod necessitate consequentie? omnino fiet, Quid refert vlterius scire, an sit contingens Vel non pro hoc loco? Et est simile, Si dicas, Vtrum si filius necessario patrem occidat, necesse sit ita fieri, tu Respondeas: Fiet necessitate consequentie, Sed filius non est pater, Vel quia non habet filium. Querunt ergo, qui hec querunt, An contingentia impediat necessitatem sequele et presupponunt se scire contingentiam Et tu per petitionem principii doces, quod sint contingentes et non Impediant. Recte Respondes, Sed superflue doces ac impertinenter. Aut saltem hoc querunt, si sunt rudiores, An certam predestinationem Dei Impediat contingentia euentus. Et Respondetur, Quod Nulla est contingentia apud Deum simpliciter, Sed tantum coram nobis. Quia etiam folium arboris non cadit in terram sine Voluntate patris. Sicut ergo Essentie? rerum, ita et tempora sunt in manu eius. Male ergo equiuocant Necessitatem ipsam Vel ad subiectum Vel copulam ponentes, cum de sola copule seu temporis contingentia queratur, de subiecti autem nequaquam”.

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To Luther’s eyes, God allows his saints to go through many evils but yet does not loose them. God’s immutable will is inherent in His predestination and cannot be hindered by anyone or anything. He even turns His own creatures against His will, as He did by hardening Pharaoh’s hearth. He allows many to lead a good life from the outset and then does not save them, while some who having led a bad life are suddenly brought to conversion and saved76. They did not merit salvation, but they were predestined for salvation. As in Augustine, Romans 9 and the case of the election of Jacob and the rejection of his twin brother Esau, mentioned by Paul, were the main scriptural sources supporting Luther’s understanding of predestination. One of the issues that brought Luther to discuss predestination was the Pauline reflection in Rom. 9:6sqq, starting with the statement according to which not all who are descendants of Israel will be saved. Luther maintained that this statement was an attack on the privileges that Jews claimed to have in relation to the rest of peoples. The Reformer saw in the case of Jacob and Esau a paradigmatic one to teach predestination: Jacob and Esau, being born from the same parents, the same conception, before having done either evil or good, i. e. without deserving either reward or punishment are predestined: one is elected and the other rejected by God. The young Luther’s exegesis on the twins’ case did not go beyond the Augustinian synthesis. The Reformer basically reproduced the arguments of the Church Father : both twins were born under condemnation on account of Original Sin, hence deserved to be condemned (“Quod ambo mali essent vitio originalis peccati, licet de Iacob aliqui sentiant, Quod in vtero fuerit sanctificatus. Sed merito proprio erant Similes et aequales ac eiusdem masse et perditionis”).77. This, Luther stressed, means that it is not the flesh that makes one son of God or heir of the promise, but only God’s gracious election (“Quod Caro non facit filios Dei et heredes promissionis, Sed electio et gratia Dei. Sic, Sic ergo humiliata superbia carnis potest nasci spiritus et gratia Dei”)78. According to Luther, human works are meritorious in the way God reputes them to be or not to be so. Human evaluations are meaningless and this was why, Luther explained, the Aristotelian doctrine of virtue should not be applied to Christian faith. As Augustine before him, Luther openly admitted that the gracious election of God is, however, arbitrary. The way Luther explained the twins’ case, as a matter of fact, points to the Reformer’s belief in the double predestination (though like Augustine, the young Reformer avoided proclaiming it openly, as, for instance, Calvin did). Romans 9:15 says that God has mercy on those He wills. Luther 76 WA 56, 384. 77 WA 56, 396, l. 5 78 WA 56, 384, l. 24

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understood it as equivalent to holding that God has mercy only on those predestined to receive mercy (“Quare non sit Iniustitia apud Deum, quam Quia dicit: ‘Miserebor, cui misertus sum.’ Quod est idem quod: Miserebor, cui voluero, Vel cui predestinatum est misereri”.)79. Luther maintained that some are predestined to salvation and some to condemnation. His explanations regarding this issue were strikingly Augustinian. It is, I dare to say, the reproduction of the Augustinian argument according to which, being the whole mankind a massa perditionis on account of Adam’s sin, the line of distinction between the redeemed and the condemned is divine grace alone (see, for instance, Enchiridion ad Laurentium 99). The verse 15 of Rom. 9, Luther explained, states that the only basis of God’s righteousness is His own will (nulla est alia Causa sue Iustitiae nec esse potest Nisi voluntas eius)80. Salvation does not depend on human running and exertion, but exclusively on God’s undeserved (and arbitrary) mercy, as stated in Rom. 9:1681.This claim became even clearer in Luther’s exegesis of Rom. 8:28 (equally emphasised by Augustine) when he explained the meaning of the alleged distinctness of the call addressed to the elect. According to Luther, a careful analysis of the nature of the call addressed to the elect shed light upon the very theological message of predestination. Luther was absolutely convinced that in Rom. 8:28 Paul spoke of a special call, a call according to God’s purpose. The very fact that Paul specified the call according to God’s purpose, Luther argued (following Augustine’s footsteps), means that some are called according to God’s purpose, while others are not (“Qui secundum propositum vocati sunt. Ergo manifeste sequitur, quod alii non secundum propositum vocati sunt”)82. The term “purpose” here (propositum) means God’s predestination or free election, deliberation or counsel (“‘Propositum’ enim hic Dei predestinatio seu libera electio et deliberatio seu consilium dicitur”)83. 79 WA 56, 396, l. 9. 80 WA 56, 396, 14. See, WA 56, 397, l. 7: “Grecus Sic: ‘Miserebor, cuiuscunque misereor, et Commiserabor, quemcunque commiseror’, q. d. cuius in presenti predestinatione misereor apud me, huius etiam miserebor postmodum in effectu, Vt sic presens tempus ‘misereor’ predestinantis misericordiam intrinsecam, tempus autem futurum predestinato exhibitam misericordiam notet. Sic etiam de ‘commiserabor’”. 81 Here Luther is careful and clarifies: this does not mean that human virtuous engagement (willing and running) achieves nothing. This is after all God’s work and God’s works is not nothing. What is important to point out is that the human willing and running is itself God’s work: “Quare ex isto textu non hoc sequitur, Quod Velle et currere hominis Nihil sit, Sed Quod non sue? virtutis sit. Quia opus Dei non est nihil. At velle et currere hominis est opus Dei. Loquitur enim de Velle et currere secundum Deum i. e. de vita Charitatis et Iustitie? Dei. Aliorum autem Velle et currere nihil est, qui non in via Dei volunt et currunt, licet magna Velint et valde currant”. WA 56, 399, l. 25. 82 WA 56, 383, l. 34. 83 WA 56, 384, l. 1.

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All saints, Luther recalled, go through numerous adversities but none of them separates them from the love of God. This is explained by the very fact that they are predestined to be saved by God. The only reason they resist adversities is that they have been called in a special way, “called according to His purpose”. Hence, to them and only to them God “works all things for good”. It was, then, God’s immutable will that secured human salvation and this was in no way the result of human merit. Human salvation becomes, so to speak, the result of a necessity implied by divine election and predestination84. Only the eternal and fixed love of God (eterna et fixa charitas Dei) – without which human would lose hope for countless times in the struggle against adversities – and the presence of the Spirit secure human salvation. The fact it is, Luther pointed out, that humans do not even know what to ask for when they are in trouble. The first temptation is to ask for the avoidance of trouble, which is working against one’s own salvation85. Much opposition may be raised against predestination, Luther recalled, but they will turn out to be arguments peculiar to the prudence of flesh which ignores Paul’s advice in Rom. 9:20 (But who are you, O man, to answer back to God?), often quoted by Augustine in his argument for divine predestination. The first opposition, Luther argued, may rely itself on free will. Have humans no free will to choose performing either good or evil; are they under coercion of a beforehand-determined circle of action within which they are compelled to perform a certain sort of deeds? Luther’s doctrine of free will can be said to have gained systematic contours only by the 1520’s in his harsh confrontation with Erasmus of Rotterdam. However, the main lines of his doctrine of free will were already present in his early Pauline commentaries, especially in his Lectures on Romans. When the issue was human salvation, Luther’s position concerning human free will was very clear : free will has no determinant role in salvation. Luther found it easy to 84 WA 56, 381 – 382, l. 21: “Nulla enim alia ratio et causa est, Quare tot aduersitates, tot mala non separent sanctos a charitate Dei, nisi quia non tantum vocati sunt, Sed ‘secundum propositum vocati’, ideo solis ipsis et nullis aliis ‘cooperatur omnia in bonum’. Quia si propositum Dei non esset et in nostro arbitrio et nostris operibus staret salus, contingenter staret. Quam contingentiam quam facile, non dico omnia illa mala simul, Sed vnum illorum impediret ac peruerteret! Nunc autem, cum dicit: ‘Quis Accusabit? Quis condemnabit? Quis separabit?’ ostendit, quam non contingenter, Sed necessario saluentur electi. Vbi non tantum contingentia, Sed exquisita contraria repugnantia tam multorum malorum ostenditur non impedire. Immo et ideo sic saluat Et tot rapacibus manibus suos electos obiicit, quot hic numerantur mala, que omnia rapere nituntur electos in damnationem, ne saluentur, vt ostendat, quia non meritis nostris, Sed electione mera et immutabili voluntate sua, tot rapientibus atrocissimis aduersariis frustra nitentibus, saluet. Quia si non per tot monstra duceret, multum relinqueret opinionis de nostris meritis. Sed nunc ostendit, quod immutabili dilectione eius saluamur. Ac non arbitrium nostrum, Sed inflexibilem et firmam sue? predestinationis voluntatem per hec omnia probat”. 85 WA 56, 382, l. 8.

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refute the claim according to which divine predestination collided with the assertion of human free will. Luther anchored himself in the old Augustinian teaching according to which free will without grace has absolutely no capacity to achieve righteousness, but is rather necessarily in sin (C. Julianum II, 8, 23). He claimed that this teaching of the Church Father would be enough to explain that predestination does not annihilate human free will. The free will without grace is bound to sin. Only after receiving grace is it made truly free. By itself, free will is “free” only in respect to things lower than itself, not higher, i. e. it is free to sin only, since it remains captive under sin and unable to choose what is good according to God86. Another opposition to the teaching of divine predestination with which Luther was confronted was the Pauline assertion in I Tim. 2:4. Here Paul declared that “God wishes all to be saved”. Luther followed Augustine’s interpretation according to which this verse is to be understood as applying to the elect only. Paul himself declared that everything is for the sake of the elect (II Tim. 2:10). Christ, Luther dared to say (like Augustine), did not die for all, since the Saviour said “This is my blood which is poured out for you” and “for many”. He did not say “for all” (Mk 14:24; Mt 26:28)87. Another opposition which Luther conjectured has to do with the fact that God does not condemn anyone without sin. Predestination to condemnation implies the necessity of sin and it would be unjust to condemn anyone who sins by necessity. Luther’s refutation of this claim does not deviate from the Augustinian path. Original Sin meant condemnation of all. So no one could possibly be condemned without sin. All were necessarily in sin and damnation, but no one is in sin by force or against his/her will. The hatred of sin makes the elect surpass sin. But those whose heart are hardened by God are those whom God, in His justice, give up. Outside God’s grace, they voluntarily desire to remain in sin and

86 WA 56, 385, l. 13: “Igitur primum Motiuum et Leuissimum Est: Quia Homini datum est lib?erum arbi?trium, quo mereatur Vel demereatur. Respondetur : Liberum arbitrium extra gratiam constitutum Nullam habet prorsus facultatem ad Iustitiam, Sed necessario est in peccatis. Ideo recte b. Augustinus ipsum Apellat li. contra Iulianum ‘Seruum potius quam liberum arbitrium’. Habita autem gratia proprie factum est Liberum, saltem respectu salutis. Liberum quidem semper est naturaliter, Sed respectu eorum, que in potestate sua sunt et se inferiora, Sed non supra se, cum sit captiuum in peccatis Et tunc non possit bonum eligere secundum Deum”. 87 WA 56, 385, l. 23: “Secundum. ‘Deus Vult omnes homines saluos fieri’, Et pro nobis hominibus tradidit filium suum Et creauit hominem propter vitam eternam. Item: Omnia propter hominem, Ipse autem propter Deum, vt fruatur etc. Hec et alia iis similia sicut et primum facilia sunt. Quia semper hec dicta intelliguntur de electis tantum, Vt ait Apostolus 2. Tim.: ‘Omnia propter electos.’ Non enim absolute pro omnibus mortuus est Christus, quia dicit: ‘Hic est sanguis, qui effundetur pro Vobis’ et ‘pro multis’ — Non ait: pro omnibus — ‘in remissionem peccatorum’”

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love iniquity. They, Luther stressed, were necessarily in sin by the necessity of immutability, but not by force88. The most evident argument for divine predestination, Luther explained, is that the very cause humans sin and are condemned lies in God himself (Causa est in Deo, quare peccent et damnentur). He commands to be done what He does not want humans (or at at least, some of them) to do. He even hardens human hearts and leads them to act against His own Law. He gives the commands and enables the elect to act according to it, but leads the reprobate astray from His paths, so He can show both His mercy and anger89. Jacob was loved by God for the simple fact he had been elected and received mercy. Accordingly, he could please God from eternity. According to Luther, this was the only explanation since all humans belong to the common massa perditionis and can not be righteous unless benefited with divine mercy. Stressing the double predestination, Luther portrayed a God close to the one portrayed by Augustine: a God tending to a certain of show off to the point that He raises difficulty in the human path in order to show both His anger and power to the reprobated (predestined to condemnation) and mercy to those held by that eterna fixa charitas which secures the salvation of those predestined to be saved. A paradigmatic case for understanding this double predestination is the liberation of the children of Israel from the slavery in Egypt. God himself raised Pharaoh over them and drove them to the extreme desperation, so they could realise they had no way to escape Pharaoh by their own means, but only through the power of a merciful God; that their escape was not their own doing, but God’s. The same happens in our time, Luther argues. In order to humble the elect and lead them to trust only in His mercy, God allows them to be led to despair on account of the troubles of this life which He Himself place in their paths90. 88 WA 56, 385 – 386, l. 32: “Tercium. Sine peccato neminem damnat, Et qui necessario in peccato est, inique damnatur. Respondetur, Quod Necessario omnes sumus in peccato et in damnatione, Sed nullus coacte et Inuite est in peccato. Quia qui odit peccatum, iam extra peccatum est et de electis. Sed quos Indurat Deus, ii sunt, quibus dat voluntarie velle in peccato esse et manere et diligere iniquitatem. tales enim necessario sunt in peccato necessitate Immutabilitatis, Sed non coactionis”. 89 WA 56, 386, l. 6: “Quartum. Quid ergo precipit fieri, quod non vult ab illis fieri? Et, quod magis est, Indurat voluntatem, vt magis velint contra legem agere. Ergo Causa est in Deo, quare peccent et damnentur. Hoc est fortissimum motiuum et principale. Et huic Respondet Apostolus principaliter dicens, Quia Sic vult Deus et Sic volendo non est iniquus. Quia omnia sunt ipsius, Sicut Lutum figuli. Precipit ergo, vt faciant electi, Sed vt irretiantur reprobi, vt ostendat iram et misericordiam suam”. 90 WA 56, 402, l. 6: “Tunc sequitur : ‘Dicit enim Scriptura.’ Cuius sensus est: Quod solius Dei miserentis sit et non volentis, patet per hoc et probatur, Quia, vt Deus hoc sic esse ostenderet et sciret homo non suo cursu, Sed Dei miericordia se velle et currere, excitauit Pharaonem super filios Israel vsque in desperationem extremam, Vt intelligerent se non suis viribus Pharaonem euadere, Sed virtute miserentis Dei, Quia eorum euadere non fuit eorum, Sed

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Conclusions

In sum, I believe what I have discussed is enough to argue that, though not systematically present in young Luther’s writings, the issue of predestination was not only present his early theology. It also constituted a crucial issue in his discussion regarding Christian soteriology. Predestination, after all, was regarded by Luther as an ideal theological reality allowing one to picture the salvation process as a God-driven process. More: for Luther, the theological reality of predestination stood as a proof that the Scholastic merit-oriented theology was profoundly mistaken. Salvation depends on divine mercy which is bestowed upon the elect. These are predestined, i. e. chosen beforehand to be saved, before they could have done any sort of good or evil. Ultimately, predestination was one more tool at Luther’s disposal in his struggle to prove that God is the sole architect of the salvation process.

6.4

Conclusions

The debate regarding Law and Gospel played a crucial role in the definition of Luther’s doctrine of justification. A precise definition of the role of both Law and Gospel turned out to be a powerful tool at Luther’s disposal in his struggle to state the radical gratuity of salvation. Gospel in its essence represents what Law could not and was not meant to accomplish, namely human salvation. The Gospel is God’s promise, and salvation requires an unshakable trust in God’s promise. The Gospel is God’s Word and when one believes God’s Word the believer becomes everything that the Word of God is, including righteousness. This is why justification cannot take place unless by faith. The centrality of the Gospel in history and the process of salvation, however, does not imply the invalidation of Law in the economy of salvation. Luther identified the Golden Rule with the very law of Christian love. The Golden Rule constitutes a great challenge for any Christian and its application in practical terms is very rare. To give up self for the sake of neighbours has to be the stuff of faith. As a matter of fact, it was the very challenging nature of the Law that led Luther to claim a special role for the Law in the process of salvation. The Law, Luther claimed, in the footsteps of Augustine, was given with the purpose of Domini educentis eos. Sic et modo, vt suos electos humiliet et doceat in nudam misericordiam suam confidere, deposita omni voluntatis Vel operum presumptione, permittit eos desperate affligi et persequi a diabolo Vel mundo Vel carne, quos excitat. Immo sepius et precipue nostro tempore suscitat diabolum, Vt suos electos in horrenda peccata prosternat et dominetur in eis diu, Vel saltem vt eorum bona proposita semper Impediat et contraria faciant quam volunt, vt sic etiam palpare possint, Quia ipsi non sunt, qui bene velint aut currant. Et tamen per hec omnia eos educit et Liberat tandem ex insperato, cum ipsi velut desperati gemant, quod tanta mala volunt et faciunt et tot bona, que volunt, non volunt neque faciunt. Sic, Sic fit, ‘Vt ostendat virtutem suam et annuncietur nomen eius in vniuersa terra’”.

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providing humans with a clear picture of their real state of decadence. This is because when facing the challenge of fulfilling the Law, humans can easily realize that divine grace is what is really lacking in their spiritual lives. Law is, in a certain extent, an important guide in the salvation process since it can prepare for and lead to to the source of salvation i. e. divine grace. Luther often insisted that, when correctly understood, that is, when one looks beyond the letter, the Law becomes a great tool at the disposal of humans in their way to salvation. Humans should struggle to perform the works of the Law. There is absolutely no harm in this. What is outrageously dangerous is to rely on the works of the Law for the purpose of salvation. When a pious Christian struggles to perform the works of the Law he/she does it aware of the fact that the true fulfilment of the Law has been accomplished in Christ’s redemptive sacrifice. This is what really matters. Regarding predestination, Luther also remained within the Augustinian framework. Predestination belongs to the depths of divine mysteries but it certainly helps also to clarify the radical gratuity of salvation. After all, if the contours of an individual’s salvation were already defined in God’s eternal decrees and immutable will, how can one claim any merit for the one who is saved. This assessment also makes it undeniable that, like Augustine, Luther’s doctrine of predestination can hardly escape the accusations of fatalism and determinism.

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The present study offers a systematic analysis of Augustine and Luther’s understanding of Original Sin and the justification of the sinners. Augustine’s writings addressed against Julian of Aeclanum and Luther’s Lectures on Romans served as the main sources for the discussion presented in this study. Though this work is not primarily a comparative study between Augustine and Luther’s theology, I decided to stress the Augustinian background of the young Luther’s Reformation theology as expounded in the Reformer’s Lectures on Romans. Since the reforming nature of Luther’s Lectures on Romans keeps dividing Lutheran scholars, I judged it pertinent to report the two main lines in the interpretation of Luther’s Reformation discovery (intimately connected with the development of his insights on justification). Some scholars maintain that the Reformation discovery took place somewhere in 1514 – 1515. Others, that Luther made his discovery only later in 1518. I assume my position by taking side with the first line of thought and giving a glimpse of what constitutes one of the basic theses of the present work: by the time Luther wrote the Lectures on Romans (1515 – 1516) he was certainly in possession of his basic Reformation insights on justification. The way he used and interpreted Augustine’s antiPelagian writings in his Lectures on Romans is sufficient to corroborate this claim. In the first part of this work I try to provide the reader with a discussion about the concept and nature of sin as well as its place within the Augustinian theological system. In discussing the Augustinian notion of sin and Original Sin, I insisted on two points: first, that the Augustinian notion of sin can not be grasped if one loses sight of a key concept of his theology as a whole: the concept of order. Secondly, the Augustinian metaphysic of creation and evil must be the point of departure in the attempt to understand the phenomenon of sin as he understood it. For Augustine it was an incontestable truth that the world and the rational creature are both creations of a God who is Himself the Supreme Good (Summum Bonum) and created everything good. In harmony with this claim, Augustine was forthright in his argument that evil is simply the absence of good.

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If evil is a privatio boni (that is, the absence of what should be or “no-thing” at all), then evil goes against the good of creation. In other words, evil is not natural since it is contrary to nature as God created it. If evil goes against the good of creation, evil is, then, contrary to the order of creation. To corroborate his claim that sin is ultimately an expression of disorder, Augustine distinguished the evil one commits from the evil one suffers. The evils one suffers find their origin in sin. Where did sin come from? Basically from a misguided will. With a misguided will, human beings started acting under the orientation of a misguided love (amor/caritas). Accordingly, whenever sin takes place it means that a misguided will and a disordered love (inordinatio amoris) are displayed. Sin is always a defective motion (motus auersionis). Thus, Original Sin, Augustine summarized in his epistle 118, is that “first voluntary falling away” motivated by a disordered love which consisted in an act of man “taking pleasure in his own power”; it was that sin that happened at the moment Adam, with a misguided will, took pleasure in something inferior, rather than rejoicing in the power of God. Augustine’s insistence on the misguidance of the will as the true origin of sin aimed at a specific goal: to rigorously serve the scrutiny of moral responsibility. The intimate connection between free will and sin is very clear in Augustine’s distinction between evil and sin. According to the Church Father sin is a particular form of evil, a ble mistreatment of God and the world, i. e. sin is essentially a blameworthy human doing, a misconduct for which one is responsible. One may still ask: how was it possible that human beings, created good and the work of a God who is the Supreme and Immutable Good, came to commit sin? Where did such a capacity come from? Augustine’s answers to these questions lay in his sharp distinction between the Creator and His creatures. Although God is eternal and immutable, He did not create human beings in the way He is. It is true that Augustine used Neoplatonic concepts in his metaphysical explanations of issues such as evil (defined by Neoplatonists also as privation of good) and creation. The Augustinian notion of creation, however, in line with the Christian tradition, differs substantially from the Neoplatonic doctrine of emanation. In Augustine’s account of creation, no creature enjoys any sort of ontological communion with God, that is, no creature is ontologically made of God. This distinction results in crucial ethical implications. Among them is the possibility of sinning, the creature’s capacity to fall away from God, the Creator. The capacity to sin is, thus, deeply intertwined with the fact that the creature is not de Deo, and, thus, is subject to an ontological instability. Corruption is, then, the natural effect of the fact that created nature came from nothing. God’s creation was created ex nihilo. In other words, even before sin, God’s creatures were subject to changes, changes to the worse. According to Augustine, what makes Original Sin special in the phenomenon

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of sin is that Original Sin marked the beginning of a different condition for human beings: Original Sin meant the rising of a corrupted nature which Augustine emphatically called secunda natura. Original Sin is the sin of mankind. It involved all of us and it marked the opening of an era of disorder. This expression of disorder that entered into this world, Augustine argued, is perfectly verifiable in human beings themselves. Following the order of creation, the rational creature’s main focus was supposed to be the Summum Bonum i. e. God. Sin occurred for first time when that order was violated, more precisely when humans, driven by a misguided love, replaced God with the love of self. Since God is Summum Bonum and existence itself comes from Him, by committing sin, human beings became less than they used to be before sin. It was the sins of the first human couple that introduced death and disorder in the world and in the human condition. More: the breaking of the order represented in sin meant also the break of order in the human constitution. Like the entire created world, humans were created impregnated with order; a hierarchy was established in the human constitution. For instance, originally the spirit was an incontestable master of the flesh. After our first parents abandoned the contemplation of God, i. e. committed sin, that dominion started being challenged. The spirit became under constant assaults of the flesh. This rebellion of the flesh against the spirit Augustine called concupiscentia carnis (desires of the flesh). The proof that the assaults of the flesh against the spirit were taken seriously by Augustine is the way the he defined the postlapsarian human nature. After sin, Augustine argued in a clear anticipation of Luther, human nature became curved upon itself (incurvatus in se). This point is of crucial importance for understanding both Augustine’s anthropological and soteriological insights. The notion of concupiscentia carnis became a key concept in Augustine’s understanding of human beings and their salvation. Sin is a perturbation of the order but this perturbation starts in disordered human beings. No one sins if his/her will and love are duly ordered. Human beings were created in a state of such an order that the term Augustine used to describe this state of order is . This term was coined by Augustine in his own translation of the Greek word "qlom¸a, meaning a perfect fitting of parts of a whole, where there is a perfect dialectics of the part and the whole. Before sin, the body, an inferior reality, was under the command of the soul, a superior one. The pre-lapsarian period was a special time when desire was not yet in opposition to the will. This time ended in the moment that human beings replaced God with the love of self. Ever since sin occurred, miseries of many sorts came upon human beings. Among these miseries are the misguidance of the will (as well as physical death). The human will now tends only to sin. The very human freedom is now seriously compromised. How can humans work their way to salvation if

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they are driven by a proneness to sin? How can they be righteous if they tend to produce only works of unrighteousness? Whether Augustine first outlined his radical approach to salvation through the gracious mercy of God and only then developed his with the theological formulation of Original Sin or did this occurred in the reverse order, may be open to dispute. What is certain is that the way Augustine approached the gravity of Original Sin is in harmony with the way he approached the issue of justification of the sinner and the salvation process as a whole. In the discussion of this issue, I discussed in summary Augustine’s soteriological insights in light of the patristic tradition. I am convinced that Augustine entered the collision route with the very tradition of the Church (which he so eagerly claimed to defend) precisely because he took the notion of a general condemnation in Adam to extreme. In the early years of his career Augustine remained faithful to the mainstream of Church tradition. He argued that despite the Fall, human beings can, through the use of their free will, take the initiative of turning to God. The rest of the way, however, would have to be done with the assistance of divine grace. Around the second half of 390s, by the time he wrote Ad Simplicianum and was working on his famous Confessiones, Augustine seems to have reconsidered a few Biblical passages such as Rom. 7:14 – 25, I Cor. 4:7 and Prov. 8:35 LXX and started to claim that the very first step one takes towards God is itself a divine gift. The very will to believe is God’s grace. This assessment constituted a break with the traditional view of the Fathers on the issue of salvation. Many influential theologians before and in Augustine’s own time had maintained what Augustine himself endorsed until about 395: it is up to humans to start seeking for their salvation, only the accomplishment of this same salvation belongs to God. Augustine broke with this line of thought. He claimed that both the beginnings and the accomplishment of the salvation process belong to God and only to God. This is a crucial point because in this assessment lies the main reason why Luther preferred Augustine to any other Church Father. Besides, it was based on this Augustinian defence of the radical gratuity of the salvation process that Luther relied to oppose the Nominalist axiom of facientibus quod in se est Deus non denegat gratiam. The teaching of the Fathers according to which human beings start, and God accomplishes the process of salvation, may have seemed to Luther dangerously close to the teaching of the recentiores doctores he so vehemently opposed. No wonder that Luther scarcely quoted Augustine’s early works in his confrontation with the Nominalists. He was aware that in the African Church Father’s early writings one can easily identify soteriological insights similar to that of the Nominalists. To fight the Pelagian trend of the Nominalist in teaching that God bestows grace upon those who do their best, Luther was perfectly aware that he needed the Bishop Augustine (especially the opponent of Pelagians) and not the presbyter Augustine.

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Ad Simplicanum is, then a landmark in Augustine’s theological development. It was in this work that Augustine, for the first time, unequivocally claimed that the justification of the sinner and the salvation process in their totality are God’s doing. No wonder that by the second half of 390’s the theological reality of predestination was emerging in Augustine’s thought. The notion of predestination fitted perfectly into Augustine’s new understanding of salvation. Earlier, Augustine had held that humanity’s temporal election by God is prior to God’s eternal election of humanity. God’s eternal decree of predestination as depicted by Augustine in Simpl. is what ultimately defined the soteriological framework with which he later opposed the Pelagians; a soteriological framework essentially shaped by a radicalism of grace which conceives the entire salvation process as depending on nothing else but God’s gracious mercy. In the last chapters of the first part of the present study I turned to the discussion of Augustine’s doctrine of justification. Augustine’s radical approach to the Fall made him a target of ferocious attacks, especially among the theologians traditionally associated with fifth century Pelagianism. I put emphasis on Augustine’s confrontation with Julian of Aeclanum. The radical theocentrism inherent in Augustine’s soteriology did not convince Julian, and Julian had solid arguments to oppose the Church Father. To start with, Julian refused to accept Augustine’s doctrine of predestination under the claim that it was an unacceptable intrusion of the pagan notion of fate (fatum) into Christian doctrine. Predestination, Julian stressed, annihilates moral commitment and progression, not to mention that it implies the denial of human free will. In Augustine’s doctrine of Original Sin, the bishop of Aeclanum saw no more than old reminiscences of the Church Father’s early education in Manichaeism. Augustine maintained that human beings are sinners for the simple fact they are humans. We all were in Adam when he first sinned, so we all share his guilt. This, according to Augustine, means that each and every human being (except Christ due to his extraordinary conception) comes into this world with both sin and guilt of sin. According to Julian, no teaching is more outrageous than these. Julian’s main line of defence in his arguments against the Augustinian doctrine of Original Sin was the goodness of the Creator. Inspired by the Ciceronian view of justice, Julian argued that God’s justice implies that He gives to each one his due; that is, to punish evil deeds and reward good deeds. Being good, God does not create guilty human beings. No new-born has ever done anything to deserve coming into this world in the state of sin. Why would a good God create sinful human beings? Wouldn’t this be an affront to God’s justice? Justice, Julian argued, is an attribute without which God cannot even be God. God is unquestionably just. Since God’s justice cannot be questioned, so went Julian’s arguments, to create

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guilty human beings would obviously be unjust. There can be no sinful newborn. There is, then, no Original Sin. Julian presented further arguments against Original Sin. In a fair analysis of the phenomenon and nature of sin, he made use of a key concept of the Augustinian doctrine of sin, the free will, to deny Original Sin. As Augustine had taught earlier, an act can only be accurately considered sinful when committed through the use of free will. It would be unjust, Augustine had stressed in his debate with the Manicheans, if God would punish anyone for having committed an act against one’s own will. Julian exploited Augustine’s line of thought to exhaustion. New-borns, Julian stressed, do not make use of free will. How can they possibly commit sin? Augustine himself agreed that there can be no sin without free will. So, Julian pointed out, his African adversary contradicted himself in teaching Original Sin. By teaching Original Sin Augustine did no more than make God a ferocious persecutor of infants. Curiously enough, Augustine’s arguments for Original Sin were essentially based upon the reality of God’s goodness as well. Augustine had a romantic view of the original creation. God created everything good. Did God create evil such as physical pain and mental diseases? Wouldn’t this make Him an evil God, consequently no God at all? What served Julian to deny Original Sin served Augustine to assert it. Original Sin, according to Augustine does not hinder God’s goodness, it only stresses it. In the attempt to make his point, Augustine went beyond the Scriptures and look for further proofs in the very human condition. It is true that Biblical passages such as Rom. 5:12, Psalms 51:1 and, above all, I Cor. 15:22 are of crucial importance for understanding Augustine’s doctrine of Original Sin. One would, however, fail to grasp the Church Father’s approach to Original Sin if one loses sight of his constant “exegesis” of human miseries in the attempt to provide his readers with proofs of Original Sin. In these attempts, Augustine focused his full attention on the human condition. Miseria humana (meaning all sorts limitations and sufferings humans could not have possibly experimented before sin), he claimed, are proof enough that Original Sin is a verifiable reality. For obvious reasons Augustine turned to the suffering of infants to make his point. He had Sir. 40:1 on his side. The human odyssey, as stated in this Biblical passage, is filled with misery from the first to the last day. Does anybody doubt that new-born children do not commit sin out of their own free will? Certainly not! Yet, isn’t it an indisputable fact that the little ones suffer great evils? Many, Augustine stressed, come into this world blind, deaf, with slowness of mind, or are tormented by grave diseases. Looking into these realities and assuming that God is just, he considers that Original Sin does not hinder divine justice but rather reiterates it. New-borns do not commit sin of their own, but they suffer evil. Their sufferings have to have an origin. Since God does not punish any one who does not deserve to be punished, it is only “logical”

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to assumed that these infants are somehow sinners. They are sinners, so goes Augustine’s arguments, precisely because they participated in Adam’s sin and share his guilt. Personally, I think that Augustine’s insistence on the intimate connection between Original Sin and miseria humana makes a good theological point. If God is, in fact, Summum Bonum and created everything good, when one looks at the human condition, one cannot help concluding that something must have gone terribly wrong in the beginning of human existence. It is important to stress that both Augustine and Julian presented fair points in their arguments. Often the divergences in their arguments were also due to the way they decided to exploit issues about which the Biblical texts provide an ambiguous account. A good example is the issue whether the children should pay for their parents’ sins. If Ezekiel 18 and Deuteronomy 24:16 support Julian’s claim according to which children should not be punished for their parents’ sins, other passages such as Exodus 20:5 and Deuteronomy 5:9 – 10 suggest otherwise and are more in line with Augustine’s claim. What is, however, of utmost importance is to stress that the Augustinian doctrine of Original Sin is a theological formulation at the service of a greater cause: the promotion of a Christocentric approach to salvation. Original Sin meant a general condemnation. Every single human being lost a right to salvation in Adam’s sin. No one is in position to claim the right to salvation. After Adam’s Sin we all belong to a single mass of condemned (massa perditionis). Anyone who is taken out of that mass or condemnation and prepared for a different fate – that is for salvation – is being favoured by God’s grace. No one deserves salvation since salvation cannot be attained through the merit of human works. After all, according to Augustine, the salvation of any sinner is nothing more nor less than the eternal decree of divine predestination coming to its accomplishment. In light of these soteriological and anthropological insights, is not difficult to understand Luther’s proximity to the anti-Pelagian Augustine. The affinity between the two theologians is much stronger than admitted in modern scholarship. A close look into the young Luther’s approach to the issues such as Original Sin and its theological implications, free will, justification and predestination reveals that the Lutheran Reformation was or, at least, started as a conscious and deliberate attempt to return to a genuine Augustinianism (the Calvinist doctrine of predestination makes it clear that Calvin was also motivated by the same goal). Most claims of modern scholarship that argue for Luther’s divergence from the core of Augustine’s main anthropological and soteriological insights, are difficult to sustain. I want to reiterate few points here in order to sum up my positions expressed especially in the second part of this study. Some theologians often claim that

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Luther went beyond the Augustinian synthesis on the issue of Original Sin. The Reformer, so go the arguments, adopted a far more radical approach to the Adamic Fall than that adopted by Augustine. Some even claim that Luther was the first Christian theologian to conceive that human beings are sinners for the simple fact that they are humans. Well, this is not what the evidence in the sources suggest. First, anyone who is familiar with the Augustinian approach to the anthropological ramifications of Original Sin is aware that it is hardly possible to adopt a more radical analysis than that of the Church Father. Secondly, it is true that, for Luther, human beings carry sin in their very constitution. Sin is present in us as is a default defect in a software device. Had Augustine lived in digital or electronics era he would certainly endorse this analogy which expresses well his line of thought regarding the sinfulness of humankind. Luther’s claim according to which humans are sinners for the simple fact that they are humans was not only inspired in Augustine, it was directly borrowed from the Church Father. Luther’s classical and much quoted definition of Original Sin in his Lectures on Romans (WA 56, 312, l. 2) is a locus classicus for analysing the issue at hand. Here, Luther opposed what he thought to be the Scholastic definition of Original Sin, that is, that it is a certain privation of righteousness. Original Sin, he claimed, “is not about the privation of a quality in the will, nor even only a lack of light in the mind or of power in the memory, but particularly it is a total lack of up-righteousness and of the power of all the faculties, be it of the body, be it of the soul or of the whole inner and outer man. On top of all this, it is a proneness to evil. It is a nausea towards the good, a disgust for light and wisdom, and a delight in error and darkness, a flight from and abomination for all sort of good works, a pursuit of evil”. It is hardly possible to deny accurately that this definition is fully Augustinian. Like Augustine, Luther identified Original Sin with the human proneness to sin that followed Adam’s sin in paradise. This point brings me to another crucial issue when it comes to the Augustinian background of the young Luther’s theology – the issue of free will. Both Luther and Augustine included the loss of human libertas among the ramifications of the Adamic Fall. What is concerning, however, is that some scholars tend to argue that Luther took a step further by arguing that humans lost free will after Adam’s sin. The claim is not accurate. Both Augustine and Luther recognised that free will remains. They were both aware that the righteous and the unrighteous use free will in their daily lives. What Luther taught, following Augustine, is that, for the purpose of their own salvation, human free will was rendered useless after Adam’s sin. If one takes the discussion deeper into the soteriological matter, one would easily conclude that the Lutheran denial of free will was not a step further in relation to Augustine’s positions. For every practical reason, Augustine denied the utility of human free

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will for the purpose of salvation. From the theological point of view, Luther’s theological ethics was as deterministic as was Augustine’s because the Reformer was inspired by the Church Father. There is, however, a slight difference in their methodological approach: Luther admitted that he denied free will for the purpose of human salvation, but Augustine was always reluctant to admit the determinism inherent to his soteriology. As I have explained, a close look at the Augustinian doctrine of grace would reveal the true nature of the determinism inherent in his theological ethics. Augustine’s main line of defence against the accusations of determinism which were addressed against his doctrine of grace was that grace does not deny human free will, but rather establishes it. What is clear from his reasoning, however, is that it is the presence/absence of grace that ultimately determines the flourishing of either sin or virtue. Grace sets the human will free from an untameable proneness to sin. What about those who do not receive grace? Do they have any other option besides embracing a sinful life? According to Augustine, they do. Their only option is to wish to embrace sin. For all practical means there is no way to deny that grace is the source of determinism in Augustine’s ethical theology. Though Augustine denied that such conclusion could be inferred from his thought, the fact is that, according to his reasoning, without grace the option for sin is no longer an option. It is a necessity. Granted, Augustine often spoke of a battle of wills in a struggle against sin, but it is important to notice that this battle of wills takes place only in the case of the justified sinners. The justified sinners resist sin precisely because they receive grace which mould their wills in harmony with God’s percepts and will. For those upon whom God decides not to bestow grace, sin is a necessity since there is no way that they can move from sin to virtue if not assisted by grace. In that case, they will necessarily will to sin. Augustine’s reading of Rom. 7:14 – 25 left no room for doubt that he thought that even in the presence of divine grace the sinner would not be not totally free of sinful impulses. In the absence of divine grace, the sinner would have no other option but to wish, to turn to and remain in sin. Because divine grace does not operate in his/her heart, the unjustified sinners take great delight in sin instead of struggling to avoid it. It is precisely this reasoning that makes of the Augustinian doctrine of grace a major basis for the theological determinism inherent in his theological ethics. As a matter of fact, the same reasoning applies to the justified who choose the path of virtue. It is divine grace that impels them to virtue. They necessarily wish the good. After all, the will is prepared by the Lord, Augustine often reminded Julian in order to deny the merit-oriented nature of the justification of the sinner. Luther’s theological ethics was inspired by the Augustinian doctrine of necessitas peccandi. The Reformer followed the very same reasoning as Augustine:

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in the presence of divine grace, sin is present but humans struggle against it. In the absence of divine grace, sinners take delight in sin. After Adam’s sin, humankind became curved upon itself. Human beings are moved by selfish desires. In the absence of grace, this is what free will is good for : to indulge selfish actions, nothing more. This is precisely why unjustified sinners enjoy sinning. For the sake of their self-interest, sinners do not hesitate to use God Himself. This “spiritual fornication”, Luther stressed, provides a clear picture about how far human sinfulness can go in the search of self-satisfaction. Deep down, Augustine and Luther’s doctrine of salvation imply that both those who receive grace and those who do not receive it lack free will. All they have is an appearance of free will. Since Luther’s theological and anthropological theology and ethics were deeply rooted in Augustine’s anti-Pelagian insights, I think it is only normal that the Reformer’s doctrine of justification did not deviate from that of the Church Father. I reiterate my conviction that the key for understanding the nature of Luther’s indebtedness to Augustine’s insights on justification lies in the way the Reformer envisaged the theology of the recentiores doctores. Here the emphasis must be placed upon what Luther thought would be the consequence if the axiom facientibus quod in se est Deus no denegat gratia is to be accepted. The reason why one should not lose sight of Luther’s criticism of the theological implication of this axiom has to do with following: First, for Luther, the axiom was a proof that in his own time, there was a gigantic work to be done before one sees a Church free of Pelagianism (if that is, actually possible). Secondly, fighting the Pelagian trend of the recentiores doctores allowed Luther to regard himself as an heir of Augustine’s old fight against Pelagianism. More than ever, Luther claimed, it was time to close ranks, show commitment and unite forces in the struggle to uproot the Pelagian-oriented theology that was infesting the Church of his own time. There can be no doubt that the young Luther’s Reformation insights, especially his doctrine of justification by faith, are to be analysed in light of his struggle against what he considered to be the Pelagianized theology and magisterium of the Catholic Church. It is also in light of this same struggle that his use and interpretation of Augustine must be investigated. It is true that the extensive use of the Church Father’s anti-Pelagian writings does not per se imply that the young Luther’s Reformation theology was in line with Augustinian thought. It is, however, also true, that by looking into the young Luther’s main anthropological and soteriological insights, one quickly realizes that Luther started his Reformation enterprise as a deliberate attempt to recover a PaulineAugustinian theology which he considered to have been either abandoned or was never properly assimilated and accepted in the Catholic Church. The proof of this, according to Luther, was the fact that the Church of his own time protected

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the “new Pelagians”, namely those who taught that God rewards with grace he who does his best (quod in se est). Despite all this, however, some modern Luther’s scholars argue that the young Luther’s doctrine of justification found its inspiration elsewhere, not in Augustine’s anti-Pelagian writings. A common argument to maintain this claim is that while Augustine taught justification by grace, Luther taught justification by faith alone. Augustine, these scholars argue, never conceived justification as fides Christi, but rather as a transformation of human will or disposition for God’s commands. I am, however, convinced that a closer look into the two theologians’ doctrine of justification would suggest otherwise. Augustine taught justification by grace as well as justification as fides Christi. Luther taught justification by faith, justification as a declaration of righteousness on account of the fides Christi, but, as the Finnish Lutheran school has demonstrated, his doctrine of justification went beyond a mere declaration of righteousness. The Lutheran notion of justification comprises a strong sense of transformation of the justified sinner’s will. Justification for both Augustine and Luther, was an event as well as a life-long process which comprises moral progresses, often called sanctification. The notion of sanctification was not absent in Luther’s understanding of the justification process. The way Luther used the Biblical parable of the Good Samaritan and the image of the house undergoing construction to explain his claim that a justified Christian remains both righteous and sinner (simul iustus et peccator) would suffice to make it clear that for Luther, his doctrine of justification cannot be dissociated from the reality of sanctification. The evidence in the sources suggest that the young Luther read the Pauline term iustitia Dei (in the first chapters of the Epistle to the Romans) in the same way Augustine did: by “righteousness of God”, Paul meant not the righteousness by which God Himself is righteous but that with which he endows man when he justifies the ungodly. The righteousness by which God is righteous and that by which he justifies sinners, Augustine remarked, are both ours but are also God’s and Christ’s because it is by their bounty that the gift of righteousness is bestowed upon us. It is true that Augustine did often speak of justification as a process aiming at righteousness. The righteousness at which justification aims is to be understood as the fullness of righteousness. It is clear that, for both Augustine and Luther, justification is primarily the result of the gift of faith. He who believes is justified, is acknowledged or is looked upon by God as righteous. Some tend to take another key concept of Augustine’s theology, the concept of love (amor/caritas) to argue that the Church Father’s doctrine of justification was distinct from that of Luther. Augustine, they argue, taught justification by love, not by faith. Augustine was, in fact, the theologian of love. He even spoke of justifying faith as a “faith which works through love”. It is precisely because

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some fail to understand the Augustinian interpretation of this Pauline expression that they fail to understand the nature of justifying faith as understood by Augustine. The emphasis is often put on love to interpret the expression under consideration. I think the emphasis should be placed on faith, instead. What is most important here is to inquire which sort of faith Augustine identified with justifying faith, the faith that is synonymous to righteousness. It is not the faith identified with the simple intellectual adherence, the credere Deum (the belief that God exists). This sort of faith even demons have. Justifying faith is something substantially different than the fides diabolica. It is credere in Deum, i. e. an unconditional adherence to God in humility and love for His paths. This is precisely why Augustine insisted on the expression “faith which works through love”. The focus here, I insist, is more faith than love. Augustine was talking of faith to which he linked a fundamental and essential feature without which it loses all its value – caritas/love. Galatians 5:6 was, for Augustine, a major Apostolic stand for the genuineness of faith (that, to be genuine, it has to contain love). The faith of demons is not the justifying faith, because lacking caritas, it can not be genuine. It is in this sense that Augustine almost always quotes Gal. 5:6. Love, as hope and humility, is a crucial component of faith, without which faith is not genuine, thus of no value. Hence the use of the term sola fide in a pejorative sense; meaning that some would want to perversely understand that they can rely on faith alone, and hope to attain salvation without abandoning their vices and setting out to change their lives through the pursue of good works. This is exactly when faith is of no value. This is not a true faith. So Gal. 5:6 is the passage in which Augustine sees a major opportunity to discuss the nature of genuine faith. The passage that Augustine regarded as an ideal clarification on the nature of faith that receives or means justification, is a faith far different, for instance, from the mere credence by which even demons believe and tremble (James 2:19). What justifies is faith, and among the distinctive characteristics of the justifying faith is love (as is also hope). Luther did not deviate from this path. Perhaps there is only a slight different in emphasis. Augustine elected love as the great distinctive characteristic of the justifying faith, while Luther selected humility. For both theologians, however, faith is the only source of justification. This faith, obviously would be useless without love, hope and humility. Without these components it would fail to justify because it would not be the justifying faith. One may still ask: by whose initiative does one come to believe? One’s own? God’s? It is clear that the two theologians provided the same answers for these questions. Luther followed the Augustinian line of reasoning according to which the very initiative of believing belongs to God’s grace. The gift of justifying faith, both Augustine and Luther remarked, is bestowed upon an unrighteous person so that he/she becomes righteous. Another reason that leads me to claim that

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475

Augustine’s understanding of justification by grace is in line with the young Luther’s doctrine of justification by faith alone is that what Augustine really taught was justification through or by the grace of faith (gratia fidei). Faith is not acquired by any merit, so it is a grace, that is, freely given. Justification is entirely God’s doing since it starts once one is bestowed with the grace of faith and proceeds impelled by the grace of perseverance (which is deep down what Augustine called gratia cooperativa, or the equivalent of what Luther understood to be the assistance a sinner needs throughout his/her life, like a sick man who needs physician’s assistance in the recuperation process). The Augustinian notion of grace is very comprehensive. Grace assumes many forms. Among its mains expressions, according to Augustine are the gifts of faith, hope and love. Another point that reveals that the young Luther’s soteriology remained within the Augustinian framework has to do with Luther’s doctrine of the relationship between Law and Gospel, as well as the crucial importance of humility in the salvation process. The Reformer’s position was basically the recuperation of the Augustinian teaching according to which Law/its observation is not bad or harmful (since it serves to practice love for God and neighbours), but the reliance upon it for the purpose of justification and salvation was simply outrageous and foolish. In the footsteps of Augustine, Luther reserved for the Law an important role: the breaking of human pride, to teach humans what they really should ask for. It makes sense, Luther argued, if one contextualizes Scripture and the very economy of salvation. Scripture, he stressed, is divided into two parts, namely commandments and promises. Even though commandments teach good things it does not provide anyone with the power to accomplish what it prescribed to be done. The purpose of the commandments was then to increase human self-knowledge, to bring to light human misery and make humans despair of their own inability. This is why it was called and constitutes the Old Testament. What is of utmost importance to stress, in the conclusion of this work, is that Luther’s call for Reformation was much more than his criticism of the teachings on Original Sin and justification in his own time. Though the issue of justification was the core of the Lutheran Reformation, Luther’s call for Reformation was far more complex than a simple disputation over justification of the sinners. Luther certainly disagreed with Augustine on many issues. I cannot imagine the two holding the same teachings on sacramental theology or on the authority of the Church. Regarding these issues, the two theologians’ concerns were different. In regard to the issue of Original Sin and the justification of sinners, they had similar goals: they emphasised human sinfulness and stressed the gratuity of the justification of sinners as taking place through the grace of faith. I give my total endorsement to Mark ELINGSEN’s argument according to which the differences between the two theologians “pertain to Luther not endorsing what Augustine

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said when he was addressing issues distinct from those the Reformer was considering. When they addressed similar contexts, Luther was clearly in line with the Augustinian heritage” (ELINGSEN, 2011, 28). From the theological and exegetical point of views, Luther’s acceptance of the Augustinian radicalism of grace could only have resulted in trouble. Augustine was perhaps the only Church Father who assumed and exploited the core of Pauline anthropological pessimism as well as well as the Pauline radically graceoriented nature of salvation. By doing so, Augustine emerged as a leading protagonist of a revolution in the patristic tradition. The theological insights of this revolution was never entirely accepted by the western theological tradition. One of the justification is that Augustine’s intransigence was due to the polemical context in which he produced in theology. The fact remains that every now and then, a theologian sympathetic to Augustine’s radicalism of grace shake things up by revisiting and insisting in the soteriological insight of the old bishop of Hippo. Gregory of Rimini and Martin Luther are among them. The truth is that whenever someone insists in the need of accepting the real theological and doctrinal implications of the Pauline-Augustinian soteriology, it means trouble. The Lutheran call for the reformation of doctrine, especially on the grounds of Christian soteriology, is a truly paradigmatic example. But one may also provide as examples the cases of John Calvin and Cornelius Jansenius. Whether I was successful in my claims that the young Luther’s call for Reformation started essentially as a deliberate attempt to re-establish the genuine theological teaching of the anti-Pelagian Augustine into the Church doctrine and magisterium is up to readers to decide. If the present study manages to make some contribution leading Augustinian and Lutheran scholars to revisit and reconsider what is presently taken for granted regarding the Augustinian background of the young Luther’s theology, I shall be pleased that the present study has met its accomplishments.

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Abbreviations and Bibliography

A.

Abbreviations

AFH AL ARG ATA

Archivum Franciscanum Historicum Augustinus-Lexicon, ed. C. Mayer (Basel:Schwabe, 1986-). Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte (Leipzig) Augustine Through the Ages: An Encyclopedia (General ed. A. D. Fitzgerald (1999). Aug. Augustiniana Institutum Historicum Augustinianum Lovanii (Leuven) Augustinianum Institutum Patristicum “Augustinianum” (Rome) Augustinus Revista trimestral publicada por los Padres Agustinos Recolectos (Madrid) Aug. St. Augustinian Studies BA BibliotÀque Augustinienne. Oeuvres de saint Augustin, Paris, IEA, 1949B.A.C. Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos; CCSL Corpus Christianorum (Series Latina) CR Corpus Reformatorum CSEL Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum CBQ The Catholic Biblical quarterly CF Collectanea Franciscana DC Doctor Communis DR Downside Review EF Êtudes Franciscaines (Paris) ETL Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses FS Franciscan Studies HTR Harvard Theological Review IA Itin¦raires Augustiniens ITQ Irish Theological Quarterly JECS Journal of Early Christian Studies JES Journal of Ecumenical Studies JRE Journal of Religious Ethics JTS The Journal of Theological Studies (Oxford) LQ Lutheran Quarterly

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478

Abbreviations and Bibliography

LW MphT NAB NRT NTGL OER OLD PL PosLuth PE RA RScR RThAM RTP RTPhM ReAug RHLR RT SP. Studia Thom WA ZKTh ZThK

Luther’s Work Medieval Philosophy and Theology New Americam Bible (Large Print edition, Oxford Univ. Press, Oxford/New York,1997) Nouvelle R¦vue Th¦ologique Novum Testamentum Graeca et Latina Oxford Enciclopedia of the Reformation (edited by Hans J. Hillerbrand) Oxford Latin Dictionary Patrologiae Latinae (J.-P. Migne); Positions Luth¦riennes Pro Ecclesia Recherches Augustiniennes (Paris) Rechercehes de Sciences Religieuses Recherches de Th¦ologie anciene et m¦di¦vale Revue de Th¦ologie et de Philosophie Recherches de Th¦ologie et Philosophie m¦di¦vales Revue des Êtudes Augustiniennes (Paris) Revue d’Histoire et de Litt¦rature Religieuses Revue Thomist Studia Patristica Studia Theologica (Scandinavian Journal of Theology) The Thomist Weimarer Ausgabe Zeitschrift für Katholische Theologie Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche

B.

Bibliography

1.

Sources

1.1

Augustine’s works

For Augustine’s works I have used the abbreviations of Augustine Through the Ages: An Encyclopedia (ed. Allan D. FITZGERALD), Grand Rapid, Eerdmans, 1999, XXXV – XLII. CCSL – Corpus Christianorum. Series Latina. Turnhout, 1953CSEL – Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum, Wien, 1865PL – Patrologiae cursus completus. Series Latina (ed. J.-P. Migne, Paris, 1844 – 64). b. vita – De bata vita (BA 4) conf. – Confessiones (Confessions, translation WSA) c. Acad. – Contra Academicos (BA 4) ep. Man. – Contra epistulam Manichaei quam vocant fundamenti c. Faust. – Contra Faustum Manichaeum (CSEL 25/1) c. ep. Pel. – Contra duas epistulas Pelagianorum (CSEL 60)

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Bibliography

c. Jul. – Contra Julianum (PL 44) c. Jul. imp. Contra Julianum opus imperfectum (CSEL 85/1 – 2) – De civitate Dei (CCSL 47 – 48) corrept. – De correptione et gratia qu. -De diversis quaestionibus octoginta tribus (BA 10) duab. an. – De duabus animabus (CSEL 25) ench. – Enchiridion ad Laurentium de fide spe et caritate. ep. – epistulae (ep. 118, CSEL 34/2; ep. 194 CSEL 57) en. Ps. – Enarrationes in Psalmsos (CCSL 38 – 40) exp. Prop. Rm. – Expositio quarundam propositionum ex epistula Apostoli ad Romanos (CSEL 84). f. et symb. – De fide et symbolo(CSEL 41) gest. Pel. -De gestis Pelagii (CSEL 42) Gn. litt. – De Genesi ad litteram (PL 34) gr. et lib. arb. – De gratia et libero arbitrio (PL 44) gr. et pecc. or. – De gratia Christi et de peccato originali (BA 22) Jo. ev. tr. – In Iohannes Evangelium tractatus (BA71 and CCSL 36). lib. arb. – De libero arbitrio mor. – De moribus ecclesiae catholicae et de moribus Manichaeorum (CSEL 90) nat. b. – De natura boni (CSEL 25/2) nat. et. gr. – De natura et gratia (CSEL 60) nupt. conc. De nuptiis et concupiscentia (CSEL 42) ord. – De ordine (CCSL 29) perf. just. – De perfectionis justitiae hominis (CSEL 42) persev. – De dono perseverantiae (PL 45) praed. Sanct. – De praedestinationum sanctorum (PL 44) pecc. mer. -De peccatorum meritis et remissione et de baptismo parvulorum (CSEL 60) retr. – Retractationes s. Sermones (PL 38 and CCSL 41 Ba) c. Dom. Mon. – De sermone Domini in monte (CchL 35) Simpl. – De diversis quaestionibus ad Simplicianum (CChL 44) spir. et litt.– De spiritu et littera (CSEL 60)

1.2

Classical and Mediaeval authors

Ambrose of Milan Exp. Luc. Expositio evangelii secumdum Lucam Is. – De Isaac vel anima (CSEL 32I) Paen. – De paenitentia (SC 179) Ambrosiaster comm. In Rom.– Commentarius in epistulas ad Romanos (CSEL 81I) Anselm of Canterbury Monologion (PL 158) Cyprian of Carthage To Donatus FC 36.

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Abbreviations and Bibliography

The Dress of Virgins FC 36 The Lapsed 36, FC 36 Desiderius Erasmus Opera omnia, ed. J. Clericus, 10 vols. Leiden, 1703 – 1706 Gabbriel Biel Collectorium circa quattuor libros Sententiarum (edited by Wilfridus Werbeck et Udo Hofmann,, J. C. B. Mohr 1973. Gregory of Rimini Lectura super primum et secundum sententiarum, ed. ATrapp, 6 vols. Berlin/New York, De Gruyter, 1979 – 1984 Hilary of Poitiers In Mathaeum (SC 254) In Psalmsus CXVIII , (SC 347) Tractatus super Psalmsos (PL 9) Irenaeus of Lyon adv. haer. – Adversus haereses (PG 7) Jerome dial. adv. Pel.– Dialogus adversus Pelagianus (CCSL 80) in Isaiam – Commentarium in Isaiam Prophetam (PL 24) Julian of Aeclanum Ad Florum (CSEL 85/1 – 2) Optatus of Milevis de schism. Don . – De Schismate Donatistarum adversum Parmenianum(PL 11). Origen c. Cels. – Contra Celsum (SC 132 and 147) Plato rep. Republic Plotinus Enn. – Enneades Robert Holcot Qaestiones super IV libros sententiarum, Leiden, 1497 Thomas Bradwardine De causa Dei contra Pelagium, London, 1618 William of Ockham Commentaria in quattuor libros sententiarum, Leiden, 1495

2.

Translations

Boulding, Maria (translator), The Confessions, WSA I/1, New City Press, Hyde Park/New York, 1997. Deferrari, Roy J. (translator) The Lapsed, in Saint Cyprian Treatises, FC 36, Washington, The Catholic University of America, D. C. 1977a, pp. 57 – 88 Deferrari, Roy J. (translator) To Donatus, in Saint Cyprian, Treatises, FC 36, Washington, The Catholic University of America, D. C. 1977b, pp. 7 – 21.

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Harbert, Bruce (translator), The Augustine’s Catechism: the Enchiridion on Faith, Hope and Charity, New York, New City Press, 1999. Jungkuntz, Richard (translator), Lectures on Galatians 1519, Luther Works 27, Philadelphia, Fortress Press, 1970. Keenan, Angela (translator), The Dress of the Virgins, in Saint Cyprian Treatises, FC 36, Washington, The Catholic University of America, D. C. 1977, pp. 31 – 52 Lambert, W. A. (translator), The Freedom of a Christian, in Career of the Reformer I (Luther’s Works 31), Philadelphia, Fortress Press, 1957, pp.327 – 377. Stare, Lowell J. (translator), Two Kind of Righteousness, in Career of the Reformer I (Luther’s Works 31), Philadelphia, Fortress Press, 1957, pp. 293 – 306. Tillmanns, Walter G. and PREUS, Jacob A. (translators), Lectures on Romans, Luther’s Works 25, Saint Louis, Missouri, Concordia Publishing House, 1972.

3.

Studies

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482

Abbreviations and Bibliography

Biechler, James E., “Gabriel Biel on liberum arbitrium: prelude to Luther’s De servo arbitrio”, The Thomist 34, 1970, pp. 114 – 127. Birmel¦, Andr¦, Le salut en J¦sus Christ dans les dialogues œcum¦niques, n.p, Les Editions du CERF/ Editions Labor et Fides, 1986. Bizer, Ernst, Fides ex auditu : eine Untersuchung über die Entdeckung der Gerechtigkeit Gottes durch Martin Luther, Neukirchen Buchhandlung des Erziehungsvereins, 1958. Bonner, Gerald, “Libido and Concupiscentia in St. Augustine” SP 6, 1962, pp. 303 – 314. – “Les origines africaines de la doctrine augustiniennes sur la chute et le p¦ch¦ originel”, Augustinus 12, 1967, pp. 97 – 116. – “Pelagianism and Augustine [I]”, Aug. St. 23, 1992, pp. 33 – 51. – “Pelagianism and Augustine [II], Aug. St. 24, 1993, 27 – 47. – “De Nuptiis et Concupiscentia”, ATA, 1999c, pp. 592 – 593. – “Contra Julianum”, ATA, 1999b p. 480. – “Contra Iulianum Opus Imperfectum” ATA, 1999b, pp. 478 – 479. – Augustine of Hippo: Life and Controversies, Norwich, Canterbury Press, 2002. Bornkamm, Heinrich Von, “Zur Frage der Iustitia Dei beim jungen Luther” (teil I), ARG 52, 1961, pp. 16 – 29. – “Zur Frage der Iustitia Dei beim jungen Luther” (teil II), ARG 53, 1962, pp 1 – 58. Bougerol, Jacques-Guy, “The Church Fathers and the Sentences of Peter Lombard” in The Reception of the Church Fathers in the West: From the Carolingians to the Maurists (vol. I) edited by Irena Backus, Boston, Brill Academic Publishers, 2001, pp. 115 – 133. Bouton-Touboulic, Anne-Isabelle L’Ordre Cach¦: la notion d’ordre chez Saint Augustin, Paris, Institute d’Êtudes Augustiniennes, 2004. Boyer, Charles, Chrisitanisme et N¦o-platonisme dans la formation de Saint Augustin, Paris, Gabriel Beauchesne, 1920. Brachtendorf, Johannes, “Augustine’s Notion of Freedom: Deterministic, Libertariam or Compatibilistic?”, Aug. St. 38, 2007, pp. 219 – 231. Braaten, Carl, Justification: The Article by Which the Church Stands or Falls, Mineapolis, Fortress Press, 1990. Brinkman, Martien, Justification in Ecumenical Dialogue: Central Aspects of Christian Soteriology in Debate, Utrecht, Interuniversity Institute For Missiology and Ecumenical Research, 1996. Brosch¦, Fredrik, Luther on Predestination: Antinomy and the Unity Between Love and Wrath in Luther’s concept of God, University of Upsala, 1978. Brown, Peter, Augustine of Hippo: a Biography, Berkley, University of California Press, 2000. – “Pelagius and his Supporters: Aims and Environment”, in Relgion and Society in the Age of St. Augustine, London, Faber and Faber, 1977. Burnbaby, John, Amor Dei: A study of St. Augustine’s teaching on the love of God and the motive of Christian life, London, Hodder & Stoughton, 1947. – Augustine: Later Works (The Library of Christian Classics, vol VIII), London, 1955. Burnell, Peter, “Concupiscence and Moral Freedom in Augustine and before Augustine”, Aug. St. 26, 1995, pp. 49 – 63. Burns, J. Patout, “The interpretation of Romans in the Pelagian Controversy”, Aug. St. 10, 1979, pp. 43 – 54

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488

Abbreviations and Bibliography

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490

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Sage, Athanase, “P¦ch¦ originel. Naissance d’un dogme”, RA 12, 1967, pp. 211 – 248. – “Le p¦ch¦ originel dans la pens¦ de saint Augustin, de 412 — 430”, RE Aug. 15, 1969, pp. 75 – 112. Salamito, Jean-Marie, Les virtuoses et la multitude : aspects sociaus de la controverse entre Augustin et les p¦lagiens, Grenoble, Millon, 2005. Salgueiro, Trindade, La Doctrine de Saint Augustin sur la Gr–ce d’aprÀs le Trait¦ — Simplicien, Strasbourg in 1925. Schlatter, Adolf, Luthers Deutung des Römerbriefes: Ein Beitrag zur vierten Säkularfeier der Reformation, Gütersloh, 1917. Scheel, Otto “Die Entwicklung Luthers bis zum Abschluss der Vorlesung über den Römerbrief”, Schriften des Vereins fu¨ r Reformationsgeschichte, 100, Leipzig, 1910, 63 – 230. – Martin Luther: vom Katholizismus zur Reformation, Tübingen, Mohr Siebeck, 1916 – 1917. Scheppard, Carol, “The Transmission of Sin in the Seed: A Debate between Augustine of Hippo and Julian of Eclanum”, Aug. St. 27, 1996, pp. 97 – 106. , Alfred, “Iustificatio”, in A-L 3, 2008, pp. 860 – 864. Schulze, Manfred, “Martin Luther and the Church Fathers” in The Reception of the Church Fathers in the West: From the Carolingians to the Maurists (vol. II) edited by Irena Backus, Boston, Bril Academic Publishers, 2001, pp. 573 – 626 Schwiebert, Ernest G., “New groups and Ideas at the University of Wittenberg”, ARG 49, 1958, pp. 60 – 79 Smalbrugge, Mathias, “La Pr¦destination entre subjectivit¦ et langage. Le premier dogme moderne”, RTP 127, pp. 43 – 54 Solignac, Aim¦, “P¦lage et P¦lagianisme” Dictionnaire de Spiritualit¦ 12, 2, Paris, Beauchesne, 1985, cols. 2889 – 2936. Springsted, Eric O., “Will and Order : The Moral Self in Augustine’s De Libero Arbitrio”, Aug. St. 29, 1998, pp. 77 – 96. Starnes, Colin, “Saint Augustine on Infancy and Childhood: Commentary on the First book of Augustine’s Confessions”, Aug. St. 6, 1975, pp. 15 – 43. Strand, Narve, “Augustine on Predestination and Divine Simplicity : The Problem of Compatibility”, SP 38, 2001, pp. 290 – 305. Strohl, Henri, L’¦volution religieuse de Luther jusq’en 1515, Strasbourg, Istra, 1922. – L’epanouissement de la pens¦e religieuse de Luther de 1515 a 1520, Strasbourg, Istra, 1924. – Luther jusqu’en 1520 (2¦me ¦dition) Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1962. Stump, Eleonore, “Augustine on free will” in The Cambridge Companion to Augustine, Cambridge University Press, 2001, pp. 124 – 147 Teselle, Eugene, Augustine the Theologian, , New York, Herder and Herder, 1970 -“Rufinus the Syrian, Caelestius, Pelagius: explanations in the Prehistory of the Pelagian Controversy, Aug. St. 3, 1972, pp. 61 – 95. Thonhard, Joseph, “Justice de Dieu et justice humaine selon saint Augustin” Augustinus 12, 1967, pp. 387 – 402 Turmel, Joseph, “Le dogme du p¦ch¦ originel dans Saint Augustin”, R¦vue d’ Histoire et Litt¦rature Religieuse, 6, 1909.

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© 2013, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht GmbH & Co. KG, Göttingen ISBN Print: 9783525550632 — ISBN E-Book: 9783647550633

Index rerum (of terms concepts)

acceptione 133, 144, 427 accusatio sui 399, 402 Adam 17, 39, 48, 60 – 63, 68, 70 – 79, 88, 95, 102, 104 – 106, 108, 110, 118, 121 seq., 124, 134 seq., 138, 140, 142, 151, 153 seq., 156 seq., 160 – 165, 167, 170 – 178, 182 seq., 185 – 200, 203 – 217, 219 – 225, 244, 246 – 248, 251 – 254, 259 seq., 289, 305, 323 – 325, 328 – 331, 333 – 335, 337 seq., 340, 342, 357 seq., 360, 375, 381, 393, 395, 436, 457, 464, 466 seq., 469 seq., 472 Adamic Fall 17, 22, 71, 470 Adrumetum 109 seq., 114, 120, 140 amor 25, 61, 63 seq., 234, 409, 414, 464, 473 anti-Donatist 24, 138 anti-Manichean 24, 47, 50, 62 – 64, 66, 96, 167 anti-Pelagian 12, 18, 24 – 26, 28, 30, 33 – 37, 42, 50, 59, 63, 83, 87 – 89, 109, 116, 121, 124 seq., 139, 146, 149, 167 seq., 192, 209, 254 seq., 276, 282, 284 – 286, 288, 293, 297 – 299, 301 – 307, 309 – 314, 316 – 318, 321, 325 seq., 333, 362, 396, 412, 463, 469, 472 seq., 476 Augustinian 11 seq., 14, 17 – 19, 21, 23, 25, 27, 32 seq., 35 – 39, 43, 48 – 51, 53 – 59, 63 – 68, 72, 77 – 79, 81 – 84, 86 – 89, 91, 93 seq., 98 seq., 101, 103, 106, 108, 111, 113 – 115, 117, 119 seq., 122, 124, 136 – 138, 140 seq., 143 seq., 146 – 154, 158 seq., 161, 163 seq., 169 – 171, 173,

177 seq., 180, 184, 187 seq., 195 – 197, 199, 209 seq., 216 seq., 219 seq., 223 – 229, 231 – 235, 237, 243 seq., 246 seq., 251 – 258, 261 seq., 267 seq., 275, 279, 285, 288, 295, 297 – 301, 304 seq., 307, 310 seq., 316, 321, 323 seq., 332 – 334, 336 seq., 340, 347 seq., 350 – 352, 361, 366, 369, 371, 373, 375 seq., 381, 390, 395 seq., 399, 402, 407, 412, 420, 435, 438, 445, 450, 456 seq., 459, 462 – 464, 466 – 472, 474 – 477 Baptism 178 bonum naturae 165 Christian faith 18, 21 seq., 57, 82, 85 – 88, 98, 194, 199, 210, 216, 219, 222, 228, 258, 292, 312, 359, 363, 428, 443, 450, 454, 456 Christocentric 193, 213, 220, 222, 442, 469 Ciceronian 132, 135, 204, 240, 257, 269, 271 – 273, 281, 289, 307, 416, 467 circumcision 78, 209, 213, 242, 437, 443 coaptatio 55, 75, 77, 204, 208, 465 communicatio 389 concupiscentia 24 seq., 40, 64, 69, 72, 74 seq., 77, 79, 94 seq., 103 seq., 122, 130, 138, 149 – 151, 157 seq., 163, 165, 170, 172 seq., 176 – 179, 181, 184, 188 – 191, 194, 200, 206 – 209, 217, 222 seq., 240, 309, 314, 323, 325 – 328, 338, 369 seq., 373, 375, 377 seq., 382 seq., 411, 436, 439, 449, 465

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494

Index rerum (of terms concepts)

concupiscentia carnis 69, 104, 149 – 151, 163, 207 seq., 326, 328, 465 concupiscentia naturalis 208 concupiscentia nuptiali 207 confessio 27, 350, 367, 399 – 403, 405, 419 seq. contemplation 55, 59, 70, 73, 77, 86 seq., 182 seq., 186, 217, 336, 338, 465 convertio 336 corruption 36, 53, 55, 62, 70, 72, 74, 156, 164, 172, 198, 212, 253, 268, 311, 336, 407 creation 47, 51 – 59, 61 seq., 64 seq., 67, 70 seq., 74 – 76, 78, 82, 88, 126, 132, 154 – 156, 162, 165 – 168, 170, 172, 188, 198 seq., 204, 206, 208, 213, 220, 244, 251, 311, 336, 375, 390, 429 seq., 463 – 465, 468 culpa 49, 198, 365, 383 cupiditas 55, 64, 67, 69, 172, 183, 209, 234, 332 curvitas 336 – 340 de condigno 268, 270 seq., 274, 277 seq., 281, 311, 314 de congruo 267 seq., 270 seq., 274, 277 seq., 281, 311 seq., 314, 437 death 14, 24 seq., 48, 74 seq., 80, 97, 110, 130, 133, 144, 177, 182 seq., 191, 195, 197, 199, 205 seq., 211, 215, 220 – 222, 240, 243, 248, 253, 266, 312, 330, 334, 342, 350, 355, 358, 382, 385, 389 – 391, 410, 432, 441 seq., 445, 465 defectivus motus 63, 67 deprivation 56, 73, 333 determinism 64, 88, 149, 152, 154, 158 seq., 164, 168, 266, 361, 462, 471 deterministic 152, 159, 162, 164, 168, 262, 471 dilectio 63 seq., 91, 228, 234, 332, 427, 432, 450 discordia spiritus carnis 138, 173, 191 disorder 17, 48, 62, 67, 69, 72 – 75, 77, 79, 104 seq., 171 – 173, 190 seq., 193, 206, 279, 333, 336, 340, 464 seq.

divine mercy 61, 104, 159, 162, 245, 260, 270 – 272, 295, 344, 402, 460 seq. donum Dei 126 election 21, 28, 84 seq., 90 seq., 93, 100 seq., 103, 105 – 107, 112, 123, 141, 143 seq., 225, 233, 243 – 245, 250, 257, 260, 267, 276, 361, 363, 454, 456 – 458, 467 emanation 56, 258, 464 emancipatio 166 empirical 196 seq., 200, 204, 217, 468 Erfurt 34, 283 seq., 300 eve 140 seq. evil 47 seq., 50 – 60, 62, 64, 67, 69 – 71, 74 seq., 77, 79, 83, 90, 97, 102, 112, 115, 126, 130, 134, 149 – 151, 155 seq., 160, 162, 164, 166 seq., 170 seq., 174 seq., 180 – 191, 199, 208, 210 seq., 217, 229, 234, 241, 245, 248 – 250, 255 – 257, 259, 268, 293, 308, 325, 327, 331, 333, 336, 338 – 341, 355, 364 seq., 369, 373 – 377, 380, 391, 395, 407 seq., 413, 418, 420, 431, 433, 436, 448, 456, 458, 461, 463 seq., 467 seq., 470 ex nihilo 54, 56 seq., 59, 66, 77, 82, 464 externa et aliena iustitia 285, 366, 400 facientibus quod in se est Deus non denegat gratiam 18, 40, 42, 114, 265, 271, 273, 278, 280, 311, 313 seq., 466 faith 18, 23, 26 seq., 31, 33, 36 seq., 39 – 41, 47, 57, 82, 84, 89, 91 – 93, 97, 103, 107 seq., 110 seq., 113 seq., 117, 119, 121, 124 – 127, 132, 134, 139, 142, 146, 198, 200, 204, 216, 218 seq., 224, 227 – 245, 247, 249 seq., 253 seq., 256, 258, 260 seq., 268, 279, 281, 284 seq., 289 seq., 293, 295, 298, 301 seq., 306, 310, 312, 315 seq., 322, 324, 327, 339, 342 – 360, 362 seq., 365 – 367, 371, 376, 379 – 381, 383 – 393, 395 – 397, 399 – 402, 404, 406 – 411, 413, 417, 419 – 423, 431 – 433, 435 – 439, 442 – 448, 450, 452 seq., 461, 472 – 475 fall 39, 56, 60, 65, 84, 117, 122, 134, 147,

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Index rerum (of terms concepts)

152, 156, 163, 168, 172 seq., 189 seq., 192, 194, 220, 233, 251, 253, 259, 261, 268, 275, 279, 302, 313, 333, 340, 365, 367, 413, 437, 464 fides Christi 18, 32, 41, 289, 407, 442, 444, 473 fides diabolica 236, 474 fides quae per dilectionem operatur 234 fomes peccati 328 foreknowledge 89 – 91, 93, 106, 124, 144, 152, 159 – 162, 276, 453 forensic justification 39, 380, 387 free will 24, 26, 39, 42, 47, 50 seq., 59 seq., 63 seq., 67, 74, 78, 81, 83 – 85, 88 seq., 91 – 95, 98, 101 – 103, 105 seq., 108 seq., 112 seq., 115, 117, 120 – 122, 124 seq., 127, 138, 140, 147 seq., 151 seq., 154, 157, 159 – 171, 173 – 175, 178, 182 – 186, 188 – 193, 201, 206, 210, 217, 226 – 228, 233, 247, 249 – 251, 253, 255 – 257, 259, 262, 265, 267 seq., 292, 306, 333, 364, 367, 375, 442, 446, 450, 455, 458, 464, 466 – 472 freedom 12, 59, 68, 72, 92 seq., 99 seq., 108 seq., 112, 115, 117, 121, 147 seq., 152, 155, 157 – 160, 163 seq., 167, 169, 175, 182 seq., 186 – 188, 190 seq., 193, 217, 230, 249, 253 – 255, 277, 313, 333, 345 seq., 375, 436, 443 seq., 450, 465 gentiles 103, 231 German humanism 32, 35 Gnostics 47 Gospel 31, 86, 192, 213, 236, 242, 255, 285, 291, 298, 307, 324, 345 seq., 348, 356, 371, 408 seq., 425, 428, 434 seq., 442 – 447, 450 seq., 454, 461, 475 grace 18 seq., 21, 26 seq., 31, 33 seq., 37, 40, 42 seq., 50, 57 – 61, 74, 81 – 85, 87 – 89, 92 seq., 95 – 97, 99 – 101, 103, 105 – 115, 118 – 121, 123 – 127, 129 seq., 137 seq., 140 – 147, 149 – 153, 155, 157 – 167, 170, 174 seq., 177, 179, 181 – 184, 186, 188, 192 – 195, 206, 209 seq., 214, 216 seq., 219 seq., 222 – 225, 227 – 234, 236, 238 seq., 241 – 260, 262, 266 – 279,

281 – 283, 285, 292 seq., 295, 299, 301 seq., 304 – 306, 308, 310 seq., 313 – 316, 324 seq., 333, 335, 339 seq., 345, 348, 351, 353 seq., 357 seq., 361 – 363, 365, 368 seq., 371, 374 seq., 378, 380, 384 seq., 387 – 389, 391 seq., 394, 399, 401, 409 – 411, 418, 422, 425 seq., 432 – 434, 437 – 443, 446 – 448, 450 seq., 457, 459, 462, 466 seq., 469, 471 – 476 gratia cooperativa 19, 124, 224, 258, 475 gratia operativa 124, 224, 258 gratuity of salvation 26, 37, 268, 461 seq. habitus 240, 267 Heidelberg disputation 294, 299 history 21 – 24, 36 seq., 54, 79 seq., 85, 104, 119, 130, 205, 221, 243, 251, 265, 287, 300, 315, 329, 461 homo incurvatus in se 74, 173, 337 seq., 340 seq. homo inordinatus 67, 190, 257 human nature 17, 36, 38, 48 seq., 60, 62, 72, 74, 77, 84 seq., 88, 101, 104, 115, 122, 138, 146, 152, 154 seq., 164 seq., 168, 170 – 173, 183, 185 seq., 188, 194, 198 seq., 204, 207, 209, 212, 215 – 217, 221, 228, 240, 244, 248, 252, 261 seq., 279 seq., 289, 306, 309, 311, 315, 323, 325 seq., 332 seq., 335 seq., 338 seq., 341, 367, 386, 389, 407, 412, 432, 465 humankind 23, 26, 41, 60, 72, 75, 84, 89, 103 seq., 126, 143, 155, 164, 172 seq., 176, 184, 195, 197, 204 – 206, 209, 220, 222, 251, 253 seq., 257, 259, 302, 308, 310 seq., 313, 315, 323, 325, 335, 337 – 340, 343, 367, 414, 429 seq., 470, 472 humilitas 27, 40 seq., 240, 261, 285, 351, 367, 399 seq., 402 seq., 405, 409, 416 seq., 419 – 421, 434 imitatio Christi 346 impiety 106, 168, 221, 379 infants 26, 73, 90, 110, 116, 134, 137, 165, 167 seq., 170 seq., 195 seq., 198, 201, 204, 209 – 217, 223, 245, 328, 468

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Index rerum (of terms concepts)

iniquity 134, 196, 325, 341, 360, 379, 413, 433, 442, 460 initium fidei 82, 84, 89, 118 seq., 121, 124, 246, 256, 258, 302, 304 seq. initium theologiae Lutheri 28 seq. inoboedentia retributa 187 iustificatio 27, 123, 343, 423 iustitia as reddens unicuique quod suum est 132, 269, 272, 289 iustitia Dei 40, 42, 226, 271 – 273, 282, 284 seq., 289, 294 – 298, 307, 356 seq., 422, 473 iustitia hominis 226, 273, 307, 312 iustitia propria 291, 407 justification by faith 18, 26 seq., 33, 37, 233, 236, 239, 286, 344 seq., 347, 351 seq., 361, 386 seq., 391, 400 seq., 410, 417, 420, 442, 450, 473, 475 Labourers in the Vineyard 257, 260 law 62, 64, 74 seq., 78, 89, 97, 102, 122, 136, 144, 146, 148, 150, 156, 170, 174, 179, 182, 184, 189 seq., 192 seq., 205, 225, 227 – 232, 244, 250 – 252, 259, 274 seq., 283, 331, 338, 340 seq., 345, 359 seq., 366, 369 – 371, 374, 377 seq., 396 seq., 402, 425 – 431, 434, 436, 438, 441 seq., 449, 452, 461 legalistic righteousness 279, 444 Leipzig 28 seq., 477 lex fidei 227, 449 lex peccati 72, 74, 168, 179, 188, 200, 206, 217, 449 libertas 59 seq., 68, 105, 108, 155, 163 – 165, 167, 169, 171, 174, 177, 183 seq., 186, 192 seq., 202, 255, 375, 450, 455, 470 libido 64, 69, 77, 79, 172, 217 Manichaeism 50, 52, 57, 63, 99 seq., 159, 467 Manichees 47, 50, 52, 57, 63, 83, 98, 154, 170 massa 49, 73, 79, 91, 102, 104 seq., 111,

121, 142 – 145, 147, 151, 162, 199, 214, 217, 244 seq., 260, 333, 457, 460, 469 Massilians 114, 258 metaphysics of creation 47, 56 miseria 134, 184, 197 seq., 205, 208, 211, 216, 469 modern 77 monism 65 Mosaic Law 426 motus auersionis 64, 464 names 280, 282 natura 53, 55, 58, 62, 66, 120, 138, 164, 167, 187, 198 seq., 205, 211 – 213, 215, 217, 229, 235, 240, 251 – 253, 255, 334, 340, 375 seq., 396, 410, 449, 465 naturalis iuris propagatione 325 necessitas 26, 148, 152 seq., 155, 157, 160, 162 – 164, 171, 173, 175 seq., 188 seq., 194, 217, 272, 274, 471 neo-Platonism 17, 50, 53 seq., 56 seq., 87 Nichomachean Ethics 290 Nominalism 33, 279, 311 Nominalist 18, 26, 33, 40, 42, 126, 266, 268 seq., 272, 274 seq., 277 – 283, 286, 293, 295, 301, 307, 309 – 311, 313 seq., 316, 323, 365, 466 ontological communion 56, 59, 66, 247, 351, 354, 388, 390 seq., 435, 447, 464 ontological impoverishment 73, 165 order 13, 17, 25, 30, 33, 38, 43, 48 seq., 51, 53 – 56, 59 – 61, 63 – 71, 74, 77, 79, 83 – 86, 95, 97, 103, 105 – 111, 114 – 116, 119, 127, 134, 142, 145, 148 seq., 152, 154, 157 seq., 167, 172 seq., 176, 178, 180, 182 seq., 185, 189, 191, 194, 197, 200, 202, 204, 206, 208, 212, 215, 220, 224 – 230, 232 seq., 235, 246, 250 – 252, 254, 256, 261 seq., 269, 271 – 273, 275, 277, 291 seq., 295, 297, 299, 301, 306 – 308, 317, 321, 325, 332 seq., 336, 340, 343 – 345, 349, 351, 353, 359, 364 seq., 374, 381, 385, 390, 407 seq., 417 seq., 423, 429 seq., 435, 438, 440, 443 seq., 448, 460, 463, 465 seq., 469, 471

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Index rerum (of terms concepts)

ordo 25, 51, 61, 64, 67 seq., 105 – 107, 117, 125, 145, 161, 230, 235, 280, 353 originalis reatus 49 participation 54, 67, 73, 105, 195, 211, 267, 305, 387 seq., 390, 392, 429 seq. Pauline corpus 82, 101, 125, 176, 288, 303, 316, 328 perficere 75, 116 seq., 180 – 182, 371, 373 seq. perturbatio 55 Platonist 50, 52 seq., 61, 65, 87, 390 poena peccati 58, 62, 71, 77, 170, 187, 189 predestination 21, 27 seq., 50, 74, 84, 90 seq., 100 – 102, 106 seq., 112, 117, 120, 123 – 125, 133, 140, 142 – 145, 151 seq., 160, 162, 224 seq., 233, 243 – 245, 250, 257, 259, 262, 265, 267, 269, 275 – 277, 299, 305, 361 – 363, 452 – 462, 467, 469 priuatio boni 53 radicalism of grace 43, 82, 84, 114, 141, 146, 476 recentiores doctores 18, 33, 37, 41, 281, 286, 288 seq., 292, 307, 309 – 311, 313 seq., 316, 318, 324, 379, 382, 452, 466, 472 reconciliation 174, 221 Redeemer 60, 63, 200, 213, 216, 222, 239, 354, 357, 381 righteousness of God 40 – 42, 226, 247, 252, 271 seq., 279, 289 seq., 296 seq., 356 seq., 359, 403, 416, 422, 442, 445, 473 schola Augustiniana moderna 40 Scholasticism 267, 277, 363, 411 scripture 14 – 15 231, 239 secundum propositum 92, 110 – 112, 124, 160, 244, 261, 457 seq. self-righteousness 43, 279, 290 seq., 293, 297, 314, 349, 355, 369, 371 seq., 379, 382, 400, 407, 412 seq., 416

Semi-Pelagians 89, 109 seq. servitudo 435 simpliciter peccatum 58, 62, 170, 189 sub gratia 95 – 97, 103, 149 seq., 163, 177 sub lege 89, 94, 96 seq., 103, 149, 176 seq., 250, 370, 374 Summum bonum 66 supreme being 59 tradition 11, 17, 21 – 23, 26, 34, 36, 38, 40, 43, 49, 53, 56, 79, 113 – 115, 117, 119, 125, 127, 132, 138, 140, 147, 188, 219, 266, 274, 281, 284, 299, 301 seq., 304 – 306, 308 – 311, 315 seq., 321, 323, 343, 411, 434, 449, 452, 464, 466, 476 traduce peccati 104 seq. tranquilitas ordinis 55, 80, 208 Trent 21, 326 turning point 18, 22, 83, 88, 99, 109, 113, 125, 190, 282, 307 two Cities 80 unformed faith 356 uocatio 102, 110, 124 vetus homo 335, 337, 419 vice 53, 55, 181, 183, 241, 261, 391 virtue 53, 67, 71, 73, 86 – 88, 117, 134, 156 seq., 162 seq., 175, 180, 182 seq., 193, 212, 235, 239 – 241, 271, 291, 388, 394, 416, 420, 431, 433, 442, 447, 456, 471 vitia naturarum 62, 334 voluntas 25, 61 – 64, 149, 169, 181, 187, 189, 259 seq., 269, 308, 312, 364, 375, 418, 449, 457 weakness 49, 62, 70, 72, 87, 115, 122, 156, 168, 172, 177 seq., 182 seq., 186, 191, 196, 205, 232, 237, 319, 332, 366, 379, 384, 404, 418 Wittenberg 23, 29 seq., 283, 286 seq., 294, 300, 303, 316 Worms 24

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Index Nominum

Ancient authors

Hilary (of Poitiers)

Amasias 203 Ambrose of Milan 48, 49, 52, 79, 109, 139, 185, 310, 319, 411 Andreas von Karlstadt 301 Anselmian 255, 350 Anselm of Canterbury 267, 277, 300 Aristotle 160, 258, 267, 287 – 290, 300, 310, 331, 368, 382, 431, 433, 445, 450

Innocent (Pope) 73, 78, 129, 133, 137, 319

Bartholomeus von Usingen

Ockham 267, 276 seq., 279 seq., 282, 327 Optatus of Milevis 117

308

Caelestius 96, 129 seq. Cicero 159 – 161, 174 Cyprian (of Carthage) 117 seq., 139, 319 Duns Scotus

267, 276

Erasmus of Rotterdam 24, 299, 314, 316, 318, 458 Esau 85, 90 – 93, 98, 102 – 104, 106, 108, 111 seq., 123, 135, 141 seq., 260, 363, 454 – 456 Evodius 51 Gabriel Biel 40, 267, 269, 270, 272, 278, 282, 295, 314, 365 Gregory of Rimini 36, 282, 307, 311, 476

118, 319

Jacob 85, 90 seq., 93, 98, 102 – 104, 106 – 108, 110 – 112, 123, 141 seq., 260, 363, 454, 456, 460 Jerome 114 – 117, 131, 137, 319 Moses

66, 259, 298, 426, 440, 445, 451

Pelagius 37, 110, 120, 127, 129 – 131, 136, 138, 140, 156, 165, 167, 220, 225, 228, 249, 251 – 253, 256, 306, 312 seq., 316, 318 Peter Lombard 288, 300, 333, 392 Pierre d’Ailly 11, 282 Plato 86, 300 Sixtus 83, 124, 140 – 142 Staupitz 11, 34, 36, 308 Tertulian 117 Trutvetter 32 Zozimus

130

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500

Index Nominum

Modern authors

Dombrowski, Daniel

Alfeche, Mamerto 75 Alflatt, Malcolm 154, 165, 174 seq. Armas, Gregorio 64

Ebeling, Gerard 291 Eborowicz, W. 210 seq. Eno, Robert B. 119

Babcock, Williams S. 83, 90, 93, 97, 101, 103, 108, 111 – 113 Barclift, Philip L. 165 Beatrice, Pier Franco 48 Bellucci, Dino 33 Berrouard, Marie FranÅois 94 seq., 176 Beutel, Albrecht 323 Biechler, James E. 295, 314 Bonner, Gerald 49 seq., 102, 106, 108 – 110, 124, 131, 172, 305 seq. Bornkamm, Martien 285 Bougerol, Jacques-Guy 300 Bouton-Touboulic, Anne-Isabelle 54 Boyer, Charles 86 Brachtendorf, Johannes 158 seq. Brown, Peter 82, 87, 94, 125, 128, 305 Bruyn, Theodore de 136 Burnaby, John 106, 242 Burnell, Peter 119

Fay, Thomas 122 FÀbvre, Lucien 28 Ferrari, Leo C. 86 seq. Ficker, Johannes 28, 29

Cadier, Jean 317 Campenhausen, Hans von 22, 300, 343 Cary, Philip 88 Couenhoven, Jesse 50, 62, 72 seq., 76, 208, 211, 221 Craig, William Lane 160 seq. Cranz, F. Edward 285 DeCelles, David 160 Delaroche, Bruno 95 Delius, Hans-Ulrich 36 Demmer, Dorothea 35 Dewart, Joanne, McW. 173 Di Palma, Gaetano 221, 223 Dieter, Theodor 14, 288 Dihle, Albretch 147 Djuth, Marianne 60, 98 – 100, 153 – 156, 165, 173 Dodaro, Robert 95 seq., 99 seq.

196

Garc†a, Hector 222, 224, 244 Gaul, Brett 114, 181, 242 Gilson, Êtienne 242 Grane, Leif 11, 35, 292, 298 Gross, Julius 48 Hadot, Pierre 86 Hamel, Adolf 30, 35, 299, 301, 319 Harbert, B. 221, 235 Harmless, William 195, 213, 215 seq. Harrison, Carol 50, 52 seq., 56 seq., 59, 82 seq., 87, 89, 101 Heikinnen, J. W 31 Hombert, Pierre-Marie 68, 85, 109, 111 Hopkins, Jasper 148 Hübner, Hans 33 Hunsinger, George 385 seq. Irwin, T. H.

241

Jenson, Matt 62, 67, 74, 333 Johnson, Penelope D. 175 Jundt, Andre 29 Juntunen, Sameli 390 Katayanagi, Eiichi 104, 106, 112 Kelly, J. N. D. 140 Kevane, Eugene 86 Kondoleon, Theodore J. 160 Köstlin, Julius 39 LAGRANGE, M.-J. 29 Lamberigts, Mathijs 14, 69 seq., 73, 78,

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501

Index Nominum

130, 136, 138 seq., 163, 165, 168, 173, 179 seq., 190, 207, 399 Le Blond, J.-Marie 87 Lewis, Charlton 55 Lohse, Bernhard 24, 35 Lortz, Joseph 32 Lössl, Joseph 83, 91 – 93, 130 – 132, 192 Lowenich, Walter von 29 MacQueen D. J. 80 Mannermaa, Tuomo 381, 387 – 389, 391 – 393 Marin, Raffll Villegas 114 Martin, Thomas F. 31, 96 Martinetto, Giovanni 120 Marx, Karl 205 Massaut, Jean-Pierre 346 Matthews, Warren 56 Mattox, John Mark 65 Maury, Pierre 323 McGrath, Alister 22 seq., 36, 39 – 42, 117, 123, 133, 135, 234, 237, 242, 257, 268, 270 – 273, 275 – 278, 289, 296 seq., 307, 311, 315, 322 seq. McMillan, Harold 300 Meconi, David Vicent 54 Meissinger, Karl A. 29 Minois, Georges 48 Newman, Cardinal 22, 48, 343 Nisula, Timo 12, 64, 67, 69, 96, 104, 149 – 151, 172, 176, 191, 223 Oberman, Heiko A. 11, 35, 268, 273 – 277, 280 seq., 301, 310 seq., 321 O’Daly, Gerard 148 O’Donovan, Oliver 71 Ogliari, D. 120 seq., 141 Olivier, Daniel 23, 308 Pang, Ann A. 148 Pani, Giancarlo 28, 38, 287, 300, 303 seq., 309, 318 seq., 322, 326, 333, 345, 373 Pelikan, Jaroslav 21 seq., 37, 48, 299 seq., 316, 321

Pelland, Gilles 47 Pesch, Otto Hermann 131 Peura, Simo 388 seq., 391 seq., 417 Piaget, Jean 196 Pincherle, Alberto 120 Pollmann, Carla 52 Prenter, Regin 285 Rannikko, Esa 149, 181 Raunio, Antti 428 – 431 Rebillard, Eric 139 seq., 202 Rees, B. R. 136 Reta, Jos¦ Oroz 111, 160 seq. Rigby, Paul 196, 254 Rist, John 148, 184, 186, 245 seq., 249 Rowe, William L. 148 Rubio, Jos¦ 51, 60, 67, 71 Rupp, Gordon 284 Saak, Eric L. 36, 299 seq., 323 Saarinen, Risto 11, 13, 397 Saarnivaara, Uuras 31 – 33, 285, 297, 322 Sage, Athanase 122, 254 Salamito, Jean-Marie 202 Scheel, Otto 29 Scheppard, Carol 203, 207 Schindler, Alfred 228 Schlatter, Adolf 29 Schulze, Manfred 316, 318 Schwiebert, Ernst G. 287 Short, Charles 55 Smalbrugge, Mathias 133 Solignac, Aim¦ 265 Souter, Alexander 136 Springsted 51 Starnes, Colin 196 Strohl, Henri 29, 316 Stump, Eleonore 148, 159 TeSelle, Eugene 101, 120 Thonhard, Joseph 136, 201, 204 Van Bavel, Tarcisius 56, 205, 235 Van Fleteren, Frederick 97, 109, 176 seq. Vannest, Alfred 188

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502

Index Nominum

Verbeke, G¦rard 62, 97 seq. Verschoren, Marleen 177, 180, 182, 193 Vogelsang, Erich 30, 284, 387

Wilson-Kastner, Patricia 305, 387 Wood, A. S. 30 seq., 332, 390 Wright, D. F. 68

Wendebourg, Dorothea Wetzel, James 241 Williams, Norman 48

Zager, Werner 24 Zumkeller, Adolar 11, 112

443

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Index to Scripture passages

Deut. 5:9; 204 Deut. 24:16; 204 Eccl. 10:13; 70 Eccles. 18:30; 179 Eph. 2:3; 154 Eph. 2:3 – 5; 252 Eph. 2:9; 144 Eph. 4:21; 76 Eph. 6:23; 256 Ex. 20:5; 136, 209 Ex. 20:17; 179 Ex. 3:14; 66 Ex. 3:19; 365 Ezekiel, chapter 18; 133 Gal. 1:10; 289 Gal. 1:15 – 16; 453 Gal. 2:20; 358, 392 Gal. 2:21; 252, 340 Gal. 5:6; 18, 228, 299, 234, 237, 352, 474 Gal. 5:7; 105, 154, 338, 370 Gal. 5:17; 86, 175, 188, 193 Gal. 5:17c; 191 Gal. 5:18; 192 Gen. 1:18; 47 Gen. 1:29 – 30; 205 Gen. 17: 24ff; 209 Gen. 3:7; 340 Hab. 2:4; 249 Heb. 1:3; 408 Heb. 11:16; 235, 241 I Cor. 13:4; 352 I Cor. 13:5; 433 I Cor. 13:12; 235

I Cor. 15:22; 71, 198, 221, 223, 254, 325, 328, 334, 395, 468 I Cor. 15:54; 341 I Cor. 2:12 – 3; 252 I Cor. 3:18; 359 I Cor. 4:7; 108, 109, 111, 143, 249, 466 I Cor. 9:19; 346 I John 1:10; 402 I John 1:18; 396 I John 1:19; 402 I John 2:16; 207 I Tim. 2:4; 459 I Tim. 2:5; 251 II Cor. 3:6; 229, 297, 441 II Cor. 4:16; 394 II Tim. 2:10; 459 James 2:19; 237, 352, 474 Jer. 1:5; 453 Job 14:4 – 5 LXX; 199 John 1:16; 236 John 1:12; 255, 256 John 10:38; 185 John 15:5; 115, 252 John 15:22; 184 John 2:16; 69, 207 John 3:5; 223, 408 John 5:43; 185 John 6:29; 351 John 6:44; 146, 256, 348 John 6:54; 223 John 6:65; 249 John 6:66; 146 John 8:36; 193, 255, 259

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504

Index to Scripture passages

Joshua 10:32; 199, 209 Joshua 6:21; 199, 209 Joshua 7:4 – 5; 127 Joshua 7:10 – 12; 127 Leviticus 19:18; 427 Luke 10:30; 396 Mk 14:24; 459 Mk 16:16; 442 Mt 12:33; 185, 433 Mt 16:17; 348 Mt 19:19; 427 Mt 20:16; 111 Mt 23:37; 185 Mt 26:28; 459 Mt 5:14 – 15; 291 Mt 6:13; 192, 486 Mt 7:12; 425, 426, 428 Mt 9:12 – 13; 252 Philip. 1:28 – 29; 256 Philip 2:6 – 7; 346 Philip. 2:7; 334 Philip. 2: 13; 248 Philip. 3:12; 359 Prov. 18:17; 399 Prov. 8:5 LXX; 117 Prov. 8: 35 LXX; 466, 248, 259 Psalms 131:1; 281 Psalms 144:4; 199 Psalms 32:5; 402 Psalms 51; 347, 349, 40, 402 Psalms 51:1; 468 Psalms 51: 4; 349, 403, 421, 422 Psalms 51:5; 79, 325, 328 Psalms 51:7; 220 Psalms 71 (72); 284 Psalms 84:8; 359 Psalms. 84:11; 145 Rev. 3:12; 359 Rom. 1:1sqq; 453 Rom 1:16 – 17; 232 Rom. 1: 17; 235, 239, 247, 249, 282, 284, 295, 296, 298, 356, 357, 359, 445 Rom. 1:22; 291

Rom. 1: 24; 362 Rom. 2:8 – 14; 232 Rom. 3:21; 298 Rom. 10:2 – 3; 252 Rom. 11:6; 244 Rom. 11: 27; 401 Rom. 13:8; 346 Rom. 13:10; 427 Rom. 13:13 – 14; 86 Rom. 14; 292 Rom. 14:1; 281 Rom. 14: 23; 235, 241, 249 Rom. 2; 425, 426 Rom. 2: 12 – 16; 425 Rom. 2:12; 425 Rom. 2:13; 434 Rom. 2:14; 425, 485 Rom. 2:14 – 15; 231, 239 Rom. 3:4; 349, 403 Rom. 3:4sqq; 284 Rom. 3:5; 403 Rom. 3:10; 418 Rom. 3: 21 – 24; 226 Rom. 3:22; 227 Rom. 3: 24; 146, 227 Rom. 4:5; 252 Rom. 4:25; 355 Rom. 5:1; 260 Rom. 5:5; 227, 231, 426, 449 Rom. 5:10; 442 Rom. 5:12; 48, 139, 197, 221, 254, 329, 331, 333, 468 Rom. 5:12sqq; 325 Rom. 5:12 – 19; 198, 323, 328, 395 Rom. 5:14; 333, 395 Rom. 5:18; 221 Rom. 6:3; 195 Rom. 6:12; 192 Rom. 6:12 – 13; 179 Rom. 6:20; 255 Rom. 7; 79, 94, 95, 149, 150, 176, 177, 181, 182, 188, 193, 194, 374, 397 Rom. 7:1 – 13; 193 Rom. 7:14; 105 Rom. 7:14sqq; 105, 149, 156 Rom. 7:14 – 25; 57, 75, 95, 96, 122, 123,

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505

Index to Scripture passages

152, 153, 156, 171, 173, 175, 176, 177, 178, 180, 182, 191, 194, 206, 217, 250, 336, 369, 371, 373, 374, 376, 380, 382, 466, 471 Rom. 7:15; 180, 189, 193, 259 Rom. 7:17; 180 Rom. 7:18; 89, 180, 336, 376 Rom. 7:19; 58, 89, 173, 188, 193 Rom. 7:20; 187, 192, 328, Rom. 7:23 – 25; 154, 396 Rom. 7:24; 75 Rom. 7:24 – 25; 97 Rom. 7:25; 193, 194 Rom. 8:1 – 4; 396 Rom. 8:3; 334, 432 Rom. 8:10 – 11; 76 Rom. 8:16; 422 Rom. 8:18; 281 Rom. 8: 28; 124, 457 Rom. 9; 84, 85, 90, 94, 101, 102, 106, 141, 457

Rom. 9:6sqq; 456 Rom. 9:8sqq; 454 Rom. 9:10 – 29; 123, 135 Rom. 9:11; 98, 142, 145 Rom. 9:11 – 12; 107 Rom. 9:11 – 13; 92 Rom. 9:12; 92 Rom. 9:12 – 13; 85 Rom. 9:13; 92 Rom. 9:15; 145, 365, 426, 454 Rom. 9:16; 110, 115, 117 , 125, 291, 457 Rom. 9:17; 365 Rom. 9:17 – 18; 454 Rom. 9:18; 145 Rom. 9:20; 126, 365, 458 Rom. 9:20 – 21; 105, 246 Rom. 9:22; 127 Sir. 40:1; 26, 73, 79, 198, 211, 212, 217, 468 Wisdom 9:1; 211 Wisdom 9:15; 212

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