Читать книгу Church History (Vol.1-3) - J. H. Kurtz - Страница 67

While the Trinitarian and Christological controversies had their origin in the East and there gave rise to the most violent conflicts, the West taking indeed a lively interest in the discussion and by the decisive voice of Rome giving the victory to orthodoxy at almost every stage of the struggle, it was in the West that a controversy broke out, which for a full century proceeded alongside of the Christological controversy, without awakening in the East more than a passing and even then only a secondary interest. It dealt with the fundamental questions of sin and grace. In opposition to the Pelagian Monergism of human freedom, as well as the semi-Pelagian Synergism of divine grace and human freedom, the Augustinian Monergism of divine grace finally obtained the victory.

§ 53.1. Preliminary History.—From the earliest times the actual universality of sin and the need of divine grace in Christ for redemption from sin received universal acknowledgment throughout the whole church. But as to whether and how far the moral freedom of men was weakened or lost by sin, and in what relation human conduct stood to divine grace, great uncertainty prevailed. Opposition to Gnosticism and Manichæism led the older fathers to emphasise as strongly as possible the moral freedom of men, and induced them to deny inborn sinfulness as well as the doctrine that sin was imprinted in men in creation, and to account for man’s present condition by bad training, evil example, the agency of evil spirits, etc. This tendency was most vigorously expressed by the Alexandrians. The new Alexandrian school showed an unmistakable inclination to connect the universality of sin with Adam’s sin, without going the length of affirming the doctrine of inherited sinfulness. In Soteriology it remained faithful to its traditional synergism (comp., however, § 47, 7k, l.) The Antiochean school sought to give due place to the co-operation of the human will alongside of the necessity of divine grace, and reduced the idea of inherited sin to that of inherited evil. So especially Chrysostom, who was indeed able to conceive that Adam by his actual sin become mortal could beget only mortal children, but not that the sinner could beget only sinners. The first man brought death into the world, we confirm and renew the doom by our own sin. Man by his moral will does his part, the divine grace does its part. The whole East is unanimous in most distinctly repudiating all predestinational wilfulness in God. In the West, on the other hand, by Traducianism or Generationism introduced by Tertullian, which regards the soul as begotten with the body, the way was prepared for recognising the doctrine of inherited sin (Tradux animæ, tradux peccati) and consequently also of monergism. Tertullian, himself, proceeding from the experience, that in every man from birth there is present an unconquerable tendency to sin, spoke with great decidedness of a Vitium originis. In this he was followed by Cyprian, Ambrose and Hilary. Yet even these teachers of the church had not altogether been emancipated from synergism, and alongside of expressions which breathe the hardest predestinationism, are found others which seem to give equal weight to the opposite doctrine of human co-operation in conversion. Augustine was the first to state with the utmost consistency the doctrine of the divine monergism; while Pelagius carried out the synergism of the earlier fathers until it became scarcely less than human monergism.—Meanwhile Traducianism did not succeed in obtaining universal recognition even in the West. Augustine vacillates; Jerome and Leo the Great prefer Creationism, which represents God as creating a new soul for each human being begotten. Most of the later church fathers, too, are creationists, without, however, prejudicing the doctrine of inherited sin. Those of them who supported the trichotomic theory (§ 52, 1) held that it was the cobegotten ψυχὴ ἄλογος, anima sensitiva as opposed to the anima intellectualis, while those who supported the dichotomic theory, which posits merely body and soul, held that it was the soul created good by God, which was infected on its passing into the body begotten by human parents with its inherited sin. The theory of Pre existence, which Origen had brought forward (§ 31, 5) had, even in the East, only occasional representatives (§ 47, 7m, n, o).166

§ 53.2. The Doctrine of Augustine.—During the first period of his Christian life, when the conflict with Manichæism still stood in the forefront of his thinking and controversial activity, Augustine, looking at faith as a self-determining of the human will, had thought a certain measure of free co-operation on the part of man in his conversion to be necessary and had therefore refused to maintain his absolute want of merit. But by his whole life’s experience he was irresistibly led to acknowledge man’s natural inability for any positive co-operation and to make faith together with conversion depend solely upon the grace of God. The perfect and full development of this doctrine was brought about by means of his controversy with the Pelagians. Augustine’s doctrinal system in its most characteristic features is as follows: Man was created free and in the image of God, destined to and capable of attaining immortality, holiness and blessedness, but also with the possibility of sinning and dying. By the exercise of his freedom he must determine his own career. Had he determined himself for God, the being able not to sin and not to die, would have become an impossibility of sinning and dying, the Posse non peccare et mori would have become a Non posse peccare et mori. But tempted by Satan he fell, and thus it became for him impossible that he should not sin and die, non posse non peccare et non mori. All prerogatives of the Divine image were lost; he retained only the capacity for outward civil righteousness, Justitia civilis, and a capacity for redemption. In Adam, moreover, all mankind sinned, for he was all mankind. By generation Adam’s nature as it was after sin, with sin and guilt, death and condemnation, but also the capacity for redemption, passed over to all his posterity. Divine grace, which alone can redeem and save man, attached itself to the remnant of the divine image which expressed itself in the need of redemption and the capacity for redemption. Grace is therefore absolutely necessary, in the beginning, middle and end of the Christian life. It is granted man, not because he believes, but that he may believe; for faith too is the work of God’s grace. First of all grace awakens through the law the consciousness of sin and the desire for redemption, and leads by the gospel to faith in the Redeemer (gratia præveniens). By means of faith it thus secures the forgiveness of sin as primum beneficium through appropriating the merits of Christ and in part the powers of the divine life through the implanting of living fellowship with Christ (in baptism). Thus is free will restored to the good (Gratia operans) and evidences itself in a holy life in love. But even in the regenerate the old man with his sinful lusts is still present. In the struggle of the new with the old he is continually supported by Divine grace (Gratia co-operans) unto his justification (Justificatio) which is completed in the making righteous of his whole life and being through the Divine impartation (Infusio) of new powers of will. The final act of grace, which, however, according to the educative wisdom of God is not attained in this life, is the absolute removal of evil desire (Concupiscentia) and transfiguration into the perfect likeness of Christ through resurrection and eternal life (Non posse peccare et mori). Apart from the inconsistent theory of justification proposed, this view of nature and grace is thoroughly Pauline. Augustine, however, connects with it the doctrine of an absolute predestination. Experience shows that not all men attain to conversion and redemption. Since man himself can contribute nothing to his conversion, the ground of this must be sought not in the conduct of the man but only in an eternal unconditional decree of God, Decretum absolutum, according to which He has determined out of the whole fallen race of man, Massa perditionis, to save some to the glory of His grace and to leave others to their deserved doom to the glory of His penal righteousness. The ground of this election is only the wise and mysterious good pleasure of the divine will without reference to man’s faith, which is indeed only a gift of God. If it is said: “God wills that all men should be saved,” that can only mean, “all who are predestinated.” As the outcasts (Reprobati) can in no way appropriate grace unto themselves, the elect (Electi) cannot in any way resist it (Gratia irresistibilis). The one sure sign that one is elected is, therefore, undisturbed perseverance in the possession of grace (Donum perseverantiæ). To the heathens, even the noblest of them, he refused salvation, but made a distinction in the degrees of their penal tortures. So too unbaptized children were all regarded as lost. Although over against this he also set down the proposition: Contemtus, non defectus sacramenti damnat, the resolution of this contradiction lay in the special divine election of grace, which secures to the elect the dispensation of the sacrament.167

§ 53.3. Pelagius and his Doctrine.—Pelagius (§ 47, 21), a British monk of respectable learning and decided moral earnestness, living far away from the storms and strife of life, without any strong inward temptations, without any inclination to manifest sins and without deep experience of the Christian life, knowing and striving after no higher ideal than that of monkish asceticism, had developed a theory quite antagonistic to that of Augustine. He was strengthened in his opposition to Augustine’s doctrine of the corruption of human nature and its unfitness for all co-operation in conversion and sanctification, by observing that this doctrine was often misused by careless men as an excuse for carnal confidence and moral selfishness. He was thus made more resolute in maintaining that it is more wholesome to preach to men an imperative moral law whose demands they, as he thought, could satisfy by determined will and moral endeavour. Man at first was created mortal by God, and not temporal but spiritual death is the consequence and punishment of sin. Adam’s fall has changed nothing in human nature and has had no influence upon his descendants. Every man now is born just as God created the first man, i.e. without sin and without virtue. By his wholly unweakened freedom he decides for himself on the one side or the other. The universality of sin results from the power of seduction, of mere example and habit. Still there may be completely sinless men; and there have been such. God’s grace facilitates man’s accomplishment of his purpose. It is, therefore, not absolutely, but by the actual universality of sin, relatively necessary. Grace consists in enlightenment by revelation, in forgiveness of sin as the expression of divine forbearance, and in the strengthening of our moral powers by the incentive of the law and the promise of eternal life. God’s grace is destined for all men, but man must make himself worthy of it by honest striving after virtue. Christ became man, in order by His perfect teaching and by the perfect pattern of His life to give us the most powerful incentive to reformation and the redeeming of ourselves thereby. As in sin we are Adam’s offspring, so in virtue shall we be Christ’s offspring. He regarded baptism as necessary (infant baptism in remissionem futurorum peccatorum). Children dying unbaptized he placed in a lower stage of blessedness. The same inconsistent submission to the fathers of ecclesiastical tradition shows itself in the acceptance of ecclesiastical views of revelation, miracles, prophecy, the Trinity and the Divinity of Christ, whereas a more consistent and systematic thinker would have felt compelled from his anthropological principles to set aside or at least modify these supernaturalistic elements.

§ 53.4. The Pelagian Controversy, A.D. 411–431.—From A.D. 409 Pelagius resided in Rome. Here he gained over to his views Cœlestius, a man of greater acuteness and scientific attainments than himself. Both won high respect in Rome for their zeal for morality and asceticism and promulgated their doctrine without opposition. In A.D. 411 both went to Carthage, whence Pelagius went and settled in Palestine. Cœlestius remained behind and obtained the office of presbyter. Now for the first time his errors were opposed. Paulinus deacon of Milan (§ 47, 20) happening to be there formally complained against him, and a provincial Synod at Carthage A.D. 412 excommunicated him, on his refusal to retract. In the same year too Augustine published his first controversial treatise: De peccatorum meritis et remissione et de baptismo parvulorum, Lb. III. In Palestine Pelagius had attached himself to the Origenists. Jerome, besides passing a depreciatory judgment upon his literary productions, contested his doctrine as an expounder of the Origenist heresy (Ep. ad Ctesiphontem and Dialog. c. Pelagium, Lb. III.), and a young Spanish presbyter Paulus [Paul] Orosius (§ 47, 20) complained of him to the Synod of Jerusalem A.D. 415, under the presidency of bishop John of that city. The synergistic orientals, however, could not be convinced of the dangerous character of his carefully guarded doctrine. Such too was the result of the Synod of Diospolis or Lydda in A.D. 415 under bishop Eulogius of Cæsarea, where two Gallic bishops appeared as accusers. Augustine proved to the Palestinians in De gestis Pelagii that they had allowed themselves to be kept in the dark by Pelagius. Orosius too published a controversial tract, Apologeticus c. Pelag., in reply to which, or more probably to Jerome, Theodore of Mopsuestia wrote the book now lost, Περὶ τοὺς λέγοντας, φύσει καὶ οὐ γνώμη πταίειν τοὺς ἀνθρώπους. Then the Africans again took up the controversy. Two Synods at Mileve and Carthage, in A.D. 416, reiterated their condemnation and sent their decree to Innocent I. at Rome. The Pope acquiesced in the proceedings of the Africans. Pelagius sent a veiled confession of faith and Cœlestius appeared personally in Rome. Innocent died, however, in A.D. 417, before his arrival. His successor Zozimus [Zosimus], perhaps a Greek and certainly weak as a dogmatist, allowed himself to be won over by Cœlestius and brought severe charges against the Africans, against which again these entered a vigorous protest. In A.D. 418 the emperor Honorius issued his Sacrum rescriptum against the Pelagians and a general Synod at Carthage in the same year emphatically condemned them. Now Zozimus [Zosimus] was prevailed on also to condemn them in his Epistola tractatoria. Eighteen Italian bishops, among them Julian of Eclanum in Apulia, the most acute and able apologist of Pelagianism, refused to subscribe and were banished. They sought and obtained protection from the Constantinopolitan bishop Nestorius. But this connection did harm to both. The Roman bishop Cœlestine took part with those who opposed the Christological views of Nestorius (§ 52, 3), and at the Œcumenical Council of Ephesus in A.D. 431, the orientals condemned along with Nestorius also Pelagius and Cœlestius, without, however, determining anything positive in regard to the doctrine under discussion. To this end with unwearied zeal laboured Marius Mercator, a learned layman of Constantinople, who published two Commonitoria against Pelagius and Cœlestius, and a controversial treatise against Julian of Eclanum. Meanwhile too Augustine rested not from his energetic polemic. In A.D. 413 he wrote De spiritu et littera ad Marcellinum; in A.D. 415 against Pelagius, De natura et gratia; against Cœlestius, De perfectione justitiæ hominis. In A.D. 416, De gestis Pelagii. In A.D. 418, De gratia Dei et de peccato originali Lb. II. c. Pelag. et Cœl. In A.D. 419, De nuptiis et concupiscentia Lb. II., against the charge that his doctrine was a reviling of God-appointed marriage. In A.D. 420, C. duas epistolas Pelagianorum et Bonifatium I., against the vindicatory writings of Julian and his friends. In A.D. 421, Lb. VI. c. Julianum. And later still, Opus imperfectum c. secundam Juliani responsionem. Engl. Transl.; Ante-Nicene Lib.: Anti-Pelag. Wr., 3 vols., Edin., 1867 ff.

§ 53.5. The Semi-Pelagian Controversy, A.D. 427–529.—Bald Pelagianism was overthrown, but the excessive crudeness of the predestination theory, as set forth by Augustine, called forth new forms of opposition. The monks of the monastery of Adrumetum in North Africa, by severely carrying out the predestination theory to its last consequences, had fallen, some into sore distress of soul and despair, others into security and carelessness, while others again thought that to avoid such consequences, one must ascribe to human activity in the work of salvation a certain degree of meritoriousness. The abbot of the monastery in this dilemma applied to Augustine, who in two treatises, written in A.D. 427, De gratia et libero arbitrio and De correptione et gratia, sought to overcome the scruples and misconceptions of the monks. But about this time in Southern Gaul there was a whole theological school which rejected the doctrine of predestination, and maintained the necessity of according to human freedom a certain measure of co-operation with divine grace, in consequence of which sometimes the one, sometimes the other, is fundamental in conversion. At the head of this school was Johannes Cassianus († A.D. 432), a disciple and friend of Chrysostom, founder and president of the monastery at Massilia. His followers are thence called Massilians or Semi-Pelagians. He had himself contested Augustine’s doctrine, without naming it, in the 13th of his Collationes Patrum (§ 47, 21). Of his disciples the most famous was Vincentius [Vincent] Lerinensis (of the monastery of Lerinum), who in his Commonitorium pro Catholicæ fidei antiquitate et universitate (Engl. Transl., Oxford, 1836) laid down the principle that the catholic faith is, quod semper, ubique et ab omnibus creditum est. Judged by this standard Augustine’s doctrine was by no means catholic. The second book of this work, now lost, probably contested Augustinianism expressly and was, therefore, suppressed. But Augustine had talented supporters even in Gaul, such as the two laymen Hilarius and Prosper Aquitanicus (§ 47, 20). What took place around them they reported to Augustine, who wrote against the Massilians De predestinatione Sanctorum and De dono perseverantiæ. He was prevented by his death, which took place in A.D. 430, from taking part longer in the contest. Hilarius and Prosper, however, continued it. Since the Roman bishop Cœlestine, before whom in A.D. 431 they personally made complaint, answered with a Yes and No theology, Prosper himself took up the battle in an able work De gratia Dei et libero arbitrio contra Collatorem, but in doing so unwittingly smoothed off the sharpest points of the Augustinian system. This happened yet more decidedly in the ingenious treatise De Vocatione gentium, whose author was perhaps Leo the Great, afterwards pope but then only a deacon. On the other side, opponents (Arnobius the younger?) used the artifice of presenting, in the notable work entitled Prædestinatus, pretending to be written by a follower of Augustine, a caricature of the doctrine of predestination carried to the utmost extreme of absurdity, and these sought to justify their own position. The first book contains a description of ninety heresies, the last of which is predestinationism; the second gives as supplement to the first the pretended treatise of such a predestinarian; and the third confutes it. A certain presbyter Lucidus, a zealous adherent of the doctrine of predestination, was by a semi-Pelagian synod at Aries in A.D. 475 forced to recant. Faustus, bishop of Rhegium (§ 47, 21), sent after him by order of the Council a controversial treatise De gratia Dei et humanæ mentis libero arbitrio, and also in the same year A.D. 475, a Synod at Lyons sanctioned semi-Pelagianism. The treatise of Faustus, although moderate and conciliatory, caused violent agitation among a community of Scythian monks in Constantinople, A.D. 520. They complained through bishop Possessor of Carthage to pope Hormisdas, but he too answered with a Yes and No theology. Then the Africans banished by the Vandals to Sardinia took up the matter. They held a Council in A.D. 523, by whose order Fulgentius of Ruspe (§ 47, 20), a zealous apologist of Augustinianism composed his De veritate prædest. et gratia Dei Lb. III., which made an impression even in Gaul. And now two able Gallic bishops, Avitus of Vienne and Cæsarius of Arles (§ 47, 20) entered the lists in behalf of a moderate Augustinianism, and won for it at the Synod of Oranges in A.D. 529 a decided victory over semi-Pelagianism. Augustine’s doctrine of original sin in its strictest form, and his assertions about the utter want of merit in every human act and the unconditional necessity of grace were acknowledged, faith was extolled as exclusively the effect of grace, but predestination in regard to the Reprobati was reduced to mere foreknowledge, and predestination to evil was rejected as blasphemy against God. A synod held in the same year, A.D. 529, at Valence confirmed the decrees of Oranges. Boniface II. of Rome did the same in A.D. 530.168—Continuation § 91, 5.