Grace for Grace: The Debates after Augustine and Pelagius

6. Prosper's Pneumatology: The Development of an Augustinian

97 6 PROSPER’S PNEUMATOLOGY The Development of an Augustinian Thomas L. Humphries Jr. An essay on the development of a particular theologian’s ideas must take several things for granted, including which texts the author wrote and when he wrote them. In the case of Prosper of Aquitaine , historians and theologians meet a perplexing figure for whom such simple matters as which texts he wrote and when he wrote them are in dispute. The case is only further complicated when we attempt to address the extent to which Prosper engages the thought of Augustine. Many have supposed that Prosper’s theology is a pure form of “Augustinianism” that is better than other Gallic theological systems. But this picture of Prosper is not nuanced enough for today’s historical theologian. Many other Gallic theologians, even those against whom Prosper argued, also read and engaged Augustine ’s thought. Prosper is not the only Augustinian theologian in fifth-century Gaul; nor is he entirely consistent in his theological opinions. In this short chapter, I would like to revisit one aspect of Prosper’s thought that is central to our understanding of his Augustinianism , his pneumatology. I argue that Prosper’s understanding of Augustine’s pneumatology developed. The basic form of my argument traces Prosper’s use of the Holy Spirit in explaining the 98 THOMAS L. HUMPHRIES JR reformation of the will. In his early works, Prosper makes no use of pneumatological claims to support his arguments about free will and grace; whereas in his later works, Prosper uses key pneumatological verses like Rom. 5:5, 8:14–15, and Galatians 4:6 to great advantage . Prosper learned both his initial emphasis on the priority of grace and the importance of pneumatology in these arguments from texts like Augustine’s On Rebuke and Grace, and, so, I argue that Prosper’s pneumatological development demonstrates his development as an Augustinian. As Prosper comes to understand Augustine ’s pneumatology better, he makes use of it in his arguments about grace and free will in the same way Augustine did. Since the literary corpus of Prosper is contested, we must consider how my argument works in relation to texts that are generally accepted as authored by Prosper and texts for which his authorship is contested. We know that Prosper was a layman who had been taken captive by Arian Visigoths early in his life. When he returned to Catholic territories in Gaul (c. 415), he began his writing career. Before that, he had been educated where he was born (c. 390), in the region of western Gaul known as Aquitaine.1 The works that come from the middle of his career are seldom contested, while 1. The most recent biography and theological discussion of Prosper is Alexander Y. Hwang, Intrepid Lover of Perfect Grace: The Life and Thought of Prosper of Aquitaine (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2009). The works of Prosper are collected in PL 51. Many are edited in CCL 68A and CSEL 47 and 57. English translations of select works are available in ACW 14 and 32, Supplements to VC, and FC 7. The works cited here are abbreviated as follows: prov. Dei = On the Providence of God; Ep. ad Aug. = Letter to Augustine; Ep. ad Ruf. = Letter to Rufinus; c. coll. = On Grace and Free Will Against the Conferencer [i.e. Cassian]; voc. om. gen. = The Call of All Nations; gr. et lib. arb. = On the Grace of God and the Free Choice of the Will. For a current critique of Prosper’s analysis of Cassian, see Augustine Casiday, “Rehabilitating John Cassian: An Evaluation of Prosper of Aquitaine’s Polemic against the ‘Semipelagians’,” SJT 58, no. 3 (2005): 270–84. See also M. Cappuyns , “Le Premier Repésentant De L’augustinisme Médiéval, Prosper D’aquitaine,” RTAM 1 (1929): 309–37; Ralph W. Mathisen, “For Specialists Only: The Reception of Augustine and His Teachings in Fifth-Century Gaul,” in Augustine: Presbyter Factus Sum, ed. Joseph T. Lienhard, Earl C. Muller, and Roland J. Teske, Collectanea Augustiniana (New York: P. Lang, 1993), 29–42; Steven Muhlberger, The Fifth-Century Chroniclers: Prosper, Hydatius, and the Gallic Chronicler of 452, Arca, PROSPER’S PNEUMATOLOGY 99 works from both the early and late periods of his life have been the subject of much controversy. Within the works that most scholars agree belong to Prosper, we can see a...