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Freedom and Necessity: St. Augustine's Teaching on Divine Power and Human Freedom
Apart from the role played by "personal emotion" (p. 17), St. Augustine's unwavering fight against the Pelagians was ultimately due to his conviction that his doctrine of grace, and the consequent theory of predestination, was the expression of true orthodoxy. This was no novelty. The Pelagians, too,were convinced that their doctrinal position was consistent with Holy Scripture and the Church's tradition. In point of fact, at the origin of their controversy there was a different attitude as to the interpretation of Adam's Fall and its effects on his descendants. Augustine was adamant in asserting universal sinfulness: all human beings, as a result of the Fall, make up the massa damnata in that they inherit Adam's guilt—in the sense that they actually share his responsibility. In fact, even when baptized, their nature remains "corrupted"and cannot achieve good without the help of grace, which is ultimately responsible for perseverance and salvation. In his predestination, God mysteriously delivers from the massa damnata only those he wishes to save and leaves those who are not reached by his unfathomable mercy to be doomed eternally.
In opposition to Augustine, the Pelagians were at pains to stress that in spite of Adam's Fall, free will had not lost entirely the power of acting and pursuing good, and the ability to refrain from sinning. Therefore they rightly emphasized— [End Page 92] although overoptimistically—man's responsibility. Moreover, they would contend that it would be impossible to maintain the agency of free will in the light of Augustine's somber doctrine of predestination whereby the election of the few and the consequent damnation of the many lay utterly in God's inscrutable designs. With regard to this, Gerald Bonner's conviction that, according to Augustine,"predestination whether to salvation or reprobation, is absolute" (p. 100) should be nuanced. It is certainly "absolute"—and positively so—with regard to salvation, but it could only be "relative" (in the sense that it can be inferred) with regard to reprobation. To maintain the contrary would mean to attribute to God the positive will to consign lots of people to perpetual damnation. Although we might indeed be left with the impression that "having proclaimed the mystery,Augustine then sought to defend it by argument"( p. 116), nevertheless it should be clear that predestination is a category that, set against the background of the massa damnata, must be applied only to salvation. In fact, however incomprehensible it may be, reprobation is merely a "consequence" of not being elected. In this light, the radicalization of Calvin's supralapsarian approach to predestination and its openness to a double predestination (see p. 46) does not translate Augustine's intention, although one may say that finally the result is the same.
Bonner masterfully synthesizes in a few chapters the difficult topic of the relationship between grace and free will and its extreme outcome, viz., predestination. Although at times it lacks systematization, the presentation is on the whole quite balanced and often supported by primary sources. Finally, even the fact that the problems considered are set in a wider context and are interconnected with the different aspects of Augustine's theology and that of his opponents, it is not only a sign of a necessary, comprehensive approach but also a proof of Bonner's extensive knowledge of both Augustinism and Pelagianism. This is a sufficient guarantee for the book itself.
Noci, Italy