Divine Grace and Human Agency: A Study of the Semi-Pelagian Controversy (review)

The century between Augustine’s death in 430 and the so-called Council of Orange in 529 has been treated rather cursorily by historians of doctrine, obscured as it has been by the long shadow of the bishop of Hippo. The tendency in treatments focusing on Dogmengeschichte has been to regard the period as a sort of quiet backwater, highlighted occasionally by evidence of the decays and glimmerings of Augustinianism. Such a viewpoint has never been adequate, and its insufficiency has been underscored in recent decades by the renewed scholarly interest in the profound social and cultural transformations of the fifth and sixth centuries. Rebecca Weaver’s monograph makes a substantial step forward by setting the “Semi-Pelagian” controversy in the context of some of these transformations.

Weaver’s interests are theological, a fact which—O tempore!—sets her treatment apart from much that is currently being written about early Christianity. Her central thesis is unremarkable, namely, that the controversies over divine grace and human agency that burst forth sporadically from Augustine’s last years (c. 426) to Orange were the function of deep differences of theological concern and social setting between the disputants. Such differences have been noted before. Weaver’s study, however, is remarkable in its ability to mark out their contours through careful, sensitive reading of the polemical texts.

Weaver distills the differences between, on the one hand, Augustine and his defenders and, on the other, those who questioned his doctrine of divine grace. The former, operating within a congregational setting, sought to safeguard the sovereignty of grace, while the latter, from within a monastic milieu, aimed to preserve the connection between human actions and human destiny. While Augustine’s opponents could be regarded as traditionalists, following a path tracing back through Evagrius Ponticus and Origen, Augustine’s own account of divine grace was novel and “almost entirely self-constructed.” The “Semi-Pelagian” controversy, then, is essentially a clash between two different ways of conceiving the relations between God and humanity, “the Augustinian and the monastic.” At first blush, this distinction may seem overdone; Augustine was, after all, a cenobite of a sort and a guide to the monastic life. In truth, the distinction between the two perspectives might be expressed with greater nuance. But the reality to which it points is clear enough. As Weaver patiently demonstrates, the differences between Augustine and, for example, John Cassian, were so deep that they could not be overcome by the convergences of vocabulary that marked the century-long evolution of the controversy.

Beginning with Augustine’s troubles with the monks of Hadrumetum, Weaver traces this evolution through a clear and informative survey of the writings of the combatants: Cassian, Prosper of Aquitaine, Vincent of Lérins, Faustus of Riez, Fulgentius of Ruspe, and Caesarius of Arles. This survey is unobtrusively informed by the most recent scholarship, and Weaver proves herself a careful reader of texts. The result is the clearest and most theologically astute account of the “Semi-Pelagian” controversy now available. It also suggests the need for detailed and comprehensive accounts of Gallic and North African monasticism. This book should certainly be in every theological library. It is a sure guide to an important period in the history of doctrine, for the Augustine who emerged from this period, his rough predestinarian edges worn somewhat smoother by the course of this controversy, was the doctor of grace for the Middle Ages.