Salvation and Sin: Augustine, Langland, and Fourteenth-Century Theology

2 Illustrating “Modern Theology”: Sin and Salvation in Ockham

        Illustrating “Modern Theology” Sin and Salvation in Ockham Garriebam plane quasi peritus et, nisi in Christo, Salvatore nostro, viam tuam quaerrerem, non peritus sed periturus essem. [I chattered on loquaciously as though I were an expert and yet unless I searched for your way in Christ our savior I would have been no expert but perished.] Augustine, Confessions, VII.. I I will begin this brief account of Ockham on sin and salvation with his commentary on the first book of the Sentences.1 Ockham sets himself the following question: “Utrum praeter Spiritum Sanctum necesse sit ponere caritatem absolutam creatam, animam formaliter informanten” (III.). He characteristically argues that “de potentia Dei absoluta” God can accept the soul to final salvation without any divinely given form inhering in the soul: that is, without any habit (III.‒). The key to Ockham’s approach is that whoever is accepted by God is for that reason worthy of eternal life (III.; see similarly ‒). The focus is on divine acceptance. It is neither on the consequences of sin for the powers  of the human soul and her separation from God nor on the transforming , healing powers of divine grace. Ockham’s habitual use of de potentia absoluta facilitates this focus. So, for example, God “in potentia Dei absoluta ,” could accept or not accept one informed with a supernatural form, or somebody who had received the divine gift of charity could be unlovely and unacceptable to God: “tales non esset carus et acceptus Deo” (III.; see too ). Indeed, God could give such a gift and then annihilate it before he gave eternal life to its subject (III.‒). Of course, Ockham’s deployment of the dialectic of potentia absoluta and potentia ordinata never collapses the former into the latter.2 Ockham affirms traditional teaching on divine agency in the redemption of humanity and is certain that his theology is free from any traces of Pelagianism. There has been a long debate, in both medieval and modern times, about Ockham’s relations to semi-Pelagianism or Pelagianism. Rega Wood, among the most learned of Ockham scholars, has fully supported Ockham’s claims, whereas Marilyn McCord Adams, an equally learned author of a massive, indispensable two-volume work on Ockham , has determined that his theology of salvation is “semi-Pelagian.”3 Ockham’s defense of his position is that Pelagianism is constituted by the claim that a “good act” obliges God to confer eternal life on its subject and that such obligatory acceptance is not solely a matter of God’s free grace (III.‒). That is, Pelagianism puts God under necessity to accept someone, whereas Ockham’s pervasive dialectic of potentia absoluta and potentia ordinata maintains God’s freedom and so, according to Ockham , keeps the theologian far removed from Pelagianism. Rega Wood’s recent defense of Ockham’s self-defense concedes that Ockham maintains that grace is not required for virtue, that pagans can love God above all else, that sinners can do good works disposing them to grace, and that foreseen merits precede predestination.4 But she asserts that only an “ultra-Augustinian” would accuse Ockham of “semi-Pelagianism” because Ockham is actually “like Augustine” in maintaining “the thesis that God completely controls the economy of salvation.”5 This is a fascinating judgment made in very revealing language. For Wood has allowed Ockham’s version of divine power and divine freedom in “the economy of salvation” to determine her own view of Christian tradition and Augustinian orthodoxy. As we will see, the key issue is in the term controls. Pelagians allegedly deprive God of “control,” whereas the orthodox, “like  Salvation and Sin Augustine,” do not. The risk of such language is that the theology of the reconciliation between God and humanity in Christ gets swallowed up in a language of power and control, albeit in Ockham’s case a “control” deferred until the display of the final divine decision to accept or not to accept. Furthermore, such language and the debate to which it belongs can occlude many of the issues that concern this book and its readings of Augustine, Ockham, Bradwardine, and Langland. So, in the present case, both Ockham and the modern commentator sideline issues concerning the consequences of habitual sin for the powers of the sinner’s intellect and will, the consequences for her love of God and love of neighbor . Issues concerning the perfectionist expectations of Pelagianism also disappear. Instead of...