Correspondence on Christology and Grace: Correspondence on Christology and Grace

Preface

PREFACE This is the second volume in the Fathers of the Church series dedicated to the North African bishop and theologian St. Fulgentius of Ruspe (ca. 467–ca. 532). The first, translated by Robert Eno and published in 1997, is broad in scope, containing the Life of the Blessed Bishop Fulgentius and a number of the bishop’s theological and moral treatises. This current volume is meant as a complement to that earlier one, and its focus is considerably narrower. It contains correspondence between Fulgentius (writing on behalf of a group of North African bishops) and a group of Latin-speaking monks from Scythia (near the mouth of the Danube River in modern-day Romania) between AD 519 and 523. The correspondence between Fulgentius and the Scythian monks is significant—and striking—because it stands at the intersection of two great theological discussions: the primarily eastern Christological controversies between the Fourth Ecumenical Council (at Chalcedon in 451) and the Fifth (at Constantinople in 553) and the largely western discussions about grace (the so-called “Semi-Pelagian” controversy ) that stretched from the closing years of St. Augustine’s life (the discussion began in 427, and Augustine died in 430) to the Second Synod of Orange in 529. Contemporary western scholars normally treat these controversies over Christ and grace separately, but there were noteworthy points of contact between the discussions. In the 420s, John Cassian was the ardent opponent of both Nestorius on Christology and Pelagius on grace, even though he has subsequently been branded (probably unjustly) as the father of Semi-Pelagianism. The correspondence between Fulgentius and the Scythian monks from a century later is another significant instance of direct connection between the controversies over Christ and those over grace. These connections suggest that we today may do well to treat Christology and grace more as two sides of the same coin than as separate theological issues. Both sets of issues deal fundamentally with the relation between God and humanity: Christological questions ask ix x PREFACE how divine and human are related in the person of the Savior, and grace-related questions ask how the divine and the human are linked in the conversion, Christian life, and final salvation of each Christian . We offer Fulgentius’s correspondence with the Scythian monks to the English-reading world in the hope not only that it will aid our understanding of sixth-century Byzantine/Roman theology, but also that it will encourage and contribute to our own thinking about the relation between two of the Christian faith’s most central doctrines. These translations represent a collaborative effort between Dr. Rob Roy McGregor (a retired classicist, Romance languages specialist, and translator of Calvin’s French sermons) and me. The stimulus that ultimately led to this volume began in the early 2000s when Dr. McGregor asked me whether there was something in my field written in French that he could translate for a general audience. Because I had long wanted to explore more fully the relation between grace and Christology in the Semi-Pelagian Controversy, I asked whether he would instead be willing to translate some of Fulgentius’s writings from Latin. Dr. McGregor kindly agreed and did the initial translation of two of Fulgentius’s writings included in this volume. Other tasks prevented me from being able to take up Dr. McGregor’s work, and the project languished for several years. Eventually I was able to give attention to Fulgentius, and as Dr. McGregor translated the third document by Fulgentius , I revised his translations, added my own translations of the documents by the Scythian monks, compiled the notes, and wrote the introduction. I would like to acknowledge my debt to Dr. McGregor for his initial offer, his patience with me when it must have seemed to him that I was doing everything except writing on Fulgentius, and his diligent work on Fulgentius’s writings themselves. Without him these translations would likely have never made the transition from being a nice idea in my mind to becoming an actual volume that could be useful to others. I would also like to acknowledge my gratitude to Dr. Carole Monica Burnett, staff editor of the Fathers of the Church series, for her enthusiastic correspondence as I was working on this project and her superb work in checking and improving the translation. Donald Fairbairn Charlotte, North Carolina March 2013 ...