Grace and the Will according to Augustine by Lenka Karfíková (review)

Lenka Karfíková, whose prior monograph was on beauty in Hugh of St. Victor, provides a survey, title by title, of Augustine’s writings on the relation of grace and free will. Karfíková groups the works chronologically: prior to episcopate (386–95), episcopate to the Pelagian controversy (395–411), and the Pelagian controversy (411–30). In the first period, her treatment focuses narrowly on the power of willing and its dependence of divine assistance. The second part starts with Ad Simplicianum, whose innovations set the agenda for the remainder of the book. After Confessions, Karfíková picks up the works against the Manichees, The Literal Commentary on Genesis books 1–9, and the writings against the Donatists (including those on the imperial suppression in 418). The third part begins with the writings against Pelagius and Caelestius (411–18) and ends with the conflict between Augustine and Julian of Eclanum (419–30). Between these sets, Karfíková reviews other works from the period 411–30, including City of God and the four treatises on the divine operation of correction and perseverance for the elect.

This organization of the presentation facilitates consulting it for individual works of Augustine. It curtails, however, the analysis of Augustine’s developing understanding of issues whose influence on his teaching on the primary subject matter become clear only later. For example, Karfíková gives the question of the origin of the soul only passing mention (41–42) in reviewing On Free Choice (3.20.56–58) and discusses it in the “other works” section of the Pelagian controversy (214–24). She never grasps (as Augustine finally did) the implications of Romans 9.11 for the question of the origin of the soul and thereby of divine election.

Because the doctrine of divine predestination and election Augustine introduced in To Simplician 1.2 provides the agenda for the remainder of her study, Karfíková’s analysis of that text deserves close attention. In reviewing the first question of this treatise (72–73), she notes that Augustine continued his explanation of inherited mortality as the root cause of evil desire and thereby of universal human sinfulness (Simpl. 1.1.11). When she comes to explain the justice of God’s causing Jacob’s conversion but not Esau’s (Simpl. 1.2), however, she fails to recognize that Augustine again used mortality and evil desire to identify both Esau and Jacob as sinners deserving condemnation at the time they were called to conversion (Simpl. 1.2.16, 17, 18, 20). The divine operation actually distinguishing Jacob from Esau occurred when both were adults and was unjust to neither—just as the distinction between the vineyard workers (Matt 20.1–12) that Augustine cited in his defense of God’s decision to call them differently. Karfíková even excludes this reference from her quotation of Augustine’s text (Simpl. 1.2.16; CCL 44:42.471–91; at 80). Thus she fails to remark that the actual divine operation distinguishing the brothers occurred not when the two were still in the womb but only once they had not only become sinners but had also distinguished themselves by their customary dispositions, which account for their different responses to the divine vocation. Further, Karfíková notes (81) but does not use Augustine insistence that the hardening of Pharaoh and Esau could benefit the elect only if it were clearly just (Simpl. 1.2.18; CCL 44:47.612–16). These and similar oversights allow Karfíková to follow Kurt Flasch (Logik des Schrenkens) into an assertion that in To Simplician 1.2, Augustine “implied” the inheritance of guilt rather than mortality alone and affirmed a negative predestination independent of individual merits. The remainder of the study charts Augustine’s fidelity to these objectionable doctrines, finding little subsequent development in his thought.

The question at issue is this: Was Augustine’s doctrine of inherited guilt developed...