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Document Details : Title: Augustine the Semi-Pelagian Author(s): ALLAN, Mowbray Journal: Augustiniana Volume: 62 Issue: 3-4 Date: 2012 Pages: 189-249 DOI: 10.2143/AUG.62.3.3294570 Abstract : Pelagius's contributions to the controversy on grace survive only in a fragmentary and incoherent selection, probably chosen by Augustine to support his caricature 'Pelagianism'. Thus the letters of Prosper (ep. 225) and Hilary (ep. 226) are invaluable, for revealing both the coherent doctrine of grace and free will proposed by his 'semi-Pelagian' opponents and for their pointing to his own early anti-Manichaean writings, and especially lib. arb., as their source and inspiration. After some attempts to refute this claim, Augustine in fact finally acknowledged his part (in praed. sanct. 3,7-4,8). Manichaeism of Augustine's time and place was promoted as the true because Pauline Christianity; thus the anti-Manichaean position of Augustine's reaction never was the naive defense of free will prior to taking account of original sin, as he likes to suggest, but a carefully considered defense of a minimum of free will in the face of original sin (see lib. arb. 111,20,56). By the time of Peter Lombard and Thomas Aquinas, it had become the main alternative to his anti-Pelagianism, and arguably the only way to reconcile grace and free will. As late as spir. et litt. 33,57ff. he posed clearly and nearly without bias the fundamental question about the initium gratiae, whether God's universal gift of free will in Creation (as in all version of pelagianism, including his own) or Recreation in Christ (as in his anti-Pelagianism). Only thereafter did he gradually harden his choice of Recreation via Christ's grace to the destruction of free will in the ungraced. His decision to defend his fellow bishops' appeal, in the trial of Caelestius, to infant damnation probably contributed more to this turn than his response, years earlier, to the questions of Simplicianus. To see that Pelagius was also a follower of Augustine's own semi-pelagianism requires learning to read Augustine critically. Though that project will require the facing of some unpleasant truths about his polemical methods, beyond them there are rewards. The apparent lack of impartial but forceful critical referees meant that the intellectual quality of the Pelagian controversy was far lower than it should have been. Fortunately, we can make up part of that loss by critical reading. Today we can decide which Augustine we prefer, rather than being obsessed by the question of which is the real Augustine, the 'semi-pelagian' or the anti-Pelagian. The real Augustine is he who can be credited for the flourishing of the concept of Christian grace far beyond the narrow bounds of theological controversy. |
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