Alastair McGrath, Iustitia Dei, (2nd ed) p. 19:
"Whilst the importance of soteriological considerations, both in the motivation of the development of early Christian doctrine and as a normative principle during the course of that development, is generally conceded, it is equally evident that the early Christian writers did not choose to express their soteriological convictions in terms of the concept of justification. This is not to say that the fathers avoid the term 'justification': their interest in the concept is, however, minimal, and the term generally occurs in their writings as a direct citation from, or a recognisable allusion to, the epistles of Paul, generally employed for some purpose other than a discussion of the concept of justification itself. Furthermore, the few occasions upon which a specific discussion of justification can be found generally involve no interpretation of the matter other than a mere paraphrase of a Pauline statement. Justification was simply not a theological issue in the pre-Augustinian tradition."
Note carefully what McGrath says here:
1. The fathers do discuss soteriology, and view it as a normative principle.
2. "Justification" plays no major role in those discussions.
3. Only with Augustine do things begin to change.
If justification is "the article upon which the Church stands or falls," whether that is viewed in a Lutheran way or a Roman way--then how is it that the Church did not stand before Augustine, and that it walked in a wobbly way until the Reformation (or Counter-Reformation, depending on whether you're Protestant or Roman Catholic)? Did the gates of hell prevail against the Church so soon after St. Paul? Or did the western fathers, beginning with the attorney Tertullian, followed by the rhetoritician St. Augustine, import into the text of Scripture an alien substructure?
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9 comments:
I have less problem with the doctrine of justification itself than with the elevation of justification to "the chief article." I have always thought that what constitutes "the chief article" at any particular point in Church history depends very much on which doctrines are most at risk to error at that point in time. Surely the "chief article" for St Athanasius and the Cappadocians in the 4th century was the Trinity, and the "chief article" for St Cyril in the 5th century was the Incarnation.
So I can't agree that justification is at all times the chief article; but surely the doctrine of justification by faith was the doctrine most at risk of error in the 16th century West; and so for the Lutheran Reformers to regard it as "the chief article" in their time was not unreasonable. But to see it as always and everywhere the chief article -- and therefore to elevate it to an hermeneutical principle -- is not so reasonable.
I don't subscribe to the school of thought that finds in St Augustine the fons et origo of all of the problems of Western Christianity. Not that I am a big fan of St Augustine; there certainly are problems with his teaching: his overly philosophical approach (particularly with regard to Triadology), his predestinarianism, etc. But he also did great service to the Church in facing the challenges of Pelagianism and Donatism.
No, I think the problem is less with St Augustine himself than it is with the fact that he was, in effect, almost the only Church Father for the Western Church. Taken out of the context of the sensus patrum, it became impossible to correct his errors while retaining the considerable good in his thought. I am sure that St Augustine himself would have been the first to insist that his thought should be judged by the sensus patrum. But that is not, in fact, how his thought was received and used in the West.
Thanks, Chris. A few comments:
1. There can be no question that soteriology is a crucial teaching: St. Gregory Nazianzen countered Apolinarius by saying, "What the Word did not assume, that he did not redeem," and I believe it was St. Basil who asked, "If the Spirit is not divine, how can he deify me?" But to narrow that soteriological concern to justification seems mistaken to me, and rests on the Augustinian theory of original sin. Further, to speak of a "chief" article moves in that western quest for essentials (instead of fullness)--a move that ends in fundamentalism.
2. St. Augustine himself can be forgiven for any errors he introduced. His grasp of the tradition was limited, due to his self-confessed ignorance of Greek. He was therefore limited to the legally-based theology that had held sway in the west since Tertullian. He constantly appeals to the reader to forgive and correct him. And you're right, of course, that those who came after made his works central--another case of western one-trumping-many that finds its equivalent in the supreme papacy.
In my view, even his works on Pelagianism and Donatism were a mixed bag. I honor him, rather, for his life of humility and of repentance.
... to speak of a "chief" article moves in that western quest for essentials (instead of fullness)--a move that ends in fundamentalism ... [St Augustine's] grasp of the tradition was limited, due to his self-confessed ignorance of Greek.
I do not think the matrix of Greek East = good, Latin West = bad is either accurate or useful. It is probably true that a focus on essentials is more pronounced in the West, but it does not follow that such a focus exhaustively characterizes Western Christian thought. You cannot say that if a Christian writer is from the West and/or writes in Latin, he therefore has a focus on essentials rather than on fullness.
Similarly, St Augustine's famous lack of Greek does not mean that he had an inadequate grasp of the Tradition. The Apostolic Tradition can be, and is, imparted in any language. St Irenaeus (himself a Western Father, though he wrote in Greek) tells us that the canon of truth is received through baptism. And it has never been a requirement to learn Greek before being baptized.
St Augustine is an orthodox Church Father who made some mistakes on particular points (as did many of the Fathers, East and West) -- not a crypto-heretic whose entire corpus is suspect. That is why he can be read from within the sensus patrum (and his mistakes corrected by it). The problems arise when he is taken as an independent "authority" outside of that patristic consensus.
If justification is "the article upon which the Church stands or falls," whether that is viewed in a Lutheran way or a Roman way--then how is it that the Church did not stand before Augustine, and that it walked in a wobbly way until the Reformation (or Counter-Reformation, depending on whether you're Protestant or Roman Catholic)? Did the gates of hell prevail against the Church so soon after St. Paul? Or did the western fathers, beginning with the attorney Tertullian, followed by the rhetoritician St. Augustine, import into the text of Scripture an alien substructure?
Roman Catholics, I'm sure you are aware, do not make Justification the central article. So while your observation is, in my opinion, a good one with reference to Lutherans, it doesn't work the same way with Catholics.
Nor would Catholics suggest that Augustine invented anything new, but rather articulated the apostolic tradition.
I am nothing close to being an expert on Catholic-Orthodox dialogues, however, soteriology doesn't appear to be major contention. Perhaps you can enlighten me on why that is, and also point me in the direction of those who do consider it a significant issue from a ecumenical point of view. (This is not a loaded question, I am truly curious.)
I have read quite a bit on the "semi-pelagian" controversy, particularly with regard to John Cassian and the initium fidei. Do the East still hold with Cassian on that particular issue?
Finally, could you articulate,what your problems with St. Augustine and the Western Church, with regard to soteriology?
Also, I am interested
Dear Dan,
My observation--probably poorly worded--was intended to apply to Lutherans, not Roman Catholics (although the latter is the soil out of which the former grew).
St. Augustine's merit (if I can use that term) :-) lies to a large extent in his humility and willingness to be corrected.
Problems with Augustine? Here are a few:
1. The notion of original guilt, which represents a departure from the Church's previous teaching (this is at the root of the 'doctrine' of the Immaculate Conception, btw);
2. The ignorance of, not to say rejection of, the distinction between essence and energies in God.
This leads Augustine to say,
“....For that sight of God in which we shall behold his unchanging substance, invisible to human eyes and promised only to the saints...this sight alone is our supreme good, and it is to gain this that we are bidden to do whatever we do rightly.”
But even in heaven, no one ever beholds the substance of God, who dwells in light unapproachable.
3. The notion of merit, which warps all soteriological teaching;
4. The notion of purgatory...
5. The filioque (well, why not throw it in too?) :-)
Those would be some issues, I suppose.
The unworthy priest,
Fr. Gregory Hogg
PS If you continue to view with suspicion my statement that I copied the citation from Quasten by myself, without any knowledge of another source citing those same words, it is not likely that we will have much success in discussing weightier matters.
Mr Woodring,
Do the East still hold with Cassian on that particular issue?
"No, I have not stopped beating my wife."
The serious answer to your question (and I will try to write this carefully) is: No, the Eastern Orthodox Church does not "still" hold, and never has held, the heretical (viz. "Semi-Pelagian") views commonly, but erroneously, attributed to St John Cassian.
The whole topic of "Semi-Pelagianism" is fraught with common misconceptions, some of which are implicit in your question.
The most common misconception in this area is a simple misunderstanding of exactly what Semi-Pelagianism is. (I am not attributing this misunderstanding to you, personally, but I am including it here for the sake of completeness, and because it forms the background for the other misconceptions.) The commonly-held view is this: Pelagianism is the teaching that we can accomplish our salvation apart from grace; Augustinianism is the teaching that our salvation is accomplished entirely by grace; and "Semi-Pelagianism" is a "compromise" teaching that salvation is accomplished partly by grace and partly by human effort. In this rather rough-and-ready view, any sort of synergism whatsoever is tarred with the brush of "Semi-Pelagianism."
But Semi-Pelagianism is a more specific, and more subtle, error than that. The point at issue in Semi-Pelagianism is whether man can even begin to seek God or to believe in Him without being given the gift of grace. The error of Semi-Pelagianism is to teach that we can make such a beginning of faith apart from grace; the orthodox teaching (both East and West) is that we cannot. But it has nothing to do with the extent and nature of our cooperation with grace, once given.
With that as background, let me respond to the specific problems implicit in your question:
Do the East still hold with Cassian ...
Well, the East still "holds with" St John Cassian in the sense that the Orthodox Church regards him, and publicly venerates him, as a saint. The Orthodox Church venerates those who have shown exemplary holiness of life, and does not turn her back on them even if they may have made a theological mistake or two. I am not saying that St John did make any such mistakes, but even if he had, the Church would still venerate him. If St Isaac of Nineveh can be forgiven for being a "Nestorian," surely St John Cassian could be forgiven if he were a Semi-Pelagian. (And, of course, St Augustine is still venerated by the Orthodox even though they disagree with some of his theology.)
... on that particular issue?
Implicit in this question is the idea that St John was a Semi-Pelagian. It is true that St John was a partisan against the "Augustinian" side in the debate, but that does not mean that St John specifically embraced the Semi-Pelagian error, nor that the "Augustinian" side was entirely correct. (The English Church historian Henry Bettenson has commented that "Semi-Pelagianism" is a rather misleading name for the error involved, making the trenchant observation that "Semi-Augustinianism would be clearer and less question-begging.") You are perhaps better-read in the controversy than I (that would not be hard), so I won't attempt a detailed defense of St John's orthodoxy here; but I can refer you to a detailed discussion of the question by the Orthodox weblogger Clifton Healy. Clifton exonerates St John (to my satisfaction, at any rate) of the charge of Semi-Pelagianism.
Also implicit in the question Does the East still hold ... is the idea that the Orthodox Church does not accept the Western Church's condemnation of Semi-Pelagianism at the Second Council of Orange. While it is true that the Eastern Churches never explicitly accepted or endorsed 2d Orange (and the subsequent Papal endorsement of 2d Orange carries no particular weight in the East), that does not mean that the Orthodox Church disagrees with the teaching of that council. For the Orthodox, Second Orange is simply a local council called to deal with a doctrinal problem which was troubling the West, but not the East. That local council dealt with the problem in a satisfactory manner, but since the error in question was not a problem in the East, there was no need to formally "accept" the teaching of the council.
As to whether the Orthodox Church agrees substantially with the teachings of 2d Orange (as distinct from an explicit acceptance of the council itself as authoritative), I believe that a comparison of the decree of 2d Orange with the decrees on grace, free will, and predestination of the 1672 Council of Jerusalem (aka the "Confession of Dositheos") is very instructive. A careful reading of both documents shows, in my view, that the doctrine contained in the two documents is substantially identical. In particular, the concluding paragraph of 2d Orange (after the canons proper) is an explicit endorsement of our post-baptismal cooperation with the grace given through the sacraments, which is the essence of Eastern Orthodox synergism (which so many people rather lazily identify with "Semi-Pelagianism").
I beg Fr Gregory's indulgence for having gone on so long on his weblog. But nothing shorter would, I think, deal with the issues raised by the question.
FGH: If you continue to view with suspicion my statement that I copied the citation from Quasten by myself, without any knowledge of another source citing those same words, it is not likely that we will have much success in discussing weightier matters.
I did note on my blog that I would take you at your word on this. Perhaps you had not read it. That said, I honestly just wanted to ask a couple of questions, and I appreciate you giving an answer.
Your use of the word success reminds of Michigan Distict "Model Conference" some years back during which we discussed syncretism and joint prayer. This was shortly after the Yankee Stadium incident. Anyway, we broke into small groups, and we were asked to go around the table and "share" our expectations of what would be a successful meeting. When it came to the last pastor, he replied, "I define success as 'all of you agreeing with me, because I'm right." The table fell into dead silent, and the looks on the faces of the other pastors was priceless. He said it tongue in cheek, to be sure, but it was perhaps the most honest thing I've ever heard at a MI district conference.
I suspect that "success" for you is getting me to agree with you, and vice versa. Success, at least, complete success, is likely to elude us, regardless of our view of each other.
As I said, I appreciate your answers very much. I am also very appreciative for Chris Jones' detailed answer.
Also, I recognize that I worded the question about John Cassian poorly. I meant no offense. Chris understood my question perfectly, and I am glad that he understood my intent charitibly.
I will read the link to Clifton Healy, perhaps that will answer some of my additional questions.
Until then, I do have one question, and it is only a question (I'm not trying to stir anything up):
CJ wrote:
I believe that a comparison of the decree of 2d Orange with the decrees on grace, free will, and predestination of the 1672 Council of Jerusalem (aka the "Confession of Dositheos") is very instructive. A careful reading of both documents shows, in my view, that the doctrine contained in the two documents is substantially identical.
FGR, do you agree with this assessment, or are there other problems you see in Western soteriology, and if so, would you mind pointing out what those problems are, rather than just listing them? For example, you had said something about merit, and I was wondering what it was about the Roman understanding of merit that you seemed to suggest was inconsistant with Eastern theology.
Dear Dan, you wrote:
"CJ wrote:
I believe that a comparison of the decree of 2d Orange with the decrees on grace, free will, and predestination of the 1672 Council of Jerusalem (aka the "Confession of Dositheos") is very instructive. A careful reading of both documents shows, in my view, that the doctrine contained in the two documents is substantially identical.
FGR, do you agree with this assessment, or are there other problems you see in Western soteriology, and if so, would you mind pointing out what those problems are, rather than just listing them? For example, you had said something about merit, and I was wondering what it was about the Roman understanding of merit that you seemed to suggest was inconsistant with Eastern theology."
Rx: I have no opinion about the Council of Orange, so it would be hard to compare it with the Confession of Dositheus. WRT merit, the whole notion of merit is a western idea that simply never took hold in the East. In fact, St. Mark the Ascetic cites the same verse as do the Lutheran confessions some 1100 years later, when he writes:
"Wishing to show that to fulfil every commandment is a duty, whereas sonship is a gift given to men through His own Blood, the Lord said: “When you have done all that is commanded you, say: ‘We are useless servants: we have only done what was our duty’” (Luke 17: 10). Thus the kingdom of heaven is not a reward for works, but a gift of grace prepared by the Master for his faithful servants. A slave does not demand his freedom as a reward; but he gives satisfaction as one who is in debt, and he receives freedom as a gift."
God is never in man's debt. Nor can saints ever have an "excess of merit."
Other problems? I think it sufficient to point out, as I did, that St. Augustine claims we will see God's substance, when that simply cannot be.
So, the notion that human acts can have merit before God...the notion that salvation consists in seeing God's substance...these two, though brief, are (I trust) sufficiently clear.
The unworthy priest,
Fr. Gregory Hogg
Perfectly clear.
Thank-you for taking the time to reply.
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