History of Dogma V V 3rd Ed.

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http://www.archive.org/details/cu31 92409234391
THEOLOGICAL TRANSLATION LIBRARY
Edited by the Rev. T. K. CHEYNE, M.A., D.D., Oriel Professor

OF Interpretation, Oxford and the Rev. A. B. BRUCE, D.D.,
;
Professor of Apologetics and New Testament Exegesis, Free

Church College, Glasgow,
VOL. X,
HARNACK'S HISTORY OF DOGMA. VOL. V.

jfjim^-^^
HISTOEY OF DOGMA
BY
Dr. ADOLPH HARNACK

ORDINARY PROF. OF CHURCH HISTORY IN THE UNIVERSITY, AND FELLOW OF
THE ROYAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCE, BERLIN
TRANSLATED FROM THE THIRD GERMAN

EDITION
BY
NEIL BUCHANAN
VOL. V.
BOSTON
LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY
1899
1>3
EDITORIAL NOTE.
The present volume is the first of three, which will reproduce
in English the contents of Vol. III. of Harnack's great work in
the German original, third Edition. The author's prefaces to
the and second Editions and to the third Edition are here
first
translated. This volume deals with the epoch-making service of

Augustine as a reformer of Christian piety and as a theological
teacher, and with the influence he exercised down to the period
of the Carlovingian Renaissance. The following volume will
complete the history of the Development of Dogma by telling
the story of Mediaeval Theology. The concluding volume will
treat of the Issues of Dogma in the period since the Reforma-
tion, and will contain a General Index for the whole work.
A. B. BRUCE.
PREFACE TO FIRST AND SECOND
EDITIONS.
There does not yet exist a recognised method for presenting

the History of Dogma of the Mediaeval and more modern
period. There is no agreement either as to the extent or treat-
ment of our material, and the greatest confusion prevails as to the
goal to be aimed at. The end and aim, the method and course
adopted in the present Text-Book, were clearly indicated in the
introduction to the first volume. I have seen no reason to make
any change in: carrying out the work. But however definite may
be our conception of the task involved in our branch of study,
the immense theological material presented by the Middle Ages,
and the uncertainty as to what was Dogma at that time, make
selection in many places an experiment. I may not hope that
the experiment has always been successful.

After a considerable pause, great activity has been shown in
the study of our subject in the last two years. Benrath, Hauck,
Bonwetsch, and Seeberg have published new editions of older
Text-Books Loofs has produced an excellent Guide to the
;
History of Dogma Kaftan has given a sketch of the study in

;
his work on the Truth of the Christian Religion Moller and

;
Koffmane have devoted special attention to the sections dealing

with it in their volumes on Ancient Church History. The study
of these books, and many others which I have gratefully made
use of, has shown me that my labours on this great subject have
not remained isolated or been fruitless. The knowledge of this
has outweighed many experiences which I pass over in silence.
This concluding volume counts, to a greater extent than its
predecessors, on the indulgence of my learned colleagues; for
its author is not a "specialist," either in the history of the
Medieval Church or in the period of the Reformation. But the
advantage possessed by him who comes to the Middle Ages and
X PREFACE.
the Reformation with a thorough knowledge of ecclesiastical

antiquity perhaps outweighs the defects of an account which
does not everywhere rest on a complete induction. One man
can really review all the sources for the history of the Ancient
Church but as regards the Middle Ages and the history of the
;
Reformation, even one more familiar with them than the author
of this Text-Book will prove his wisdom simply by the most
judicious choice of the material which he studies independently.
The exposition of Augustine, Anselm, Thomas, the Council of
Trent, Socinianism, and Luther rests throughout on independent
studies.' This is also true of other parts but sections will be
;
found in which the study is not advanced, but only its present
position is reproduced.
have spent a great deal of time on the preparation of a Table
I
of Contents. I trust it will assist the use of the book. But for
the book itself, I wish that it may contribute to break down the
power that really dictates in the theological conflicts of the
present, viz., ignorance. We cannot, indeed, think too humbly
of the importance of theological science for Christian piety ; but
we cannot rate it too highly as regards the development of the
Evangelical Church, our relation to the past, and the preparation
of that better future in which, as once in the second century, the
Christian faith will again be the comfort of the weak and the
strength of the strong.
Berlin, 24th Dec, 1889.
PREFACE TO THIRD EDITION.

Since thisvolume first appeared, there may have been pub-
lished about fifty monographs and more extensive treatises on
the Western History of Dogma, most of which have referred to
it. I have tried to make use of them for the new Edition, and
I also proposed to make other additions and corrections on the

PREFACE. XI
original form of the book, without finding myself compelled to

carry out changes in essential points. I have thankfully studied
the investigations, published by Dilthey in the Archiv f. Gesch.
d. Philosophic, Vols. V. to VII., on the reformed system of
doctrine inits relation to Humanism and the " natural system."
He has examined the reformed conceptions in connections in

which they have hitherto been seldom or only superficially con-
sidered, and he has, therefore, essentially advanced a knowledge
of them.
Among the many objections to the plan of this work, and the
critical standards observed in
it, four are especially of impoi'tance.
It has been said that in this account the development of Dogma

is judged by the gospel, but that we do not learn clearly what
the gospel is. It has further been maintained that the History
of Dogma is depicted as a pathological process. Again, the
plan of Book III., headed "The threefold outcome of Dogma,"
has been attacked. And, lastly, it has been declared that,
although the account marks a scientific advance, it yet bears too
subjective or churchly a stamp, and does not correspond to the
strictest claims of historical objectivity.
As to the first objection, I believe that I have given a fuller
account of my conception of the gospel than has been yet done
in any text-book of the History of Dogma. But I gladly give
here a brief epitome of my view. The preaching of Jesus con-
tains three great main sections. Firstly, the message of the
approaching Kingdom of God or of the future salvation secondly, ;
the proclamation of the actual state of things and of thoughts,

such as are given in Matthew VI. 25-34 VII. 7-1 1 IX. 2; X.
; ;
28-33, etc. (see Vol. I., p. 74 f); thirdly, the new righteousness
(the new law). The middle
section connected with Matthew
XI. 25-30, and therefore also combined with the primitive
Christian testimony regarding Jesus as Lord and Saviour, I hold,
from strictly historical and objective grounds, to be the true
main section, the gospel in the gospel, and to it I subordinate
the other portions. That Christ himself expressed it under
cover of Eschatology I know as well (Vol. I., p. 58) as the anti-
quarians who have so keen an eye for the everlasting yesterday.
As to the second objection I am at a loss. After the new
Xll PREFACE.
religion had entered the Roman Empire, and had combined with
it in the form of the universal Catholic Church, the History of
Dogma shows an advance and a rise in all its main features

down to the Reformation. I have described it in this sense
from Origen to Athanasius, Augustine, Bernard, and Francis, to
mystic Scholasticism and to Luther. It is to me a mystery how
far the history should nevertheless have been depicted as a
" process of disease." Of course superstitions accumulated, as in
every history of religion, but within this incrustation the indi-
vidual ever became stronger, the sense for the gospel more active,
and the feeling for what was holy and moral more refined and
pure. But as regards the development from the beginnings of
the evangelic message in the Empire down to the rise of the
Catholic Church, I have not permitted myself to speculate how
splendid it would have been if everything had happened differ-
ently from what it did. On the other hand, I grant that I have
not been able to join in praising the formation of .that tradition
and theology which has lowered immediate religion to one that
is mediated, and has burdened faith with complicated theological
and philosophical formulas. Just as little could it occur to me

to extol the rise of that ecclesiastical rule that chiefly means
obedience, when it speaks of faith. But in this there is no
" pathology " ; the formations that arose overcame Gnostic-
ism.
My critics have not convinced me that the conception followed
by me in reference to the final offshoots of the History of Dogma
is unhistorical. But I readily admit that the History of Dogma
can also be treated as history of ecclesiastical theology, and that
in this way the account can bring it down to the present time.
Little is to be gained by disputing about such questions in an
either-or fashion. If we regard Protestantism as a new
principle which has superseded the absolute authority of Dogmas,
then, in dealing with the History of Dogma, we must disregard
Protestant forms of doctrine, however closely they may approxi-
mate to ancient Dogma. But if we look upon it as a particular
reform of Western Catholicism, we shall have to admit its
doctrinal formations into that history. Only, even in that case,
we ndust not forget that the Evangelical Churches, tried by the
PREFACE. xill
notion of a church which prevailed for 1 300 years, are no churches.

From this the rest follows of itself
Finally, as regards the last objection, I may apply chiefly to
my account a verdict recently passed by a younger fellow-

worker :
—
" The History of Dogma of to-day is, when regarded
as science, a half thing." Certainly it is in its beginnings, and it
falls far short of perfection. It must become still more circum-
spect and reserved ; but I should be so purified in
fear, lest it
the crucible of this youngest adept —who
meantime, however, is
still a member of the numerous company of those who only give
—
advice that nothing of consequence would remain, or only that
hollow gospel, " religion is history," which he professes to have
derived from the teaching of four great prophets, from whom he
could have learnt better. We are all alike sensible of the labours
and controversies which lie would evade but it is one of the
;
surprises that are rare even in theology, that one of our number
should be trying in all seriousness to divide the child between
the contending mothers, and that by a method which would
necessarily once more perpetuate the dispute that preceded the
division. The ecclesiastics among Protestants, although they
arrogate to themselves the monopoly of " Christian " theology
on the title-pages of their books, will never give up the claim to
history and science ; they will, therefore, always feel it their duty to
come to terms with the " other " theology. Nor will scientific
theology ever forget that it is the conscience of the Evangelical
Church, and as such has to impose demands on the Church
which it serves in freedom.
Berlin, nth July, 1897. ADOLF HARNACK.
CONTENTS.
PART II.
DEVELOPMENT OF ECCLESIASTICAL DOGMA.
BOOK II.
Expansion and Remodelling of Dogma into a Doctrine of Sin,
Grace, and Means of Grace on the basis of the Church.
Page
CHAPTER I.— Historical 3—13
-------
Situation . - - .
Augustine the standard autliority till the period of the Re-

formation 3
Augustine and Western Christianity - - - -
3
Augustine as Reformer of Christian Piety 4
-----
- - -
Augustine as teacher of the Church - - - - 4

Augustine and Dogma 5
Dogma in the Middle Ages - - - - - 6
The German and Roman Peoples and Dogma - - 6
Method of Mediaeval History of Dogma - - -
9
Division into Periods - - - - - 12
CHAPTER II.~Western Christianity and Western Theologians

before Augustine - - - - - - 14 —60
TertuUian as Founder of Western Christianity - - 14
Elements of Tertullian's Christianity as elements of Western
Christianity as a whole - - - - - 14
Law (lex) - - - - - - - 15
Juristic element - - - - - - 16
Syllogistic and Dialectical - - - - 17
XVI CONTENTS.
Psychological
Biblical
------
and Practical - - - - -
21
22
Page
"
23
------
- - -
Eschatology and Morality -
-
Cyprian's importance . - - - 24
The Roman Church 25
Revolution under Constantine : Origen's theology and

Monachism are imported into the West 27
------
-
Grjecised Western Theology and the Old Latin type enter

into Augustine 29
The importance to Augustine of the Greek scholars Ambrose
- -
-------
(p. 29) and Victorinus Rhetor - -
33
The influence upon him of genuine Latins - 37
-------
Of Cyprian 38
-
The Donatist Controversy - - - 38
Optatus 42
Ambrose as Latin - - - - -
48
Results of Pre-Augustinian development -
------
- 53
Doctrine of the Symbol . - - - -
53
Death of Christ
Soteriology
The Church
Rome and Heathenism
-------
- - -
- -
54
55
59
59
CHAPTER
of Christian Piety
General Characteristics
------
III.— Historical Position of Augustine as Reformer
- - - - -
61
61
— 94
Augustine's new Christian self-criticism - - - 66
Pre-Augustinian and Augustinian Piety - - -
67
Sin and Grace the decisive factors in Augustine - -
69
The changed tone of Piety - - - - -
72
. -Criticism of this Piety - - ,
- -
75
.Four elements constituting the Catholic stamp of Piety -
77
a Authority of Church for Faith - - - '78
j3 God and Means of Grace - - - - -
83
.
7 Faith, Forgiveness of Sins, and Merit - - -
87
S Pessimistic view of Present State - - - -
91
- Concluding remarks - -,-•- - '93
-
CONTENTS. XVll
Page
CHAPTER IV.— Historical Position of Augustine as Teacher of
the Church - - . . . .
95— 240
The new Dogmatic Scheme - - - -
95
The connection with the Synibol - - -
95
Discord between Symbol and Holy Scripture 98
Discord between Scripture and the principle of Salvation -
99
Discord between Religion and Philosophy - 100
Discord between Doctrine of Grace and Ecclesiasticism - lOI
Contradictions within these series of conceptions - lOI
Impossibility of an Augustinian system 102
Universal in-fluence of Augustine • -
103
Method of presenting Augustinianism Dogma and Augus-
;
tine - - - -. . - .. 104
1. Augustine's Doctrines of the First and Last Things 106 — 140
Augustine's Theology and Psychology (" Aristoteles Alter")
were bom of Piety - - - - 106
Dissolution of the ancient feeling - - - - 108
Psychological and Neo-Platonic view of the soul - III
The ethical views interwoven with this (God, world, soul,
wiH, love) - - -
113
Influence of Christian ecclesiasticism . . .
124
[On reason, revelation, faith,
Authority ofChrist and Christology
Final aims in the other and this world
...
and knowledge]
-
125
125
134
Concluding observation - - -
138
2. The Donatist Controversy. The Work: De civitate Dei.
Doctrine of the Church a:nd Means of Grace 140 — i6S
.Introduction' 140
The Church as Doctrinal Authority 143 .
Unity of the Church - - - -

144
Its Holiness - - - - - 146
Catholicity - 149
Apostolicity and other attributes 149
Church and Kingdom of Qod 151
Word and Sacrament 155
The Sacraments - -
156
Lord's Supper
Baptism - --
- - -
- ---
- - . - 158
1 59
xvm CONTENTS.
Ordination ------- i6i

Page
As a heavenly communion -----

The Church as societas sacramentorum
-------
- - -
163
164
As primeval
As communio fidelium ----- 164
165
3.
As numerus electorum
Closing observations
The Pelagian
- -
Controversy.
----- Doctrine of Grace and Sin
- -
-
- 166
157
168 — 221
Augustine's Doctrine before the controversy - - 168
General characteristics of Augustinianism and Pelagian-
ism, as of Pelagius, Caelestius, and Julian - - 168
Origin and nature of Pelagianism - - - - 173
§ I. The outward course of the dispute - - - I73
Pelagius and Caelestius in Rome and Carthage -
173
Events in Palestine - . - - -
177
Events in North Africa and Rome - - - 181
Condemnation in Rome ; JuHan of Ecl3.num - 186
Final Stages - - - - - -187
§ 2. The Pelagian Doctrine - . , .
j3g
Agreement and
The
The
chief doctrines
separate doctrines
-----
differences between the leaders
in their degree of con-

- 189
igi
formity to tradition - . . . jng

3. The Augustinian doctrine - - - -
203
^ The doctrine of grace, predestination, redemption,
and justification - - - . .
204
Doctrine of sin, original sin, and the primitive state 210
Criticism of Augustinianism - - - - 217
4. Augustine's explanation of the Symbol (Enchiridion ad
Laurentium). New system of religion - - . 222 240
Exposition of Article I. - - - - . 223
Article II. - - - - - . _
325
Article III, - - - - - . - 228
Criticism of this exposition ; old and ijew system of re-
ligion . -
234
CHAPTER v.— History of Dogma in the West down to the

beginning of the Middle Ages, A.D. 430-604 - - 241 273
Historical position - - - - - . 242
CONTENTS. XIX
Page
Conflict between Semi-Pelagianism and Augustinianism —261
-....._
- 245
The monks of Hadrumetum and in South Gaul, Cassian - 246
Prosper 249
De vocatione gentium - -
250
Liber Prsedestinatus- - . .
251
Faustus of Rhegium 252 _
Decree de libris recipiendis - - -

255
The Scythian monks, Hormisdas
.......
Fulgentius, 255
Cassarius of Aries, Synods of Valencia and Orange
Results
Gregory the Great -.--.-
.....
General characteristics
257
260
262
262
— 273
Superstition, Christology, Intercessions 263
Doctrine of Sin and Grace
--.....
. - . - .
266
Merits, satisfactions, saints, relics, purgatory 267
Penance 269
Gregory's position between Augustine and the Middle Ages 270
CHAPTER VI.— History of Dogma in the period

vingian Renaissance ..... of the Carlo-
274—331
of Dogma and of the Church ....

The importance of the Carlovingian epoch in the History
274
I a. The Adoptian Controversy -
Genesis of the problem
Spanish affairs
.....
and the dispute
. -
in Spain.
-
Teaching of
.
278—292
278
Elipandus, Felix and Beatus is Augustinian 281

Dispute before the Frankish and Roman tribunals 287
Influence of Greek conception
..--...
Alcuin's teaching. 289
Connection with doctrine of the Lord's Supper 291
I b.
Result
.... .....
Controversy about Predestination
The monk Gottschalk
292
292
293
—302
Rabanus and Ratramnus, his opponents 295
Controversy among Frankish and Lothringian Bishops.
Objective
Synod at Chiersey
Synod at Valencia
.....
untruthfulness
---.--
of Gottschalk's opponents.
299
299
Synods at Savoniferes and Toucy - . - .
300
—
XX CONTENTS.
Page
The theory consonant to Church practice holds the field
- -
under Augustinian formulas . .
301
Dispute as to Xh^fiUoque and about images - - 302 — 308
"Xh&filioque, the Franks and the Pope - - -
302
Attitude of the Franks to images - - - -
305
The Carolini and the self-consciousness of the
-----
libri
Frankish Church. Synod of Frankfurt - - - 306

Later history of images 308
Development of theory and practice of the Mass (the
Dogma of the Lord's Supper) and of Penance - - 308—331
The
Lord's Supper in the West
The controversy de âriu vz'rgim's -
....
three causes of the development of theory of the
308
-------
-
- -
310
The Augustinian conception promoted by Beda checked
by Alcuin 311
Paschasius Radbertus - - - - - 312
Rabanus and Ratramnus - - - - . - 318
Ideas of the Mass as part of the institution of expiation - 322
Practice of Confession :
a The notion of God at its root - - -

323
Development of institution of penance from Roman
------
^
Church and German premises, Influence of Mona-
chism 324
Defective theory - - - -
7 -
326
5 Growth of satisfactions and indulgences • -
327
êconb ipAvt
DEVELOPMENT OF ECCLESIASTICAL DOGMA.
SECOND BOOK.
Expansion and Remodelling of Dogma into a Doctrine of Sin,
Grace and means of Grace on the basis of the Church.

"
" Domini mors potentior erat quam vita . , .
Lex Cliristianorum crux est sancta Christi."

—Pseudo-Cyprian.
" Die Ehrfurcht vor dem, was unter uns ist, ist ein Letztes
wozu die Menschheit gelangen konnte und musste. Aber was
gehorte dazu, die Erde nicht allein unter sich liegen zu lassen
und sich auf einen h5heren Geburtsort zu berufen, sondern auch
Niedrigkeit und Armuth, Spott und Verachtung, Schmach und
Elend, Leiden und Tod als gottlich anzuerkennen, ja selbst
Siinde und Verbrechen nicht als Hindernisse, sondern als
Fordernisse des Heiligen zu verehren !
— Goethe.
CHAPTER I.
HISTORICAL SITUATION.!
The history of piety and of dogmas in the West was so

thoroughly dominated by Augustine from the beginning of the
fifth century to the era of the Reformation, that we must take
this whole time as forming-one period. It is indeed possible to

doubt whether it is not correct to include also the succeeding
period, since Augustinianism continued to exert its influence in
the sixteenth century. But we are compelled to prefer the views
that the Reformation had all the significance of a new move-
ment, and that the revolt from Augustine was marked even in
post-tridentine Catholicism, as well as, completely, in Soci-
nianism.^ In this second Book of the second Section, therefore,
we regard the history of dogma of the West from Augustine to
the Reformation as one complete development, and then, in
accordance with our definition of dogma and its history,^ we add
the "final stages of dogma " in their triple form —Tridentine
Catholicism, Socinianism, and Protestantism.
In order rightly to appreciate the part played by Augustine,
2.
it is necessary first (Chap. II.) to describe the distinctive

character of Western Christianity and Western theologians
^ Baur, Vorles. ub, die christl. D.-G., 2nd vol., 1 866, Bach, Die Dogmengeschichte
des Mittelalters, 2 vols., 1873, 1875. Seeberg, Die Dogmengesch. des Mittelalters
(Thomasius, Die christl. Dogmengesch, 2 Ed., 2 vol., Division I.) 1888. All
begin in the period after Augustine, as also Schwane, D.-G. der mittleren, Zeit 1882.
Loofs, Leitfaden der D.-G., 3 Ed., 1893. Seeberg, Lehrbuch d. D.-G., Division I.,
1895.
2 The complete breach with Augustine is indeed marked neither by Luther nor
Ignatius Loyola, but first by Leibnitz, Thomasius, and —
the Probabilists of the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
3Vol. L,§l.
3
—
4 HISTORY OF DOGMA. [CHAP. I.
anterior to his appearance. It will then appear that while the

West was prepared to favour Augustinianism, those very
elements that especially characterised Western Christianity
—
the juristic and moralistic resisted the Augustinian type of
thought in matters of faith. This fact at once foreshadows the
later history of Augustinianism in the Church.
3. Augustine comes before us, in the first place, as a reformer
of Christian piety, altering much that belonged to vulgar

Catholicism, and carrying out monotheism strictly and thoroughly.
He gave the central place to the living relation of the soul to
God he took religion out of the sphere of cosmology and the
;
cultus, and demonstrated and cherished it in the domain of the

deepest life of the soul. On the other hand, we will have to
show that while establishing the sovereignty of faith over all
that is natural, he did not surmount the old Catholic foundation
of the theological mode of thought; further, that he was not
completely convinced of the supremacy of the religious over the
moral, of the personal state of faith over ecclesiasticism and ;
finally, that in his religious tendencies, as generally, he remained

burdened by the rubbish of ecclesiastical tradition. (Chap. III.)
4. Augustine falls next to be considered as a Church teacher.
The union of three great circles of thought, which he recon-
structed and connected absolutely, assured him, along with the
incomparable impression made by his inexhaustible personality,
of a lasting influence. In the first place, he built up a complete
circle of conceptions, which is marked by the categories, " God,
the soul, alienation from God, irresistible grace, hunger for God,
,unrest in the world and rest in God, and felicity," a circle in
which we can easily demonstrate the co-operation of Neo-
platonic and monastic Christian elements, but which is really so
pure and simple that it can be taken as the fundamental form
of monotheistic piety in general. Secondly, he gave expression
to a group of ideas in which sin, grace through Christ, grace iii
general, faith, love, and hope form the main points a Paulinism
;
modified by popular Catholic elements. Thirdly, he constructed

another group, in which the Catholic Church is regarded as
authority, dispenser of grace, and administrator of the sacra-
ments, and, further, as the means and aim of all God's ordinances.
CHAP. I.] HISTORICAL SITUATION. 5
Here he always constructed, along with a wealth of ideas, a pro-

fusion of schemes —
not formulas; he re-fashioned Dogmatics
proper, and, speaking generally, gave the first impulse to a study
which, as an introduction to Dogmatics, has .obtained such an
immense importance for theology and science since the Schol-
astics.
5. On the other hand, Augustine always felt that he was, as re-
gards Dogma, an Epigone, and he submitted himself absolutely to

thetradition of the Church.Hewas wanting in thevigorousenergy
in Church work shown, e.g., by Athanasius, and in the impulse
to force upon the Church \n fixed formulas the truths that pos-
sessed his soul. Consequently the result of his life-work on
behalf of the Church can be described thus, (i) He established
more securely in the West the ancient ecclesiastical tradition as
authority and âw. (2) He deepened and, comparatively speak-
ing, Christianised the old religious tendency. (3) In the thought
and of the Church he substituted a plan of salvation, along
life
with an appropriate doctrine of the sacraments, for the old

dogma ^ and the cultus, and instilled into heart and feeling the
fundamental conception of his Christianity .that divine grace
was the beginning, middle, and end but he himself sought to
;
harmonise the conception with popular Catholicism, and he ex-

pressed this in formulas which, because they were not fixed and
definite, admitted of still further concessions to traditional views.
In a word, he failed to establish without admixture the new and
higher religious style in which he constructed theology. There-
fore the ancient Greek dogma which aimed at deification, as well
as the old Roman conception of religion as a legal relationship,
could maintain their ground side by side with it. Precisely in
the best of his gifts to the Ckurck, A ugustine gave it impulses and
problems, but not a solid capital. Along with this he transmitted
to posterity a profusion of ideas,' conceptions, and views which.
iThe ancient dogma has thus formed building material in the West since Augustine.
It hias been deprived-âl least in the most important respect—-of its ancient purpose^
and serves new ones. The stones hewn for a temple, and once constructed into a
temple, now serve for the building of' a cathedral. Or perhaps the figure is more
appropriate tha;t the old temple expanded into a cathedral, and wonderfully trans-
formed, is yet perceptible in the cathedral.
6 HISTORY OF DOGMA. [CHAP. I.
unsatisfactorily harmonised by himself, produced great friction,

living movements, and, finally, violent controversies.
6. As at the beginning of the history of the Latin Church
Cyprian followed Tertullian, and stamped the character of

ancient Latin Christianity, so Gregory the Great succeeded
Augustine, and gave expression to the mediseValr character of
Latin Christianity, a form which, under Augustinian formulas,
often differs in whole and in details from Augustine. Dognia
remains almost throughout, in the Middle Ages, the complex of
Trinitarian and Christological doctrines which was handed down
with the Symbol. But, besides this, an immense series of
theological conceptions, of church regulations and statutes,
already possessed a quasi-dogmatic authority. Yet, in acute
cases, he could alone be expelled as a heretic who could be con-
victed of disbelieving one of the twelve articles af the Symbol,
or of sharing in the doctrines of heretics already rejected, i.e., of
Pelagians, Donatists, etc. Thus it remained up to the time of
the Reformation, although the doctrines of the Church the —
Pope, and the sacraments, the ecclesiastical sacrament of pen-
ance, and the doctrine of transubstantiation claimed almost —
dogmatic authority, though only by being artificially connected
with the Symbol.
7. The consolidation of the ecclesiastical and dogmatic system
into a legal order, in harmony with the genius of Western
Christianity, was almost rendered perfect by the political history
of the Church in the period of the tribal migrations. The
Germans who entered the circle of the Church, and partly be-
came fused with the Latins, partly, but under the leadership of
Rome, remained independent, received Christianity in its
ecclesiastical form, as something absolutely complete. There-
fore, setting aside the Chauvinistic contention that the Germans
were predisposed to Christianity,^ no independent theological
movement took place for centuries on purely German soil. No
German Christianity existed in the Middle Ages in the sense
that there was a Jewish, Greek, or Latin form.^ Even if the
iSeeberg, (Dogmengesch. des Mittelalteis, p. 3), has repeated it.
Even the influence, which some have very recently sought to demonstrate, of
2
German character on the formation of a few mediseval theblogumena is at least doubt-

"
CHAP. I.] HISTORICAL SITUATION. j?
Germans may have attempted to make themselves more thor-

oughly familiar with Latin Christianity, as e.g., the Slavs did
—
with the Greek we may recall the old Saxon harmony of the
—
Gospels, etc. ^ yet there was a complete absence of any inde-
pendence in consciously appropriating it, up to the settlement
of the Begging orders in Germany, properly speaking, indeed, up
to the Reformation. Complaints of Papal oppressions, or of
external ceremonies, cannot be introduced into this question.
The complainers were themselves Roman Christians, and the
never-failing sectaries paid homage, not to a " German
Christianity, but to a form of Church which was also imported.
If up to the thirteenth century there existed in Germany no in-
dependent theology or science, still less was there any move-
ment in the history of dogma.^ But as soon as Germans, in
Germany and England, took up an independent part iri the
inner movement of the Church, they prepared the way, supported
indeed by Augustine, for the Reformation. The case was
different on Roman territory. We need not, of course, look at
Italy, for the land of the Popes steadily maintained its charac-
teristic indifference to all theology as theology. Apocalyptic,
socialistic, and revolutionary movements were not wanting ;
Hippocrates and Justinian were studied but the ideals of

;
thinkers seldom interested Italians, and they hardly ever troubled

themselves about a dogma, if it was nothing more. Spain, also,
very soon passed out of the intellectual movement, into which,
besides, it had never thrown any energy. For eight centuries it
was set the immense practical task of protecting Christendom
from Islam in this war it transformed the law of the Catholic
:
The Spanish history of dogma

religion into a military discipline.
has been a blank since the days of Bishop Elipandus.
ful (against Cremer). Die Wurzeln des Anselm'schen Satisfactions-begriffs in the

Theol. Stud. u. Kritik., 1880, p. 7 ff., 1893,
P- 3i6 ff., and Seeberg, I.e. p. 123.
Fuller details in I., ch. 7,, Sect. 4.
1 It was to the advantage, here and there, of simple piety that it had not co-operated
in the construction of the Church.
« Nitzsch, Deutsche Gesch., II., p. 15 " (Up to the middle of the eleventh century)
:
the task of administering property was more important to the German Church than
the political and dogmatic debates of the neighbouring French hierarchy." See also
Dollinger Akad. Vortrage, vol. II., Lecture i, at beginning.
8 , HISTORY OF DOGMA. [CHAP. I.
Thus France alone remains. In so far as the Middle Ages',

down to the thirteenth century, possessed atiy dogmatic history, it
was to a very large extent Prankish or French} Gaul had been
the land of culture among Latin countries as early as the fourth
and fifth 'Mid the storms of the tribal migrations,
centuries.
culture maintained its ground longest in Southern Gaul, and
after a short epoch of barbarism, during which civilisation
seemed to have died out everywhere on the Continent, and
England appeared to have obtained the leadership, France
—
under the Carlovingians of course, Frarice allied with Rome
—
through Boniface came again to the front. There it remained,
but with its centre of gravity in the North, between the Seine
and the Rhine. Paris was for centuries only second to Rome,
as formerly Alexandria and Carthage had been.^ The imperial
crown passed to the Germans the real ruler of the world sat at
;
Rome; but the "studium" in every sense of the term-—

belonged to the French. Strictly speaking, even in France,
there was no history of dogma in the Middle Ages. If the
Reformation had not taken place, we would have been as little
aware of any mediaeval history of dogma in the West as in the
East for the theological and ecclesiastical movements of the
;
Middle Ages, which by no means professed to be new dogmatic

efforts, of dogma because
only claim to be received into the history
they ended in the dogmas of Trent on the one hand, and in the
symbols of the Reformed Churches and Socinian Rationalism on
the other. The whole of the Middle Ages presents itself in the
sphere of dogmatic history as a transition period, the period
when the Church was fixing its relationship to Augustine, and
the numerous impulses originated by him. This period lasted
so long, (i) because centuries had to elapse before Augustine
found disciples worthy of. him, and men were in a position even
to understand the chain of ecclesiastical and theological edicts
1 See the correct opinion of Jordanus of Osnabriicli (about 1285) that the
Romans had received the sacerdotium, the Germans the imperium, the French the
studium (Lorenz, Geschichtsquellen, 2 ed., vol. II., p. 296).
2 See on the importance of North-Eastern France, Sohm in the Ztschr. d;

Savigny-Stiftung. German Division I., p 3 ff., and Schrors, Hinkmar, p. 3 f. On
Rome and Paris see Reuter, Gesch. d, Aufkl. I., p. iSl.
—
CHAP. I.] HJSTORICAL SITUATION. $
handed down from antiquity (2) because the Roman genius of

;
the Western Church and the Augustinian spirit were in part ill-
assorted, and it was therefore a huge task to harmonise them
;
^"d (3) because at the time when complete power had been
gained for the independent study of Church doctrine and
Augustine, a new authority, in many respects more congenial to
the spirit of the Church, appeared on the scene, viz., Augustine's
powerful rival,^ Aristotle. The Roman genius, the superstition
which, descending from the closing period of antiquity, was
strengthened in barbarous times, Augustine, and Aristotle
these are the four powers which contended for their inter-
pretation of the gospel in the history of dogma in the Middle
Ages.
8. The Middle Ages experienced no dogmatic decisions like
those of Nicsea or Chalcedon. After the condemnation of

Pelagians and Semipelagians, Monothelites, and Adoptians, the
dogmatic circle was closed. The actions in the Carlovingian
age against images, and against Ratramnus and Gottschalk
were really of slight importance, and in the fights with later
heretics, so many of whom disturbed the mediaeval Church,
old weapons were used, new ones being in fact unnecessary.
The task of the historian of dogma is here, therefore, very
difficult. In order to know what he ought to describe, to be as
just to ancient dogma in its continued influence as to the new
quasi-dogmatic Christianity in whose midst men lived, he must
fix his eyes on the beginning, Augustine, and the close, the
sixteenth century. Nothing belongs to the history of dogma
which does not serve to explain this final stage, and even then
only on its dogmatic side, and this again may be portrayed only
in so far as it prepared the way for the framing of new doctrines,
or the official revision of the ancient dogmas.
If my view is right, there are three lines to which we have to
'
turn our attention. In the first place we must examine the

history of piety, in so far asnew tendencies were formed in it,
based on, or existing side, by side with Augustinianism for the ;
piety which was determined by other influences led also to the

1 The derisive title of Augustine — " Aristoteles Poenorum " — was prophetic. He
got this name from Julian of Eclanum, Aug. Op. imperf., III., 199.
"
10 HISTORY OF DOGMA. ;
[CHAP. I.
construction of other dogmatic formulas. But the history of

piety in the Middle Ages is the history of monachism.^ We
may therefore conjecture monachism really passed
that if
through a history in the Middle Ages, and not merely endless

repetitions, it cannot be indifferent for the history of dogma.
As a matter of fact, it will be shown that Bernard and Francis
were also doctrinal Fathers. We may
here point at once to
the fact that Augustine, at least apparently, reveals a hiatus in
his theology as dominated by piety he was able to say little ;
concerning the 7vork of Christ in connection with his system of

doctrine, and his impassioned love of God was not clearly
connected theory with the impression made by Christ's
in
death, or with Christ's " work." What a transformation, what
an access of fervour, Augustinianism had to experience, when
impassioned love to the Eternal and Holy One found its object
in the Crucified, when it invested with heavenly glory, and
referred to the sinful soul, of the beaten, wounded, and
all traits
dying One, when it began to reflect on the infinite " merits " of
its Saviour, because the most profound of thoughts had dawned
upon it, that the suffering of the innocent was salvation in

history Dogma could not remain unaffected by what it now
!
found to contemplate and experience in the " crucified " Saviour

of Bernard, the " poor " Saviour of Francis.^ We may say
briefly that, by the agency of the mediaeval religious virtuosi
and theologians, the close connection between God, the " work "
of Christ, and salvation was ultimately restored in the Triden-
tine and ancient Lutheran dogma. The Greek Church had
maintained and still maintains it but Augustine had loosened
;
it, because his great task was to show what God is, and what
salvation the soul requires.

In the second place, we have to take the doctrine of the
Sacraments into consideration for great as were the impulses
;
1 See Ritschl, Gesch. des Pietismus, vol. I., p. 7 ff., and my Vortrag uber das
Monchthum, 3 ed.
2 Bernard prepared the way for transforming the Neoplatonic exercitium

of the
contemplation of the All and the Deity into methodical reflection on the sufferings of
Christ. Gilbert says: "Dilectus meus, inquit sponsa, candidus et rubicundus.
In
hoc nobis et candet Veritas et rubet caritas.
1
given here also by Augustine, yet everything was incomplete

which he transmitted to the Church. But the Church as an
institution and training-school required the sacraments above
all, and its, adherence to
in Augustine it was precisely his
sacramental doctrine, and the conception connected therewith
of gradual justification, of which it laid hold. We shall have to
show how the Church developed this down to the sixteenth
century, how it idealised itself in the sacraments, and fashioned
them into being its peculiar agencies. In the third place, we
have to pursue a line which is marked for us by the names of
Augustine and Aristotle-— fides and ratio, auctoritas and ratio
intelligentia and ratio. To investigate this thoroughly would
be to write the history of mediaeval science in general. Here,
therefore, we have only to examine it, in so far as there were
developed in it the same manifold fashioning of theological
thought, and those fundamental views which passed into the
formulas, and at the' same time into the contents of the doctrinal
creations, of the sixteenth century, and which ultimately almost
put an end to dogma in the original sense of the term. But we
have also to include under the heading "Augustine and Aristotle"
the opposition between the doctrine of the enslaved will and
free grace and that of free will and merit. The latter shattered
Augustinianism within Catholicism..
We cannot trace any dogma regarding the Church in the
Middle Ages until the end of the thirteenth century, but this
is only because the Church was. the foundation and the latent
co-efficient of all spiritual and theological movement.^ Our

account has to make this significance of the Church explicit,
and in doing so to examine the growth of papal power for in ;
the sixteenth century the claim of the Pope was in dispute. On

this point the Western Church was split up. But further,
Augustine had given a central place to the question of the
personal position of the Christian, confusing it, however, by un-
certain references to the Church and to the medicinal effect of
^ The opposition to a sacerdotal Church which existed at all times, and was
already strong in the thirteenth century, left no lasting traces down to the fourteenth.
In this century movements began on the soil of Catholicism which led to new forms
of the conception of the Church and compelled it to fix definitively its own.
12 HISTORY OF DOGMA. [CHAP. 1.
the means of grace. And the mediseval movement, in propor-

tion as the Church and the sacraments came to the front with-
out any diminution of the longing for an independent faith/ was
led to the question of personal assurance. On th's point also —
justification— the Western Church was rent asunder.^ Thus an
account of the history of dogma in the Middle Ages will only
be complete if it can show how the questions as to the power
of the Church (of the Pope, the importance of the' Mass and
sacraments) and justification came to the front, and how in
these questions the old dogma, not indeed outwardly, but really,
perished. In Tridentine Catholicism it now became completely,
along with its new portions, a body of law; in Protestantism it was
retained only in as far as it showed itself, when compared
still
with the Divine Word, to express the Gospel, to form a bond

with the historical past, or to serve as the basis of personal
assurance of salvation.
There can be no doubt about the division into periods. After
an introduction on Western Christianity and Theology before
Augustine, Augustinianism falls to be described. Then we have
to discuss the epochs of (i) the Semipelagian controversies and
Gregory I. (2) the Carlovingian Renaissance (3) the period of
; ;
Clugny and Bernard (the eleventh and twelfth centuries) and ;
(4) the period of the mendicant orders, as also of the so-called

Reformers before the Reformation, i.e., of revived Augustinianism
(thirteenth and fifteenth centuries). The Middle Ages' only
reached their climax after the beginning of the thirteenth century
and, having grown spiritually equal to the material received from
the ancient Church, then developed all individual energies and
conceptions. But then at once began the crises which led to the
1 In the Middle Ages every advance in the development of the authority and
power of the Church wras accompanied by the growing impression that the Church
was corrupt. This impression led to the suspicion that it had become Babylon, and
to despair of its improvement. .
;
2 On most impbttant point the schism went beyond Augustine; for in the
this
Middle Ages, as regards the ground and assurance of faith, Augustine of the Con-
fessions and doctrine of predestination was played off against Augustine the apologist
of the Catholic Church. Luther, however, abandoned both alike, and followed a
view which can be shown to exist in Augustine and in the Middle Ages at most in a
hidden undercurrent.
3
Renaissance and Humanism, to the Reformation, Socinianism and

Tridentine Catholicism. It is, therefore, impossible to delimit
two periods within the thirteenth to the fifteenth century for
;
Scholasticism and Mysticism, the development of the authorita-

tive, Nominalist, dogmatics, and the attempts to form new
doctrines, are all interwoven. Reformation and Counter-re-
formation have a common root.
CHAPTER II,
WESTERN CHRISTIANITV AND WESTERN THEOLOGIANS

BEFORE AUGUSTINE.
The distinctive character of Western Christianity has been

frequently referred to in our earlier volumes. We may now,
before taking up Augustine and the Church influenced by him,
appropriately review and describe the Christianity into which he
entered,and on which he conferred an extraordinarily prolonged
existence and new vital energies by the peculiar form and train-
ing to which he subjected it. It was the Roman Church that
transmitted Christianity to the Middle Ages. But it might
almost be named the Augustinian-Gregorian^ with as much justice
as that of the Augsburg Confession is called the Lutheran.
If, however, we ascend the history of the Latin Church to as
near its origin as we can, we find ourselves confronted by a man

in whom the character and the future of this Church were already
announced, viz., TertulHan. TertuUian and Augustine are the
Fathers of the Latin Church in so eminent a sense that, measured
by them, the East possessed no Church Fathers at all.^ The
only one to rival them, Origen, exerted his influence in a
more limited sphere.Eminently ecclesiastical as his activity
was, his Christianity was not really ecclesiastical, but esoteric.
His development and the import of his personal life were almost
without significance for the mass he continued to live in his
;
books and among theologians. But with Tertullian and Augus-
1 After Gregory I.
2 Mohler says very justly, from the Catholic standpoint (Patrologie, p. 737) " We :
are often surprised for a moment, and forget that in Tertullian we have before us a
writer of the beginning of the third century, we feel so much at home in reading
the language, often very familiar to us, in which he discusses difficult questions con-
<erning dogmatics, morals, or even the ritual of the Church."
14
CHAP. II.] WESTERN CHRISTIANITY. IS
tine it was different. It is true that only a fraction of Tertul-

lian's teaching was retained, that he was tolerated by posterity
only in Cyprian's reduced version, and that Augustine became
more and more a source of uneasiness to, and was secretly op-
posed by, his Church. Yet both passed into the history of the
Western Catholic Church with their personality, with the charac-
teristics of their Christian thought and feeling. The frictions and
unresolved dissonances, in which they wore themselves out, were
transmitted to the future as well as the concords they sounded,
and the problems, which they could not master in their own
inner experience, became the themes of world-historical spiritual
conflicts.^ We
can exhibit the superiority of Western to Eastern
Christianity at many points we can even state
a whole series of
;
causes for this superiority but one of the most outstanding is

;
the fact that while the East was influenced by a commonplace

succession of theologians and monks, the West was moulded by
Tertullian and Augustine.
Roman Christianity, still (c. i8o) essentially Greek in form,
but already with important features of its own,^ had won the
Great African to its service.^ It had already transmitted to him
Latin translations of Biblical books but on this foundation ;
Tertullian laboured, creating both thought and language, because

he was able thoroughly to assimilate the new faith, and to ex-
press his whole individuality in it*
In doing so he adopted all the elements which tradition
offered him. First, as a Christian Churchman, he took up the
old enthusiastic and rigorous, as well as the new anti-heretical,
faith. He sought to represent both, and in his sovereign law to
verify the strict lex of the ancient disciplina, founded on eschato-
^ Ultimately men were content, indeed, with preserving the inconsistencies, treating
them as problems of the schools, and ceasing to attempt to solve them ; for time
makes even self-contradictions tolerable, and indeed to some extent hallows them. ,
2 See the Ep. of Clement, also the tractate on The Players, and the testimonies
I
of Ignatius, Dionysius of Corinth and others as to the old Roman Church.

3 De praescr. 36 :
" Si Italiae adjaces habes Romam, unde nobis auctoritas quoque
praesto est."
* On Church Latin, see iSCoffmane's work, which contains much that is valuable,
Gesch. des Kirchenlateiris, 1879-1881.

6
1 HISTORY OF DOGMA. [CHAP. II.
logical hopes, and pneumatic dogmatics,

allied with unrestrained
and also the strict lex of the new rule of faith, which seemed
ancient, because the heretics were undoubtedly innovators. He
sought to be a disciple of the prophets and an obedient son of
his Episcopal teachers. While he spent his strength in the fruit-
less attempt to unite them,i he left both forces as an inheritance
to the Church of the West. If the history of that Church down
to the sixteenth century exhibits a conflict between orthodox
clerical and enthusiastic, between biblical and pneumatic
elements, if monachism here was constantly in danger of running
into apocalyptics and enthusiasm, and of forming an opposition
to the Episcopal and world-Church, all that is foreshadowed in
Tertullian.
A further element, which here comes before us, is the juristic.
We know that jurisprudence and legal thought held the chief
place in mediaeval philosophy, theology, and ethics.^ Post-
apostolic Greek Christians had, indeed, already put Christianity
forward as the " law," and the Roman community may have
cultivated this view with peculiar energy * but in and by itself ;
this term is capable of so many meanings as to be almost

neutral. Yet through the agency of Tertullian, by his earlier
profession a lawyer, all Christian forms received a legal impress.
He not only transferred the technical terms of the jurists into

the ecclesiastical language of the West, but he also contemplated,
from a legal standpoint, all relations of the individual and the
Church to the Deity, and vice versd, all duties and rights, the
1 See our expositions of this in Vol. II., p. 67 ff., 108 ff., 128 f., 311 f.
"^
See V. Schulte, Gesch. der Quellen iind Lit. d. kanonlschen Rechts, Vol. I., jip.
92-103, Vol. II., p. 512 f. Also his Gedanken fiber Aufgabe und Reform d. jurist.
Studiums, 1881 " The science of law was in practice the leading factor in Church
:
and State from the twelfth century." That it is so still may, to save many words,
be confirmed by a testimony of Bollinger's. In a memorable speech on Phillips he says,
(Akad. Vortrage, Vol. II., p. 185 f.) " Frequent intercourse with the two closely-
:
allied converts, larcke and showed me how an ultramontane and papistical

Phillips,
conception of the Christian religion was especially suggested and favoured by legal
culture and mode of thought, which was dominated, even in the case of German
specialists like Phillips, not by ancient German, but Roman legal ideas." . .
s On the designation of Holy Scripture as " lex " in the West, see Zahn, Gesch.
d. neutestamentlichen Kanous, I. i, p. 95 f. .
chap: ir.], WESTERN CHRISTIANITY. \J
moral imperative as well as the actions of God and Christ,

nay, their mutual relationship. He who was so passionate and
seemed never to be thoroughly satisfied until he had
fanciful
found the scheme of a legal relationship which he could pro-
claim as an inviolable authority he never felt secure until he
;
had demonstrated inner compulsions to be external demands,

exuberant promises to be stipulated rewards. But with this the
scheme of personal rights was applied almost universally. God
appears as the mighty partner who watches jealously over his
rights. Through TertuUian this tendency passed into the
Western Church, which, being Roman, was disposed to favour
it there it operated in the most prejudicial way.
; If we grant
that by it much that was valuable was preserved, and juristic
thought did contribute to the understanding of some, not
indeed the most precious, Pauline conceptions, yet, on the
whole, religious reflection was led into a false channel, the ideas
of satisfaction a,nd merit becoming of the highest importance,
and the separation of Western from primitive and Eastern
Christianity was promoted.^
Another element is closely connected with the legal, viz., the
syllogistic and dialetical. TertuUian has been extolled as a
speculative theologian but this is wrong.
; Speculation was
not his forte; we perceive this very plainly when we look at his
relation to Irenaeus. Notice how much he has borrowed from
this predecessor of his, and how carefully he has avoided, in
doing so, most profound speculations
his TertuUian. was a !
Sophist in the good and bad sense of the term. He was in his
element in Aristotelian and Stoic dialectics; in his syllogisms
he is a philosophising advocate. But in this also he was the
pioneer of his Church, whose theologians have always reasoned
inore than they have philosophised. The manner in which he
rings the changes on auctoritas and ratio, or combines them,
and spins lines of thought out of them the formal treatment of
;
problems, meant to supply the place of one dealing with the

matter, until it ultimately loses sight of aim and object, and
falls a prey to the delusion that the certainty of the conclusion
1 Consider, e.g., a sentence like this of Cyprian De unit. ,15! " Justitia opus est>
ut promereri quis possit deum judicem." '

:
B
8
guarantees the certainty of the premises this whole method —

only too well known from mediaeval Scholasticism, had its
originator in Tertullian.^ In the classical period of eastern
1 A
series of legal schemes framed by TertuUianfor his dogmatics and ethics have been
given in Vol. II., 279 f., 294 f., Vol. IV. pp. 1 10, 121. In addition to his speculation
on substantia, persona, and status, the categories offendere,- satisfacere, promereri, ac-
ceptare, and rependere, etc., play the chief part in his system. Most closely connected
with the legal contemplatibn of problems is the abstract reference to authority ; for
one does not obey a law because he finds it to be good and just, but because it is law.
(Tertullian, indeed, knows very well, when defending himself against heathen insinu-
ations, that the above dictum is not sufficient in the sphere of religion and morals,
see e.g. Apolog. 4. ) This attitude of Tertullian, led up to by his dialectical procedure
,
and his alternations between auctoritas and ratio, produces in many passages the im-
pression that we are listening to a mediseval Catholic. In regard to the alternation
above described, the work De corona is especially characteristic ; but so is Adv. Marc.
I. 23 f.
, He writes, De paenit. 4 " Nos pro nostris angustiis unum inculcamus, bonum
:
atque optimum esse quod deus prsecipit. Audaciam existimo de bono divini praecepti
disputare. Neque enim quia bonum est, idcirco auscultare debemus, sed quia deus
prsecepit. Ad exhibitionem obsequii prior est majestas divinas potestatis, prior est
auctoritas imperantis quam utilitas servientis." (Compare Scorp. 2, 3 ; De fiiga, 4;
De cor. 2.) But the same theologian writes, De psen. I :,"Res dei ratio, quia •
deus nihil non ratione providit, nihil non ratione tractari intellegique voluit. " The
work De psnit. is in geiieral peculiarly fitted to initiate us into Tertullian's style of
thought. I shall in the sequel pick out the most important points, and furnish
parallels from his other writings. Be it noticed first that the work emphasises the
three parts, vera poenitentia (deflere, metus dei), confessio and satisfactio, and then
adds the venia on the part of the cffensus deus.
In chap. II. we already meet with " merita psenitentise." There we
the expression
read :
" ratio salutis certam formam ne bonis umquam factis cogitatisve quasi
tenet,
violenta aliqua manus injiciatur. Deus enim reprobationem bonorum ratam non
habens, utpote suorum, quorum cum auctor et defensor sit necesse est, proinde et
acceptator, si acceptator etiam remunerator . . . bonum factum deum habet debitorem,
sicuti et malum, gztia judex omnis remunerator est causee."
7: "pseni- (De orat.
tentia demonstratur acceptabilis deo ;" we have also " commendatior
Chap. III. ; ").
" Admissus ad dominica prascepta ex ipsis statim eruditur, id peccato deputandum, a
quo deus arceat." (The distinction between prascepta and consilia dominica is
familiar in Tertullian ; see Ad. uxor. II. i ; De coron. 4 ; Adv. Marc. II. 17. In
Adv. Marc. I. 29, he says that we may not reject marriage altogether, because if we
did there would be no meritorious sanctity. In Adv. Marc. I. 23, the distinction is
drawn between "debita"and " indebita bonitas "). Chap. III. "Voluntas facti :
origoest;"a disquisition follows on velle, concufiscere, per/icere. Chap. V. " Ita :
qui per dehctorum psenitentiam instituerat dominus satisfacere, diabolo per alia
psenitentise pEenitentiam satisfaciet, eritque tanto magis perosus deo, quanto smulo
tya% acceptus" (See De orat. II "fratri satisfacere," 18; " disciplinse satisfacere "
;
23 ; satisfacimus deo domino nostro " ; De jejun. 3 ; De pud. 9, I3 ; De pat. 10 l^

etc., etc. : "peccator patri satisfacit," namely, through his penances ; see De pud.
13 : "hie jam carnis interitum in officium pasnitenti^ interpretantur, quod videatur
CHAP. II.] WESTERN CHRISTIANITY. I9
theology men did not stop at auctoritas z.nd ratio ; they sought to
reach the inner convincing phases of authority, and understood
by ratio the reason determined by the conception of the matter
jejuniis et sordibus et incuriaomni et dedita opera raalaa tractationis carnem extermin-
ando deo facere "). la ch. V, it is explained quite in the Catholic manner that
satis
timor is the fundamental form of the religious relation. Here, as in countless other
passages, the " deus offensus" moves Tertullian's soul (see De pat. 5 "hinc deus :
irasci exorsus, unde ofifendere homo inductus.") Fear dominates the whole of peni-
tence. (De p^nit. 6: "metus est instrumentum pEenitentise. " In general
"offendere deum " and " satisfacere deo " are the proper technical terms; see De
paen. 7 "offendisti, sed reconciliari adhuc potes ; habes cui satisfacias et quidem
:
volentem," Ch. X. " intolerandum scilicet pudori, domino offenso satisfacere."

:
Ch. XI. " castigationem victus atquecultus offenso domino prsestare." Along with
:
satisfacere we have " deum iratum, indignatum mitigare, placare, reconciliare." Ch.
VI "omnes salutis infromerendo deo petitores sumus." Compare with this "pro-
:
mereri deum " Scorp. 6 : " quomodo multae mansiones apud patrem, si non pro
varietate merilorum porro et si fidei propterea congruebat sublimitati et clari-
. . .
tatis aliqua prolatio, tale quid esse opportuerat illud emolumenti, quod magno constaret
labore, cruciatu, tormento, morte . . , eadeni pretia qua et merces." De orat. 3 :
" meritum 3: "nos angelorum, si meruimus, candidati"; 4: " merita cu-

fidei. "
jusque." De psenit. 6 " catechumenus mereri cupit baptismum, timet adhuc delid-
:
quere, ne non mereretur accipere." De pat. 4 "artificium promerendi obsequium :
est, obsequii vero disciplina morigera subjectio est." Devirg. vel., 13 "deus Justus :
est ad remuneranda quae soli sibi fiunt." De exhort, i " nerao indulgentia dei :
utendo promeretur, sed voluntati obsequendo ; " 2 " deus quae vult prascipit et :
accepto facit et £Etemitatis mercede dispungit." De pud. 10 " psenitentiam deo im- :
riiolare magis merebitur fructum psenitenfiae qui nondum ea usus est quam qui
. . .
jam et abusus est." De jejun. 3 " ratio promerendi deum " [jejunium iratum deum :
homini reconciliat, ch. VII.]; 13: "ultro ofEcium facere deo." How familiar and im-
portant in general TertuUian the thought of performing a service, a favour to
is to
God, or of furnishing him with a spectacle ! He indeed describes as a heathen idea

( Apolog. 1 1 ) the sentence conlatio divinitatis meritorum remunerandorum fuit
:
'
'
ratio " ; but he himself comes very near it ; thus he says (De exhortat. 10) " per :
continentiam negotiaberis magnam subslantiam sanctitatis, parsimonia carnis spiritum

acquires." He " Lax " Christus non
sternly reproves, Scorp. 15, the saying of the :
vicem passionis ; sitit " rependamus Cai\i,'i\ patientiam,

he himself says (De pat. 16) :
quam pro nobis ipse dependit." De paenit. 6 " Quam porro ineptum, quam paeni- :
tentiam non adimplere, ei veniam delictorum sustinere ? Hoc est p-etium non ex-
hibere, ad mercem vianum emittere. Hoc enim pretio dominus veniam addicere in-
stituit hac paenitenti^ compensatione redimendam proponit impunitatem," (see Scorp.
;
6 :
" nulli
compensatio invidiosa est, in qua aut gratiae aut injurias communis est
ratio "). In Ch. VI. TertuUian uses " imputare," and this word is not rarely found
along with "reputare " ; in Ch. VII. we have " indulgentia" (indulgere), and these
terms are met somewhat frequently ; so also "restituere" (ch. VII. 12 "restitutio :
peccatoris"). De pat. 8: "tantum relevat <:o»/i!jj!o delictorum, quantum dissimu-

latio exaggerat ; confessio omnr satisfactionis consilium est." Further, ch. IX. " Hujus : .
igitur paenitentiaesecundaeet uniusquanto in arte negotium est, tanto operosior probatio

—
in question. In the West, auctoritas and ratio stood for a very

long time side by side without their relations being fixed see —
the mediaeval theologians from Cassian— and the speculation
introduced by Augustine was ultimately once more eliminated,
(thatsounds quite mediseval), ut non sola conscientia prseferatur, sed aliquo etiam actu
administretur. Is actus, qui magis Grseco vocabulo exprimitur et frequentatur, ex-
omologesis est, qua delictum domino nostro confitemur, non quidem ut ignaro, sed
quatmus satisfactio confessione disponitur, confessione pzenitentia nascitur, pccnitentia
deus mitigatur. Concerning this exhomologesis, this tearful confession, he goes on :
" commendat psenitentiam deo ettemporali afflictationi ceterna suppUcia non dicam
frustratur sed expungit." {" Commendare " as used 'above is common, see e.g.. Da
virg. vel. 14, and De 13: " patientia corporis [penances] precationes commendat,
pat.
deprecationes affirmat hsec aures Christi aperit, clementiam elicit.").
; The conception
is also distinctly expressed by Tertullian that in the ceremony of penance the Church
completely represents Christ himself, see ch. X. "in uno et altero ecclesia est,
:
ecclesia vera Christus. Ergo cum te ad fratrum genua protendis, Christum contrectas,
Christum exoras." De pudic. 10, shows how he really bases pardon solely on the
"cessatio delicti"; " etsi venia est psenitentiae fructus, hanc quoque consistere non
licet sine cessatione delicti. Ita cessatio delicti radix est venia ut venia sit fanitentis
fructus." Further ch. II. : "omne
delictum aut venia -dispungit aut poena, venia ex
castigatione, poena ex damnatione"; but "satisfactio" is implied in the "castigatio."
In De pudic. I tlie notorious lax edict of Calixtus is called " liberalitas " (venia) i.e.,
"indulgence." Let us further recall some formulas which are pertinent here. Thus
we have the often-used figure of the "militia Christi," and the regimental oath
sacramentum. So also the extremely characteristic alternation between "gratia" and
"voluntas humana," most clearly given in De " non est bonse et solidae
exhort. 2 :
fidei sic omnia ad voluntatem dei referre et unum quemque dicendo nihil
ita adulari
sine nutu ejus, ut, non intellegamus,

fieri «j«fl/z'âzi^2«Koto z)i«>.
. Nondebemus
. .
quod nostro expositum est arbitrio in domini referre voluntatem " ; Ad uxor. 1,8:
" qusedam enim sunt divinae liberalitatis, qusedam nostrae operationis." Then we
have the remarkable attempt to distinguish two wills in God, one manifest and one
hidden, and to identify these with prascepta and consilia, in order ultimately to
establish the "hidden" or "higher" alone. De exhort. 2 f. "cum solum sit in :
nobis velle, et in hoc probatur nostra erga deum mens, an ea velimus quae cum volun-
recogitandum esse dico dei voluntatem, quid etiam
tate ipsius faciunt, alte et impresse
in occulto velit.Quae enim in manifesto scimus omnes." Now follows an exposi-
tion on the two wills in God, the higher, hidden, and proper one, and the lower :
"Deus ostendens quid magis velit, minorem voluntatem majore delevit. Quantoque
notitiae tuee utrumqae proposuit, tanto definiit, id te sectari debere quod declaravit se
magis velle. Ergo si ideo declaravit, ut id secteris quod magis vult, sine dubio, nisi
contra voluntatem ejus sapis, sapiendo contra potiorem ejus voluntatein,
ita facis,
magisque offendis quam promereris, quod vult quidem faciendo et quod mavult re-
spuendo. Ex parte delinquis ; ex parte, si non delinquis, non tamen promereris.
Non porro et promereri nolle delinquere est ? Secundum igitur matrimonium, si est
ex ilia dei voluntate qua indulgentia vacatur, etc., etc." On the other hand, see the
sharp distinction between sins of ignorance ("natural sins") and sins of " conscientia
et voluntas, ubi et culpa sapit et gratia," De pud. 10.
CHAP. II.] WESTERN CHRISTIAlÎTY, 21
as is proved by the triumph of Nominalism. Stoic, or " Aris-

totelian " rationalism, united with the recognition of empirical
authority under cover of Augustinian religious formulas, re-
mained the characteristic of Roman Catholic dogmatics and
morality.^
But the Western type of thought possessed, besides this, an
element in which it was considerably superior to the Eastern,
the psychological view. The importance due to Augustine in

this respect has been better perceived in recent years, and we
may look for better results as regards the share of Scholasticism
in the development of modern psychology.^ In Augustine him-
self Stoic rationalism was thrust strongly into the background by
his supreme effort to establish the psychology of the moral and
immoral, the pious and impious on the basis of actual observa-
tion. His greatness as a scientific theologian is found essentially
in the psychological element. But that also is first indicated in
TertuUian. As a moralist he indeed follows, so far as he is a
philosopher, the dogmatism of the Stoa but Stoic physics;
could lead into an empirical psychology. In this respect Ter-

tuUian's great writing, " De anima," is an extremely important
achievement. It contains germs of insight and aspirations
which developed afterwards; and another Western before Augus-
tine, Arnobius, also did better work in grasping problems
psychologically than the great theologians of, the East.^ This
I Augustine has also employed both notions in countless places since the writings
De Ordine (see II. 26 ad discendum necessarie dupliciter ducimur, auctoritate
:
atque ratione) and De vera religione {45 anitnae medicina distribuitur in auctoritatem
:
atque rationem).
^See Kahl, Die Lehre vom Primal des WiUens bei Augustin, Duns Scotus und
Descartes 1886, as also the works of Siebeck ; cf. his treatise " Die Anfange der
neueren Psychologic in der Scholastik " in the Ztschr. f. Philos. u. philosoph.
Kritik. New series. 93 Vol., p. 161 ff., and Dilthey's Einl. in d. Geisteswiss.
Vol. I.
• See Franke, Die Psychologic und Erkenntnisslehre des Arnobius, 1878, in which
the empiricism and criticism of this eclectic theologian are rightly emphasised. The
perception that Arnobius was not original, but had taken his refutation of Platonism
from Lucretius, and also that he remained, after becoming a Christian, the rhetorician
that he had been before (see Rbhricht Seelenlehre des Arnobius, Hamburg, 1893),
cannot shake the fact that his psychology is influenced by the consciousness of
redemption.
22 . HISTORY OF DOGMA. [CHAP. II.
side of Western theology undoubtedly continued weak before

Augustine, because the eclecticism and moralism to which Cicero
had especially given currency held the upper hand through the
reading of his works.^
Finally, still another element falls to be mentioned which
distinguishes the features of Western Christianity from the East-

ern, but which it is hard to summarise in one word. Many have
spoken of its more practical attitude. But in the East, Christi-
anity received as practical a form as people there required.
What is meant is connected with the absence of the speculative
tendency in the West. To this is to be attributed the fact that
the West did not fix its attention above all on deification, nor, in
consequence, on asceticism, but kept real life more distinctly in
view it therefore obtained to a greater extent from the gospel
;
what could rule and correct that life. Thus Western Christi-
anity appears to us from the first more popular and biblical, as
well as more ecclesiastical. It may be that this impression is
chiefly due to our descent from the Christianity in question, and
that we can never therefore convey it to a Greek ^ but it is un- ;
deniable that as the Latin idiom ot the Church was from its
origin more popular than the Greek, which always retained
something hieratic about it, so the West succeeded to a greater
extent in giving effect to the words of the gospel. For both of
these facts we have to refer again to TertuUian. He had the
gift, granted to few Christian writers, of writing attractively, both
for theologians and laymen. His style, popular and fresh,

must have been extremely effective. On the other hand,
he was able, in writings like De patientia, De oratione, De
psenitentia, or De idololatria, to express the gospel in a concrete
and homely form and even in many of his learned and polemi-
;
cal works, which are full of paradoxes, antitheses, rhetorical
1 Compare especially Minucius Felix and Lactantius.

5 Conversely it is quite intelligible that he who has started with the ideals of classic
antiquity, and has assimilated them, should derive more pleasure from men like
Clemens Alex. Origen and Gregory of Nazianzus than from TertuUian and
Augustine. But this sympathy is less due to the Christianity of the former scholars.
We are no longer directly moved by the religious emotions of the older Greeks, while
expressions of TertuUian and Augustine reach our heart.
— :
-CHAP. II.] WESTERN CHRISTIANITY. .25
figures, frigid sentences, and wild exaggerations, we do not 'fail

to find the clear and pertinent application of evangelical sayings,
astonishing only by its simplicity, and reminding us, where the
thought takes a higher not infrequently of Augustine.^
flight,
The Christianity and theology of Tertullian, whose elements
we have here endeavoured to characterise, were above all
headed by the primitive Christian hope and morality. In these
was comprehended what he felt to be his inmost thought. Both
phases recur in a large section of Latin literature of the third
' Not only is («.^., De anima 21),

the distinction between " natura " and "gratia "
or between "gratia" and "virtus" common in Tertullian, not only has he in his —
later writings —
laid great stress on the continued effect of Adam's sin and the trans-
mission of death, but there also occur many detached thoughts and propositions which
recall Augustine. (For the transmission of sin and death see De exhort. 2 ; Adv.
Marc. I., 22; De pud. 6, 9; De jejun. 3, 4: "mors cum ipso genere traducto,"
"primordiale delictum expiare," cf. the expression "vitium originis"; further, also,
the writing —
De pascha comput. 12, 21.) De orat. 4 "summa est voluntatis deisalus:
eorum, quos adoptavit." De pat. I: " Bonorum quorundara intolerabilis magnitudo

est, ut ad capienda et prsEstanda ea sola gratia divinsa inspirationis operetur. Nam
quod maxime bonum, id maxime penes deum, nee alius id, quam qui possidet, dispeu-
sat, ut cuique dignatur. " De psenit. 2: "Bonorum unus est titulus salus hominis
criminum piistinorum abolitione prasmissa." De pat. 12: "Dilectio summum fidei
sacramentum, Christiani nominis thesaurus." De orat. 4 In order to fulfil the will
:
of God " opus est dei voluntate . Christus erat voluntas et potestas patris. " 5
. . :
" quidquid nobis optamus, in ilium auguramur, et illi deputamus, quod ab illo exspec-
tamus." 9 " Deus solus docere potuit, quomodo se vellet orari."
: De psenit. 2 :
" Quod homini proficit, deo servit." 4 "Rape occasionera inopinatse felicitalis, ut
:
ille tu, nihil quondam penes deum nisi stilla

situlee et areae pulvus et vasculum figuli,
arbor exinde fias ilia qux penes aquas seritur, etc." 4 "Obsequii ratio in similitu-
:
dine animorum constituta est." De orat. 7

" debitum in scripturis delicti figura est.'
:
De bapt. S exempto
: reatu eximitur e.t poena. De pud. 22 " Quis alienara mortem :
sua solvit nisi solus dei filius." "peccando pro-

Tertullian imputed the proposition
meremur (De pud. 10) to his ecclesiastical opponents. The religious elements in his
"
—
mode of thought seem to have been decided apart from the New Testament books
by the reading of Seneca's writings. In these Stoic morality seems to have been
deepened, and in part transcended, by a really religious feehng and reflection, so that _
them to Pauline Christianity. Seneca, however, influ-

it was possible to pass from
enced Western thinkers generally see Minucius Felix, Novatian, and Jerome Deinl.
:
vir. 12. Even might be termed Augustinian

in Cyprian there occur traits that
notice how heemphasises the immanence of Christ in believers, e.g., Ep. 10, 3, and
" Christus in certamine agonis nostri et coro-
cf. the remarkable staitement Ep. 10, 4
:
nal pariter et coronatur." Add Ep. 58, 5 "Spiritus dei, qui cum a confitentibus
:
non discedit neque dividitur,- ipse in nobis loquitur et coronatur." See also the
Roman epistle Ep, 8, 3.
HISTORY OF DOGMA, [CHAP. IL
24
and of the first half of the fourth century.^ There it is hardly

possible to find any traces of Antignostic dogmatics; on the
contrary, Apocalyptics were developed with extreme vividness,
and morality, often Stoic in colouring, received a stringent
form.2 The whole of and

the abundant literary labours
dogmatic efforts of Hippolytus seem to have been lost on the
West from the first and completely.
But Tertullian also was deprived by his Montanism of the full
influence which he might have exerted on the Church.^ The
results of his work passed to Cyprian, and, though much
abbreviated and modified, were circulated by him. For the
period from A.D. 260 down to Ambrose indeed, properly speaking, —
to Augustine and Jerome— Cyprian
became the Latin Church
author par excellence. All known and unknown Latin writers
of his time, and after him, had but a limited influence he, as an :
edifying and standard author, dictated like a sovereign to the

Western Church for the next 120 years. His authority ranked
close after that of the Holy Scriptures, and it lasted up to the
time of Augustine.*
' Compare especially also the "vpritings which are falsely headed with the name of
Cyprian, and have begun to be examined in very recent years.
2 Compare the by Commodian, Arnobius,
characteristics of the Christianity taught
and Lactantius, vol. III. Novatian was accused of Stoicism by his
p. 77 ff.
opponents. Several of the writings headed by the name of Cyprian are very old and
important for our knowledge of ancient Latin Christianity. I have verified that in
the tractates D? aleatoribus (Victor), Ad Novatianum (Sixtus), and De laude mart.
( Novatian) (Texte und Unters, VI. I ; XIII. 1 and 4 ; see also the writings, to be
, ,
attributed to Novatian, De spectac, and De bonopudic); but let anyone read also
"De duobus montibus" in order to gain an idea of the theological simplicity and
archaic quality of these Latins. And yet the author of the above treatise succeeded
in formulating the phrase (c. 9) :
" Lex Christianorum crux est sancta Christi filii
dei vivi." Most instructive are the Instructiones of Commodian. The great influence
of Hennas' Pastor, and the interest directed accordingly to the Church, are character-
istic of this whole literature. Even unlearned authors continued to occupy themselves
with the Church, see the Symbol of Carthage "credo remissionem peccatorum per
:
sanctam ecclesiam."
' See my on "Tertullian in der Litteratur der alten Kirche" in the
treatise
Sitzungsber, d. IC. Akad. d. Wissensch, 1895, p. 545 ff.
Preuss.
* See a short demonstration of this in my Texten und Unters, V i,
p. 2, and
elaborated in my Allchristl. Litt. -Gesch. , Part I., p. 688 ff. I'itra has fiirnishe4
new material for the acquaintance also of the East writh Cyprian in the Analecta
.CHAP. II.] WESTERN CHRISTIANITY. 25
Cyprian had hardly one original theological thought for ;
even the work " De unitate ecclesise " rests on points of view
which are partly derived frqm the earlier Catholic Fathers, and
partly borrowed from the .Roman Church, to which they were
indigenous. In the extremely authoritative work, "Deopere.
et eleemosynis " the Tertullian conceptions of merit and satis-
faction are strictly developed, and are made to serve as the
basis of penance, almost without reference to the grace of God
in Christ. Cyprian's chief importance is perhaps due to the fact
that, influenced by the consequences of the Decian storm he
founded, in union with the Roman bishop Cornelius, what was
afterwards called the sacrament of penance ; in this, indeed, he
was the slave rathei- than the master of circumstances and in ;
addition, he was yielding to Roman influences which had been

working in this direction since Calixtus. He established the
rule of the hierarchy in the Church in the spheres of the sacra-
ment, sacrifice, and discipline he set his seal on Episcopalian-
;
ism he planted firmly the conceptions of a legal relation

;
between man and God, of works of penance as means of grace,

and of the "satisfactory" expiations of Christ. He also created
.clerical language with its solemn dignity, cold-blooded anger,
and misuse of Biblical words to interpret and criticise contem-
—
porary affairs a metamorphosis of the Tertullian genius for
language. Cyprian by no means inherited the interest taken
by Tertullian in Antignostic theology. Like all great princes
of the Church, he was a theologian only in so far as he was a
catechist. He held all the more firmly by the symbol, and
knew how to state in few words its undoubted meaning, and to
turn it skilfully even against allied movements like that of
Novatian.
This had been learnt from Rome, where, since as early as the
end of the second century, the " Apostles' " creed had been used
with and tact against the motley opinions held about doc-
skill
trine by Eastern immigrants. The Roman Bishops of the
Sacra. Cyprian's unparalleled authority in the West is attested especially by Lucifer,
Pradentius, Optatus, Pacian, Jerome, Augustine, and MommSen's catalogue of the
Holy Scriptures. The see of Carthage was called in aftertimes " Cathedra Cypriani,"
as that of Rome " Cathedra Petri." Optat. I., 10.
;
meddle with dogmatic disputes the only-

third century did not ;
two who and undoubtedly rendered great services to the

tried it,
Church, Hippolytus and Novatian, could not keep the sym-

pathies of the clergy or the majority. In the West men did not
live as Christians upon dogma, but they were obedient to the
short law (lex) presented in the Symbol ^ they impressed the ;
East by the confidence with which, when necessary, they adopted

a position in dogmatic questions, following in the doctrine of
the Trinity and in Christology an original scheme formed by
Tertullian and developed by Novatian ^ while at the same time ;
they worked at the consolidation of the constitution of the

Church, the construction of a practical ecclesiastical moral
code, as also the disciplining and training of the com-
munity through Divine Service and the rules of penance.*
The canons of Elvira, which, for the rest, are not lax, but are
even distinguished by their stringency, show how strictness and
clemency were united, Christendom being marked off from the
world, while at the same time a life in the world was rendered
possible, and even the grossest sins were still indulged in. The
result was a complete ecclesiastical constitution, with an almost
military organisation. At its head stood the Roman Bishop,
who, in spite of the abstract equality of all Bishops, occupied a
unique position, not only as representative, but also as actual
defender of the unity of the Church, which, nevertheless, was
1 The perversions adopted in order to represent the Christians as being bound t6
the "lex " are shown, e.g., by the argument in the, we admit, late and spurious
writing attributed to Cyprian De XII., abusivis sjeculi, chap. 12: "DumChristus
finis est legis, qui sine lege sunt sine Christo sunt ; populus sine lege populus
igitur
sine Christo est." As against this, verdicts such as that cursorily given by Tertullian
(De spect. 2), that the natural man " deum non novit nisi naturali jure, non etiam
familiari," remained without effect.
^ See on this Vol. II., p. 279 f. 312 f., and Vol. III. and IV. in various places
cf. Reuter, Augustin. Studien, pp. 153-230. Since the West never perceived clearly
the close connection between the result of salvation (i.(p6aptrla) and the Incarnation,
there always existed there a rationalistic element as regards the person of Christ,
which afterwards disclosed itself completely in Pelagianism. The West only com-
pleted its own theory as to Christ after it had transferred to His work conceptions
obtained in the discipline of penance. But that took place very gradually.
' Here again the Instructiones of Commodian are very instructive.
CHAP. 11.] WESTERN CHRISTIANITY. 2J
severely shaken, first by Novatianism, and afterwards by 1
Donatism.
When Constantine granted toleration and privileges to the
Church, and enabled the provincial Churches to communicate
with all freedom, Rome had already become a Latin city, and
the Roman community was thoroughly Latinised elsewhere ;
also in the West the Greek element, once so powerful, had

receded. Undoubtedly, Western Christians had no other idea
than that they formed a single Church with the East they were ;
actually at one with the Eastern tendency represented by

Athanasius in the fundamental conceptions of the doctrines of
God, Christ, and eternal salvation. But their interests were
often divided, and, in fact, there was little mutual understanding,
particularly after Cappadocian orthodoxy triumphed in the East.
From the middle of the third century the weakening of the cen-
tral power had once more restored their independence to all the
provinces, and had thus set free the principle of nationality and ;
this would have led to a complete reaction and wholesale par-

ticularism had not some energetic rulers, the migrations of the
tribes, and the Church set up a barrier, which, indeed, ultimately
proved too weak in the East.
It was the great dogmatic controversies which compelled the
provincial Churches to look beyond their own borders. But
the sympathy of the West for the East— there never developed
—
any vital interest in the opposite direction^ was no longer general
or natural. It sprang, as a rule, from temporary necessities or
ambitious purposes. Yet it became of incalculable importance
for Western theology for their relations with the East, into
;
which the Western Church was brought by the Arian conflict,

led Western Christians to observe more closely two great
phenomena of the Eastern Church, the scientific theology {of
Origen) and monachism.
It may here be at once said that the contact and influence
which thus arose did not in the end change the genius and
1 Anexception of short duration is formed by the interest taken by the Antiochenes

in the Western scheme of Christology during the Eutychian controversy : see the
epistolary collection of Tfeeodoret and his Eranistes, as also the works of Theodore
of Mopsuestia.
28 HISTORY OF POGMA. [CHAP. II.
tendency of the Western Church to its depths. In so far as a

lasting change was introduced in the fifth century, it is not to be
derived from this quarter. But for their suggestiveness, the
capital and impulse which were received from the East cannot
be highly enough appreciated. We need only compare the
writings of the Latin theologians who were not influenced by
the Greeks, ^ with Hilary, Victorinus Rhetor, Ambrose, Jerome,
Rufinus, and the others dependent on them, in order to perceive
the enormous difference. The exegetical and speculative science
of the Greeks was imported into the West, and, besides mona-
chism and the ideal of a virginity devoted to God, as the prac-
tical application of that science.
The West was not disposed to favour either of these, and
since always hardest to carry through changes in the rules
it is
of practical life, the implanting of monachism cost embittered

conflicts.^ But the ideal of virginity, as denoting the love-bond
with Christ, very soon established itself among the spiritual
leaders of the West. (Even before this, Cyprian says, De hab.
virg. 22 and you virgins have no husband, your lord and head
:
is Christ in the similitude and place of a man.) * It then won

through Ambrose the same significance for the West as it had
obtained through Origen's expositions of the Song of Songs
and Methodius in the East. Nay, it was in the West that the
ideal was first, so to speak, individualised, and that it created a
profusion of forms in which it was allied with or excited the
impassioned love of Christ* The theological science of the
1 E.g. Lucifer, so far as he does not simply imitate the Greeks. See on his
" theology " Kriiger's Monograph, i886.
2 See Jovinian and Vigilantius, as also the conflicts of monachism in Spain and
Gaul (cf. the works of Sulpicius Severus).

^ " Virginibus nee maritus dominus, dominus vester ac caput Christus est ad instar
et vicem masculi." Before this he says of the Church (Cypr., de unit. 6) :"sponsa
Chtisti, unius cubiciili sanctitatem casto pudore custodit." Afterwards this far frorn
beautiful thought was transferred to the individual soul, and thus erotic spiritualism
was produced,
^ See details in Vol. III.,
p. 129 f. The conception of Methodius was quite current
in Latin writers at the end of the fourth century, viz., that Christ must be born in
every Christian, and that only so could redemption be appropriated. Thus Prudentius
sings, " Virginitas et prompta fides Christum bibit alvo cordis et intactis condjt
paritura latebris." Ambrose, Expos, in ev. sec. Luc. 1. II., c. 26: "Vides non
CHAP. II.] WESTERN CHRISTIANITY. 29
Greeks could not have domesticated itself, even if the time had
been less unfavourable just then its authority was tottering even
;
in the East, after the Cappadocians seemed to have reconciled

faith and knowledge for a brief period. Where one has once
been accustomed to regard a complex of thoughts as an inviol-
able law, a legal order, it is no longer possible to awaken for it
for a length of time the inner sympathy which clings to spheres
in which the spiritual life finds a home and if it does succeed
;
in obtaining an assured position, its treatment assumes a different

character there is no freedom in dealing with it. As a matter
;
of fact, the West was always less free in relation to dogma

proper than the East in the classic period of Church theology.
In the West men reflected about, and now and again against,
dogma but they really thought little in it.
;
But how great, nevertheless, were the stores rescued to the^

West from the East^ by Greek scholars, especially Hilary,
Ambrose, and Jerome, at a time when the Greek sun had
already ceased to warm the West ! In the philosophical,
historical,and theological elements transplanted by them, we
have also one of Augustine's roots. He learned the science of
exegetical speculation from Ambrose, the disciple of the Cappa-
docians, and it was only by its help that he was delivered from
Manichseism. He made himself familiar with Neoplatonic
philosophy, and in this sphere he was apparently assisted by
the works of another Greek scholar, Victorinus Rhetor. He
acquired an astonishing amount of knowledge of the Egyptian
monks, and the impression thus received became of decisive
importance for him. These influences must be weighed if we
are to understand thoroughly the conditions under which such a
dubitasse Mariam, sed credidisse et ideo fructum fidei consecutam. . Sed et vos
. .
beati, qui audistis et credidistis qusecunque enim crediderit anima et concipit et

;
general dei verbum et opera ejus agnoscit. Sit in singulis Mavise anima, ut magnificat
dominum ; sit in singulis spiritus Marise, ut exultet in deo. Si secundum carnem

una mater est Christ], secunduvi fideiii tamen omnium frucius est Christus, Omhis
enim anima accipit dei verbum, si tamen immaculata et immunis a vitiis intemerato
castimoniam pudore custodiat."
1 We must pass by the older importer of Greek exegesis, Victorinus of Pettau, since,
in spite of all his dependence on Origen, the Latin spirit held the upper hand, and
his activity seems to have been limited.
30 ,
HISTORY OF DOGMA. [CHAP, II.
phenomenon as that which Augustine offers us was possible.''^
But, on the other hand, Augustine continues the Western line

represented by TertulHan, Cyprian, Ambrosiaster, Optatus,
Pacian, Prudentius, and also by Ambrose. Extremely char-
'
acteristic is his relation to the Stoic Christian popular philo-

sophy of Western teachers. We shall see that he retained a
remnant of it. But his importance in the history of the Church,
and of dogma, consisted essentially in the fact that he gave to
the West, in place of Stoic Christian popular morality as that was
comprised in Pelagianism, a religious and specifically Christian
ethic, and that he impressed this so strongly on the Church that its
formulas at leastmaintain their supremacy up to the present day

in the whole of Western Christendom. In getting rid, however,
of Stoic morals, he also thrust aside its curious complement, the
realisticeschatology in which the ancient Latin Christians had
given specific expression to their Christian faith.
Ambrose was sovereign among Western Bishops, and at the

same time the Greek trained exegete and theologian. In both
qualities he acted on Augustine, who looked up to him as
^Luther did to Staupitz.^* He comes first to be considered here
^ Wemay disregard Jerome ; he had no importance for Augustine, or if he had
any, was only in confirming the latter in his conservative attitude. This, indeed,
it
does not refer to Jerome's learning, which to Augustine was always something
uncanny and even suspicious. Jerome's erudition, acquired from the Greeks, and
increased with some genius for learned investigations, became a great storehouse of
the mediaeval Church ; yet Jerome did not mould the popular dogmatics of the Church,
but confirmed them, and as a rhetorician made them eloquent, while his ascetic
writings implanted monachism, and held out to it ideals which were in part extremely
questionable. At the glance
it is a paradoxical fact that Jerome is rightly re-
first
garded as the doctor RomancB Kareôx^y, and that we can yet pass him over
ecclesia
in a history of dogma. The explanation of the paradox is that after he threw off the
influence of Origen, he was exclusively the speaker and advocate of vulgar Catholic-
ism, and that he possessed a just instinct for the " ecclesiastical mean " in contrq.
versies which were only to reveal their whole significance after his time (see the
Semipelagian question and his relation to Augustinianism.) If that is a compliment
to him, it is none to his Church. After Augustine's time influences from the East
were very scanty ; yet we have to recall Junilius and Cassiodorus.
2 See Augustine's testimony as to Ambrose in the Ballerinis' ed.
of the latter's works.
Contra Jul. I. 4, 10 : "Audi excellentem dei dispensatorem, quem veneror ut pat-
rem ; in Christo Jesu enim per evangelium me genuit et eo Christi ministro lavacrum
regenerationis accepi. Beatum loquor Ambrpsium cujus pro Catholica fide gratiam,
in the latter respect. His education, his Episcopal chair in

Milan, the Arian and Apollinarian conflict into which he had to
enter, directed him to Greek theological literature. Philo, Hip-
polytus, Origen, and Basil were industriously read by him he ;
made extracts from them, and edited them in Latin.^ He was

lanited with Basil, not only by similiarity of situation, but above
all by agreement in character and attitude. Basil was his real
teacher in doctrine, and while the former was met with distrust
in Alexandria and Rome, Ambrose highly honoured him, and
fully recognised his orthodoxy. The importance of this attitude
of the Milanese Bishop for the closing of the Arian controversy,
and for the reconciliation of Roman and Alexandrian orthodoxy
with that of the Cappadocians, has been described in an earlier
volume.^ It has indeed been recently shown, beyond dispute,
that, in spite of his dependence on the Greeks, Ambrose pre-
served and further developed the Western system in his
Christology.^ —
TertuUian, Novatian directly or indirectly and —
Hilary influenced him. But on the other hand there is no
mistake that he emphasised more strongly than Augustine the
fundamental position of the Nicene decision,* and that he was
confirmed in his doctrine of the Two Substances by the Cappa-
docians, who had been involuntarily led to something approach-
ing it in their fight against Apollinaris. Further, he treats the
Logos in Jesus Christ so much as the subject, the human
substance so much as form and matter, that here again Greek
constantiam, labores, pericula.sive operibus sive sermonibus et ipse sum expertus et
raecum non dubitat orbis prsedicare Romanus." Op. imperf. c. Julian. I., 2 " Quem
:
vero judicem poteris Ambrosio reperire meliorem? De quo magister tuus Pelagins
ait, quod ejus fidem et purissimutn in sciipturis sensum ne inimicus quidem ausus est
reprehendere." Pelagius' own words in De gratia Christi et lib. arb. 43 (47):

^'Beatus Ambrosius episcopus, in cujus prsecipue libris Romana elucet fides, qui
scriptorum inter Latinos flos quidam speciosus enituit, cujus fidem et purissimum in
"
scripturis sensum ne inimicus quidem ausus est reprehendere (see c. Jul. I., 30). The
fame of Ambrose is also proclaimed by Rufinus, who defends him against Jerome,
"who, as an envious Augur, censured Ambrose's plagiarisms from the Greeks, while
he himself was much more culpable since he always posed as original."
:
1 See detailed references in Forster, Ambrosius, p. 99 ff.
.
2 See Vol. IV., p. 93-
» See Renter, August. Studien, pp. 207-227.
< See Ambrose de fid. I. prol et al. loc. in Reuter, I.e. p^ 185; on Augustine's
neutral position, id. p. 185 f.

32 HISTORY OF DOGMA, [CHAP. IL
influence —as in Hilary, who was similarly dependent on the

Greeks — cannot be overlooked ; for his own conception of the
work of Christ conflicts with this stunted view of his human
nature. But the most important influence of the East upon
Ambrose does not lie in the special domain of dogmatics. It
consists in the reception of the allegorical method of exegesis,
and of many separate schemes and doctrines. It is true
Ambrose had his own reservations in dealing with Plato and
Origen he did not adopt the consequences of Origen's
;
theology ^ he was much too hasty and superficial in the spliere

;
of speculative reflection to appropriate from the Greeks more than

fragments. But he, as well as the heavier but more thorough
Hilary, raised the West above the "meagreness" of a pedanti-
cally literal, and, in its practical application, wholly planless
exegesis ; and they transmitted to their countrymen a profusion
of ideas attached to the text of Holy Scripture. Rufinus and,
Jerome also completed the work.
in his first period, Manichse-
ism would hardly have been overcome in the West unless it had
'been by the theosophic exegesis, the "Biblical
confronted
alchemy "
of the Greeks, and the great theme of virginity was
praised with new tongues after Western Christians heard of the
union of the soul with its bridegroom, Christ, as taught by Origen
in his commentary on the Song of Songs.^ The unity, so far as
at all attainable, of ecclesiastical feeling in
East and West, was
restored in the loftiest regions of theology about A.D. 390. But
the fight against Origen, which soon broke out with embittered
hatred, had, among other sad consequences, the immediate
result that the West refused to learn anything further from the
1 Not a few passages might here be quoted from Ambrose's works. He rejects
questionable principles held by Origen with tact and without judging him a heretic,
always himself holding to the common Christian element. In a few important
questions, the influence of Origen— Plato —
is unmistakable ; as in the doctrine of
souls and the conception of hell. Greek influence appears to me to be strongest in

the doctrine of the relative necessity and expediency of evil ("amplius nobis profuit
culpa quam nocuit"). Therefore, I cannot see in this doctrine a bold theory of evil
peculiar to Ambrose, Deutsch (Des Ambrosius Lehre von der Siinde, etc., 1867,
like
p. 8) and Forster pp. 136, 142, 300).

(I.e. The teleological view from the standpoint
of the fuller restoration is alone new perhaps.
^ Ambrose, De Isaac et anima. . .
;
CHAP. 11.] WESTERN CHRISTIANITY. 33
great theologian. The West never attained a strict system in

the science of allegorical exegesis.
The sacred histories of the Old Testament were also trans-
formed into spiritual narratives for the West by Hilary,^ Am-
brose, Jerome, and Rufinus.^ In this transformation Western
Christians obtained a multitude of separate mystical Neoplatonic
conceptions, though they failed to obtain any insight into the
system as a whole. Another Western, the rhetorician Victori-
nus, that "aged man, most learned and skilled in the liberal
sciences, who had read and weighed so many works of the philo-
sophersthe instructor of so many noble Senators, who also, as a
;
monument of his excellent dischargeof his office,had deserved and

obtained a statue in the Roman Forum," had initiated his fel-
low-countrymen into Neoplatonism by translations and original
works.^ That happened before he became a Christian. Having
gone over to Christianity at an advanced age, and become a pro-
lific ecclesiastical writer, he by no means abandoned Neopla-
tonism. If I am not mistaken, Augustine made him his model

in the; crucial period of his life, and although he understood
enough Greek to read Neoplatonic writings, yet it was substan-
tially by Victorinus that he was initiated into them. Above all,
he here learned how to unite Neoplatonic speculation with the
Christianity of the Church, and to oppose Manichseism from
this as his starting-point. We do not require to describe in
detail what the above combination and polemic meant to him.
When Neoplatonism became a decisive element in Augustine's
religious and philosophical mode of thought, it did so also for
the whole of the West. The religious philosophy of the Greeks
was incorporated in the spiritual assets of the West, along with
^ On Hilary's exile in the East, epoch-making as it was for the history of theology,
and his relation to Origen, see Reinken's Hilarius, p. 128, 270, 281 ff. Augustine
held him in high honour.
° In the interpretation of the New Testament, Ambrose kept more faithfully to the
letter,following the Western tradition, and declining the gifts of the Greeks. He
describes Origen (Ep. 75) as " Longe minor in novo quam in veteri testamento."
But Western Christians were first made familiar with the Old Testament by the
Greeks.
' Aug. Confess. VIII., 2. See there also the story of his conversion.
C
its ascetic and monachist impulses.^ But, unless all signs

deceive, Augustiae received from Victorinus the impulse which
led him to assimilate Paul's type of religious thought ; for it
appears from the works of the aged rhetorician that he had
appropriated Paul's characteristic ideas, and Augustine demon-
strably devoted a patient study to the Pauline epistles from the
moment when he became more thoroughly acquainted with
Neoplatonism. Victorinus wrote very obscurely, and his works
found but a slender circulation. But this is not the only case in
history where the whole importance of an able writer was merged
in the service he rendered to a greater successor. great, A
'
epoch-making man is like a stream the smaller brooks, which
:
have had their origin perhaps further off in the country, lose
themselves in it, having fed it, but without changing the course
1 If we disregard the fragments which reached the West through translations of
Origen's works, and plagiarisms from the Cappadocians, Neoplatonism, and with it
Greek speculation in general, were imparted to it in three successive forms (i) By :
—
Victorinus and Augustine, and by Marius Mercator in the fourth and fifth centuries ;
{2) by Boethius in the sixth ; (3) by the importation of the works of the Pseudo-
Areopagite in the ninth century. Cassiodorus praises Boethius (Var. epp. i, 45) for
having given the Latins by translations the works of Pythagoras, Ptolemy, Nico-
machus, Euclid, Plato the theologian, Aristotle the logician, Archimedes, and other
Greeks. It seems now to me proven (Usener, Anecdoton Holderi, 1877) that
Boethius was a Christian, and that he also wrote the frequently-suspected writings De
sancta trimitate, Utrum pater et filius et spiritus s. de divinitate substantialiter prse-
<Jicentur, Quomodo quod sint bonee sint, cum non sint subslantialia
substantiae in eo
bona, De and Contra Eutychen et Nestorium. But he has influenced
fide Catholica
posterity, not by his Christian writings, but by his treatise, wholly dependent on
Aristotle, " De consolatione philosophise," which for that very reason could have been
written by a heathen, and by his commentaries on Aristotle. He was really, along
with Aristotle, the knowledge of whom was imperfect enough, the philosopher of the
early Middle Ages. On the system of Boethius, see Nitzsch's monograph, i860.
Many of his ideas recall Seneca and Proclus ; an examination of his relation to Vic-
torinus would be desirable. " In his system the foundation is formed by Platonism,
modified by certain Aristotelian thoughts ; besides this we have unmistakably a Stoic
trait, due to the Roman and personal character of the philosopher and the reading of
Roman thinkers. In this eclecticism Christianity occupies as

good as no position.
For that reason we must renounce the attempt to give a place to the system of
Boethius among those which represent or aim at a harmonising or fusion of Chris-
tianity with Platonism (e.g., Synesius, Pseudo-Dionysius) "; compare Nitzsch, I.e. p.
84 f. The fact that this man, who, in view of death, consoled himself with the ideas
of heathen philosophers, wrote treatises on the central dogma of the Church, affords
us the best means of observing that the dogma of Christ presented a side on which it
led to the forgetting of Christ himself.
CHAP. IL] WESTERN CHRISTIANITY. 35
of its current. Not only Victorinus,^ but ultimately also Am-

brose himself, Optatus, Cyprian, and Tertullian were lost to
view in Augustine ; but they made him the proud stream in
' It is to the credit of Ch. Gore that he

has described, in his article "Victorinus"
(Diet, of Christ. Biog. IV., pp. 1129-1138), the distinctive character of the theology
of Victorinus and its importance for Augustine. He says rightly " His theology is :
Neoplatonist in tone ... he applied many principles of the Plotinian philosophy to

the elucidation of the Christian mysteries. His importance in this respect has been
He preceded the Pseudo-Dionysius.
entirely overlooked in the history of theology.
He anticipated a great deal that appears in Scotus Erigena." In fact, when we
study the works of Victorinus (Migne T. VIII., pp. 999-1310), we are astonished to
find in him a perfect Christian Neoplatonist, and an Augustine before Augustine. The
writings " Ad Justinum Manichseum," and " De generatione verbi divini, and the great
work against the Arians, read like compositions by Augustine, only the Neoplatonic
element makes a much more natural appearance in him than in Augustine, who had
to make an effort to grasp it. If we substitute the word "natura"for "deus"in
the speculation of Victorinus, we have the complete system of Scotus Erigena. But
even this exchange is unnecessary ; for in Victorinus the terminology of the Church
only rests like a thin covering on the Neoplatonic doctrine of identity. God in
himself is —
"motus" not mutatio " moveri ipsum quo est esse"; but without the
:
Son he is conceived as 6 fii) &v (speculation on the four-fold sense of the iiA\ eXvai as
in the later mystics). The Son is 6 &v. It appears clearly in the speculation on the
relation of Father —
and Son, that consequent pantheistic Neoplatonism is favourable —
to the doctrine of the Homoousia. Because the Deity is movere, the Father finds
himself in a " semper generans generatio." So the Son proceeds from him, "re non
tempore posterior." The Son is the "potentia actuosa "; while the Father begets
him, "ipse se ipsum conterminavit." The Son is accordingly the eternal object of
the divine will and the divine self-knowledge ; he is the form and limitation of God,
very essence of the Father ; the Father in perceiving the Son perceives himself
("alteritas nata"). "In isto sine intellectu temporis, tempore ... est alteritas
;
nata, cito in identitatem revenit " therefore the most perfect unity and absolute
.
consubstantiality, although the Son is subordinate. Victorinus first designated the

Spirit as the copula of the Deity (see Augustine) he who completes the perfect
; it is
circle of the Deity ; "omnesin semper simul 6/too!)irioi divina

alternis exsistentes et
affectione, secundum actionem (tantummodq) subsistentiam propriam habentes,"
This is elaborated in speculations which form the themes of Augustine's great work
" De trinitate." The number three is in the end only apparent ; " ante unum quod
est in numero, plane simplex." " Ipse quod est esse, subsistit tripliciter." While
anyone who is at all sharp-sighted sees clearly from this that the ' Son " as '
" potentia actuosa " is the world-idea, that; is perfectly evident in what follows. All
things are potentially in God, actually in the Son; for "filius festinat in actionem."
The world is distinguished from God, as the many from the one, i.e., the world is
God unfolding himself and returning to unity sub specie atemitatis. That which is
alien and God-resisting in the world is simply not-being, matter. This is all as
given by Proclus, and therefore, while the word "creare" is indeed retained, is
transformed, in fact, into an emanation. The distinction between deus ipse and qua
36 • HISTORY OF DOGMA. [CHAP. II.
whose waters the banks are mirrored, on whose bosom the ships
sail, and which fertilises and passes through a whole region of
the world. -
a deo is preserved ; but, in reality, the world is looked at under the point of view of
the Deity developing himself. Ad Justinum 4 :
"
quidem quod ipse est, aliter
Aliter
quae ab ipso. Quod ipse est unum est totumque est quidquid ipse est ; quod vero ab
ipso est, innumerum est. Et haec sunt quibus refletur omne quod uno toto clauditur
et ambitur. Verum quod varia sunt quae abipso sunt, qui a se est et unum est, variis
cum convenit dominare. Et ut omnipotens apparet, contrariorum etiam origo ipse
debuit inveniri." But it is said of these "varia," that " insubstantiata sunt omnia
ivTo, in Jesu, hoc est, iv r$ \6ry(f. He is the unity of nature, accordingly elementum,
receptaculum, habitaculum, habitator, locus naturae. He is the "unum totum" in
which the universum presents itself as a unity. And now follows the process of
emanation designated as " creation," in whose description are employed the Christian
and Neoplatonic stages deus, Jesus, spiritus, coCs, anima (as world-soul) angeli et
:
deinde corporalia omnia subministrata." Redemption through Christ, and the return
ad deum of all essences, in so far as they are a deo, is Neoplatonically conceived, as
also we have then the doctrine of the pre-existence of souls and their pre-temporal
fall. The Incarnation is admitted, but spiritualised, inasmuch as side by side with
the conception of the assumption of a human form, which occurs once, the other
prevails that Christ appears as burdened with humanity in its totality " universalis ;
caro, universalis anima; in isto omnia universalia erant" (Adv. Arian. III., 3).
" Quia corpus ille catholicum ad omnera hominem habuit, omne quod passus est
catholicum fecit; id est ut omnis caro in ipso crucifixa sit" (Ad Philipp, pp. 1196-
1221 ; Adv. Arian. III., 3). But the most interesting features, because the most
important for Augustine are (l), that Victorinus gives strong expression to the
doctrine of Predestination —only he
compelled in opposition to Manichaeism to
feels
maintain the freedom of the will ; and (2), that, especially in his commentaries, he
places the highest value on /unification by faith alone in opposition to all moralism.
'
Neoplatonism had won his asseut, or had prepared him in some measure to assent, to
both these doctrines ; we know,indeed, from other sources, that heathen Neo-
platonists felt attracted to John and Paul, but not to the Synoptics or James. Thus
Victorinus writes :
" non omnia restaurantur sed quae in Christo sunt" (p. 1245),
" quae salvari possent " (p. 1274), "universes sed qui sequerentur" (p. J221). In a
mystical way Christ is believing humanity (the Church), and believing humanity is
humanity in general. Everything undergoes a strictly necessary development ; there-
fore Victorinus was a predestinationist. The passages in which Victorinus expresses
himself in a strictly Pauline, and, so to speak, Antipelagian sense, are collected by
Gore, p. 1 137; see Ad Gal. 3, 22; Ad Philipp, 3, g; "'non meani justitiam'
tunc enim mea est vel nostra, cum moribus nostris justitiam del mereri nos putamus
perfectam per morei. At non, iuquit, banc habens justitiam, sed quam ? lUam ex
fide. Non illam quae ex lege ; vae in operibus est et carnali disciplina, sed hanc quae
ex deo procedit '
justitia ex fide;'" Ad Phil. 4, 9; Ad Ephes. 2, 5 : "non nostri
laboris est, quod ssepe moneo, ut nos salvemus sed sola fides in Christum nobis
;
salus est . . nostrum pene jam

. nihil est nisi solum credere qui superavit omnia.
Hoc est enim plena salvatio, Christum hsec vicisse. Fidem in Christo habere.
;
For not only the work of those Greek Latins, but also the
genuine Western theology and ecclesi-
line of representatives of
asticism ended in Augustine.^
plenarii fidem, nullus labor est, nulla difScultas, animi tantum voluntas est . . .
justitianon tantum valet quantum fides " ; Ad Ephes. 1,14; 3, 7 ; Ad Phil. 2, 13 :
" quia ipsum velle a deo nobis operatur, fit ut ex deo et operationem et voluntatem
habearaus." Victorinus has been discussed most recently by Geiger (Programme von
Metten, 1888, 1889), and Reinhold Schmid (Marius Victorinus Rhetor u. s. Bez. z.
—
Augustin. Kiel, 1S95) compare also the dissertation by Koffmane, De Mario Victor-
ino, philosopho Christiano, Breslau, 1880. Geiger has thoroughly expounded
the .complete Neoplatonic system of Victorinus; Schmid seeks, after an excell'ent
statement of his theological views, to show (p. 68 ff.), that he exerted no, or, at least,
no decisive influence on Augustine. I cannot see that this proof has really been
successful yet I admit that Schmid has brought forward weighty arguments in
;
support of his proposition. The name of Victorinus is not the important point for the
history of dogma, but the indisputable combination of Neoplatonisin
fact that the
and highly orthodox Christianity existed in the West, in Rome, before Augustine,
under the badge of PauUnism. Since this combination was hardly of frequent
occurrence in the fourth century, and since Augustine gives a prominent place to
Victorinus in his Confessions, it will remain probable that he was influenced by him.
The facts that he was less Neoplatonic than Victorine, and afterwards even opposed
him, do not weigh against the above contention. But it is positively misleading to
argue like Schmid (p. 68) against Augustine's Neoplatonism by appealing to the fact .
that from the moment of his rejection of Manichîsm and semi-scepticism, he was a
" decided Christiaii."
1 known regarding the history of ecclesiastical penance in the East
Little is yet
but I believe I can maintain that in the West the shock was less violent in its effect,
which all official Church discipline received through the rapid extension of Christianity
after Constantine. Here confidence in the Church was greater, the union of "sancta
ecclesia" and " remissio peccatorum " closer ("credo remissionem peccatorum per
.sanctara ecclesiam " : Symbol. Carthag.), and the sense of sin as guilt, which was to
,be atoned for by public confession and satisfactio, more acute. Whence this came,
jt is hard to say. In the East it would appear that greater stress was laid on the
operations of the cultus as a collective institution, and on the other hand on private
self-education through prayer and asceticism ; while in the West the feeling was
stronger that men occupied religious legal relationships, in which they were responsible
to the Church, being able, however, to expect from the Church sacramentalund inter-
cessory aid in each individual case. The individual and the Church thus stood nearer
each other in the West than in the East. Therefore, ecclesiastical penance asserted
a much greater importance in the former than in the latter. We
can study this
significance in theworks of the Africans on the one hand, and of Ambrose on the
other. They have little else in common, but they agree in their view of penance
(Ambrose, De peenitentia). The practice of penance now acquired an increasing
.
constitution and of
influence in the West on all conditions of the ecclesiastical
the whole of
theology, so that we can ultimately construct from this starting-point ,
Western Catholicism in the Middle Ages and modern times, and can trace the subtle
Augustine studied, above all, very thoroughly, and made him-

self familiar with Cyprian's work. Cyprian was to him the
" saintly," the Church Father, Kar^ eôxw, and his view of
heresy and the unity of the Church was dependent on Cyprian.

But standing as a Bishop, unassailed, on the foundation which
Cyprian had created, Augustine did not find it necessary to
state Episcopalianism so uncompromisingly as the former,
and being occupied with putting an end to a schism which was
different from the Novatian, he learned to take a different view
of the nature of schisms from the Bishop whom he venerated as
a hero.^ Cursory remarks show, besides, that Augustine had
made himself familiar with the literature of the Novatian con-
troversy, and had learned from it for his notion of the Church.
Some works quoted by him we no longer possess^^.^., that of
Reticius against the Novatians.^ What has been preserved to
us of this literature,^ proves that the Western Church was con-
tinually impelled, by its opposition to the Novatians in the
course of the fourth century, to reflect on the nature of the
Church.*
But even when he entered into the Donatist controversy,
Augustine did so as a man of the second or indeed of the third
generation, and he therefore enjoyed the great advantage of
workings of the theory of penance to the most remote dogmas. But Augustine once
more marks the decisive impetus in this development. With him began the process
by which what had long existed in the Church was elevated into theory. He indeed
created few formulas, and has not even once spoken of a sacrament of penance ; but,
on the one hand, he has clearly enough expressed the thing itself, and, on the other,
where he has not yet drawn the theoretical consequences of the practice of penance,
he has left such striking gaps (see his Christology) that they were filled up by unosten-
tatious efforts, as if inevitably, in after times.
iSee Reuter, August. Studien, pp. 232 ff., 355.
2 Lib I. c. Julian. 3 Op. imperf. c. Jul I., 55 ; Jerome de vir. inl., 82.
s Pseudo-Cyprian = Sixtus II. ad Novatianum, Ambrosiaster in the
Qusest. ex Vet.
et Novo Testam. [the inserted tractate against Novatian] Pacianus c. Novat.
*From Pacian's Ep. I. ad Sempron. comes the famous sentence: " Christianus
mihi nomen est, catholicus cognomen." In the tractate of Ambrosiaster against
Novatian, the objectivity of the Divine Word and of baptism, and their independence
in their operation of the moral character of the priest, are consistently argued. In
some of the sentences we imagine that we are listening to Augustine. On the whole
there is not a little in Ambrosiaster's commentary and questions which must be
described as leading up to Augustine, and is therewith genuinely Western.
having at his disposal a fund of conceptions and ideas already

collected. In this sphere Optatus had especially wrought
before him.^
This is not the place to describe the rise of Donatism ; for
the dispute did not originate in a dogmatic controversy.^ It
arose in the first place out of Csecilian's action against the ex-
aggerated veneration of martyrs, which disturbed the order and
endangered the existence of the Church. Some of the clergy
who did not desire a strong episcopal power seem to have made
common cause with the discontented and refractory enthusiasts,
to whom Csecilian had been obnoxious even when Deacon. In
any case, a point of principle did not immediately emerge in
the controversy. But it was soon introduced, and indeed-there
isno doubt that Cyprian was played off against himself^ The
Donatist party, which was at the same time, it appears, the
African national party, found support both in Cyprian's con-
ception that the Bishop was only a Bishop if he possessed a
certain Christian and moral quality, and in his defence of
heretical baptism. The opposition, also carrying out ideas
taught by Cyprian, gave such prominence to the official char-
acter of the episcopate, and the objective efficacy of the sacra-
ment, that the personal quality of the official or dispenser
became indifferent* It may be that those martyrs and relic-
1 Aug adv. Parmer. I, 3: " Venerabilis memoriae Milevitanus episcopus catholicae
communionis Optatus." Fulgentius ranks Optatus along with Ambrose and
Augustine.
2 See Deutsch, Drei Actenstiicke z. Gesch. des Donatismus, 1875, P- 4° f- Volter,
Der Ursprung des Donatismus, 1882; Harnack, Theol. Lit-Zeit., 1884, No. 4; on
the other side, Reuter I.e. 234 ff. whose contradiction,
however, partly rests on a
misunderstanding of my view. Seeck. Zitschr. fur K. -Gesch. X. 4. Duschesne gives
the best account, Le doissier du Donatisme, 1890.
s See Vol. II., p. ii4ff-
Here these Africans abandoned the position, in the question of heretical baptisms,
4
taken up by Cyprian; see the 8th Canon of

Aries (a.d. 316) "De Afris quod :
ut si ad ecclesiam aliquis de haeresi

propria lege sua utuntur, ut rebaptizent, placuit,
si perviderint eum in patre et filio et spiritu
venerit, interrogent euro symbolum ; et
imponatur ut accipiat spiritum sanctum.
sancto 'esse baptizatum, manus ei tantum
Quod si interrogatus non responderit hanc trinitatem,
baptizetur." Can. 13 "De :
his, qui scripturas tradidisse dicuntur vel vasa dominica vel nomina patrum suorum,
s.
aclis publicis fuerit detectus, non verbis nudis,

placuit nobis, ut quicumque eorum ex
ab ordine amoveatur.
cleri Nam
si iidem aliquos ordinasse fuerint deprehensi et
40 . HISTORY OF DOGMA. [CHAP. II.
worshipping enthusiasts in Carthage were inclined from the first

to the conception once held by Cyprian against Calixtus and
his successors, and that they thus required a standard of active,
personal holiness for bishops, which could no longer be sus-
tained in the great Church and during the devastating storms
of the last persecution. But this cannot be proved. On the
other hand, it is indisputable that, after the Synod of Aries,
the controversy had reached a point where it must be regarded
as the last link in the chain of the great phenomena (Encratites
Montanists, adherents of Hippolytus and Novatians) in which
Christendom strove against the secularisation that was imposed
upon it by the removal of the attribute of holiness, and with it
of the truth of the Church, from persons to institutions the —
office and mysteries ^ this change being due to the fact that
;
"
hi quos ordinaverunt rationales (able ? capable ?) subsistunt, non illis obsit ordinatio
(that is even ordination by a traditor was to be valid).
the decisive principle ;
' Crises, similar to that of the Donatists, also arose elsewhere as in Rome and —
—
Alexandria at the beginning of the fourth century ; but our information regarding
them is wholly unsatisfactory ; see Lipsius, Chronologie der rbmischen Bischofe, p.
250 ff., where the epitaphs by Damasus on Marcellus and Eusebius are copied, and
rightly compared with the passage in the Liber prsedest., c. 16 on Heracleon (who is
really Heraclius). Heraclius appears already (a.d. 307-309) to have exaggerated
the view of the "objectivity" and power of the sacraments to such an extent as o
declare all sins by baptised persons to be " venial," and to hold a severe public pen-
ance to be unnecessary. Therefore it was said of him, " Christus in pace negavit "
and " vetuit lapsos peccata dolcre" more precisely in Lib. praedest.
;
" Baptizatum :
hominem justum sive peccatorem loco sancti computari docebat nihilque obesse
sive
baptizatis peccata memorabat, dicens, sicut non in se recipit natura ignis gelu ita
baptizatus no7i in se recipit peccatum. Sicut enim ignis resolvit aspectu suo nives
quant:ecunque juxta sint, sic semel baptizatus non \tc\'^\t peccaforum reatum, etiam
quantavis fuerint operibus ejus peccata permixta." In this we can truly study the
continuity of Western Christianity How often this thought has cropped up on into
I
the ninetfeenth century, and that precisely among evangelicals ! It marks positively
the " concealed poison," which hard to distinguish from the wholesome medicine
it is
of evangelic comfort. But it is very noteworthy that this phase in the conception of
the favoured position of the baptised can be first proved as existing in Rome. De-
velopments always went furthest there, as the measures tak^n by Calixtus also show.
Yet this one was rejected, after a schism had broken out in the community, and that
is perfectly intelligible ; for apart from the ruinous frivolity which had come in with
the above view, what importance could the priestly class retain if every baptised
person might, without further ceremony, and if he only willed it, feel and assert him-''
self to be a member of the congregation even after the gravest not very sin ? It is
probable that Heraclius developed his ecclesiastical .attitude on the basis of the
— 1
CHAP, n.] WESTERN CHRISTIANITY. 4
Otherwise men would have had to despair of the Christian

character of the Church as Catholic. The Donatists denied the
validity of any ordination conferred by a traditor, and therefore
a.lso of sacraments administered
by a bishop who had been
consecrated by a traditor. As a last remnant of a much more
earnest conception, a minimum ofpersonal worthiness was required
of the clergy alone, and received into the notion of the Church
Itself: it was no longer Christian if this minimum was wanting,
if the clergy —
nothing being now said of the laity were not —
free from every idolatrous stain. Compared with the measure
of agreement which prevailed between Catholics and Donatists,
the separate thesis of the latter looks like a caprice, and certainly
much obstinacy, personal discontent, and insubordination lurked
behind it. But we may not overlook the question of principle
any more here than in the case of Novatianism. The legend of
the Sybilline Books is constantly repeating itself in the history
of spiritual conflicts. The remnant saved from the flames
stands at as high a price as the whole collection. And what a
price the Church has paid in order to escape the exhortations of
separatists ! The Novatian
crisis —
after the Decian persecution
—drew from the sacrament of penance, and thereby gave the
it
impulse in general to substitute a system of sacraments for the

sacrament that blotted out sin. (The formal establishment of
the new sacrament had, indeed, still to be waited for for a long
time.) —
The Donatist crisis after the Diocletian persecution
taught the Church to value ordination as imparting an inalien-
able title (character indelebilis) and to form a stringent view of
the " objectivity " of the sacraments ; or, to use a plainer ex-
pression, to regard the Church primarily as an institution whose
Pauline theory of baptism and of the faith that lays hold of Christ. If we were to
.understand the matter so, he would have Iseen a Luther before Luther. We have
probably to suppose that he saw in baptism the magical bestowal of a stamp, as in
"theconception taken of certain heathen mysteries. In the Melelian schism in Egypt,
the difference in principles as to the renewed reception of the lapsed, co-operated
with opposition tcthe monarchial position of the Alexandrian Bishop. The dispute,
which thus recalls the Donatist controversy, soon became one of Church politics,
and personal. (Compare Meletius and the later Donatists ; the limitation of tht
whole question to the Bishops is, however, peculiar to the Donatists.) See Walch,
Ketzerhistorie, Vol. IV., and Moller in Herzog's R.-E. IX., p. 534 fF.
:
holiness and truth were inalienable, however melancholy the

state of its members.
In this thought Catholicism was first complete. By it is ex-
plained its later history down to the present day, in so far as it
is not a history of piety, but of the Church, the Hierarchy,

sacramental magic, and implicit faith (fides implicita). But
only in the West did the thought come to be deliberately and
definitely expressed. It also made its way in the East, be-
cause it was inevitable but it did so, as it were, unconsciously.
;
This was no advantage for the very fact that this conception
;
of the Church was definitely thought out in the West, led over
and over again to the quest a form which
for safeguards, or
could be reconciled with living and the requirements of a
faith,
holy life. Even Augustine, who stated it definitely and fully,
aimed at reconciling the Christian conscience with it. But he
was not the first he rather received it from
to declare it ;
tradition. The first new conception known

representative of the
to us, and Augustine also knew him, was Optatus.
The work of Optatus, " De schismate Donatistarum," was
written in the interests of peace, and therefore in as friendly and
conciliatory a tone as possible. This did not, indeed, prevent
violent attacks in detail, and especially extremely insulting
allegorical interpretations of texts from Scripture. But the
author every now and then recalls the fact that his opponents
are after all Christian brethren (IV., i., 2), who have disdainfully
seceded from the Church, and only decline to recognise what is
gladly offered them. Church fellowship. At the very beginning
of his book, which, for the rest, is badly arranged, because it is
a reply point by point to a writing by the Donatist, Parmenian,
—
Optatus (I., 10 sq.) differing from Cyprian indicates the —
distinction in principle between heretics and schismatics, and he
—
adheres firmly to the distinction already drawn by Irenseus —
to the end of his statement.^ Heretics are " deserters from or
of the Symbol " (I., 10, 12 ; II., 8), and accordingly are
falsifiers
not Christians ; the Donatists are seditious Christians. Since
the definition holds (I., 11) that " a simple and true understand-
1 Parmenian denied this distinction.

ing in the law {scil. the two testaments), the unique and most
true sacrament, and unity of minds constitute the Catholic
{scil. Church)," ^ the Donatists only
want the last point to be
genuinely Catholic Christians. The heretics have " various and
false baptisms," no legitimate office of the keys, no true divine
service " but these things cannot be denied
; to you schismatics,^
although you be not in the Catholic Church, because you have
received along with us true and common sacraments" (I., 12).
He says afterwards (III., 9) "You and we have a common
:
ground in the Church (ecclesiastica una conversatio), and if the

minds of men contend, the sacraments do not." Finally, we
also can say " We equally believe, and have been stamped
:
with one seal, nor did we receive a different baptism from you ;
nor a different ordination. We read equally the Divine Testa-

ment we pray to one God. Among you and us the prayer of
;
our Lord is the same, but a rent having been made, with the
parts hanging on this side and on that, it was necessary that it
should be joined." And (III., 10) he remarks very spiritually,
founding on a passage in Ezechiel " You build not a protect-:
ing house, like the Catholic Church, but only a wall the ;
partition supports no corner-stone it has a needless door, nor

;
does it guard what is enclosed it is swept by the rain, de-

;
stroyed by tempests, and is unable to keep out the robber. It

is a house wall, but not a home. And your part is a quasi
ecclesia, but not Catholic." V., i: "That is for both which is
common to you and us therefore it belongs also to you, because
:
you proceed from us ; " that is the famous principle which is still
valid in the present day in the Catholic Church. " Finally, both
you and we have one ecclesiastical language, common lessons,
the same faith, the very sacraments of the faith, the same
^ " Catholicam (scil. ecclesiam) facit simplex et verus intellectus in lege (scil. duobus
testamentis) singulare ac verissimum sacramentum et unitas animorum."
2 Cyprian would never have admitted that. He accused the Novatians (Ep^ 68) of
infringing the Symbol like other heretics, by depriving the " remissio peccatorum " of
its full authority ; and he commanded all who had not been baptised in the Catholic
Church to be re-baptised. Cyprian had on his side the logical consequence of the
Catholic dogma of the Church ; but since this consequence was hurtful to the expan-
sion of the Church, and the development of its power, it was rejected with a correct
instinct in Rome (see Ambrosiaster), and afterwards in Africa.
;
mysteries." Undoubtedly Optatus also held ultimately that

those things possessed by the schismatics were in the end fruit-
less, because their offence was especially aggravated. They
merely constituted a " quasi ecclesia." For the first mark of
the one, true, and holy Church was not the holiness of the
persons composing it but exclusively the possession of the
;
' sacraments. II., i :

" It is the one Church whose sanctity is de-
rived from the sacraments, and

not estimated from the pride of
persons. This cannot apply to all heretics and schismatics it ;
remains that it is (found) in one place." The second mark con-

sists in territorial Catholicity according to the promise :
" I will
give the heathen for an inheritance, and the ends of the world
for a possession." II., i : "To whom, then, does the name of
Catholic belong, since it is called Catholic because it is reason-
able and diffused everywhere ? " ^
Optatus did not succeed in clearly describing the first mark in

its negative and exclusive meaning; we could indeed easily
charge him with contradicting himself on this point. The
second was all the more important in his eyes,^ since the Dona-
tists had only taken hold in Africa and, by means of a few
emigrants, in Rome. In both signs he prepared the way for
Augustine's doctrine of the Church and the sacraments, in which
Optatus' thought was, of course, spiritualised. Optatus has
himself shown, in the case of Baptism (V., i-8), what he meant
by the "sanctity of the sacraments." In Baptism there were
1 Compare I.e. :
" Ecclesiam tu, frater Parmeniane, apud vos solos esse dixisti
nisi forte quia vobis speciaUm sanctitatem de superbia vindicare contenditis, ut, ubi
vultis, ibi sit ecclesia, et non sit, ubi non vultis. Ergo ut in particula Africse, in an-
gulo parv£E regionis, apud vos esse possit, apud nos in alia parte Africse non erit ? "
' In connection with the territorial catholicityof the Church, Optatus always treats
the assertion of its unity. Here he dependent on Cyprian ; see besides the details
is
in Book 2 those in Book 7 : "Ex persona beatissimi Petri forma unitatis retinendse
vel faciendse descripta recitatur;" ch. 3 : "Malum est contra interdictum aliquid
facere ; sed pejus est, unita'em nou habere, cum possis " Bono unitatis ..."
sepelienda esse peccata hinc intellegi datur, quod b. Paulus apostolus dicat, caritatem
posse obstruere multitudinem peccatorum " (here, accordingly, is the identification of
unitas and caritas). " HiEC omnia Paulus viderat in apostolis ceteris, qui bono
...
unitas per caritatem noluerunt a communione Petri recedere, ejus soil, qui negaverat
Christum. Quod si major esset amor innocentise quam utilitas pacis unitatis,
dicerent se non debere communicare Petro, qui negaverat magistrum." That is still
a dangerous fundamental thought of Catholicism at the present day.
three essentials the acting Holy Trinity ("confertur a trinitate"),

:
the believer (" fides credentis "), and the administrator. These
three were not, however, equally important the two first rather ;
belonged alone to the dogmatic notion of Baptism ("for I see

that two are necessary, and one as if necessary [quasi neces-
sariam]!"), for the baptisers are not "lords" (domini), but
" agents or ministers of baptism " (operarii vel ministri baptismi).
(Ambrosiaster calls them advocates who plead, but have nothing

to say at the end when sentence is passed.) They are only
ministering and changing organs, and therefore contribute no-
thing to the notion and effect of Baptism for " it is the part of ;
God to cleanse by the sacrament." But if the sacrament is in-

dependent of him who, by chance, dispenses it, because the rite
presupposes only the ever the same Trinity and the ever the same
faith,^ then it cannot be altered in its nature by the dispenser
(V. 4 " the sacraments are holy in themselves, not through

:
men sacramenta per se esse sancta, non per homines"). That

:
is the famous principle of the objectivity of the sacraments
which became so fundamental for the development of the dog-

matics of the Western Church, although it never could be
carried out in all its purity in the Roman Church, because in
that case it would have destroyed the prerogatives of the Clergy.
It is to be noticed, however, that Optatus made the holiness of
the sacraments to be effective only for the faith of the believer
(fides credentis), and he is perfectly consistent in this respect,
holding faith to be all important, to the complete exclusion of
virtues. Here again he prepared the way for the future theology
of the West by emphasising the sovereignty of faith.^ It is all
1 Notice that there already occur in Optatus terms compounded with "quasi" which
were so significant in the later dogmatics of Catholicism.

2 Here stands the following sentence (V., 7) "Ne quis pularet, in solis apostolis
:
aut episcopis spem suam esse ponendam, sic Paulus ait Quid est enim Paulus vel
:
'
quid Apollo? Utique ministri ejus, in quem credidistis. Est ergo in universis
servientibus non dominium sed ministerium."
8 this point there occur especially in V., 7, 8, very
important expositions antici-
At
pating Augustine. " gratiam dei pertinet qui credit, non ille, pro cujus voluntate,
Ad
trinitatis est, quod sanctificat, non
ut dicitis, sanctitas vestra succedit."— " Nomen
merito aliquid dicere, cujus ^%V fides,
opus (operantis)."—" Restat jam rfe credentis
dei et sanctitati suse anteposuit et majestati ; non
enim potestis sanctiores.
quam filius
quam Christus est." Here follows the story' of the Canaanitish

woman, with
esse
the more shocking to find that even Optatus uses the whole re-
flection to enable higi to depreciate claims on the life of the
members of the Church. We see clearly that the Catholic
doctrine of the sacraments grew out of the desire to show that
the Church was holy and therefore true, in spite of the irreligion
of the Christians belonging to it. But in aiming at this, men lit,
curiously, upon a trace of evangelical religion. Since it was im-

possible to point to active holiness, faith and its importance
were called to mind. A great crisis, a perplexity, in which, see-
ing the actual condition of matters, the Catholic Church found
itselfinvolved with its doctrine of Baptism, virtue, and salvation,
turned its attention to the promise of God and faith. Thus the
most beneficent and momentous transformation experienced by
Western Christianity before Luther was forced upon it by circum-
stances. But it would never have made its way if it had not
been changed by the spiritual experiences of a Catholic Christian,
Augustine, from an extorted theory^ into a joyful and confident
confession.
Parmenian gave Optatus occasion to enumerate certain " en-
dowments " (dotes) of the Church, i.e., the essential parts of its
possession. Parmenian had numbered six, Optatus gives five :
(i) cathedra (the [Episcopal] chair); (2) angelus; (3) spiritus; (4)
fons (5) sigillum (the symbol). The enumeration is so awk-
;
ward that one can only regret that it is adapted to the formula
of an opponenti But we learn, at least, in this way that
Cyprian's ideal of the unity of the Episcopate, as represented in
Peter's chair,had been received and fostered unsuspiciously in
Africa. "Peter alone received the keys" (I., 10, 12). "You
cannot deny your knowledge that on Peter, in the city of Rome,
was first conferred the Episcopal chair, in which he sat, the
head of all the Apostles, whence he was also called Cephas, in
which one chair unity might be observed by all, lest the rest of
the remarkable application : "Etut ostenderet filius dei, se vacasse, Jidem tantum-
modo operatam esse : vade, inquit, mulier in pace, /ides tua te salvavit." So also faith
is extolled as having been the sole agent in the stories of the Centurion of Capernaum
and the Issue of Blood. " Nee mulier petiit, nee Christus promisit, sed fides tantum
quantum prsssumpsit, exegit." The same thoughts occur in Optatus' contemporary,
Ambrosiaster.
1 This it was in the case of Ambrosiaster as well as in that of Optatus.
the Apostles should severally defend one, each for himself, in

order that he might now be a schismatic and sinner, who
should appoint a second as against the one unique chair" (II., 2).
The connection with Peter's chair was of decisive importance,
not only for Optatus, but also for his opponent (II., 4), who had
appealed to the fact that Donatists had also possessed a Bishop
in Rome. Optatus, besides, discusses the second point, the
angelus, who is the legitimate Bishop of the local community,
the chair (cathedra) guaranteeing the oecumenical unity, and he
emphasises the connection of the African Catholic Churches
with the Oriental, and especially the seven-fold ecclesia of Asia
(Rev. II., 3), almost as strongly as that with the Roman Church
(II., 6 ; VI., 3). His disquisitions on spiritus,^ fons, and sigil-
lum, are devoid of any special interest (II., 7-9). On the other
hand, it is important to notice that he expressly subordinates
the consideration of the endowments (dotes) of the Church, to
the verification of "its sacred members and internal organs"
(sancta membra ac viscera ecclesise), about which Parmenian
had said nothing. These consisted in the sacraments and the
names of the Trinity " in which meet the faith and profession of
believers " (cui concurrit fides credentium et professio). Thus
he returns to his natural and significant line of thought.^
1 The Donatist had said (II., 7) :

" Nam in ilia (catholica) ecclesia quis spiritus esse
potest, nisi qui pariat filios gehennae ? " That is the genuine confession of separatists.
2 We may here select a few details from the work of Optatus as characteristic of
Western Christianity before Augustine. He regularly gives the name of " lex " to
both the Testaments ; he judges all dogmatic statements by the symbolum apostolicum,
in which he finds the doctrine of the Trinity, to him the chief confession, without
therefore mentioning the Nicene Creed; he confesses
" per carnem Christi deo re-
conciliatus est mundus
" (I. 10) ; he declares (VI. , I ) " quid est altare, nisi sedes et
, :
corporis et sanguinis Christi, cujus illic per certa momenta corpus et sanguis habita-
bat ? " He speaks of the reatus peccati and meritum fidei ; he has definitely stated
the distinction between pmcepta and consilia (VI. , 4) in his explanation of the parable of
the Good Samaritan. The innkeeper is Paul, the two pence are the two Testaments,
the additional sum still perhaps necessary are the consilia. He describes the position
:— " Est
of the soteriological dogma in his time by the following exposition (II., 20)
Chrlstiani hominis, quod bonum est velle et in eo quod bene voluerit, currere sed ;
homini non est datum perficere, ut post spatia, qu£e debet homo implere, restet aliquid
perfectus solus dei filius
deo, ubi deficient! succurrat, quia ipse solus est perfectio et
Christus, cxtexi omnes semi-perfecti smcmz." Here we perceive the great task that
awaited Augustine. But even as regards Church politics Optatus betrays himself as
"
48 HISTORY OF DOGMA. [CHAP. 11.
If Ambrosiaster and Optatus prepared the way for Augustine's

doctrines of the sacraments, faith, and the Church,^ Ambrose did
so for those of sin, grace, and faith. have endeavoured We
above to estimate his importance to Augustine as a disciple of
the Greeks ;
we have now him as a Western.^ But
to regard
we have first of all to consider
not the theologian, but the
Bishop. It was the royal priest who first opened Augustine's
eyes to the authority and majesty of the Church. Only a Roman
—
Bishop even if he did not sit in the Roman chair could teach —
him thi?, and perhaps the great work, De civitate Dei, would
never have been written had it not been for the way in which
this majesty had been impressed on Augustine by Ambrose ; ,
for great historical conceptions arise either from the fascinating

impression made by
great personalities or from political energy ;
and Augustine never possessed the latter. It was, on the con-

trary, in Ambrose, the priestly Chancellor of the State, that the
imperial power (imperium) of the Catholic Church dawned upon
him,^ and his experiences of the confusion and weakness of the
civil power at the beginning of the fifth century completed the
impression. Along with
Ambrose's sermons fall to be con-
this
sidered.* If, on one
they were wholly dependent on Greek
side,
models, yet they show, on the other hand, in their practical
tone, the spirit of the West. Augustine's demand that the
preacher should " teach, sway, and move (docere, flectere, '
movere) is as if drawn from those sermons.

In spite of the
asceticism and virginity which he also mainly preached, he con-
stantly discussed all the concrete affairs of the time and the
an Epigone of the Constantinian era, and as a precursor of the Aiigustinian. See his
thesis on the disloyalty of the Donatists to the State (III., 3) "Non respublica est :
in ecclesia, sed ecclesia in republica est, id est in imperio Romano.

iln the West, before Augustine, the conception oi gratia exhausted itself in that of
the remissio peccatorum. We can see this in propositions like the following from
Pacian, sermo de bapt. 3 :
— "Quid est gratia? peccati remissio, i.e., donum ; gratia
enim donum est."
2 In this respect Ambrose takes an isolated position ; thus it is, e.g. , characteristic
that he does not seem to have read Cyprian's works.
8 1 express myself thus intentionally ; for Ambrose never, in words, thrust the
actual, hierarchical Church into the foreground.
'i
See proofs by Forster, I.e., p. 218 ff.
CHAP. II.] WESTERN CHRISTIANITY. •49
moral wants of the community.^ Thus Ambrose represents the

intimate union of the ascetic ideal with energetic insistence on
positive morality, a union which the Western mediaeval Church
never lost, however much practical life was subordinated to the
contemplative.
Three different types of thought are interwoven in Ambrose's
doctrine of sin and grace. First, he was dependent on the
Greek conception that regarded evil as not-being, but at the same
time as necessary.^ Secondly, he shows that he was strongly
influenced by the popular morality of Ciceronian Stoicism,^ which
was widespread among cultured Western Christians, and which
had, by its combination with monastic morality, brought about,
in Pelagianism, the crisis so decisive for the dogmatics of the
West. Thirdly and finally, he carried very much further that
view taken by Tertullian of the radical nature of evil and the
guiltiness of sin which was made his fundamental principle by
Augustine. Evil was radical, and yet its root was not found in
the sensuous, but in pride of mind " {superbia animi); it sprang
^^
from freedom, and was yet a power propagating itself in man-

kind. The Greeks had looked on the universal state of sinfulness
as a more or less accidental product of circumstances Ambrose ;
regarded it as the decisive fact, made it the starting-point of his

thought, and referred it more definitely than any previous
teacher — Ambrosiaster —
excepted to Adam's Fall.* Passages
occur in his works which in this respect do not fall a whit
behind the famous statements of Augustine.^
1 See at an earlier date the Instriictiones of Commodian. Ambrose was not such
an advocate of Monachism as Jerome.
^See above, p. 31.
3 See Ewald, Der Einfluss der stoisch-ciceronianischen Moral auf die Darstellung
der Ethik bei Ambrosius, 1 88 1. "De ofBciis," with all its apparent consistency, shows
merely a considerable vacillation between virtue as the supreme good (in the Stoic
—
^ sense) and eternal life which latter term, for the rest, is not understood in its Chris-
tian meaning. The moralism of antiquity, as well as the eudaimonist trait of ancient
moral philosophy dominate the book, in which ultimately the " true wise man "
appears most clearly. In such circumstances the distinction drawn between /?-«<:«j#te
and consilia, in itself so dangerous to evangelical morality, constitutes an advantage ;
for speciiically Christian virtues appear in the form of the consilia.
* Hilary also speaks of the vitium originis.
^See Deutsch, Des Ambrosius Lehre von der Siinde und Siindentilgung, 1867.
n
50* HISTORY OF DOGMA. [CHAP. II.
But important as this phase was, in which thought was no

longer directed primarily to sin's results, or to the single sinful
act, but to the sinful state which no virtue could remove, yet it
is just in this alone that we can perceive the advance made by
Ambrose. As regards religion, none is to be found in his
works for his doctrine of the traducian character and tenacity
;
of sin was in no way connected with the heightened conscious-

ness of God and salvation. Ambrose did not submit evil to be
decided upon in the light of religion. Therefore he merely groped
his way round the guilty character of sin, without hitting upon
it he could once more emphasise the weakness of the flesh as
;
an essential factor and he could maintain the proposition that

;
man was of himself capable of willing the good. For this

reason, finally, his doctrine of sin is to us an irreconcilable mass
of contradictions. But we must, nevertheless, estimate very
highly the advance made by Ambrose in contemplating the
radical sinful condition. It was undoubtedly important for
Augustine. And to this is to be added that he was able to
speak in a very vivid way of faith, conceiving it to be a living
communion with God or Christ. The religious individualism
which shines Augustine already does so faintly in
clearly in
Ambrose " Let Christ enter thy soul, let Jesus dwell in your
:
minds. What advantage is it to me, conscious of such

. . .
great sins, if the Lord do come, unless He comes into my soul,

returns into my mind, unless Christ lives in me ? "^ And while
Forster, 1. c. , p. 146 ff. All human beings are sinners, even Maiy. The "haereditariutn
vinculum " of sin embraces all. ' Fuit Adam, et in illo fuimus
' omnes periit Adam,
;
et in illo omnes perierunt." It is not only an inherited infirmity that is meant, but a
guilt that continues active. " Quicunque natus est sub peccato, quem ipsa noscije
conditionis hsereditas adstrinxit ad culpam." No doctrine of imputation, indeed, yet
occurs in Ambrose ; for as he conceived it, mankind in Adam was a unity, in which
took place &peccatrix successio, a continuous evolution of Adam's sin. Accordingly
no imputation was necessary. Ambrosiaster (on Rom. V., 12) has also expressed
Ambrose's thought " Manifestum itaque est, in Adam omnes peccasse quasi in massa ;
:
ipse enim per peccatum corruptus, quos genuit, omnes, nati sunt sub peccato. Ex eo
igitur cuncti peccatores, quia ex eo ipso sumus omnes." In the West this thought was
traditional after Tertullian. See Cyprian, Ep. 64, J ; De opere I, and Commodian,
Instruct. I., 35.
1 "Intret in animam tuam Christus, inhabitet in mentibus tuis
Jesus. Quid . . .
mihi prodest tantorum conscio peccatorum, si dominus veniat, nisi veniat in meam
animam, redeat in meam mentem, nisi vivat in me Christus." In Ps. CXIX:, exp.
— 1
in many passages he distinctly describes the merit gained by

works, and love as means of redemption, yet in some of his re-
flections, on the other hand, he rises as strongly to the lofty
thought that God alone rouses in us the disposition for what is
good, and that we can only depend on the grace of God in
Christ. 1 St. Paul's Epistles occupied the foreground in
Ambrose's thought,^ and from them he learned that faith as
confidence in God is a power by itself, and does not simply fall
into the realm of pious belief However much he adds that is
ahen, however often he conceives faith to be an act of obedience
to an external authority, he can speak of it in different terms
from his predecessors. Faith is to him the fundamental fact of
the Christian life, not merely as belief in authority (" faith goes
before reason," fides praevenit rationem),^ but as faith which lays
hold of redemption through Christ, and justifies because it is the
foundation of perfect works, and because grace and faith are
alone valid before God. " And that benefits me because we are
not justified from the works of the law. I have no reason,
therefore, to glory in my works, I have nothing to boast of;

and therefore I will glory in Christ. I will not boast because I
am just, but because I am redeemed. I will glory, not because
I am without sins, but because my sins have been remitted. I
will not glory because I have done good service, or because
anyone has benefited me, but because the blood of Christ was
IV., 25 : in Luc. enarr., X., 7 ; in Ps. XXXVI., exp. 63. The passages are col-
lected by Forster (see esp.De poenit., II., 8). See also Vol. III., p. 130. For the
rest, et. Nov. Testam. (Ambrosiaster) could
the author of the Qusestiones ex Vet.
also speak in toneswhose pathetic individualism recalls Augustine ; cf. e.g., the con- .
elusion of the inserted tractate c. Novat. " ego te (scil. deum) quaesivi, te
: . . .
desideravi, tibi credidi ; dehomine nihil speravi . . . ego verbis antistitis fidem dedi,
quae a te data dicuntur, quseque te inspirant, te loquuntur, de te prnmittunt ; huic de
se nihil credidi nee gestis ejus, sed fidei quae ex te est, me copulavi."
1 On Ps. CXIX., exp. XX., 14 " Nemo sibi arroget, nemo de meritis, nemo de
:
potestate se jactet, sed omnes speremus per dominum Jesum misericordiam invenire
"
qu32 enim spes alia peccatoribus ?
The interrogation mark August. Studien, p. 493, is due to exagge-

in Reuter,
rated caution. The and grace, which, wherever it occurs, has

antithesis of nature
one of its roots in Paulinism, and was already familiar to TertuUian, is anew pro-
claimed in Ambrose ; see De off. I,, 7, 24 ; see also the address on the death of his
brother. Ambrosiaster, too, makes use of the natura-gratia antithesis.
SDe Abrah., I., 3> 21.
shed for me."^ That is Augustinianism before Augustine, nay,

it is more than Augustinianism.^
In the dogmatic work of Western theologians of the fourth

century, the genius of Western Christianity, which found its
most vigorous expression in Cyprian's De opere et eleemosynis,
fell away to some extent. But it only receded, remaining still
the prevailing spirit. The more vital notion of God, the strong
feeling of responsibility to God as judge, the consciousness of God
as moralpower, neither restricted nor dissolved by any speculation
on nature — all that constituted the superiority of Western to
Eastern Christianity is seen in its worst form under the deterio-
rating influence of the legal doctrine of retribution, and the
pseudo-moral one of m,erit.^ In view of this, the inrush of Neo-
platonic mysticism was highly important for it created a ;
counterpoise to a conception which threatened to dissolve

religion into a series of legal transactions. But the weightiest
counterpoise consisted in the doctrine of faith and grace as pro-
claimed by Augustine. However, it will be shown that Augus-
tine taught his new conception in such a form that it did not
shatter the prevailing system, but could rather be admitted into
it perhaps the greatest triumph ever achieved in the history of
;
religion by a morality of calculations over religion.

The conception of religion as a legal relationship, which was
concerned with the categories lex (law) delictum (fault) satis-
factio, poena (punishment) meritum, premium, etc., was not de-
stroyed by Augustine. Grace was rather inserted in a legal -
and objective form into the relationship, yet in such a way that
it remained possible for the individual to construe the whole
relationship from the point of view of grace.
^ De Jacob beata I., 6, 21 ; other passages in Forster, pp. 160 ff, 303 ff.
et vila
2 A detailed account would here require to discuss many other Western writers
e.g., Prudentius (see monographs by Brockhaus, 1872, and Rosier, 1886), Pacian,
Zeno, Paulinus of Nola, etc. ; but what we have given may serve to define the
which Western Christianity moved. As regards Hilary, Forster has
directions in
shown very recently (Stud. u. Krit., 1888, p.. 645 ff.) that even he, in spite of his
dependence on the Greeks, did not belie the practical ethical interest of the
Westerns.
3 The East knew nothing of this excessive analysis ; it took a man more as a.
whole, and judged him by the regular course taken by his will.
We have attempted, above discussion, to exhibit the

in the
different lines existing in the West which meet in Augustine.
Let us, in conclusion, emphasise further the following points.
Along with Holy Scripture, the Symbol, the Apostolic
I.
"law" (lex), was placed in the West on an unapproachable

height. This law was framed in opposition to Marcionitism,
Sabellianism, Arianism, and Apollinarianism, without essential
variations, and without any process of reasoning, as a confession
of faith in the unity of God m
three persons, as also in the unity
of Christ in two substances. The Western Church, therefore,
apparently possessed a lofty certitude in dealing with Trinitarian
and Christological problems. But with this certitude was con-
trasted the fact, of which we have many instances, that under
cover of the official confession many more Christological heresies
circulated, and were maintained in the West than in the
Churches of the East, and that in particular the Christological
formula, where it was not wholly unknown, was, for the laity
and for many of the clergy, simply a noumenon.'^ This fact is
further confirmed when we observe that Western theologians, as
long as they were not directly involved in Eastern controversies,
did not turn their attention to the principles coittained in the above
" /aw," but to quite different questions. Augustine was not the
first to write " expositions of the Symbol," in which questions,
wholly different from what his text would lead us to expect,
^ I have already discussed this briefly in Vol. III., p.
33 ff. Augustine (Confess.
VII., 19) believed, up to the time of his conversion, that the doctrine of Christ held
by the Catholic Church vifas almost identical vifiththat of Photinus ; his friend Alypius
thought, on the contrary, that the Church denied Christ a human soul. We see
from Hilary's work, De trinitate, hovf many Christological conceptions circulated in
the Western communities, among them even " quod in eo ex virgine creando efficax
Dei sapientia et virtus exstiterit, et in nativitate ejus divinee prudentiae et potestatis
opus intellegatur, sitque in eo efhcientia potius quam natura sapientise." Optatus (I.,
8) had to blame Parmenian for calling the body of Christ sinful, and maintaining
that it viras purified by his baptism. Further, in spite of the doctrine of "two
natures," and the acceptance of Greek s.peculations, the thought of Hippolytus
(Philos. X., 33) : el ycip 6 debs de6v
ffe -fidiXfiffe woLTJaat, ^SOvclto' ^x^^^ '^'^^ X6701; rb
irapiSeiyiw., runs like a concealed thread through the Christological utterances of the
West. We shall see that even in Ambrose and Augustine there is to be found a
hidden, but intentionally retained, remnant of the old Adoptian conception. (How
this is to be regarded, see above under 2). We
may here pass over the influence of
Manichaean Christology on many -secondary minds in the Western Churches.
were discussed. On the contrary, Western theologians from

Cyprian show that they lived in a complex of ideas and ques-
tions which had little to do with the problems treated by Anti-
gnostics and Alexandrians, or with dogma.
2. In connection with the development of penance on the
basis of works and merits (in the sense of satisfactions), and in

harmony with the legal spirit characteristic of Western theolo-
gical speculation, Christ's expiatory work came now to the
front. It was not so much the Incarnation — that was the
—
antecedent condition as the death of Christ, which was re-
garded as the salient point (punctum saliens) ;
^ and it was
already treated from all conceivable points of view as a

sacrificial death, atonement, ransom, and vicarious consumma-
tion of the crucifixion. At the same time, Ambrose discussed
its relationship (reconciliatio, redemptio, satisfactio, immolatio,
meritum) to sin as guilt (reatus). In such circumstances the
accent on the human nature of Christ
fell the offerer and ;
offering was the mediator as man, who received his value

through the divine nature, though quite as much so by his
acceptance on the part of the Deity. Thus the West had a
Christological system of its own, which, while the formula of
the two natures formed its starting-point, was pursued in a new
direction the mediator was looked on as the 7nan whose voluntary
:
achievement possessed an infinite value in virtue of the special dis-

pensation of God? (Optat I., lo " the world [was] reconciled to
:
God by means of the flesh of Christ " : mundus reconciliatus deo

per carnem Christi.) From this we can understand how Augus-
tine, in not a few of his arguments, opposed, if in a veiled
fashion, the doctrine of the divine nature of Christ, discussing
the merits of the historical Christ as if that nature did not exist,
but everything was given to Christ oi grace? The same reason
1 Pseudo-Cypiian, De duplici mavtyrio, i6 : "Domini mors potentior erat quam

vita."
2 For fuller details, see Vol. III., p. 310 fF. Ritschl, Lehre v.d., Rechtfertigung
u. Versohnung, 2nd. ed., I., p, 38, III:, p. 362. Gesch. des Pietism. III., p. 426 ff.
2 See e.g. the remarkable expositions ad Laurentium, c. 36 sq.
, The divine nature
is indeed regarded as resting in the background ; but in Jesus Christ there comes to
the front the " individual" man, who, without previous merit, was of grace received
into the Deity.
further explains why afterwards modified Adoptianism was

constantly re-emerging in the West,^ it being from the stand-
point of the consistent Greek Christology the worst of heresies
because it dislocated the whole structure of the latter, and threw
itspurpose into confusion. Finally, the same fact also explains
why, in later times, Western Christians, particularly such as had
acquired the mystical monachist observance of intercourse with
Christ, the chaste bridegroom, substantially reduced the Christo-
logical conception to "Ecce homo." The vividness and thrilling
power which this figure possessed for them, raising them above
sorrow and suffering, cannot deceive us as to the fact that the
Church Christology was no longer anything to them but a
formula. But while the ancient Western form had become the
basis of a view which left fancy and disposition to fix the signi-
ficance of Christ's Person, that must not be described as a
—
necessary deduction from it. That form in which Christ was
the object of the Father's grace, carried out what the Father
entrusted him with, and by Him was exalted rather corres- —
ponded to the clearest passages of the New Testament, and was
the only protection against the superstitious conceptions of the
Greeks which emptied the Gospel of all meaning. Of decisive
value, however, are not the various mediaival attempts to ap-
praise Christ's work, hut rather the whole tendency to under-
stand Christianity as the religion of atonement ; for in this
tendency is expressed characteristically the/^«r of God as judge,
which, in the East, disappeared behind mystic speculations.^

3. An acute observer perceives that the soteriological question
— How does man get rid, and remain rid, of his sins and attain
eternal life ? —
had already, in the fourth century, actively en-
gaged the earnest attention of thinkers in the Western Church,
and, indeed, in such a way that, as distinguished from the East,
the religious and moral sides of the problem are no longer found
separate. But the question was not clearly put before the
Pelagian conflict, since the controversies with Heraclius and
Jovinian were not followed by a lasting movement. Opinions
were still jumbled together in a motley fashion, sometimes in
1 See the evidence in Bach's Dogmengesch. des Mittelalters, Vol. II.
2 See Vol. III., p. 189.

;
one and the same writer. If I see aright, five different con-
ceptions can be distinguished for the period about 400 A.D.
First we have the Manichcean which insinuated its way in the
darkness, but was widely extended, even among the clergy
according to it evil was a real physical power, and was over-
come in the individual by goodness, equally a physical force
which was attached to natural potencies and Christ.^ Secondly,
we have the Neoplatonic and Alexandrian view which taught
that evil was not-being, that which had not yet become, the
necessary foil of the good, the shadow of the light, the transitori-
ness cleaving to the " many " in opposition to the " one." It
held that redemption was the return to the one, the existent, to
God ; that it was identification with God in love ; Christ was
the strength and crutches for such a return ; for " energies and
crutches come from one hand." ^ Thirdly, there was the ration-
alistic Stoicconception this held that virtue was the supreme
;
good was the separate evil act springing from free will
; sin
redemption was the concentration of the will and its energetic
direction to the good. Here again the historical and Christo-
logical were really nothing but crutches.^ All these three
conceptions lay the greatest stress on asceticism. Fourthly,
there was the sag'amental view, which may be characterised
partly as morally lax, partly as " evangelical " we find it, e.g., ;
in Heraclius * on the one hand, and in Jovinian ^ on the other.
According to it he who was baptised possessing genuine faith

obtained the guarantee of felicity sin could not harm him no
; ;
impeachment of sin (reatus peccati) could touch him. It is

proved that really lax and " evangelical " views met a man :
could always rely as a Christian on the grace of God sin did ;
not separate him from God, if he stood firm in the faith. Nay,
from the second century, really from Paul, there existed in the
iSee on the extension of Manichasism in the V^êst, Vol. III., p. 334 ff. It was
always more Christian and therefore more dangerous there. On its importance to
Angus' ine, see under.
^See the conceptions of Ambrose, Victorinus, and Augustine.
sStethe Western popular philosophies in the style of Cicero, but also Ambrose'
De officiis.
^ See above, p. 40 f.
" Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine and Siiicius give us information regarding him.
—
Gentile Church movements which deliberately defended reliance

on faith alone (the "sola fide") and "the most assured sal-
vation through grace granted in baptism " (salus per gratiam in
baptismo donatam certissima.) ^ A fifth conception was closely-
related to, yet different from, the last. We can call it briefly
the doctrine of grace and merit. We
have pointed out strong
traces of it in Victorinus, Optatus, and Ambrose. According
to it, evil as the inherent sin of Adam was only to be eradicated
by divine grace in Christ; this grace produced faith to which,
however, redemption was only granted when it had advanced
and become the habitual love from which those good works
spring that establish merit in the sight of God. Evil is
godlessness and the vice that springs from it ;

goodness is the
^ have demonstrated this in the Ztschr. f. Theol. u. Kirclie I. (1891), pp. 82-178,
I
and cannot repeat the proof here. From the I. Ep. of John onwards undercurrents
can be traced in the Gentile Church which required to have the saying addressed to
them " Be not deceived, he who does righteousness is righteous." My main refer-
:
ences are to the erroneous views opposed in the Cathohc Epistles the lax Christii ns ;
mentioned by Tertullian ; the edict on penance of Calixtus, with its noteworthy

evangelical basis (see also Rolffs in tlie Texlen u. Unters, Vol. XI. part 3) Heraclius ,
;
in Rome the counter-efforts of the lax against the monachism wliich was establishing
;
itself in the West ; Jovinian ; and to the opponents assailed by Augustine in his
very important writing, " De fide et operibus." This writing is, along with Jovinian's
discussions, the most important source. There can be no doubt that in the majority
of cases an unbridled and accommodating trust in the sacrament accordingly a —
strained form of the popular Catholic feeling —
was the leading idea, and that the
reference to Gospel texts, which bore witness to the unlimited mercy of God, was
—
only a drapery; that accordingly the "sola fide" the catchword occurs was not —
conceived evangelically, but really meant "solo Sacramento" z.e., even if the life —
did not correspond to the Christian demand for holiness. But there were Christian
teachers who had really grasped the evangelical thesis, and Jovinian is to be counted
one of them, even if his opponents be right (and I am doubtful of this) in taking
offence at his conduct ; and even if it be certain that his doctrine, in the circumstances
of the time, could and did promote laxity. His main positions were as follows :
I. Thenatural man is in the state of sin. Even the slightest sin separates from God
and exposes to damnation. 2. The state of the Christian rests on baptism and faith ;
these produce regeneration. 3. Regeneration is the state in which Christ is in us,
and we are in Christ ; there are no degrees in it, for this personal relationship either
does or does not exist. Where it does, there is righteousness. 4. It is a relation
formed by love that is in question Father and Son dwell in believers but where
: ;
there is such an indweller, the possessor can want for nothing. 5. Accordingly all
blessings are bestowed with and in this relationship ; nothing can be thought of as
capable of being added. 6. Since all blessings issue from this relationship, there
can be no special meritorious works ; for at bottom there is only one good, and that
58 HISTORY OF DOGMA, [CHAP. II.
energy of grace and the good works that flow from it. Here,
accordingly, nature and grace, unbelief and faith, selfishness and
love of God are the antitheses, and the work of the historical
Christ stands in the centre. Nevertheless, this view did not
exclude asceticism, but required it, since only that faith was
genuine and justified men which evinced itself in sanctification,
i.e., in world-renouncing love. Thus a middle path was here
sought between Jovinian on the one side and Manichsean and
Priscillian asceticism on the other.^
These different conceptions met and were inextricably
mingled. The future of Christianity was necessarily to be
decided by the victory of one or other of them.
we possess as the best beloved children of God, who now participate in the divine
nature, and that good will be fully revealed in Heaven. 7. In him who occupies
this relationship of faith and love there is nothing to be condemned ; he can com-
mit no sin which would separate him from God ; the devil cannot make him fall,
forhe ever recovers himself as a child of God by faith and penitence. The relation-
ship fixed in baptism through faith is something lasting and indissoluble. 8. But
such an one must not only be baptised ; he must have received baptism with perfect
faith, and by faith evince baptismal grace. He must labour and wrestle earnestly
—though —
not in monkish efforts, for they are valueless not in order to deserve
something further, but that he may not lose what he has received. To him, too, the
truth applies that there are no small and great sins, but that the heart is either with
God or the devil. 9. Those who are baptised in Christ, and cling to Him with con-
fident faith, form the one, true Church. To her belong all the glorious promises :
she is bride, sister, mother, and is never without her bridegroom. She lives in one
faith, and is never violated or divided, but is a pure virgin. We may call Jovinian
actually a "witness of antiquity to the truth," and a "Protestant of his time,"
though we must not mistake a point of difference the indwelling of God and Christ
:
in the baptised is more strongly emphasised than the power of faith.

The Spaniard, Vigilantius, even surpassed Jovinian, both in range and intensity,
in the energy with which he attacked the excrescences of monkery, relic- worship,
virginity, etc.; but he does not belong to this section, for he was moved by the
impression made upon him by the superstition and idolatry which he saw rising to
supremacy in the Church. Jerome's writing-against him is miserable, but is surpassed
in meanness by the same author's books against Jovinian.
^The puzzling phenomenon of Priscillianism has not been made much clearer by
the discovery of Priscillian's" homilies. I believe we maypass them over, since, im-
portant as were the points touched on in the Priscillian controversy (even the question
as to the claims of the" Apocrypha " compared with the Bible), they neither evoked
a dogmatic controversy, nor obtained a more general significance. The meritorious
work by Paret, Priscillianus, ein Reformator des 4 Jahrh. (Wiirzburg, 1891) is not
convincing in its leading thoughts (see on the other side Hilgenfeld in his Zeitschr,
Vol. 35, 1892, pp. 1-85).
4. In the West, interest in the question of the relation of

grace and means of grace to the Church was awakened by the
Novatian, heretical baptism, and Donatist controversy. This
interest was, however, still further strengthened by the fact that
the Church detached itself more forcibly from the State than in
the East. The fall West Roman Empire, opposition to
of the
the remains of a powerful heathen party in Rome, and
still
finally dislike to the new Arian German forms of government

all contributed to this.
One perhaps expects to find here by way of conclusion a

characterisation of the different national Churches of the West;
but little can be said from the standpoint of the history of
dogma. The distinctive character of the North African Church

was strongly marked. A darkness broods over the Churches
of Spain, Gaul, and Britain, in which the only clear spot is the
conflict of the priests with the monachism that was establishing
itself The conflict with Priscillianism in Spain, the attacks on
Martin of Tours in Gaul, and, on the other hand, Vigilantius,
come in here. It is not unimportant to notice that Southern
Gaul was distinguished by its culture and taste for aesthetics and
rhetoric about A.D. 360 (see Julian's testimony) and a.d. 400
(see Sulp. Severus, Chron. init). Rome only became a
Christian city in the fifth century, but even in the time of
Liberius and Damasus Roman Bishop was the foremost
the
Roman. What waswrested by Damasus, that unsaintly but
sagacious man, from the State and the East, wa^s never again
abandoned by his energetic successors they also tried vigorous
;
intervention in the affairs of the provincial Churches. Holding

faithfully to its confession, the Roman Church was, not only
from its position, but also by its nature, the connecting link
between East and West, between the monachist leanings of the
former, and the tendency to ecclesiastical politics and sacra-
mentarianism of the latter. It also united South and North in
the West. Rome, again, from the time of Liberius pursued and
explained that religious policy towards paganism, "by which
the Catholic Church gained the means not only of winning but
of satisfying the masses of the people who were, and, in spite of
the confession, remained heathen " (Usener, Relig. Unters., I., p.
293) :
" rendered heathenism harmless by giving its blessing to
it
it, i.e., to all that belonged to the pagan cultus." BuJ that mag-
nanimous way of opposing paganism, which has been rightly ad-
duced, and which Usener (op. cit.) has begun to exhibit to us so
learnedly and instructively, concealed within it the greatest
dangers. In such circumstances it was of supreme value both

for the contemporary and future fortunes of the Church that,
just when was in full swing, Augustine,
the process of ethnicising
equally at home
North Africa, Rome, and Milan, appeared
in
and reminded the Church what Christian faith was.
CHAPTER III.
THE HISTORICAL POSITION OF AUGUSTINE AS REFORMER

OF CHRISTIAN PIETY.^
"Virtues will so increase and be perfected as to conduct thee

without any hesitation to the truly blessed life which only is
eternal where evils, which will not exist, are not discriminated
:
from blessings hy prudence, nor adversity is borne bravely, because

there we shall find only what we love, not also what we tolerate,
nor lust is bridled by temperance, where we shall not feel its
1 Of the immense literature about Augustine, the following works may be men-
tioned (with special regard to the Pelagian controversy) : The critical investigations
of the Benedictines' in their editions oT Aug.'s 0pp., and the controversies over his
doctrine of grace in the l5th to the l8th century; the works of Petavius, Noris (Hist.
Pelag.), Tillemont, Gamier, Mansi, Hefele ; Bindemaun, Der hi. Aug. 3 vols.,
1844-69; Bohringer, Aur. Aug., 2 ed., 1877-78; Reuter, August. Studien, 1887
(the best of later works) ; A. Dorner, Aug., sein theol. System und seine relig.-
philos. Anschauung, 1873 Loofs, " Augustinus in the 3 Ed. of the R.-Encykl. v.
;
Hauck, Vol. II., pp. 257-285 (an excellent study, with an especially good discussion
of the period to 395). Comprehensive expositions in Ritter, Baur, Nitzsch,
Thomasius, Schwane, Huber (Philos. der KVV.), Jul. Miiller (L. v. d. Siinde),
Dorner (Entwicklgesch. d. L. v. d. Person Christi), Pranil (Gesch. d. Logik),
Siebeck(Gesch. d. Psychologie), Zeller see esp. Eucken, Die Lebenanschauungen
;
der grossen Denker (1890) p. 258 ff. —

Naville, S' Aug., Etude sur le developpement
de sa pensê jusqu a I'^poquede son ordination (Geneva 1872). Bornemanu, Aug.'s
Bekenntnisse, 1888; Harnack, Aug.'s Confessionpn, 1888 ; Boissier, La conversion de
S. Aug. in the Rev. de deux mondes, 1888 Jan.; Worter, Die Geistesentw. d. h. Aug.
bis zu seiner Taufe, 1892 ; Overbeck, Aug. u. Hieronymus in the Histor. Ztschr. N.
F., Vol. VI. Feuerlein, Ueb. d. Stellung Aug.'s in the Kirchenund Culturgesch.
;
XXIL, p. 270 ff. (see Reuter, I.e. p. 479 ff.) ; Ritschl, Ueber die
Histor. Ztschr.,
Methode der altesten D.-G. in the Jahrbb. f. deutsche Theol., 1871 (idem', Rechtfert.
und Versohn. Vol. I. , Gesch. d. Pietismus Vol. I. ) ; Kattenbusch, Studien z. Sym-
bolik in the Stud. u. Krit. 1878; Reinkens, Geschichtsphilos. d. hi. Aug., 1866;
Seyrich, Geschichtsphilosophie Aug.'s, 1891 ; Gangauf, Metaphys. Psychologie d. hi.
Aug., 1852 ; Bestmann, Qua ratione Aug. notiones philosophias grsecEe, etc., 1877 ;
Loesche, De Aug. Platonizante 1880; Ferraz, P.sychologie de S. Aug., 1862;
Nourissou, La philosophie de S. Aug., 2 Ed., 1866 ; Storz, Die Philosophie des hi.
Aug., 1882; Scipio, Des Aurel. Aug. Metaphysik, etc., 1886; Melzer, Die aUgus .
Lehre vom Causalitatsverhaltniss Gbttes zur Welt, 1892; Melzer, Auguslini et Cartesii
61
62 HISTORY OF DOGMA. [CHAP. III.
incitements, nor the needy are aided justly, where we will have
no need and nothing unworthy. There virtue will be one, and
virtue and the reward of virtue will be that spoken of in sacred
phrase by the man who loves it " But to me to cling to God is a :
good thing!' This virtue will be there the full and eternal wisdom,
and it will also truly be the life that is blessed. Surely this is
placita de mentis humane sui cognitione, i860 • Siebeck, Die Anfange der neueren
Psychologie in the Ztschr. f. Phtlos., 1S88, p. 161 ff. ; Kahl, Der Primal des Willens
bei Aug., 1886; Schiitz, August, non Heinzelmann, Aug.'s
esse ontologum, 1867
;
- Ansichten vom Wesen der menschlichen Seele, 1894 ; van Endert, Gottesbeweis in d.
1869 ;
patrist. Zeit, Clauren, Aug. s. script, interpret., 1822 ; Gangauf, Des 111. Aug.
Lehre von Gott dem Dreieinigen, 1S65 ; Nitzsch, Aug.'s Lehre v. Wunder, 1865.
Walch, De pelagianismo ante Pelagium, 1783 idem. hist, doctrinae de peccato orig., ;
1783 ; Horn, Comm. de sentent. patrum de pecc. originali, 180: ; Dunker,

. . .
Pecc. orig. et act., 1836; Krabinger, Der angebliche Pelagianismus d. voraugust. W.

Tub Quartalschr. 1853 ; Kuhn, Der vorgebl. Pelagianismus d. voraugust. VV., in
,
same journal Walch, Ketzerhistorie, Vols. IV. and V. ; Wiggers, Pragmat. Darstell.
;
des Augustinismus u. Pelagianismus, 2 Vols., 1831-33 (the continuation on Semipela-

gianism in the Zeitschr. f. d. histor. Theol., 1854 ff.) ; Rottmanner, Der Augustinis-
mus, 1892 Jacobi, Die Lehre des Pelagius, 1842 ; Leutzen, de Pelagianorum
;
doctrinse principiis, 1833 ; Jul. MuUer, Der Pelagianismus in the deutsche

Zeitschr f. christL Wissens.ch., 1854, Nr. 40 f. ; Worter, Der Pelagianismus,
1866; Klasen, Die innere Entw. des Pelagianism. 1882; Geffcken, Histor. semipelag., ,
1826; Wiggers, de Joanne Cass., 1824^25; Worter, Prosper v. Aquitanien liber

Gnade und Freiheit, 1867 ; Landerer, Das Verhaltniss v. Gnade u. Freiheit in the
Jahrbb. f. deutsche Theol. Vol. II. 1857 ; Luthardt, Die L. v. freien Willen u. s. Verb.
, ,
z. Gnade, 1863 Kihn, Theodor. v. Mopsueste, 1880 ; RitschI, Expos, doctr. S. Aug.
;
de creat., peccato, gratia, 1843 Zeller, Die Lehre des Paulus u. Augustinus v. d.
!
Siinde u. Gnade in ihrem Verhaltniss z. protest. Kirchenlehre (Theol. Jahrbb., 1854,

p. 295 ff.) ; Ehlers, Aug. de origine mali doctrina, 1857 ; Nirschl, Ursp. u. Wesen
des Bbsen nach Aug., 1854 ; Hamma, Die L. des hi. Aug. uber die Concupiscenz in
the Tiib. Quartalschr., 1873 Voigt, Comment, de theoria August., I'elag., Semi-
;
pelag. et Synergist., 1829 Kiihner, Aug.'s Anschauung v. d. Erlosungsbedeutung

;
Christi, 1890 ; Dieckhoff, Aug.'s L. v. d. Gnade in the Mecklenb. Theol. Ztschr. I.,
i860 ; Weber, Aug. de juslificatione doctr. Ernst, Die Werke der Unglaubigen nach
;
Aug., 1871 ; Beck, Pradest.— Lehre in the Stud. u. Krit., 1847, II. ; Koch, Autori-
tat Aug.'s in der Lehre v. der Gnade u. Pradest., in the Tiib. Quartalschr., 1891, p.
95 ft". ; H. Schmidt, Origenes u. Aug. als Apologeten, in the Jahrbb. f. deutsche
Theologie, Vol. VIII. ; Bigg, The Christian Platonists of Alexandria, 1886.— On
Aug.'s doctrine of Baptism see Renter, Kliefoth (Liturg. Abhandl.), and Hbfling.
Wilden, Die L. d. hi. Aug. v. Opfer d. Eucharistie, 1864 ; Ginzel L. d. hi. Aug. v.
d. Kirche, in the TUb. Theol. Quartalschr., 1849 ; Kostlin, Die kathol Auffass. v. d.
Kirche, etc., in the deutschen Zeitschrift f. christi. Wissensch.,
1856, Nr. 14 ; H.
Schmidt, Aug.'s L. v. d. Kirche, in the Jahrbb. f. deutsche Theol., 1861 (id. Die
Kirche, 1884); Seeberg, Begriff d. christi. Kirche, Pt. I., 1885; Roux, Diss. de.
Aug. adversario Doiiatistarum, 1838 Ribbeck, Donatus und Augustinus, 1858.
;
^
CHAP. III.] AUGUSTINE AS REFORMER OF PIETY. 63
to attain to the eternal and supreme blessing, to which to cling for

ever is the end of our goodness. Let this (virtue) be called
prudence, because it will cling to the good too eagerly for it to be
lost, diX\d fortitude, because it good too firmly for
will cling to the
it to be torn away, and temperance, because it will cling to the
good too chastely to be corrupted, and justice, because it will

cling to the good too justly to be inferior in any merit.
Although even in this life the only virtue is to love what ought to
be loved. But what should we choose chiefly to love except that
than which we find nothing better? This is God, and if we
prefer anything or esteem anything equal to love to him we fail
to love ourselves. For it is the better for us, the more we enter
into him, than whom there is nothing better. But we move not
by walking, but by loving. We may not go (to him) afoot, but
with our character. But our character is wont to be judged, not
from what anyone knows, but from what he loves. Nothing
makes character good or bad but good or bad affections. There-
fore, by our corruption, we have been far from the righteousness
of God. Whence we are corrected by loving the right, that
being just we may be able to cling to the right."
1 August. Ep. 155 c. 12. 13. "Virtutesita crescent et perficientur, ut te ad vitam

vere beatam, qu« uUa dubitatione perducant ubi jam nee
nonnisi seterna est, sine :
pnidenter discernantur a bonis mala, quEE non erunt, nee fortiter tolerentur adversa,
quia non ibi erit nisi quod amemus, non etiam quod toleremus, nee temperanter
libido frenetur, ubi nulla ejus incitamenta sentiemus, nee juste subveniatur ope in-
digentibus, ubiinopem atque indignum non habebimus. Una ibi virtus erit, et idip-
suni erit virtus pramiumque virtutis, quod dicit in Sanctis eloquiis homo qui hoe
amat : Mihi autem adhcerere deo bonum est. Usee ibi erit plena et sempiterna sapi-
entia eademque veraciter vita jam beata. Peiventio quippe est ad aternurn ac
summum bonum, cui adhcerere est finis Hostri boni. Dicatur htee eX prudentia quia
prospectissime adhserebit bono quod non amittatur, et fortitudo, quia fermissime ad-
hEerebit bono unde non avellatur, et temperantia, quia castissime adhserebit bono, ubi
non corrurapatur, tX justitia, quia rectissime adhEerebit bono, cui merito subjiciatur.
Quamquam et in hac vita virtus non est nisi diligere quod diligendum est. Quid
autem eligamus quod prascipue diligamus, nisi quo nihil melius invenimus? Hoe
deus est, cui si diligendo aliquid vel prssponimus vel aequamus, nos ipsos diligere
nescimus. Tanto enim nobis melius est, quanto magis in ilium imtis, quo nihil
melius est. Imus autem non ambulando, sed amando. Ad eum non pedibus ire
licet, sed moribus. Mores autem nostri, non ex eo quod quisque novit, sed ex eo
quod diligit, dijudicari solent. N'ec faciunt bonos vel malos mores, nisi boni vel mali
amores, Pravitate ergo nostra a rectitudine deilonge fuimus. Unde rectum amando
corrigimur, ut recto recti adhserere possimus."
Augustine reveals his soul in these words they therefore

;
also mark his importance in the history of dogma. If, as we

have attempted in the preceding chapter, we pursue and let
converge the different lines along which Western Christianity
developed in the fourth and fifth centuries, we can construct a
system which approximates to " Augustinianism " indeed we ;
can even deduce the latter, as a necessary product, from the

internal and external conditions in which the Church and
theology then found themselves. But we cannot, for all
that, match the man who was behind the system and lent it
—
vigour and life. Similarly we can attempt and it is a remun-
erative task —to make
Augustine's Christian conception of the
world intelligible from the course of his education, and to show
how no stage in his career failed to influence him. His pagan
father, and pious, Christian mother, Cicero's Hortensius, Manich-
aeism, Aristotelianism, Neoplatonism, with its mysticism and
scepticism, the impression produced by Ambrose and monach-
—
ism all contributed their share.^ But even from this stand-
point we cannot finally do complete justice to the distinctive
character of this man. That is his secret and his greatness, and
perhaps all or any analysis itself is an injury he knew his heart
:
to be his worst possession, and the living God to be his highest good ;
he lived in the love of God, and he possessed a fascinating power
of expressing his observations on the inner life. In doing this, he
taught the world that the highest and sweetest enjoyment was
to be sought in the feeling that springs from a soul that has
triumphed over its pain, from the love of God as the fountain of
good, and therefore from the certainty of grace. Theologians
before him had taught that man must be changed in order to be
blessed ;he taught that man could be a new being if he let God
find him, and if he found himself and God, from the midst of
his distraction and dissipation.
He destroyed the delusion of ancient popular psychology
and morality he gave the final blow to the intellectualism of
;
antiquity but he resuscitated it in the pious thought of the

;
man who found true being and the supreme good in the living
1 Compare my lecture "Augustin's Confessionen," 1888. See also Essay by G.
Boissier in the Rev. de deux mund., i Jan., 1888.
:
CHAP. HI.] AUGUSTINE AS REFORMER OF PIETY. 65
God. He was the first to separate nature and grace, two spheres
which men had long attempted unsuccessfully to divide but by ;
this means he connected religion and morality, and gave a new

meaning to the idea of the good. He was the first to mark off
the scope and force of the heart and will, and to deduce from
this what moralists and religious philosophers imagined they
had understood, but never had understood he set up ;
a fixed goal for the aimless striving of asceticism

perfection in the God, suppression of selfish
love of
ambition, humility. He taught men to realise the horror
of the depth of sin and guilt which he disclosed, at the same
time with the blessed feeling of an ever-comforted misery, and a
perennial grace. He first perfected Christian pessimism, whose
upholders till then had really reserved for themselves an
extremely optimistic view of huinan nature. But while showing
that radical evil was the mainspring of all human action, he
preached also the regeneration of the will, by which man
adapted himself to the blessed life. He did not bridge foK
feeling and thought the gulf which Christian tradition disclosed
between this world and the next but he testified so thriUingly
;
to the blessedness of the man who had found rest in God, that
nothing was reserved for the future life but an indescribable
"vision." But above all and in all, he exhibited to every soul
its glory and its responsibility God and the soul, the soul and
:
its God. —
He took religion a transfigured and moulded
monachism, dominated by positive conceptions and trust in
—
Christ out of its congregational and ritualistic form, and set it
in the hearts of individuals as a gift and a task. He preached
the sincere humility tîch blossoms only on ruins the ruins —
of self-righteousness but he recognised in this very humility
;
the charter of the soul, and even where he assigned an imperious

power to the authority of the Church, he only did so in the end
in order to give the individual soul an assurance which it could
not attain by any exertion, or any individual act of pardon.
Therefore, he became not only a pedagogue and teacher, but a
Father of the Church. He was a tree, planted by the waters,
whose leaves do not fade, and on whose branches the birds of
the air dwell. His voice has pealed forth to the Church through
E
66 HISTORY OF DOGMA, [CHAP. Ill,
the centuries, and he preached to Christendom the words

"Blessed is the man whose strength Thou art; in whose heart
are Thy ways."
We do not require to prove that, for a man with such a per-

sonality, all that tradition him could only serve as
offered
material and means, that he only accepted it in order to work it
into the shape that suited him. In this respect Augustine was
akin to the great Alexandrians, and plenty of evidence can be
adduced in support of this affinity, which was conditioned on
both sides by the same loftiness of soul, as well as by dependence
on Neoplatonic philosophy. But in spite of all they possessed
in common, the distinction between them was extremely signi-
ficant. It did not consist merely in the fact that while the former
lived about A.D. 200, Augustine was a member of the Theodosian
imperial Church, nor that he had passed through Manichseism,
but it was due in a much greater degree to his having, in spite
of his Neoplatonism, a different conception of the nature of the
Christian religion, and also other ideas about the nature and
authority of the Church.
I. He thought of sin, when he reflected on God and Christ,
and he thought oi'Cn.e. living God,wh.o has created and redeemed
us, when he reflected on evil : the steadfastness with which he
referred these factors to each other was the novel feature which
distinguished him above all his But not less novel
predecessors.
was the energy with which he combined the categories God,
Christ, the word of God, the sacraments, and the Catholic Church
/or practical piety, compressing what was fullest of life and
freest, the possession of God, into, as it were, an objective pro-
perty, which was transferred to an institution, the Church. As
he accordingly begot the feeling that Christian piety was grief
of soul comforted, so, on the other hand, he created that inter-
weaving, characteristic of Western Catholicism, of the freest,
most personal surrender to the divine, with constant submission
to the Church as an institution in possession of the means of
grace.
According to this he is, in the first place, to be estimated, even
CHAP, III.] AUGUSTINE AS REFORMER OF PIETY. &7
for the history of dogma, not as a theologian, but as a reformer

of Christian piety. The characteristic feature of the old Chris-
tian piety was its vacillation between hope and fear (Tertull., De
uxor. II., 2 :
" Fear is the foundation of salvation, confidence is
the barrier against fear " : timor fundamentum salutis est, prce-
sumptio impedimentum timoris). It was known that Jesus ac-
^
cepted sinners ;but in that case men were accepted through

baptism. The action of God was, as it were, exhausted.^ The
whole Dogmatic (Trinity, Christology, etc.) had its practical
culmination, and therewith its end, in the merely retrospective
blessing received in baptism. What next? Men feared the
judge, and hoped ia an uncertain fashion for a still existent
grace. The fear of the judge led to fasting, almsgiving, and
prayer, and the uncertain hope groped after new means of grace.
Men wavered between reliance on their own powers and hope in
the inexhaustibility of Christ's grace. But did they not possess
faith ? They did, and prized it as a lofty possession but they ;
valued it as a condition, as an indispensable card of admission. In

order actually to enter, there were other and wholly different
conditions to be fulfilled. Piety, when it concerned itself with the
task of the present, did not live in faith. The psychological form
of piety was unrest, i.e., fear and hope.^ Reliance was placed on
free-will but what was to be done if it led to one defeat after
;
another? Repentance and amendment were required. No

doubt was felt that repentance was sufficient wherever sins
" against our neighbour " were in question, and where the injury
could be made good. Repentance and compensation had the
widest possible scope in relation to sin. Sin consisted in evil
action ;the good action united with repentance balanced it.
One's neighbour could forgive the offence committed against
1 In what follows the fundamental tendency is alone characterised. It is not to be

denied that in some cases evangelical features were more marked.
2 After the exposition given in Vols. I. -IV., and the indications in Chap. II. of this
vol., I need not adduce further evidence that for the ancient Church the grace of God
in Christ was exhausted in the gifts received in baptism. All other grace, which
was hoped for, was beset with uncertainty.
3 Read the striking avowals of II. Clement, the Shepherd of Kermas, TertuUian,
the confessions of monks, and of the great theologians of the fourth century who were
prevented by circumstances from becoming monks.
68 HISTORY OF DOGMA. [CHAJ. III.
him, and the sin no longer existed the Church could forgive
;
what affected its constitution, and guilt was effaced.

But he who was baptised sinned also " against God." However
widely the Church might extend the circle of sins in which she
was the injured party, the judge, and the possessor of the right
to pardon, there were sins against God, and there were trans-
gressions which could not be made good. Who could cancel
murder and adultery, or a misspent life on the part of the bap-
tised ? Perhaps even these sins were not in such evil case per- ;
haps God did not impute them to the baptised at all— though
that would be an Epicurean error perhaps the power of the
;
Church did not break on the rock of accomplished i2.c\s,; perhaps

there were other means of grace besides baptism. But who could
know this? The Church created a kind of sacrament of penance
in the third and fourth centuries but it did not say clearly what
;
was to be expected of this sacrament. Did it reconcile with

the Church or with God did it do away with sin, guilt, or
;
punishment was it effective through the penances of the peni-

;
tent, or through the power of grace ? ^ Was it necessary ? Was

there in that case a sinful state, one that lasted, when the dis-
position had changed, when the will strove with all its powers
after the good ? Was there such a thing as guilt ? Was not
everything which man could do in accordance with his nature
involved in the eternal alternation marked by good and evil
actions, by knowledge, repentance, and striving? Knowledge
and action decide. The man of to-day, who does the good, has-
no longer anything in common with the man of yesterday who
did evil. But sins against God persisted in troubling them.
Whence came fear, lasting fear? The Church threw itS; doors
wider and wider it forgave sin, all sin; but the earnest fled
;
into the desert. There they tried to succeed by precisely the

same means they had used in the world, and their mood
—
remained the same one of hope and fear. There was no con-
solation which was not confronted by a three-fold horror.
^Rothe says very truly, Kirchengesch., 33: "Men secretly distrusted in-
II., p.
evitably the presupposed purely supernatural and accordingly magical operation of
God's grace, and they therefore arranged their plans on the eventuality that in the:
end everything might still require to be done by man alone."
That was the temper of the ancient Christians from the day
when we can first observe them in the wide framework of the
Roman Empire until the epoch with whose dawn we are here
concerned. The " evangelical " ideas which are sometimes
formed of the nature of their piety are not at all appropriate.
The two most restless elements which can agitate a human
breast, hope and fear, ruled over those Christians. These
elements shattered the world and built the Church. Men, in-
deed, had a faith, and created a dogmatic for themselves but ;
these were insufficient to satisfy them regarding their daily life,

or any life. They gave wings to hope, but they did not eradi-
cate fear. They did not tell what the sins were with which the
Christian daily fights, and what Christ had done for these sins.
They left those questions to the individual conscience, and the
answers given in ecclesiastical practice were not answers to
soothe the heart. The only sure issue of the whole system of
dogmatics was in the benefits of baptism. He who rose from
the font had henceforth to go his way alone. If he reflected
earnestly he could not doubt that all the Church could after-
wards give him was a set of crutches.
" Against Thee only have I sinned." " Thou, Lord, hast
made us for Thyself, and our heart is restless, until it finds rest
in Thee." " Grant what Thou dost command, and command
what Thou dost desire" ('da quod jubes, et jube quod vis).^
" The just \>y faith will live." " No one enjoys what he knows,
unless he also loves it, nor does anyone abide in that which he
perceives unless by love " (eo quod quisque novit, non fruitur,
nisi et id diligit, neque quisquam in eo quod percipit permanet
nisi dilectione).^ These are the new tones sounded by
Augustine, that is the mighty chord which he produced from
Holy Scripture, from the most profound observations of human
nature, and speculations concerning the first and last things.
Everything in the mind that was without God was absolutely
sinful the only good thing left to it was that it existed. Sin
;
1 pecc. mer. et remiss., II,, 5; De spiritu et lit, 22; see Confessions, X, 40, and
De
De, dono persever., 53. The substance is given already in Soliloq., I., 5 : "Jube
quseso atque impera quidquid vis, sed sana et aperi aures meas." Enchir., 117,
" Fides impetirat quod lex imperat."
2 De fide et symb., 19,
— :
70 HISTORY OF DOGMA. [CHAP. HI.
was the sphere and form of the inner life of every natural man.
It had been maintained in all theological systems from Paul to
Origen, and later, that a great revolt lay at the root of the
present state of the human race. But Augustine was the first
to base all religious feeling and all theological thought on this
revolt as still existent and damning in every natural man. The
Apologists regarded the revolt as an uncertain datum Origen ;
looked upon it as a premundane fatality. To Augustine it was

the most vital fact of the present, one which, at work from the
beginning, determined the life of the individual and of the
whole race. Further, all sin was sin against God ; for the
created spirit had only one lasting relationship, that to God.
Sin was self-will, the proud striving of the heart (superbia);
therefore took the form of desire and unrest.
it In this
unrest, lust., never quieted, and fear revealed themselves. Fear
was evil but in this unrest there was
; also revealed the in-
alienable goodness of the spirit that has come from the hand
of God " We wish to be happy, and wish not to be unhappy,
:
but neither can we will.''^ We cannot but strive after blessings,

after happiness. But there is only one good, one happiness,
and one rest. " It is a good thing that I should cling to God."
All is included in that. Only in God as its element does the
soul " Oh
live. who will give me to repose in Thee ? Oh
! !
that Thou wouldest enter into my heart, and inebriate it, that I
may forget my ills, and embrace Thee, my only good What !
art Thou to me ? Of Thy mercy teach me to declare it. What

am I to Thee that Thou demandest my love, and if I give it
not, artangry with me, and threatenest me with grievous
miseries For Thy mercies' sake tell me, O Lord my God,
? . . .
what Thou art to me. Say unto my soul / am thy salvation! :

'
Say it so, that I may hear. Behold, Lord, the ears of my

heart are before open Thou them, and say to my soul
Thee ;
/ am thy salvation. I will run after this voice, and take hold on
Thee. Hide not Thy face from me let me die seeing it ;
1 De Trinit., XIH., 4 :
" Felices esse volumus et infelices esse nolumus, sed nee
velle possumus." De civit. dei, XI., 26 : "Tam porro nemo est qui esse se nolit,
quam nemo est qui non esse beatus velit Quo mode enim potest beatus esse, si
nihil sit?"
1;
only let me seeis the tenement of my soul

it. Narrow en- ;
large Thou may

be able to receive Thee. It is ruin-
it, that it
ous repair Thou it.
; Within, it has these things that must
offend Thine eyes I confess and know ; but who will cleanse ;
it ? or to whom shall I cry save Thee ? " ^
The same God who created us has redeemed us through Jesus

Christ. That simply means that he has restored us to com-
munion with himself. This takes place through grace and love,
.
and in turn through faith and love. Through grace which lays
hold of us and makes the unwilling willing (ex nolentibus
volentes), which gives us an incomprehensibly new nature by
imparting a new birth and through love, which strengthens the
;
weak spirit, and inspires it with powers of goodness. Through

faith which holds to the saying, " He who is just by faith will
live," "which was written and confirmed by the all-powerful
authority of apostolic teaching " (quod scriptum est et apostolicse
disciplinae robustissima auctoritate firmatum) and through love^ ;
which humbly renounces all that is its own and longs for God
and his law. Faith and love spring from God for they are ;
the means by which the living God enables us to appropriate

him. The soul regards those possessions, in which it has
obtained all that God requires of us, as an everlasting gift and a
sacred mystery for a heart equipped with faith and love fulfils
;
the righteousness that is accepted by God. The peace of God

is shed upon the soul which has the living God for its friend
it has risen from unrest to rest, from seeking to finding, from
the false freedom to the free necessity, from fear to love for ;
perfect love casts out fear. It cannot for a moment forget that
it is entangled in worldliness and sin, as long as it lives in this
1 Confess., I., 5 : Quis mihi dabit acquiescere in te?

Quis mihi dabit ut venias in
cor meum et inebries illud, ut obliviscar mala mea unum bonum
amplectar te ?
et
Quid mihi es ? Miserere, ut loquar. Quid tibi sum
ipse, ut amari te jubeas a me,
et nisi faciam irascaris mihi et mineris ingentes miserias ? Die mihi per misera-
. . .
tiones tuas, domine deus meus, quid sis mihi. Die animas mese Salus tua ego sum. :
Sic die, ut audiam. Ecce aures cordis mei ante te, domine ; aperi eas, et die animse
mesa Salus tua ego sum. Curram post vocem banc et apprehendam te. Noli
:
abscondere a me faciem tuam ; moriar ne moriar, ut eam videam. Augusta est

domus animse meae quo venias ad eam ; dilatetur abs te. Ruinosa est ; refice eam.
Habet quae offendant oculos tuos ; fateor et scio ; sed quis mundabit eam ? aut cui
alteri prseter te clamabo ?
72 . HISTORY OF DOGMA. [CHAP. III.
world but it does not let its thoughts rest for a

; moment on
sin, without remembering the living God who is its strength.
The misery of sin overcome
hy faith, humility and love that is —
Christian piety. In this temper the Christian was to live. He
was constantly to feel the pain caused by sin, separation froni
God but he was at the same time to console himself with the
;
conviction that the grace of God had taken possession of him,

that the Lord of heaven and earth had instilled His love into
his h?art, and that this love worked as mightily after as in
baptism.^ Thus Augustine dethroned the traditional feelings of
the baptised, fear and hope, the elements of unrest, and substi-
tuted the elements of rest, faith, and love. For an uncertain
and vacillating notion of sin he substituted the perception of its
power and horror, for a still uncertain notion of grace he substi-
tuted the perception of its omnipotence. He did not abolish
hope, he rather confirmed with all his power the old feeling that
this life is not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to
be revealed. But in realising and preaching the rest bestowed
by faith and love, he transformed the stormy and fanatical
power of hope into a gentle and sure conviction.^
I have here reproduced Augustine's teaching, as we find it
chiefly in his Confessions. This book has the advantage of

giving us an account which is not influenced by any particular
aims. Our exposition is by no means complete we should ;
require to add more than one caution, in order tb be perfectly

just.^ Further, the description has intentionally only considered
the fundamental lines, and given expression to but one direction
in which the epoch-making importance of Augustine comes to
the front. But there can be no doubt that it is the most decisive.
If we Western Christians are shut up to the conviction that
religion moves between the poles of sin and grace nature and —
grace ; if we subordinate morality to faith, in so far as we reject
1 Enchir., 64: "Excepto baptismatis munere ipsa etiam vita cetera, quantalibet
prsepolleat foecunditate justitije, sine peccatorum retnissione non agitur."
2 We will afterwards discuss how
Augustine failed to surmount this uncertainty
far
and unrest, owing to the reception of popular Catholic elements into his piety.
3 The mo<;t important caution —
that Augustine fitted his new form of feeling and
reflection into the old — will be discussed later on ;,it has been only mildly suggested
in the above exposition.
CHAP. Hi.] AUGUSTINE AS REFORMER OF PIETY. 73
the thought of an independent morality, one indifferent to

reh'gion if we behêve that it is necessary to pay much greater
;
heed to the essence of sin than to the forms in which it is

—
manifested fixing our attention on its roots, not on its degrees,
or on sinful actions if we are convinced that universal sinfulness
;
is the presupposition of religion if we expect nothing from our

;
own powers ; if we comprise all means of salvation in the

thought of God's grace and of faith ; if the preaching of faith
and the love of God is substituted for that of fear, repentance,
and hope ^ if, finally, we distinguish between law and gospel,
;
gifts and tasks appointed by God then we feel with the —

emotions, think in the thoughts, and speak with the words of
Augustine.^
Who can deny that in this way religion disclosed deeper
truths to feeling and thought that the disease was recognised
more surely, and the means of healing were demonstrated more
reliably ? Who
can mistake the gain in laying bare the living
heart, the need of the soul, the living God, the peace that exists
in the disposition to trust and love ? Even if he merely seeks
to study these phenomena as a disinterested " historian of cul-
ture," who can escape the impression that we have here an
advance, at least in psychological knowledge, that can never
1 1 need hardly guard against the misapprehension that I represent faith as not
having been of fundamental importance to the Pre-Augustinian and Greek Church,

The question here is as to the feeling and disposition of the Christian. The Pre-
Augustinian Christian regarded faith as the Self-evident presupposition of the righteous-
ness which he had to gain by his own efforts.
2 It need not be objected that this is the doctrine of Scripture. In the first place.
Scripture has no homogeneous doctrine secondly, even Paul's range of thought, to
;
which Augustine's here most closely approximates, does not perfectly coincide with
it. But we must undoubtedly recognise that the Augustinian reformation was quite
essentially a Pauline reaction against the prevailing piety. Augustine, to some ex-
tent, appears as a second Marcion, see Vol. I., p. 136, Keuter, August. Studien, p.
492 :
" We
can perhaps say that Paulinism, which the growing Catholic Church only
half-learned to understand, which Marcion attempted to open up in an eccentric one-
sidedness that the Church, in its opposition to him, had all but rejected, was exploited
by our Church Father for the second time, in such a way, that much hitherto belong-
ing to popular Catholicism was remodelled." This is followed by a parallel between
Augustine and Marcion. The triad " Faith, Love, and Hope," is Pauline, and occurs
in almost all Church Fathers ; but Augustine first made-it fruitful "again (perhaps he
learned here from Jovinian). ', <
H HISTORY OF DOGMA. [CHAP. III.
again be lost ? In fact, history seems to teach that the gain can
never perish within the Christian Church nay, it attests more,
;
it would appear, than this it tells us that a limit has been

:
reached, beyond which the pious mood cannot receive a further

development. If we review all the men and women of the
West since Augustine's time, whom, for the disposition that
possessed them, history has designated as prominent Christians,
we have always the same type ; we find marked conviction of
sin, complete renunciation of their own strength, and trust in
grace, in the personalGod who is apprehended as the Merciful
One in the humility of Christ. The variations of this frame of
—
mind are indeed numerous we will speak of these later on j
but the fundamental type is the same. And this frame of mind
is taught in sermons and in instruction by truly pious Catholics
and Evangelicals to it youthful Christians are trained, and

;
dogmatics are framed in harmony with it. It always produces,

so powerful an effect, even where it is only preached as the ex-
perience of others, that he who has once come in contact with
it can never forget accompanies him as a shadow by day
it; it
and as a light in the dark he who imagines that he has long

;
shaken it off sees it rising up suddenly before him again.

Since the days of Leibnitz, indeed, and the " Illumination," a
powerful opponent has grown up, an enemy that seemed to
have mastered it during a whole century, that reduced the
Christian religion, when it gave any countenance to it at all,
once more to energetic action, and furnished it with the foil
of a cheerful optimism, a mode of thought which removed the
living God afar off, and subordinated the religious to the moral.
But this opponent succumbed in our century, at least, within
the Churches, before the power of the old frame of mind.
Whether this triumph of Augustine is guaranteed to last, none
but a prophet could tell. It is only certain that the constella-
tion of circumstances in the fray has been favourable to the
victor.
On the part of the Church no doubt prevails that the
Augustinian feeling and type of thought are alone legitimate in
Christianity, that they are alone Christian for the conception
;
of redemption (by God himself), in the sense of regeneration.

CHAP, in.] AUGUSTINE AS REFORMER OF PIETY. 75
dominates everything. But we cannot fail to be puzzled when

we consider that it cannot by any means be directly deduced
from the surest words of Jesus, and that the ancient and Greek
Church was ignorant of it. Further, we cannot but be doubtful
when we weigh its consequences for their testimony is not all ;
favourable. A
quietistic, I might almost say a narcotic, element
is contained in it, or is, at least, imperceptibly associated with
it. There is something latent which seems to enervate the
in it
vital energies, to hinder the exertion of the will, and to substi-
tute feelings for action. Is there no danger in substituting a
general consciousness of sin for evident evil tendencies, heartless
words and shameful deeds .' ^ Is it safe to rely on the uniform
operation of Grace, when we are called to be perfect and holy
like God ? Are all the energies of the Will actually set free,
where the soul lives constantly in the mood shown in the
" Confessions " Are fear and hope
? really phases, necessarily
to be superseded by faith and love ? Perhaps it is correct to
answer all these questions in accordance with the type of
thought here considered but even then a doubt remains.
;
Is it advisable —
apart from the variety in men's temperaments
— to present this ideal as the aim at all stages of spiritual
development? Here, at least, the answer cannot be doubtful.
That which is the last stage reached by the advanced Christian
who has passed through a rich experience is a refinement to him
who is in process of development. But a refined piety or
morality is always pernicious for it no longer starts at the ;
point of duty and conscience. It deceives regarding our need

and its satisfaction. And since it is strong enough to fascinate,
and can also be comprehended as a doctrine by an intelligence
that is far from advanced, in order, once comprehended, never
to pass away again, so it can become dangerous to morality, and
therefore also to piety. For, after all, in both these spheres,
^ I say nothing of the arrogant habit of those who, because they agree with the
Augustinian doctrine, not only openly credit themselves with possessing "positive"
Christianity, but also denounce their opponents as " half-believers." For this non-
sense Augustine is not responsible, and it only made its appearance in the nineteenth
century. It is only in our days that evangelical Christendom has permitted itself to
be terrorised by people who bear the deeper " knowledge of sin " as a motto, and
with this shield guard themselves against the counsel to be just and modest.
7<5 HISTORY OF DOGMA. [CHAP. III.
that only has any value which heightens the power to be and
do good everything else is a poisonous fog. Perhaps, if we
;
consider the matter fairly, no feeling or mood, and no theory of

the factors in the religious process, are alone legitimate. As
man requires sleep and wakefulness, so also he must, if he is to
preserve his moral and religious life in health, alternate between
the sense of his freedom and power and that of his bondage and
helplessness, between the sense of full moral responsibility and
the conviction that he is a favoured child of God. Or is there a
way of so grasping Augustine's type of feeling and thought,
that it may fashion faith into the strongest lever of moral
energy and action ? Are not. the difficulties that rise against his
typeofpiety due perhaps just to his not having developed it forcibly
and absolutely enough ?

This question will obtain its answer later on. Here we have
to point out that the dissemination of the religious views;
peculiar to Augustine, was
in every respect beneficial.
not
They they conducted him to the
constituted his greatness ;
wonderful path he trod they led him to conceive redemption-

;
no longer as a solitary intervention, by means of baiptism^ in

the course of human life, but as the element in which the soul
lived —
baptismal grace being therefore a continuously operative
force. " Personal characteristics " lie beyond the sphere of
errors they may be erroneous, looked at from with-<
and truths ;
out, true from within. They may for that very reason be eyen
hurtful as influences, for " when they introduce disproportion-
:
ately what is foreign, the question arises, how these adventitious

peculiarities harmonise with those fhait are native to the soul,
and whether by the very act of mingling they do not produce a
sickly condition." Nevertheless, there can be no doubt that
'^
Augustine submitted the traditional religious feeling to as

thorough-going a revision as is conceivable, and even he who is.
not in a position to praise it unreservedly will not seek to
minimise its benefits.^ «>
1 Compare Goethe in his wonderful reflections on Sterne, Werke (Hempel's Ed.),

Vol. XXIX., 749 f.
p.
'^
Augustine's Exposition of the Church I neither count one of his greater achieve-
ments, nor can I hold it to be the central idea which determines what is essential to him./
CHAP. III.] AUGUSTINE AS REFORMER OF PIETY. ^^
II. No
one was further than Augustine from intending to
correct the tradition of the Church. If he has done this so
emphatically, he was himself merely actuated by the feeling
that he was thus assimilating more and more thoroughly the
faith of the Church. Having forced his way through scepticism
to the truth of the Catholic Church, he regarded the latter as
the rock on which his faith was founded. We should misunder-
stand him were we to blink this fact. He rather sets us reflect-
ing how it was possible for the most vital piety to have a double
ground of conviction, inner experience, and external, nay, ex-
tremely external, attestation. We can make a still stronger
assertion. A ugustine first transformed the authority of the
Church into a factor in religion; he first expressed pious con-
templation, the view of God and self, in such a way that the
religious man always found the authority of the Church side by
side with sin and grace.^ Paul and post-apostolic teachers,
especially Tertullian, had, indeed, already introduced the Church
into the religious relationship itself;^ but they were not think-
ing of its authority.
When we our attention on Augustine's distinctive type
fix
of- Christian the "foundation of his significance for
piety as
Church and dogmatic history, we must not only consider the
decisive tendency of his doctrine of sin and grace, but we must
also review his reception and characteristic revision of traditional
elements. For from these his piety, i.e., his sense of God, and
sin and grace, obtained the form which is familiar to us as
specifically Catholic. In addition to (i) the above-mentioned
element of the authority of the Church, there are, if my view is
1 Renter says excellently (I.e., p. 494) :
" Many phases of the hitherto traditional
and authoritative doctrine were transformed by him he
into really religious factors ;
a revolution in the religious consciousness in those circles in and upon which

efiFected
he worked, yet without peeking to endanger its Catholicity." Cf., also p. 102 {71-
98) " Much, but very far from all, that belonged to popular Catholicism was
:
revised by Augustine."
2 See De bapt.-i«6' : "Cum antem sub tribus et testatio fidei et sponsio salutis pig-
nerentur, necessarto adicitur ecclesise mentio, quoniam ubi tres, id est paler et filius
et spiritus sanctus, ibi ecclesia, quae Deorat.,2: "Pater
trium corpus est." . . .
filius . ne rnater quidam ecclesia prsteritur.. Si quidem in filio et patre mater

. .
recognoscitur, dequa constat et patris et filii nomen." De monog., 7 " Vivit enim :
unicus pater nosfer et mater ecclesia." All this is based on the Symbol.
correct, other three ; (2) the confusion of personal relationship to

God with a sacramental communication of grace ; (3) uncertainty
as to the nature of faith and the forgiveness of sins ; (4) un-
certainty as to the significance of the present life. Even in the
way he felt and wrote about these things he created new states
of feeling but they appear merely to be modifications of the
;
old ; he first enabled the old moods fully to under-

or, rather,
stand themselves, in other words, enriched them from the dead
material which they brought with them. This exerted in turn a
very strong influence on the fundamental feeling— the sense of
sin and grace, and first gave it the form which enabled it to
take possession of souls, without creating a revolution, or pro-
ducing a violent breach with tradition.
In the sequel we only discuss the fundamental features of
^
these four elements.
Augustine introduced the authority of the Church as a
I.
religious factor for two reasons. Like the thought of redemp-

tion, the significance of the Church seems, on a superficial ex-
amination, to have received so sovereign and fixed an impress in
the conception formed by the ancient Catholic and Greek
Fathers, that any further accentuation of it is impossible. But,'
if we look more closely, redemption was presented as a solitary
^ We don't need now to say for the first time that Augustine was as closely as pos-
sible united to the past of the Church in all else (Scripture, doctrinal confession, etc. ).
Besides he shared with his contemporaries in the conception of the Church's
this,
science in relation to faith, and had on many points as naive ideas as they of the
its
limits and scope of knowledge. If he possessed the faculty of psychological observa-

tion in a much higher degree than his predecessors, he retained the absolute type of
thought, and, with all the sceptical reserve which he practised in single questions, he
further developed that conglomerate of cosmology, ethics, mythology, and rationalism,
which was then called science. So also he was implicated in all the prejudices of
contempoiary exegesis. It is to be added, finally, that, although less credulous than
his contemporaries, he was, like Origen, involved in the prejudices, the mania for
miracles, and the superstition of the age. His works, sober in comparison with many
other elaborations of the epoch, are yet full of miracles. A slave learns to read in
answer to prayer, in three days, and without human help ; and we have divine judg-
ments, miracle-workingrelics, etc. He certainly made the absurd indispensable to
the Church. Since Augustine's time there are wholly absurd Church doctrines, whose
abandonment would not be without danger, because they have excited, or at least
have supported, like the vine-pole, the virtues of conscientiousness, strictness in self-
examination, and tenderness of soul (see, e.g., his doctrine of original sin). But Uke
all absurdities, they have also excited blind fanaticism and fearful despair.
CHAP. III.] AUGUSTINE AS REFORMER OF PIETY, 79
intervention, and the significance of the Church was exhausted

in the fact that, while it was the presupposition of Christian Hfe
and the guarantee of Christian truth, it did not enter into the
separate acts in which the religious and moral life ran its
spiritual course. Here also Rothe's saying is true that Chris-
tians tacitly " laid their plans to meet the chance that in' the end
everything might require to be done by men alone." These
" plans " were based since the days of the Apologists on the
optimistic conception of the inalienable goodness of human

nature, and the demonstrability (clearness and intelligibility) of
the Christian religion. The course of a spontaneously moral life
was ultimately modified, neither by the doctrine of redemption

nor by that of the Church.
In both these respects Augustine's experience had led to
wholly different conclusions. His conflict with himself had con-
vinced him of the badness of human nature, and Manichceism
had left him in complete doubt as to the foundations and truth of
the Christian faith. ^ His confidence in the rationality of
Christian truth had been shaken to the very depths, and it was
never restored.In other words, as an individual thinker he
never gained the subjective certitude that Christian truth
and as such everything contained in the two Testaments
had to be regarded, was clear, consistent, and demon-
strable.^ When he threw himself into the arms of the Catholic
Church, he was perfectly conscious that he needed its
1 See lieuter, I.e. p. 490 f.
2 The fewtendencies to this conception, which are also found in his works, are
always combined with that neutralising of the historical displayed by the Apologists,
We cannot here discuss more fully this undercurrent in his writings. But it is im-
portant to show clearly the main current, namely, that scholars were by no means con-
fident of the rationality of the Catholic faith. The attacks made by heathens and
Manichseans had shaken them. Some speak, partly with self-satisfaction, partly with
pain, of" modern " doubts of the faith of the Church. But these doubts are so far
from modern that the creation of the Augustinian and mediaeval authority of the
Church is work. That ecclesiasticism is so powerful, nay, has become a dog-
their
matic quantity, is due to the defective morality of Christians in the second and third
centuries, and to their defective faith in the fourth and fifth. The distinction between
Justin and Augustine is in this respect much greater than that between Augustine and
a Christian of the sixteenth or nineteenth centuries.
— ;:
8o HISTORY OF DOGMA. [CHAP. III.
authority, not to sink in scepticism or nihilism.^For example,

nothing but the authority of the Church could remove the
stumbling-blocks in the Old Testament. The thousand doubts
excited by theology, and especially Christology, could only be
allayed by the Church. As regards the former case, allegorical
interpretation, of course, helped to get one over the difficulties ;
but it which solves everything)

(as contrasted with the literal
did not justify itself; the Church alone gave the right to apply
it. The Church guaranteed the truth of the faith, where the indi-
vidjial could not perceive it ; that is the new thought whose open
declaration proves the thinker's scepticism, as well as the man's
love of truth. He would not impose upon himself; he would
not become the sophist of his faith. Openly he proclaimed it
I believe in many articles only on the Church's authority
nay, I believe in the Gospel itself merely on the same ground.^
Thereby the Church had gained an enormous importance, an
importance which it was henceforth to retain in Western
Catholicism upon it, an entity above all incomprehensible
;
for what and where is the Church ? —

a great part of the respon-
sibility was rolled, which had hitherto to be borne by the
individual. Thus henceforth the Church had its part in every
act of faith. By this, however, a vast revolution was brought
about in the relation to the " faith which is believed " (fides
qujE creditur). Acts of faith were, at the same time, acts of
obedience. The difficulties were recognised which the Alex-
andrians overcame by distinguishing between exoteric and
1 See the middle Books of the Confessions, e.g., VI., ii :
" Scripturze sanctse, quas
ecclesiee catholicfe commendat auctoritas." VI., 7: " Libris tuis, quos tanta in
omnibus fere gentibus auctoritate fundasti. . . . Non audiendos esse, si qui forte
mihi dicerent unde scis illos libros uniiis veri et veracissimi dei spiritu esse humano
;
generi ministratos? idipsumenim maxime credendum erat." VI., 8 " Ideoquecum :
essemus infirmi ad inveniendam liquida ratione veritatem, et ob hoc nobis opus esset
auctoiitate sanctarum litteraruni, jam credere coeperam nullo modo te fuisse tributu-
rum tam excellentem illi scripturse per omnes jam terras auctoritatem, nisi et per
ipsam tibi credi et per ipsam te quseri voluisses. Jam enim absuiditatem qiise me in
illis litteris solebat offendere, cum multa ex eis probabiliter exposita audissem, ad
sacramentorum altitudinem referebam." See also the treatise De utilit. credendi, and,
in general, the writings against Manichseism.
2 Contra Ep. ManichEei, 5 :
" Ego vero evangelio non crederem, nisi me catholicEe
(ecclesiK) comnioveret auctoritas." Innumerable parallels exist, especially in the
writings against Manichjeism, but also elsewhere.
1;
CHAP. HI.] AUGUSTINE AS REFORMER OF PIETY. 8
was itself rejected. In its

esoteric religion, but this distinction
place was now openly proclaimed what had long especially in —
the West (see ch. I., Scripture and Dogma as Law) been —
secretly the expedient of thousands : partial renunciation of in-
dependent faith, and the substitution for it of obedience. It is
obvious that thus a great body of dogmas, or of the contents of
Scripture, was placed beyond the reach of the believing subject,
that a wholly different relation to them was introduced, that, in
a word, the doctrines of Scripture and the Church obtained a
new meaning. Augustine was the father of the conception of
implicit faith (fides implicita),by associating with the individual
believer the Church, with which he believes and which believes
for him, in as far as it takes the place for him in many points of
a psychological element of faith, namely, inner conviction. In
openly proclaiming this conception, which, as has been said,
already lurked in darkness, Augustine, on the one hand, dis-
burdened individual faith, and directed it more energetically to
those spheres in which it could rest without difficulties, but, on
the other hand, introduced all the evil consequences which
spring from faith in authority.^
However, this championship of faith in authority had an addi-
tional root, in the case of Augustine, besides scepticism. Tradi-
tion and grace are connected by secret ties. A genius, who was
never a sceptic, and who was therefore never possessed by a
mania for authority, has confessed " The dew in which I bathe
:
and find health is tradition, is gface." Augustine was also led,

both as a psychologist and a Christian of living faith, to tradi-
tion and therewith to the Church. In breaking with moralism,
he broke too with the individualism and atomism of the ancient
school. The "mass of perdition" (massa perditionis) was
always confronted for him by grace (gratia) as a force working
in history. I will not here yet go into his notion of the Church
it is certain that he possessed a lively sense that all great bene-
" Reuter, who by no means over- values the importance of the idea of the Church in
Augustine, declares 499)
(p.
" By Augustine the idea of the Church was rendered
:
the central power in the religious state of mind and ecclesiastical activity of the
West in a fashion unknown to the East." "Central power "is almost saying too
much (see Theol. Lit.— Zeit., 1887, No. 15).
F
;
82 HISTORY OF DOGMA. [CHAP- HI.
fits, even communion with God hirriself, were' attached to

and it is manifest that religious individualism,
historical tradition,
as developed by him, was paralleled by and compatible with a
conception, according to which the individual was supported by
other persons, and by forces in the direction of goodness which
he received through a visible medium. Augustine concentrated
this correct historical conception in the idea of the Church. It
was —
him the organism and for the individual the womb of
to —
grace it was further the communion of righteousness and love
;
and he felt this significance of the Church in his most personal

piety much more acutely than any one before him.
But the sceptic who needs the authority of the Church, and
the Christian of quick feeling and sure observation, who
perceives and prizes the value of Church communion, do not part
company. There has never yet existed in the worjd a strong
religious faith, which has not appealed, at some decisive point or
other, to an external authority. It is only in the colourless ex-
positions of religious philosophers, or the polemical systems of
Protestant theologians, that a faith is constructed which derives
its certitude exclusively from its own inner impulses. These
undoubtedly constitute 'Ca& force by which it exists and is pre-
served. But are not conditions necessary, under which this force
becomes operative ? Jesus Christ appealed to the authority of
the Old Testament, ancient Christians to the evidence of pro-
phecy, Augustine to the Church, and Luther himself to the
written Word of God. Only academic speculation thinks that
it can eliminate external authority life and history show that
;
no faith is capable of convincing men or propagating itself,

which does not include .obedience to an external authority, or
fails to be convinced of its absolute power. The only point is
to determine the rightful authority, and to discover the just
relationship between external and internal authority. Were it
otherwise, we should not be weak, helpless beings. We cannot
think too highly of the nobility of human talents; but they are not
lofty enough to enable men so to appropriate the sum of all the
ideal elements which compose the inner life, that these simply
^row with the growth of the soul, or become its product.
Above all, the thought of God, the thought of the love of God,
:
CHAP. III.] AUGUSTINE AS REFORMER OF PIETY, 83
can never receive an irrefragable certainty, without being sup-

ported by an external authority. It is not a false view of
religion that the restless quest of the soul only ceases when
there has dawned upon it an authority whose validity is inde-
pendent of the degree of strength with which its justification is
felt zvithin the breast?-
All this Augustine perceived and expressed. Therefore " the
traditional, exclusively authoritative doctrine " of the Church
was transformed by him into a conception, according to which
the Church is a religious factor. By this, however, the distinc-
tive character of piety itself received a new definition.^
2. The perception that religion is the possession of the living
God, a personal relationship between the soul and God, is con-
spicuous in Augustine's Confessions, but also in other writings
by him. That nothing but God himself could give the soul
rest and peace is the fundamental note of the Confessions
" Say unto my
soul : I am thy salvation." His great place in ^
'^
This argument has been very badly received by some critics, but I find nothing to
change in it. Perhaps it vfill help to its being understood if I add that the spiritual
—
man is directly conscious of the Divine Spirit as his Lord who constrains him to
obedience, even where he himself does not perceive the inner authority but the non-—
spiritual require some sort of intervening authority, whether consisting in persons, or a
book, or Church. But in both cases we are dealing with a controlling power, whose
authority rises above one's own individuality and knowledge. I hope that in disclos-
ing tills state of the case I am safe from being (wrongly) understood to draw a fixed
line between the spiritual and non-spiritual. Throughout it is only a question of the
proportion in which the apocalyptic and mediated elements appear and are connected
in personal religion. Eyen the spiritual man who holds direct communion with God
has, as history shows, extremely seldom, perhaps never entirely, freed himself from
all intermediate authority ; on the contrary, he has clung to it firmly, in spite of his
intercourse with the Deity. This is not the place to explain this phenomenon ; but
personal religion is not shown to be valueless by its being proved that its authorities
are not sound (against Baumann, Die Grundfrage der Religion, 1895, p. 21 f.). The
important point is what the pious man has derived from his authorities.
2 It is only to a superficial observer that Eastern Christians seem to cling more
strongly to the Church than Western. In the East the historical course of events
welded ecclesiasticism and nationality into one, and the internal development made
the cultus of the Church the chief matter. But what other role does the Church play
in personal piety than being the scene of Christian life, the teacher of doctrine, and
the administrator of the mysteries ? All these are, in fact, presupposed conditions ;
in the West, on the contrary, the Church has thrust itself into ail relations and points
of contact of the pious soul to God and Christ, as far as the Augustinian. tradition is
accepted.
84 HISTORY OF DOGMA. [CHAP. III.^
the history of piety is bound up with this perception, as we find

it attached to Rom. VIII., 31-39. He is to be compared, in
this also, to the great Alexandrians, especially Clement. But
as Augustine did not merely reach this conclusion by means of
a laborious speculation, so it assumed a much more forcible and
purer form in his life and works than in theirs.^
But the sure application of what is simplest in dogma is ever
the hardest thing. Augustine found himself confronted by a
tradition which taught that men enjoyed intercourse with God
through laws and communications of grace ; nay, the prevailing
tradition was constantly in danger of reducing the latter to the
former. In opposition to this, a great advance was at once
made by insisting on the distinction between law and gospel,
commands and grace. We now perceive that Augustine sub-
stantially limited himself to this in his polemicaldogmatic writ-
ings. That is, he was not in a position to translate into his
dogmatic theory the vital perception that God himself, as he
appeared in Christ, was the possession of the soul. He substan-
tially left standing the old scheme that God came to man's assist-
ance, like a benevolent judge with acts of pardon, or like a
physician with medicines. In other words, he gave the force of
absolute conviction to what had been uncertain, viz., that God
operates continuously by a mysterious and omnipotent imparta-
tion of grace, i.e., by powers of grace.^ Thus grace (gratia per
Christum) preserved even with him an objective character, and
Let anyone read attentively the Confessions B. VII. and VIII., as also the writ-
1
ings and epistles composed immediately after his conversion, and he will find that
Augustine's Neoplatonism had undoubtedly a share in giving him this perception.
But he was brought to it in a much higher degree by his inner experience, and the
reading of Paul and the Psalms. The Psalmists' piety was revived in him Csee esp.
Confess., IX., 8-12). even was modelled on theirs. In Clement of Alex,
His style
and Origen, Neoplatonic speculation, on the contrary, prevailed. Even in the
most glorious of their expositions, in which the power of feeling is clearly conspicu-
ous, we cannot forget the speculative path by which they thought they had attained
to the possession of God.
The final ground of this view with Augustine consists naturally in the fact that he
never wholly got rid of the old Catholic scheme that the ultimate concern of Christi-
anity was to transform human nature physically and morally for eternal life. He
took a great step forward ; but he was not able to give clear expression to the
Pauline thought that the whole question turned on forgiveness of sins and sonship to-
God, or to frame all dogmatics in harmony with it.
in his controversy with Donatists and Pelagians he completely

developed this view of grace
connection with his doctrines of
in
the Church and sacraments. He understood how to harmonise
this, in his own feeling and self-criticism, with the conviction
that the question involved was the possession of the living God.
But as teacher of piety he did not succeed in doing so indeed, ;
we can say that, just because he laid all emphasis on grace

through Christy while conceiving it to consist in portions or in-
stalments of grace, he was the means of establishing, along with
the perception of its importance as beginning, middle, and end,
the delusion that grace had an objective character. His age
could understand, though with a great effort, his exposition of
grace, as something imparted by the sacraments or the Church.
It could bring that down to its own level. The magical element
which adhered to this conception, the external solidity which
the notion of grace received in the sacrament, the apparent
clearness of the view, the possibility of instituting theological
computations with sin and grace all —
these phases in the
Augustinian doctrine of grace were greedily seized. Thus, in
making grace the foundation and centre of all Christian theo-
logical reflection, it was due to his way of thinking that the
living God and the personality of Christ lost ground in the con-
sciousness of the Church he influenced. The believer had to do
with the inheritance left by Christ, with what he had gained,
with his merit, but not with Christ himself The love of God
was instilled into the soul in portions but Augustine did not
;
perceive that dogmatic was imperfect, nay, formed a hindrance

to religion, as long as the supreme place was withheld from
the principle :
" Our heart is restless, until it rests in Thee!'
The violent agitation which he had himself experienced, the
crisis in which the sole question was whether he should or
should not find God to be his God, he has extremely imper-
fectly expressed in the dogmatic theory of his later period. He
poured the new wine into old bottles, and was thus partly to
blame for the rise of that Catholic doctrine of grace, which is
perhaps the most dreadful part of Catholic dogmatics for " the ;
corruption of the best is the worst " (corruptio optimi pessima).

When a Roman Catholic dogmatist very recently called the
doctrine of grace " thorny ground," this description alone must

have sufficed to show every common-sense Christian that the
whole treatment of this main article had stumbled on a false
path since the days of Augustine. Could there be a sadder ad-
mission than this, that reflection on what God grants the soul
in Christ leads us among nothing but thorns ? And could we
conceive a greater contrast than that which exists between the
sayings of Jesus and the Catholic doctrine of grace ? But Pro-
testantism, in its actual form, need not boast of having sur-
mounted this pernicious Catholic doctrine. As it rests on the
Augustinian doctrine of grace in the good sense of the term,
and is distinguished thereby as Western Christianity from
Eastern, it also bears the greatest part of the burden of this
doctrine, and is therefore subject to the same dangers as
Catholicism. It runs the risk of concealing the personal Christ
by grace and the sacraments, of hedging in the living God
through grace itself, and of setting up calculations about grace
which make an account out of what is freest and holiest, and
either dull the soul or leave it in unrest.
But as Augustine knew, for his part, by what his soul lived,
and was able to testify to it in words that lived, and, indeed, in
some of his discussions also doctrinally, he exerted a powerful
influence in this respect, too, on posterity. He became the
father not only of the Catholic doctrine of grace, but also of"
y that mysticism which was naturalised in the Catholic Church,
down to the Council of Trent, indeed,
till the Jansenist contro-
versy. In more than a hundred passages of his works, above

all by his Christian personality, he incited men to gain a life
with God, within which they apprehended the personal God in

grace. We
may here also recall his doctrine of predestination.
One its roots indisputably grew out of the thought of the
of
supremacy of personal relationship to God. It was understood,
too in this way, wherever it was the means in after-times of
obviating the pernicious consequences of the Church doctrine of
grace and sacraments. But there can undoubtedly be no mistake,
that wherever Augustine threw into the background his question-
able doctrine of grace, he at once also incurred the danger of neut-
ralising Christ's general significance. According to him, Christ's
CHAP, m.] AUGUSTINE AS REFORMER OF PIETY. 8/
work referred to, and exhausted itself in the forgiveness of sins.

But, as we shall see in
, what immediately follows, forgiveness
did not bestow all that the. Christian requires for salvation.
Therefore the doctrine of grace was relatively independent of
the historical Christ. This danger of conceiving positive grace
without reference to Christ, or of connecting it with him only in
the form of aesthetic observations, continued to exert an influ-
ence. Luther, who first overcame
started from Augustinianism,
it, God, he only thought of God at
in as far as, in his relation to
all as he knew him in Christ. Augustine was prevented from
doing so by his religious philosophy, and also his Biblicism,
both of which had established independent claims upon him.
Thus it happened that he influenced the piety of Western
Christians by a doctrine of grace which met their lower inclina-
tions, as well as by a promulgation of the immediateness of the
religious relationship which failed to do justice to Christ's
significance as mirror of God's fatherly heart and as the eternal
mediator. In the latter as the former case, he set his seal on
and gave vitality to elements which existed in the traditional
doctrine only as dead material or stunted germs.
3. Augustine shared with the whole of contemporary Christen-
dom the thought, held to be all-important, that a time would

come when at the judgment-seat of Christ " every one would
receive in accordance with his actions " and none will impugn ;
the Christian character of this thought. But he went a step

further, and also accepted the conception of merits current in
the Church from the days of Tertullian and Cyprian. He did
not get beyond the idea that in the final decision merits could
alone be considered. He reconciled this principle, however,
with his doctrine of grace, by teaching that God crowned his
gifts (munera) in crowning our merits (merita).^ This seemed
to correspond to both considerations, and the certainty with
which this conception established itself in the Church appeared
1 Seec.^., Confess. IX. 34: " Quisquis tibi enumerat vera merita sua, quid tibi
enumerat nisi munera. tua." Ep. 194, n. 19: "cum

deus coronal merita nostra,
nihil aliud coronat quam munera sua." De gratia et lib. arb., 15 " Dona sua coronal
:
deus non merita tua . . .si ergo dei dona sunt bona merita tua, non deus coronat
merita tua tamquam merita tua sed tamquam dona sua." De gestis Pelag., 3.5:
88 HISTORY OF DOGMA. [CHAP. HI.
. to guarantee that the correct view had now been reached. But,
first,the question arises whether the ambiguity of the reconciHa-
tion did not contribute to its being received secondly, it cannot
;
fail to surprise us that there is not a word about faith in the
principle. We are once more at a point where Augustine, in

reforming the prevailing piety, paid it a very considerable
tribute. He certainly expressed the importance and power of
faith in a striking and novel fashion. He who disregards the
formulas, but looks to the spirit, will everywhere find in
Augustine's works a stream of Pauline faith. None before him
i but his teachers Victorinus and Ambrose, in some of their
.expositions, had used similar language. Numerous passages
can be cited in which Augustine extolled element
faith as the
in which the soul lives, as beginning, middle, and end of piety.
But in the sphere of dogmatic reflection Augustine spoke of
faith with extreme uncertainty, and, indeed, as a rule, not
differently from his predecessors.
Different points meet here. Firstly, it was simply the power
of tradition which prevented him from perceiving more in faith
than the act of initiation. Secondly, Scriptural texts led him to
the assumption that something else than faith, namely, habitual
goodness (righteousness), must finally fall to be considered at the
divine tribunal. Thirdly and lastly, he limited the significance
of the forgiveness of sins. The last point is in his case the most
paradoxical, but here the most important. He for whom the
supreme thing was the certainty of possessing a God, and who
called to his whole period " You have not yet considered of how
:
great weight sin is " (nondum considerasti, quanti ponderis sit

peccatum),never realised the strict relation that exists between
faith and forgiveness, nor could explain clearly that the assur-
ance of forgiveness is life and salvation. At this point the
moral element suddenly entered with sovereign power into reli-
gious reflection. It is as if Augustine had here sought to escape
" Redditur quidein meritis tuis corona sua, sed dei dona sunt merita tua." De trinit.,
Xllt., 14: " Et ea quae dicuntur merita nostra, dona sunt eius," etc. XV. 21 :
f'Quid animani faciei beatam, nisi meritum suum et pi'semium domini siii ? Sed et
meritum ejus gratia est illius, cujus, prsemium erit beatitude ejus." De prsedest,
sanct., 10. For this very reason the fundamental principle, holds good, that grace is
not gj-anied secundum merita nostra. . .
•CHAP. Ill,] AUGUSTINE AS REFORMER OF PIETY. 89
the quietistic consequences of his doctrine (see above), and, in

his inability to deduce positive virtue from faith in forgiveness of
sin, turned from faith to works. Or was he prevented by the
remnants of religious philosophy and cosmology that still clung
to his theory of religion from perceiving absolutely that religion
is bound up in faith ki forgiveness of sins
Or, again, is this ? ^
perception erroneous and untenable, one that paralyses the

itself
power of moral exertion ? We do not intend to examine these
questions here. The fact is that Augustine conceived faith to
be a preliminary stage, because he regarded forgiveness of sins
as preliminary. If we look closely, we find that in his dogmatic
theory sin was not guilt, but loss and infirmity. The very man
who strove for, and found, a lasting relationship with God, was not
capable of reproducing and stating his experience correctly in
the shape of doctrine. He came back to the customary moral-
istic view, in so far as in his doctrine of grace he thought not of
enmity to God, but the disease of sin, not of divine sonship, but
of the restoration of a state in which man was rendered capable
of becoming good, i.e., sinless. Therefore faith was merely
something preliminary, and it is this that makes it so difficult to
define Augustine's conception of the forgiveness of sins. It
appears to have been really identical with the external and
magical idea of his predecessors, with the exception that he had
a firmer grasp of the forgiveness being an act of God, on which
the baptised might constantly rely. But his reflection rarely
took the form of regarding assurance of forgiveness as something
whereby the soul receives energy and wings. He substantially
never got beyond the impression that something was actually
swept away by it, though that was indeed the gravest of facts,
sin.
The impossibility of carrying out this conception will always,
however, leave a latent doubt. In spite of his new feeling,
Augustine, for this reason, moved entirely in the lines of the old
scheme when he soiight to supplement and to build upon for-
giveness of sin, and looked about him for a positive force which
was required to take its place alongside of the negative effect.
1 In his 177th letter, e.g. (Ad Innocent., c. 4), he expressly declares that it is an
error to say that gratia is liberum arbitrium or remissio peecatorum.
90 HISTORY OF: DOGMA. [CHAP. HI.
This he found in love. It was not in faith, but only in love, that
he could recognise the force that really changed a man's nature,
that set him in a new relationship. But then, in spite of the em-
'pirical objections that confronted him, he did not doubt that love
could be infused like a medicine. Certain that God alone effects
. everything, he transferred to love the conception applicable to
faith (trust) —
that it ceases to be itself where it is felt to be other
than an assimilative organ (opyavov XtiTTTiKov) as if love could —
also be as simply regarded as a gift of God through Christ
(munus dei per Christum). The result of these reflections is that
Augustine held that the relation of the pious soul to God was
most appropriately described as a gradually advancing process of
sanctification. To
he believed he could reduce all legitimate
this
considerations, the fundamental importance of faith, the concep-
tion of (sacramental) grace as beginning, middle, and end, the
need of positive forces capable of changing man's state, the view
that only the just could be saved, and that no one was righteous
whose works were not perfect, i.e., the necessity of merits, etc.
He believed that he had found a means of adjusting the claims
of religion and morality, of grace and merits, of the doctrine of
faith and eschatology. Omnipotent love became for him the
principle that connected and supported everything. Faith, love,
and merit were successive steps in the way to final salvation, and
he has impressed this view on the Catholic Church of after times,,
and on its piety up to the present day. It is the ancient scheme
of the process of sanctification leading to final salvation, but so
transformed that grace acts upon all its stages. Excellent and
— for many stages of development —appropriate as this concep-
tion appears, yet it cannot be mistaken that in it Augustine
lagged behind his own experience, and that against his will he
subordinated the religious sphere to moral goodness for this ;
subordination was by no means precluded by the equation " our

merits, God's gifts " (nostra merita, dei munera). Where merits
play a part there is a failure to understand that there is a
relationship to God which is maintained mid weakness and sin,
as well as in misery and death. ^
^ But, besides, the final and supreme question as to assurance of salvation is not less
misunderstood.
^
Of this even Augustine had a presentiment, and he therefore

also imparted to the Church, to which he transmitted his
doctrine of faith, love, and merit, germs of a conception vs^hich
could not but be fatal to that doctrine. They are not only in-
cluded in his doctrine of predestination, but at least as much so in
every passage of his vi^ritings, where he gives voice to the con- -
fession, " To me to cling to God is a good thing." In this

avowal the religious possession and moral goodness coincide,
and are referred to God, their source. But even apart from this,
his idea of love :
" in this life also virtue is nothing but loving
what ought to be loved good affections make a good character,"
;
was so excellent and forcible that all criticism looks like im-
pudent coxcombry. Nevertheless, we must criticise it from the
standpoint of the gospel. We have already remarked above
that Augustine's doctrine of infused love is indifferent to the
work of the historical Therefore he had a two-fold
Christ.
Christology on the one hand, Christ is God, a member of the
:
Trinity (unus ex trinitate) ; on the other hand, the chosen man,

who was as much under grace as we are. All that leads us back
ultimately to the fact that he under-estimated the significance
of the forgiveness of sins and of the publican's faith: that his
piety was not yet simple enough.^
4. Finally, it is to be pointed out that Augustine in his re-
formation of Christian piety did not disturb its character as a
preparation for the next world. He could have changed noth-
ing here without wounding the Christian religion itself; for the
view of some Protestants, that Christianity can be transformed
into a religion of this world, is an illusion. Augustine lived as
much in the future world as Justin and Irenaeus. His eschato-
^ Et in hac vita virtus non est nisi diligere quod diligendum est ; faciunt boni amores
bonos mores.
^ It has seemed necessai-y to concede to Augustine's conception of sanctification that
it had the merit of correcting the quietistic phase that, clung dangerously to his
doctrine of grace. But, on a closer inspection, we find that love did not certainly
mean to him the exemplification of morality in serving our neighbour, but sentiments,
or such works of love, as owed their value to reflex action at least as strongly as to
philanthropy. Here again, in very many expositions, he did not advance beyond the
old Catholic Christians, or Cyprian and Ambrose ; man attends best to his own in-
terests by means oi cantos, and pleases God in divesting himself of what is worldly.
logical reflections are inexhaustible, and if, as will be shown

afterwards, he set aside a few of the older ideas, yet that affords
no standard of the whole trend of his piety. He only intensified
the pessimistic view of this life, this mortal life and living death
(vita mortalis, mors vitalis), by his doctrine of sin. " What flood of
eloquence would ever suffice to portray the tribulations of this
life, to describe this wretchedness, which is, as it were, a kind of
hell in our present existence? Verily, the new-born infant

comes to our mortal light, not laughing but weeping, and by its
tears prophesies in some fashion, even without knowing it, to
what great evils it has come forth. ... A heavy yoke burdens all
the children of Adam from the day of birth to that of burial,
when they return to the common mother of all. And the . . .
sorest thing of all is that we cannot but know how, just by the
grievous sin committed in Paradise, this life has become a
punishment to us."^ Just as he has retained the pessimistic
view of our present life, he has also described blessedness as the
state of the perfect knowledge of God. He has done so in one
of his earliest writings, De vita beata, and he substantially
adhered to it.
But the very perception, that misery was not a mere fatality,
but was incurred by guilt, and the confidence that grace could
make man free and happy even upon this earth, exerted a
certain counterpoise. He undoubtedly does not call the present
life of the Christian " joy of felicity," " but comfort of misery,"
and declares that to be an extremely false felicity which is
devised by men who seek here another happiness than that
entertained by hope.^ But in not a few passages he yet speaks
of the joy in God which creates blessedness even here. He
seldom obeyed this feeling. For that very reason he found this
1 See also the thrilling description, De civitat, XIX. , 4.

2 In his Soliloquies, one of his earliest writings, he awards felicity to the soul that
perceives God here below. But in his Retractations, I., 4, he says expressly, " Nee
illud mihi placet, quod in ista vita deo intellecto jam beatam esse animam (in Solilo-
quiis) dixi, nisi forte spe." In general, Augustine at a later date disavowed many
arguments in his works written immediately after his conversion ; nay, even in his
Confessions, in which he is disposed to describe his conversion as instantaneous, he has
admitted in one important sentence how imperfect his Christian thought was at that
time IX. 7, " Ibi (in Cassiciacum) quid egerim in litteris, jam quidem servientibus
:
life in and there are only a few indications,

itself objectless,
especially in the work, De civitate dei, in which he tried to
show that a kingdom of Christ may be built up even in this
world, and that the just, who live by faith, constitute it, and
have a present task to perform (see also De trinit. I., 16 and
21). Speaking generally, he propagated the feeling shown in
ancient Christian eschatology in every respect, and prepared the
ground for monachism. If he seems to have instigated the de-
velopment of the Catholic Church in its tendency to masterful
rule over this world, yet external circumstances, and the inter-
pretation they produced of his work " De civitate dei," contri-
buted rhuch more to the result than any intentional impulses
given by him.^ Where, however, there has developed in
Catholicism in after times a strong sense of the blessedness
which the Christian can receive even in this state, it has always
assumed a mystical and ecstatic character. This is a clear
proof that in any case this life was disregarded for the mystical ;
feeling of blessedness, even as Augustine knew it, really exists,

by means of an excess, already in the future state.
In the preceding pages the attempt has been made to show

how the piety was constituted in which Augustine lived, and
which he transmitted to posterity. It is extraordinary difficult to
understand it aright for experience and tradition are interwoven
;
in it in the most wonderful way. Yet we cannot understand
tibi, sed adhue superbia sckolam tanquam m pausatione anhelantibus, testantur libii
disputati cum prassentibus (libr. c. — —
Academ. de beata vita de ordine) et cum ipso
me solo (Soliloquia) coram te ; qu£e autem cum absente Nebridio, testantur epistolsB").
But our judgment must here be divided. What was written earlier was undoubtedly
in many respects less complete, less churchly, more Neoplatonic ; but on the other
hand it was more direct, more personal and determined to a smaller degree by regard
for the Catholicism of the Church. Yet he -wa.'s, already determined to have nothing
to do v?ith a felicity of inquiry and seeking; but only saw it in its possession (Adv.
Acad, lib., I.).
^ On Augustine's pessimistic and eschatological tendency, his view of the secular
and clerical life, as also the efforts to surmount the popular Catholic conception, see
Renter, I.e., Studie VI. We return briefly to these subjects further on.
him as teacher of the Church, until we have formed our estimate

of him as reformer of piety for, besides Scripture and tradition,
;
his theories have their strongest roots in the piety that animated
him. They are in part nothing but states of feeHng interpreted
theoretically. But in these states of feeling there gathered round
the grand experience of conversion from bondage to freedom
in God all the manifold religious experiences and moral re-
flections of the ancient world. The Psalms and Paul, Plato
and the Neoplatonists, the Moralists, Tertullian and Ambrose,
we by side with the new
find all again in Augustine, and, side
psychological view constructed by him as disciple of the Neo-
platonists, we come once more upon all the childish reflections
and absolute theories which these men had pursued.
CHAPTER IV.
THE HISTORICAL POSITION OF AUGUSTINE AS

TEACHER OF THE CHURCH.
The ancient Church before Augustine only possessed a single

great dogmatic scheme, the Christological. Augustine also knew
itand made use of it but in inserting it into a greater and
;
more living group, he deprived it of its original meaning and

object. It has been said of Socrates that he brought philosophy
down from heaven we may maintain of Augustine that he did
;
the same for dogmatics, by separating it from speculations about

the finite and infinite, God the Logos and the creature, mortal
and immortal, and connecting it with questions as to moral good,
freedom, sin, and blessedness. Goodness became for him the point
on which turned the consideration of blessings ; moral goodness
(virtue) and the possession of salvation were not merely to
occupy corresponding positions, but to coincide (ipsa virtus et
praemium virtutis). If we may use a figure, we can say that
Augustine formed into one the two centres of popular Catholic
theology, the renewing power of redemption and the free effort
to attain virtue ; —
of the ellipse he made a circle God, whose
grace delivers the will and endows it with power to do what is
good. In this is comprehended his significance in the history
of the Christian religion. He did not, however, vindicate the
new portion consistently, but built the old into it. Indeed, in
the new cathedral erectedby him, the old building formed, as
it were, the holy of holies, which is seldom entered.
When we seek to determine what has been accomplished by

an ancient Church theologian as teacher of the Church, we must
examine his expositions of the Symbol. We possess several by
Augustine. It is extremely instructive to compare the earliest
(De fide et symbolo, a.d. 393) with one of the latest (De fide,
95
96 HISTORY OF DOGMA. [CHAP. IV.
spe et caritate, A.D. 421, or later). In the former Augustine is

still substantially a theologian of the ancient Church. The
questions discussed by him are the same as were then dealt
with, in both halves of the Church, in the Symbol, and are sug-
gested by its language. Even the manner in which he discusses
them but slightly distinguished from the customary one.
is
Finally, the polemic is the one that was usual Arians, Manichaeans, :
Apollinarians, Pneumatomachoi occupy the foreground the last ;
named especially are very thoroughly refuted. On the other

hand, Augustine's characteristics declare themselves even in this
early exposition.^ Thus we have, above all, his love of truth'
and frankness in the sections on the Holy Spirit, and his scepti-
cal reserve and obedient submission to Church tradition.
Further, in the Christology we find his characteristic scheme
" Christ invested in man " (Christus indutus in homine), as well
as the strong emphasis laid on the humility of Christ contrasted
with pride (superbia). Compare, besides, sentences like the
following.
—
Chapter VI. " Since he i^ only-begotten he has no
brothers but since he is first-begotten, he has deigned to name
;
all those his brothers who after and through his headship are
born again into the grace of God through the adoption of sons."
Or (Chapter XI.) " Our Lord's humility was lowly in his being
:
born for us ; to this it was added that he deigned to die for

1 The foundation of Augustine's religious characteristics can be best studied in the.
writings that are read least, namely in the tractates and letters written immediately
after his conversion, and forming an extremely necessary supplement to his Confes-
sions (see above, p. 92, note 2). In these writings he is not yet at all interested in.
Church dogmatics, but is wholly absorbed in the task of making clear to himself,'
while settling with Neoplatonism, the new stage of religious philosophical reflection,
and inner experience, which he finally found rest (see De vita beata. Adv. Academ.,^
in
Soliloquia, De ordine, and the Epistles to Nebridius). The state of feeling expressed,
by him in these works never left him ; but it was only in a later period that he gave it
its dogmatic sub-structure. In consequence of this, as is proved even by the Confes-
sions and also the Retractations, he himself lost the power of rightly estimating those^
writings and the inner state in which he had found himself in the first years after his
conversion. But he never lost the underlying tone of those first fruits of his author-
ship :
" Rest in the possession of God," as distinguished from the unrest and unhap-
piness of a seeking apd inquiry that never reach their aim, or the essentially
Neoplatonic version of the loftiest problems (see«.^.,De ordine II., ii ff., "mala
in ordinem redacta faciunt decorem universi " ; the same view of evil is still given iu
De civit., XI., i8). Those writings cannot be more fully discussed in a history of
"
CHAP. IV.] AUGUSTINE AS TEACHER. 97,
mortals." Or (Chapter XIX.): "The writers of the Divine

Scriptures declare that the Holy Spirit is God's gift in order that
we may believe that God does not bestow a gift inferior to himself!'
Or (ibid.) " No one enjoys that which he knows, unless he also
:
loves it . . . nor does anyone; abide

in that which he apprehends
unless by love." But
Augustine had died before the Donatist
^ if
and Pelagian controversies, he would not have been the dog-
matist who changed the whole scheme of doctrine for it was ;
these controversies that first compelled him to reflect on and

review what he had long held, to vindicate it with all his power,
and to introduce it also into the instruction of the Church. But
since it had never entered his mind that the ancient doctrinal
tradition, as attached to the Symbol, could be insufficient,^ since
it had still less occurred to him to declare the Symbol itself to
be inadequate, it was a matter of course to him that he should
1 Secundum id, quod unigenitus est, non habet fratres ; secundum id autem quod
primogenitus est, fratres vocare dignatus est onines qui post ejus et per ejus primatum
adoptionem filiorum." " Parva erat pro nobis domini
in dei gratiam renascuntur per
nostri accessit etiam ut mori pro mortalibus dignaretur.
humilitas in nascendo ;
" Divinarum scripturarum tvactatores spiritum sanctum donum dei esse praedicant, ut
deum credamus non se ipso inferius donum dare.^^ *' Eo quod quisque novit non
fruitur, nisi et id diligat neque quisquam in eo quod percipit permanet nisi
. . .
dilectione."
2 Heundoubtedly noticed, and with his love of truth frankly said, that the Church
writers gave throughout an insufficient statement of the grace of God but he con- ;
tented himself with the plea that the Church had always duly emphasised grace in its
prayers and institutions. See prsedest. sanct., 27 " Quid opus est, ut eorum scrute-
:
mur opuscula, qui prius quam ista h^resis (Pelagianorum) oriretur, non habuerunt
necessitatem in hac difficili ad solvendum qusestione versari ? quod procul dubio
facerent, si respondere talibus cogerentur. Unde factum est, ut de gratia dei quid
sentirent, breviter quibusdam scriptorum suorum locis et transeunter adtingerent, im-
morarentur vero in eis, quae adversus inimicos ecclesise disputabant, et in exhortationi-
bus ad quasque virtutes, quibus deo vivo et vero pro adipiscenda' vita aaterna et vera
felicitate servitur. Frequentationibus autem orationum simpHciter apparebat dei
gratia quid valeret ; non enim posceventur de deo quae prsecipit fieri, nisi ab illo
donaretur ut fierent." He himself had indeed learned from experience in his struggle
with the Manichseans, that the defence of truth has to be regulated by the nature of
the attack. When he was twitted by his opponents with what he had formerly
written about freewill against the Manichseans, he appealed to the claims of advanc-
ing knowledge, as well as to the duty of offering resistance both to right and left.
He thus saw in the earlier Church teachers the defenders of the truth of the Church
against fatalism, Gnosticisim, and Manichseism, and from this standpoint explained
their attitude.
G
make everything which he had to present as religious doctrine

hinge on that Confession. In this way arose the characteristic
scheme of doctrine, which continued to influence the West in
the Middle Ages nay, on which the Reformed version is based
;
— a combination of ancient Catholic theology and system with

the new fundamental thought of the doctrine of grace, forced
into the framework of the Symbol. It is evident that by this
means a mixture of styles arose which was not conducive to the
transparency and intelligibility of doctrine. But we have not
only to complain of want of clearness, but also of a complexity
of material which, in a still higher degree than was the case in the
ancient Catholic Church, necessarily frustrated the demand for
a closely reasoned and homogeneous version of religious doc-
trine. We are perhaps justified in maintaining that the Church
never possessed in ancient times another teacher so anxious as
Augustine to think out theological problems, and to secure unity
for the system of doctrine. But the circumstances in which he
was placed led to him above all others necessarily confusing that
system of doctrine, and involving it in new inconsistencies.^
The following points fall to be considered.
I. As a Western theologian, he felt that he was bound by the
Symbol but no Western theologian before him had lived so

;
much in Scripture, or taken so much from it as he. The old vari-

ance between Symbol and Scripture,^ which at that time indeed
was not yet consciously felt, was accordingly intensified by him.
The uncertainty as to the relation of Scripture and Symbol was

increased by him in spite of the extraordinary services he had
rendered in making the Church familiar with the former. ^ The
Biblicism of later times, which afterwards took up an aggressive
attitude to the Church in the West, is to be traced back to
Augustine ; and the resolute deletion of Scriptural thoughts by
1 It is self-evident that for this reason dogma, i.e., the old Catholic doctrine of the
Trinity and Christology, necessarily became less impressive. Renter's objection (I.e.
p. 495) restson an incomprehensible misunderstanding.

^See on this and on what follows, Vol. III., pp. 203 flf., 207 S.
3 The attempts to define their relationship, e.^., in Book I. of the treatise De
doctrina Christiana, are wholly vague, and indeed scarcely comprehensible. The
"substance" of Scripture is to form the propositions of the Rule of Faith; but yet
every sentence of Scripture is an article of faith.
—
CHAP, IV.] AUGUSTINE AS TEACHER. 99
an appeal to the authority of the Church's doctrine may equally

refer to him.^ If we are asked for the historical justification
of pre-reformers and reformers in the West, in taking their
stand exclusively on Scripture, we must name Augustine if we ;
are asked by what right such theologians have been silenced, we

may refer similarly to Augustine but we can in this case un-
;
doubtedly go back to the authority of TertuUian (De prsescr.

haer.).
2. On the one hand, Augustine was convinced that everything

in Scripture was valuable for faith, and that any thought was at
once justified, ecclesiastically and theologically, by being proved
to be Biblical —
see his doctrine of predestination and other
tenets, of which he was certain simply because they were found
in the Bible. By this principle any unity of doctrine was nul-
lified. ^ But, on the other hand, Augustine knew very well that
religion was a practical matter, that in it faith, hope, and love, or
love alone, were all-important, and that only what promoted the
latter had any value. Indeed he advanced a considerable step
further, and approximated to the Alexandrian theologians he :
ultimately regarded Scripture merely as a means, which was dis-

pensed with when love had reached its highest point, and he
even approached the conception that the very facts of Christ's
earthly revelation were stages beyond which the believer passed,
whose heart was possessed wholly by love. ^ This latter point
which is connected with his individualistic theology, but slightly
1 After his conversion Augustine was firmly of opinion that nothing stood in Scrip-
ture that contradicted the doctrine of the Church ; he was not so certain that the inter-
pretation of Scripture must follow the authority of tradition. Yet what a profusion of
"dangerous" ideas would have been evolved from the Bible by his rich and acute
genius if once he had freed his intellect from the fetters of obedience The perception
!
that no leas than everything would have been doubtful, that a thousand contradictions
would have taken the place of a unanimous doctrine, certainly helped in determining
him not to shake the bars of his prison. He felt he would never be able to escape,
but would be buried by the ruins of the collapsing edifice. Hence the principle
declared in De nat. et grat. 22, that we must first submit to what stands in Scripture,
and only then ask " quomodo id fieri potuerit." What a difference from Origen !
"See Vol. II., 331, n. 3.

^De doctr. Christ. I,, 34: an extremely noteworthy exposition, which, so far as I
know, has very few clear parallels in Augustine's works, but forms thebackground of
his development.
lOO . HISTORY OF DOGMA. . [CHAP. IV.,,
influenced by the historical Christ — -will be discussed below. It

isenough here to formulate sharply the inconsistency of making
Scripture, on the one hand, a source, and, on the other, a means?-
— a means indeed which is finally dispensed with like a crutch. ^
The mystics and fanatics of the West have given their adhesion
to the last principle, advancing the inner light and inner revela-
tion against the written. Now Augustine, in his excellent pre-
face to his work " De doctrina Christiana," has undoubtedly, as;
with a flash of prophetic illumination, rejected all fanatical

inspiration, which either fancied it had no need at all of Scripture,
or, appealing to the Spirit, declared philological and historical
interpretation to be useless. But yet he opened the door to

fanaticism with his statement that there was a stage at which
men had got beyond Scripture. Above all, however, he created
the fatal situation, in which the system of doctrine and theology
of the Western Church are found at the present day, by the
still
vagueness which he importance of the

failed to dispel as to the
letter of Scripture. The Church knows, on the one hand, that
in the Bible, so far as meant for faith, the " matter " is alone of
importance. But, on the other hand, it cannot rid itself of the
prejudice that every single text contains a Divine and absolute
direction, a " revelation." Protestant Churches have in this
respect not gone one step beyond Augustine Luther himself, if ;
we compare his " prefaces" to the New Testament, e.g., with his
position in the controversy about the Lord's Supper, was
involved in the same inconsistency as burdened Augustine's
doctrinal structure.
1 3. Augustine brought the practical element to the front more
than any previous Church Father. Religion was only given to

produce faith, love, and hope, and blessedness itself was bound
up bestowed by God, or in love. But the act of
in these virtues
reform, which found expression in the subordination of all
materials to the above intention, was not carried out by him
^See the details in " De doctr. Christiana" copied in Vol. III., p. 203, n. 2, of
this work.
2De doctr. Christ., 35-40, especially c. 39, "Therefore a man \yho .depends on
faith,hope, and love, and holds by them invincibly, only needs Scripture to instruct
others." Scripture even only offers patchwork ; but a man may rise to such perfection
even in this life as no longer to require the patchwork.
"CHAP. IV.] AUGUSTINE AS TEACHER. , lOI
unalloyed. In retaining the old Catholic scheme, knowledge

and eternal {atpQapala) remained the supreme thoughts in
life ;
pursuing Neoplatonic mysticism, he did not cast off the acosmic

view that regarded all phenomena as transient, and all that was
transient as figurative, retaining finally only the majesty of the
concealed Deity ; in despising the present life, he necessarily
also depreciated faith and all that belonged to the present.
Thus, his theology was not decided, even in its final aims, by
one thought, and he was therefore unable really to carry out his
doctrine of grace and sin in a pure form. As the intellectualism
of antiquity, of course in a sublimated form, was not wholly
superseded by him, his profoundest religious utterances were
accompanied by, or entwined with, philosophical considerations.
Often one and the same principle has a double root, a Neo-
platonic and a Christian (Pauline), and accordingly a double,
meaning, a cosmological and a religious. Philosophy, saving
faith, and Church tradition, disputed the leading place in his
-system of faith, and since Biblicism was added to these three
elements, the unity of his type of thought was everywhere
disturbed.
4. But apart from the intention, the execution contains not
only inconsistencies in detail, but opposite views. In his con-
flict with Manichseism and Donatism, Augustine sketched a
doctrine of freedom, the Church, and the means of grace, which

has little in common with his experience of sin and grace, and
simply conflicts with the theological development of that ex-
—
perience the doctrine of predestinating grace. We can
positively sketch two Augustinian theologies, one ecclesiastical,
the other a doctrine of grace, and state the whole system in
either.
5. But even system and his doctrine of
in his ecclesiastical
grace, conflicting lines meet for in the former
of thought ;
a hierarchical and sacramental fundamental element conflicts

with a liberal, universalist view inherited from the Apologists ;
and in the doctrine of grace two different conceptions are

manifestly combined, namely, the thought of grace through (per,
propter) Christ, and that of grace emanating, independently- of
Christ, frorft the essential nature of God as the supreme good
and supreme being (summum bonum, summum esse). The

was of greatest importance for Augustine's
latter inconsistency
own theology, and for the attitude of Western theology after
him. The West, confessedly, never thoroughly appropriated the
uncompromising Eastern scheme of Christology as a statement
of saving faith. But by Augustine the relation of the doctrine
of the two natures (or the Incarnation) to that of salvation was
still further loosened. It will be shown that he really prepared
the way much more strongly for the Franciscan feeling towards
Christ than for Anselm's satisfaction theory, and that, in general,
as a Christologian —
in the strict sense of the term he be- —
queathed more gaps than positive material to posterity. But in
addition to this antithesis of a grace through Christ and with-
out Christ, we have, finally, in Augustine's doctrine of sin a
strong Manichaean and Gnostic element ; for Augustine never
wholly surmounted Manichseism.
From our exposition up to this point and only the most —
—
important facts have been mentioned it follows that we cannot
speak of Augustine having a system, nor did he compose any
work which can be compared to Origen's trepi apxuiv- Since he
did not, like the latter, boldly proclaim the right of an esoteric
Christianity, but rather as Christian and churchman constantly
delayed taking this liberating step,^ everything with him stands
on one level, and therefore is involved in conflict.^ But it is
" not what one knows and says that decides, but what one
loves " he loved God, and his Church, and he was true.
; This
attitude is conspicuous in all his writings, whether it is the Neo-
platonist, the earlier Manichsean, the Pauline Christian, the
Catholic Bishop, or the Biblicist, that speaks, and it lends to all
his expositions a unity, which, though it cannnot be demon-

strated in the doctrines, can be plainly felt. Therefore, also, the
different movements that started or learned from
him, were
always conscious of the complete man, and drew strength from
^ Tendencies in this direction are found everywhere ; but they were never more
than tendencies.
2 It is one of Reuter's chief merits that he has proved the impossibility of construct-
ing a system fromi Augustine's thought, and of removing the inconsistencies that
occur in it.
CHAP, IV.] AUGUSTINE AS TEACHER. 103
him. He would not have been the teacher of the future if he

had not stood before it as a Christian personality who lent force
and weight to every word, no matter in what direction it led.
As preacher of faith, love, and the dispensation of grace, he has
dominated Catholic piety up to the present day. By his funda-
mental sentiment " Mihi adh^rere deo bonum est," as also by
:
his distinction between law and gospel, letter and spirit, and his
preaching that God creates faith and a good will in us, he called
forth the evangelical Reformation.^ By his doctrine of the
authority and means of grace of the Church, he carried forward
the construction of Roman Catholicism ; nay, he first created
the hierarchical and sacramental institution. By his Biblicism
he prepared the way for the so-called pre-reformation move-
ments, and the criticism of all extra-Biblical ecclesiastical tradi-
tions. By
the force of his speculation, the acuteness of his
intellect, the subtlety of hisobservation and experience, he
incited, nay, partly created, scholasticism in all its branches,
including the Nominalistic, and therefore also the modern
theory of knowledge and psychology. By his Neoplatonism
and enthusiasm for predestination he evoked the mysticism as
well as the anti-clerical opposition of the Middle Ages.^ By
the form of his ideal of the Church and of felicity, he strengthened
the popular Catholic, the monachist, state of feeling, domesticat-
ing it, moreover, in the Church, and thereby rousing and capaci-
tating it to overcome and dominate the world as contrasted with
the Church. Finally, by his unique power of portraying him-
self, of expressing the wealth of his genius, and giving every
word an individual impress, by his gift of individualising and

he contributed to the rise of the Renaissance
self-observation,
and the modern spirit.
These are not capricious combinations, but historical facts * :
the connecting lines that lead back to him', can everywhere be
1 See the testimonies to Augustine of the Reformers and their confessional writings ;
yet the difference thatstill existed was not unknown to them.
2 Even the Anti-Gregorian party in the Middle Ages frequently appealed to
Augustine. It was possible to find in him welcome statements as to the meaning of

the Empire, the possibility of correcting Councils, and, generally, anti-hierarchical
passages.
3 Compare Reuter, Studie VII.
I04 HISTORY OF DOGMA. [CHAP. IV.
clearly demonstrated. But where, then, in the history of the

West is there a man
compared to him ? Without taking
to be
much to do with affairs —
Augustine was Bishop of a second-
rate city, and possessed neither liking nor talent for the role of
an ecclesiastical leader or practical reformer by the force of —
his ideas he influenced men, and made his life permeate the
centuries that followed.
It has been attempted to depict Augustine's significance as

Church teacher, by dividing absolutely the various directions in
which his thought moved, and by giving separate accounts of
the Neoplatonist, the Paulinist, the earlier Manichsean, and the
Catholic Bishop.i But it is to be feared that violence is done
him by such an analysis. It is safer and more appropriate,
within the limits of a history of dogma, to keep to the external
unity which he has himself given to his conceptions. In that
case his Enchiridion ad Laurentium^ his matured exposition of
the Symbol, presents itself as our best guide. This writing we
mean to bring forward at the close of the present chapter, after
preliminary questions have been discussed which were of
supreme importance to Augustine, and the controversies have
been reviewed in which his genius was matured. We shall, in
this way, obtain the clearest view of what Augustine achieved
for the Church of his time, and of the revolution he evoked. It
isa very attractive task to centralise Augustinian theology, but
it issafer to rest content with the modest result of becoming
acquainted with it, in so far as it exerted its influence on the
Church. One difficulty meets us at the very outset which can
not be removed, and went on increasing in after times. What
portion of Augustine's countless expositions constituted dogma
own eyes, or became dogma at a later period? While he
in his
extended dogma to an extraordinary extent, he at the same time
1 It is unmistakable that there are three planes in Augustine's theological thoughts,
Neoplatonic mysticism (without means of grace, without the Church, nay, in a

sense, even without Christ), Christological soteriology. and the plane of the authority
and sacraments of tlie Church. Besides these, rationalistic and Manichsean elements '
have to be taken into account.

—
)
CHAP. IV.] AUGUSTINE AS TEACHER. 105
Sometimes relaxed, sometime.s —as regards ancient tradition

be held of it. The question
specifically stiffened, the notion to
as to the extent of dogmas was neither answered, nor ever put
precisely, in the West, after the Donatist and Pelagian contro-
versies. In other words, no necessity was felt for setting up
similarly express positive statements in addition to the express
refutations of Pelagians, Donatists, etc. But the necessity was
not felt, because Churchmen possessed neither self-confidence
nor courage to take ecclesiastical action on a grand scale.
They always felt they were Epigones of a past time which had
created the professedly adequate tradition. This feeling, which
was still further accentuated in the Middle Ages, was gradually
overcome by the Popes, though solely by them. Apart from
a few exceptions, it was not till the Council of Trent that
dogmas were again formed. Till then the only dogmas were
the doctrines contained in the Symbols. Next these stood the
catalogues of heretics, from which dogmas could be indirectly
deduced. This state of matters induces us to present the
doctrine of Augustine as fully as possible, consistently with the
design of a text-book. Many things must here be brought
forward from his works which bore no fruit in his own time, but
had a powerful influence on the course of doctrinal develop-
ment in the following centuries, and came to light in the
dogmas of Trent.^
In what follows we shall proceed (i) to describe Augustine's
fundamental view, his doctrines of the first and last things:^
*&-
1 Reuter also recognises 495 f., note) that Augustine held the contents of the
(p.
Synibol alone to be dogma. But we have here to remember that the most elaborate
doctrine of the Trinity and Christology were evolved from the Symbol, and that its
words ' ' sancta ecclesia " and ' remissio peccatorum " contained theories from which
'
.equally far-reaching dogmas could be formed, or heretics be convicled. Even

Cyprian refuted the Novatians from the Symbol, and Augustine used it against the
Pelagians. A peculiar difficulty in the way of discussing Augustine in the history of
dogma consists further in the fact that he created countless theological schemes, but
no Aa^vazAo. formulas. He was too copious, too earnest, aiid too sincere to publish
catch-words.
2 Augustine was the first dogmatist to feel the need of considering for himself the
questions, which we are now accustomed to treat in the " prolegomena to dogmatics."
The Alexandrians undoubtedly attempted this also; but in their case formal and
material, original and derived, were too much intertwined. Nor did they advance toi
for they were fixed when he became a Catholic Christian ; (2)

and (3) we then and
describe his controversies with Donatists
Pelagians, in which his conception of faith was deepened and
unfolded and (4) we expound his system of
; doctrine by the
help of the Enchiridion ad Laurentium.
I. Augustine's Doctrines of the First and Last Things?
It has been said of Fiesole that he prayed his pictures on to

the walls. It can be maintained of Augustine that his most
profound thoughts regarding the first and the last things arose
out of prayers for all these matters were contained for him in
;
God. If the same can be said of innumerable mystics down to

the private communities of Madame de Guyon and Tersteegen,
it is true of them because they were Augustine's disciples. But
more than anyone else he possessed the faculty of combining
speculation about God with a contemplation of mind and soul
which was not content with a few traditional categories, but
analysed the states of feeling and the contents of consciousness.
Every advance in this analysis became for him at the same time
an advance in the knowledge of God, and vice versa concen- ;
tration of his whole being in prayer led him to the most abstract
observation, and this, in turn, changed to prayer. No philo-
sopher before or after him has verified in so conspicuous a
fashion the profound saying that " the fear of the Lord is the
beginning of wisdom." Godliness was the very atmosphere of
his thought and life. " Piety is the wisdom of man " (Hominis
sapientia pietas est, Enchir., 2 De civ. dei XIV., 28). Thus

;
Augustine was the psychological, because he was the theological,

genius of the Patristic period.^ Not unversed in the domains
of objective secular knowledge, he yet discarded them more
the last problems of psychology and the theory of perception. Enchir., 4 " Quid :
primum, quid ultimum, teneatur, quae totius definitionis summa sit, quod certum
propriumque fidei catholicse fundameiitum." (Questions by Laurentius.)
1 Augustine taught that it was only possible to obtain a firm grasp of the highest
questions by earnest and unwearied independent labour. Herein above all did his
greatness consist.
2 Compare with what follows, Siebeck, in the Ztschr. f. Philos. und philos. Kritik,
•
1888, p. 170 ff.
CHAP. IV.] DOCTRINES OF FIRST AND LAST THINGS. 10/
resolutely than his Neoplatonic teachers, to whom he owed

much, but whom he far surpassed. " The contents of the inner
life lay clearly before Augustine's eyes as a realm of distinctive
objects of perception, outside and independent of sense experi-
ence, and he was convinced by his own rich insight that in this
sphere quite as genuine knowledge and information, based on
inner experience, were to be gained, as by external observation
in surrounding nature." Augustine brought to an end the de-
velopment of ancient philosophy by completing the process
which led from the naive objective to the subjective objective.^
He found what had been long sought for the making of the :
inner life the starting-point of reflection on the world.- And

he did not give himself up to empty dreams, but investigated
with a truly " physiological psychology " all conditions of the
inner life, from its elementary processes up to the most sublime
moods he became, because he was the counterpart of Aristotle,
;
the true Aristotle of a new science,^ which seems indeed to
1 See the Appendix on Neoplatonism, Vol. I., p. 336 ff.
The method of the Neoplatonists was still very uncertain, and this is connected,
2
among other things, with their polytheism. It is easy to show that Augustine
went so much further in psychology because he was a monotheist. So far as I know
we are still, unfortunately, without any investigation of the importance of monotheism
for psychology.
3 See the excellent parallel between them in Siebeck, I.e. p. 188 f. "Among the :
important personalities of Antiquity two could hardly be found with characters so

different as Aristotle and Augustine. In the former we have the Greek, restful and
clear, and yet moved by energetic warmth of thought, who gives its purest scientific
expression to the Hellenic ideal of the life of the cultured, contentment with the even
and constant advance of the life of the thinker, examining the depths and wants of
the soul, only in so far as they appear on the surface, in the external nature and garb
"of the affections, and discussing this whole domain, not properly in order to know
the heart, but only for rhetorical purposes. The internal world of the soul is here
described and criticised only in so far as it evinces itself in reciprocal action with the
external,and in the form it assumes as determined by the co-operation of the latter.
For the comprehensive and final problem with Aristotle is the scientific construction
and form of the external world in nature and social life. Augustine's tendency and
frame of mind are quite the opposite. The external owes all its importance and
value in his eyes to the form it assumes as reflected in the internal. Every-
thing dominated not by problems of nature and the State and secular ethics, but
is
by those of the deepest wants of mind and heart, of love and faith, hope and con-
science. The proper objects and the moving forces of his speculation are not found
in the relation of inward to outward, but of inner to innermost, to the sense and
vision of God in the heart. Even the powers of the intellect are looked at from a
I08 '
HISTORY OF DOGMA, [CHAP. IV.
have forgotten that as a theory of perception, and as inner

observation, it originated in the monotheistic faith and life
of prayer. He disposed of all that we call the ancient classical
temper, the classical conception of life and the world. With
the last remains of its cheerfulness and naive objectivity, he
buried for a long time the old truth itself, and showed
the way to a new truth of things. '
But this was borh
in him amid pains, and it has kept its feature of pain ful-
ness.Mohammed, the barbarian, smote into ruins, in the
name of Allah, who had mastered him, the Hellenistic
world which he did not know. Augustine, the disciple of
the Hellenes, completed in the West the long prepared dis-
solution of this world, in the name of God, whom he had
new point of view, owing to the influence exerted on them by the heart and will, and
they lose, in consequence, their claim to sole supremacy in scientific thought. The
cool analysis made by Aristotle of the external world, which also dissected and dis-
criminated between the states of the soul, as if they were objecls that existed extei?-
nally, disappears in Augustine before the immediate experience and feeling of states
and processes of the emotional life ; but the fact that he presents them to us with
the warmest personal interest in them, entirely prevents us from feeling the abseiice
of the Aristotelian talent of acuteness in .-inalytical dissection. While Aristotle avoids
all personal and individual colouring in his views, and labours everywhere to let the
matter in hand speak for itself, Augustine, even when bringing forward investigations
of the most general purport, always speaks as if only of himself, the individual, to
whom his personal feelings and sensations are the main thing. He is a priori certain
that they must have a farther reaching meaning, since feeling and wishing are found
to be similar potencies in every human heart. Questions of ethics, which Aristotle
handles from the standpoint of the relation of man to man, appear in Augustine in
the light of the relations between his own heart and that of this known and felt God.
With the former the supreme decision is given by clear perception of the external by
reason ; with the latter, by the irresistible force of the internal, the conviction of feel-
ing, which in his case —
as is given in such perfection to few —
is fused with the pene-
trating light of the intellect. . . . Aristotle knows the wants of the inner life only so
far as they are capable of developing the life, supported by energetic effort and philo-
sophic equanimity, in and with society. He seems to hold that clear thinking and
restfiiUy energetic activity prevent all suffering and misfortune to society or the indi- "
vidual. The deeper sources of dispeace, of pain of of unfulfilled wants of the

s.oul,
heart, remain dark in his investigation. Augustine's significance begins just where
the problem is to trace the unrest of the believing or seeking soul to
its roots, and to
make which the heart can reach its rest. Even the old pro-
sure of the inner facts in
blems which he reviews and examines in their whole extent and meaning from the
now appear in a new light. Therefore he
standpoint of his rich scientific culture,
can grasp, and, at the same time, deepen everything which has come to him froiii
Hellenism. For Aristotle, everything that the intellect xian see and analyse in the
;
CHAP. IV.] DOCTRINES OF FIRST AND LAST THINGS. IO9
perceived to be the only reality ^ but he built up a new world ;
in his own heart and mind.^ Flowever, nothing really perished

entirely,because everything was accomplished by a protracted
transformation, and, besides, the old Hellenistic world continued
in part to. exist on the North-East coast of the Mediterranean.
It was possible to travel back along the line which had been
traced by a millennium down to Augustine, and the positive
inner and outer world constitutes a problem ; for Augustine, that holds the, chief
place which the life of feeling and desire forces on him as a new fact added to his
previous knowledge. In the one case it is the calm, theoretical
in the other, mind ;
the conscience excited by the unrest caused by love of God and consciousness of sin,
from which the questions spring. But along with this, scientific interest also turned
'
to a wholly novel side of actual life. No wonder that the all-sufficiency of the dis-
secting and abstracting intellect had its despolism limited. The intellect was now
no longer to create problems, but 10 receive them from the depths of the world of
feeling, in order then to see what could be made of them. Nor was it to continue to
feel supremacy over the will, but rather the influence to which it was subject from it.
The main subject of its reflections was to consist, henceforth, not in the external
wiirld, nor in the internal discussed by means of analogy with, and the method of,
the external, but in the kernel of personality, conscience in connection with emotion
,
and will. On'.y from this point might it return, in order to learn to understand them
anew, to previous views of the inner and outer life. Aristotle, the Greek, was only
interested in the life of the soul, in so far as it turned outward and helped to fathom
the world theoretically and practically ; Augustine, the first modern tuan (the expres-
sion occurs also in Sell, Aus der Gesch. des Christenthums, 1888, p. 43 ; I had
already used it years ago), only took it into consideration, in so far as reflection upon
it enabled him to conceive the inner character of personal life as something really in-
dependent of the outer World." Aristotle and Augustine are the two rivals who con-
tended in the science and tendency of the fallowing centuries. Both, as a rule, were
indeed degraded, Aristotle to empty distinctions and categories, and a hide-bound
dogmatism, Augustine to a mysticism floating in all conceivable media, having lost
the guidance of a sure observation of the inner nature. Even in the Pelagians
Augustine energetically opposed Aristotelian rationalism, and his controversy with
them was repeated over and over again in after ages. In the history of religion it
was a fight between a really irreligious, theologically, labelled morality and religion ;
for even in its classical form, Aristotelianism is a morality without religion.
Âll Christian Hellenistic thinl<er5 before Augustine were still refined poly theists,
or, more correctly, the polytheistic element was not wholly eradicated in their case,
seeing that they preserved a part of nature-religion. This is most evident among
Origen's successors,
2 Weh Weh ! ! Wir Iragen
Da hast sie zerstort, Die Triimmer ins Nichts hintiber
Die schbne Welt, Und klagen
, Mit machtiger Faust Ueber die verlorene Schone.
Sie stttrzt, sie zerfallt ! Prachtiger baue sie wieder,
Ein Halbgott hat sie zerschlagen ! In deinem Busen baue sie atif I
no HISTORY OF DOGMA. [CHAP. IV.
capital,which Neoplatonism and Augustine had received from

the past and had changed into negative values, could also be
. re-established with a positive force. But something had un-
doubtedly been lost; we find it surviving in almost none but
those who were ignorant of theology and philosophy we do ;
not find it among thinkers and that is frank joy in the pheno-
;
menal world, in its obvious meaning, and in calm and energetic

work.^ If it were possible to unite in science and in the dis-
position, the piety, spirituality, and introspection of Augustine,
with the openness to the world, the restful and energetic activity,
and unclouded cheerfulness of antiquity, we should have reached
the highest level We are told that such a combination is a
!
phantom, that it is an absurd idea. But do we not honour the

great minds, who have been granted us since Luther, simply
because they have endeavoured to realise the " fancy picture " ?
. Did not Goethe declare this to be his ideal, and endeavour to
present it in his own life, in his closing epoch ? Is it not in the
same ideal that the meaning of evangelical and reforming Chris-
tianity is contained, if it is really different from Catholicism ?
" I desire to know God and the soul. Nothing more ? No-
thing at all." ^ In these words Augustine has briefly formulated
the aim of his spiritual life. That was the truth'^ for which
' the marrow of his soul sighed." All truth was contained for
him in the perception of God. After a brief period of sore
doubting, he was firm as a rock in the conviction that there was
a God, and that he was the supreme good (summum bonum);*^
but who he was, and how he was to be found, were to him the
great questions. He was first snatched from the night of un-
certainty by Neoplatonism the Manichân notion of God had:
1 Compare even the state of feeling of Petrarch and the other Humanists.
2 Soliloq., I. 7. Deum et animam scire cupio. Nihilneplus? Nihil omnino. In
the knowledge of God was also included that of the Cosmus, see Scipio, Metaphysik,
p. 14 ff.
3 Playing with husks and shells disgusted Augustine ; he longed for facts, for the
knowledge of actual forces.
* Augustine became a Manichaean because he did not get past the idea that
the
Catholic doctrine held God to be the originator of sin.
s Confess., VII. 16 :
" Audivi (verba Ego sum qui sum) sicut auditur in corde, et
non erat prorsus unde dubitarem ; faciliusque dubitarem vivere me, quam non esse
veritatem (VI., 5).
— 1
\GHAP. IV.] DOCTRINES OF FIRST AND LAST THINGS. 1 1
its God was not absolute and

jproved itself to be false, since
omnipotent. Neoplatonism had shown him a way by which to
j
escape the flux of phenomena, and the mysterious and harassing
/play of the transient, to reach the fixed resting-point he sought,
! and to discover this in the absolute and spiritual God (Confess.
VII., 26 "
incorporea Veritas"). Augustine traversed this ascend-
:
I
ing path from the corporeal world through ever higher and more
permanent spheres, and he also experienced the ecstatic mood
in the " excess " of feeling.^ But at the same time he turned
more energetically to those observations for which the Neoplaton-
ists had only been able to give him hints to his spiritual ex- —
perience, and psychological analysis. He was saved from
scepticism by perceiving that even if the whole of external
experience was subject to doubt, the facts of the inner life re-
mained and demanded an explanation leading to certainty.
There is no evil, but we are afraid, and this fear is certainly an
evil.^ There is no visible object of faith, but we see faith in
us.^ Thus in his theory of perception God and the soul —
entered into the closest union, and this union confirmed him in
1 Suggestions in Confess., VII. 13-16, 23. Here is described the intellectual

" exercise " of the observation of the mutabilia leading to the incommutabile. " Et
pervenit cogitatio ad id quod est, in ictu trepidantis aspechis. Tunc vero invisibilia
tua, per ea quas facta sunt, intellecta conspexi (this now becomes his dominant saying);
sed (Kiemfigere non valui : et repercussa infirmitate redditus solitis, non mecum ferebam
nisiamantem memoriam et quasi olfacta desiderantem (quite as in Plotinus) qu£E

comedere nondum possem," VIII. I. But again in his famous dialogue (IX. 23-25),
with his mother in Ostia, a regular Neoplatonic " exercise" is really described which
ends with ecstasy (attigimus veritatem modice toto ictu cordis"). We afterwards
meet extremely seldom with anything of the same kind in Augustine; on the other
hand, the anti-Manichsean writings still show many echoes (" se rapere in deum,"
" rapi in deum," "volitare," "amplexus dei"). Reuter says rightly (p. 472) th.it
these are unusual expressions, only occurring exceptionally. But he must have for-
gotten the passages in the Confessions when he adds that no instructions are given
as to the method to be followed.
2 Confess., VII. 7 :
" Ubi ergo malum et unde et qua hue irrepsit? Quee radix
ejus et quo semen ejus ? An omnino non est? Cur ergo timemus et cavemus quod
non est ? Aut si inaniter timemus, certe vel timor ipse malum est . et tanto . .
gravius malum, quanto non est quod timeamus. Idcirco aut est malum quod timemus,
aut hoc malum est quia timemus."
'De XIII. 3: "Cum propterea credere jubeamur, quia id quod credere
trinit,,
jubemur, videre non possumus, ipsam tamen fidem, quando inest in nobis, videmus
in nobis."
;
112 HISTORY OF DOGMA. [CHAP. IV..^
his belief in their metaphysical connection.Henceforth the in-

vestigation of the life him a theological
of the soul was to
necessity. No examination seemed to him to be indifferent
he sought to obtain divine knowledge from every quarter. The
command to "know thyself" (Fi/ffi^t o-eavTw) became for him
the way to God. We cannot here discuss the wealth of psycho-
logical discoveries made by him.^ But he only entered his
proper element when he was inquiring into the practical side of
spirituallife. The popular conception, beyond which even
philosophers had not advanced far, was that man was a rational
being who was hampered by sensuousness, but possessed a free
will capable at every moment of choosing the good a very —
external, dualistic view. Augustine observed the actual man.
He found that the typical characteristic of the life of the soul
consisted in the effort to obtain pleasure^ (cupido, amor); from
this type no one could depart. It was identical with the striv-
ing to get possessions, enjoyment. As the attempt to attain

the pleasant it was desire (libido), cupiditas, and was perfected
in joy ; as resistance to the unpleasant, it was anger (ira), fear
(timor),and was completed in sadness (tristitia). All impulses
were only evolutions of this typical characteristic sometimes ;
they partook more of the form of passive impression, sometimes

they were more of an active nature, and they were quite as true
of the spiritual as of the sensuous life?
According to Augustine, the will is most closely connected
with this life of impulse, so that impulses can indeed be con-
ceived as contents of the will, yet it is to be distinguished from
them. For the will is not bound to the nexus of nature it is a ;
force existing above sensuous nature.* It is free, in so far as it
1 As regards memory, association of ideas, synthetic activity of spontaneous thought,

ideality of the categories, a priori functions, "determinant" numbers, synthesis of
reproduction in the imagination, etc. Of course all this is only touched on by him ;
we have, as it were, merely flashes of it in his works; see Siebeck, I.e. p. 179. He
has applied his observations on self-consciousness in his speculation on the Trinity.
3 He meant by this the legitimate striving after self-assertion, after Being, which
he attributed to all organic, nay, even to inorganic, things; see De civ. dei, XI., 28.
2 This is tlie most important advance in perception.
^See Siebeck I.e. p. 181 f. ; Hamma in the Tub. Theol. Quartalschr., vol. 55,
pp. 427 ff. 458; Kahl, Primat des Willens, p. i f. Augustine's psychology of the
CHAP. IV.] DOCTRINES OF FIRST AND LAST THINGS. II3
possesses formally the capacity of following or resisting the

various inclinations; but concretely it is never free; that is,
never free choice (liberum arbitrium), but is always conditioned
by the chain of existing inclinations, which form its motives and
determine it. The theoretical freedom of choice therefore only
becomes actual freedom when desire (cupiditas, amor) of good
has become the ruling motive of the will in other words, it is ;
only true of a good will that it is free : freedom of will and moral
goodness coincide. But it follows just from this that the will
truly free possesses its liberty not in caprice, but in being bound
to the motive which impels to goodness ("beata necessitas
boni "). This bondage is freedom, because it delivers the will
from the rule of the impulses (to lower forms of good), and
realises the destiny and design of man to possess himself of true
being and life. In bondage to goodness the higher appetite
(appetitus), the genuine impulse of self-preservation, realises
itself, while by satisfaction " in dissipation " it brings man " bit
by bit to ruin." does not follow, however, from Augustine's
It
assertion of the incapacity for good of the individual spontaneous
will, that the evil will, because it is not free, is also irresponsible ;
for since the will is credited with the power of yielding to

the love of good (amor boni), it is guilty of the neglect (the
defect).
From this point Augustine, combining the results of Neo-
platonic cosmological speculation with the above analysis, now
built up his metaphysic, or more correctly, his theology. But
since in the epoch in which he pursued these observations, he
turned to the asceticism of Catholic monachism, and also studied
profoundly the Psalms (and the Pauline epistles), the simple
grandeur of his living notion of God exerted a tremendous
influence on his speculations, and condensed the different, and
in part artificially obtained, elements of his doctrine of God,^
again and again into the supremely simple confession :
" The
will is undoubtedly rooted in indeterminism ; but in his concrete observations he

becomes a determinist.
' They have all besides a practical object, i.e., they correspond to a definite form
of the pious contemplation of the divine, and a definite relatioft to it (a definite self-
criticism). For details of the theology, see Dorner, Augustin, pp. 5-112.
H
;
I [4 HISTORY OF DOGMA. [CHAP. IV.
Lord of heaven and earth is love ; He is my salvation ; of whom

"
should I be afraid ?
By the Neoplatonic speculation of the ascent [of the soul]

Augustine reached the supreme unchangeable, permanent Being/
the incorporeal truth, spiritual substance, incommutable and
true eternity of truth, the light incommutable ^ (incorporea
Veritas, spiritalis substantia, incommutabilis et vera veritatis
aeternitas, the lux incommutabilis). Starting with this, every-
thing which was not God, including his own soul, was examined
by Augustine from two points of view. On the one hand, it
appeared as the absolutely transient, therefore as non-existent
for no true being exists, where there is also not-being ; therefore
God exists alone (God the only substance). On the other hand,
as far as it possessed a relative existence, it seemed good, very
good, as an evolution of the divine being (the many as the em-

bodiment, emanating, and ever-returning, of the one). Augustine
never tires of realising the beauty (pulchrum) and fitness (aptum)
of creation, of regarding the universe as an ordered work of art,
in which the gradations are as admirable as the contrasts. The
individual and evil are lost to view in the notion of beauty nay, ;
God himself is the eternal, the old and new, the only, beauty.
Even hell, the damnation of sinners, is, as an act in the ordina-
tion of evils (ordinatio malorum), an indispensable part of the
work of art.^ But, indeed, the whole work of art is after
^ In Confess. VII. 16, he could now put the triumphant question " Numquid nihil :
«st Veritas, quoniam neque per finita, neque per infinita locorum spatia diffusa est."
Not common light " non hoc ilia erat sed aliud, aliud valde ab istis omnibus.
'^
; ;
Nee ita erat supra mentem meam sicut oleum super aquam, nee sicut coelum super
terram, sed superior, quia ipsa fecit me, et ego inferior, quia factus sum ab ea. Qui
novit veritatem novit earn, ef qui novit eam,novit seternitatem. Caritas novit earn. O
aeterna Veritas, et vera caritas, et cara aeternitas ! tu es deus meus ; tibi suspiro die
ac nocte." (Confess. VII. 16.) Further the magnificently reproduced reflection,
I X. 23-25, De Trin. IV. I. By being, Augustine did not understand a vacuous ex-
istence, but being full of life,and he never doubted that being wras better than not-
being. De civit. dei, XI. 26 " Et sumus et nos esse novimus et id esse ac nosse
:
diligimus." The triad, "esse, scire, amare" was to him the supreme thing ; he
never thought of the possibility of glorifying not-being after the fashion of Buddhism
or Schopenhauer.
2 We cannot here discuss Augustine's cosmology more fully (see the works by
Gangauf and Scipio). His reflections on life and the gradation of organic and in-
organic ("ordo, species, modus ") were highly important to later philosophy and
CHAP. IV.] DOCTRINES OF FIRST AND LAST THINGS. I15
all— nothing; a likeness, but ah! only a likeness of the

infinite fulnessof the one which alone exists. How deeply
in earnest Augustine was with this acosmic Pantheism, which
threatened to degenerate into cosmic Monism, how he never
wholly abandoned shown even by the expression "pulchri-
it, is
tudo'' (beauty) for God,i by his doctrine of predestination,

which has one of its roots here, and, finally, by the aesthetic
optimism of his view of the world which comes out here and
there even in his latest writings,^ and by his uncertainty as to
the notion of creation.^ But the very fact that, as a rule,
Augustine was governed by a wholly different temper is a guar-
antee that the element here obtained was only a grounding to
which he applied new colours. He would not have been the
reformer of Christian piety if he had only celebrated, albeit in
the most seductive tones,* that Neoplatonic notion of God,
which, indeed, ultimately rested on a pious natural sentiment.
The new elements resulted first from the psychological
analysis briefly indicated above. He found in man, as the
fundamental form of existence, the desire to reach- happiness,
theology, and especially continued to exert an influence in medieeval mysticism. So

also the view that evil and good are necessary elements in the artistic composition of
the world continued to make its presence actively felt in the same quarter. Yet — as
in Augustine — the idea of the privative significance of evil always preponderated.
1 This expression is frequent inall his writings. Even utterances like " vita vitse
mese," etc., have at first an acosmic meaning, but, of course, were given a deeper
sense by Augustine.
2 Augustine never lost his optimistic joy in life in the sense of the true life, as is
proved in his work, De civit. dei ; but in contrasting the moods causSd by contem.
plation of the world —
aesthetic joy in the Cosmus, and sorrow over the world per-
—
verted by sin the latter prevailed. Existence never became to Augustine a torment
in itself, but that existence did which condemned itself to not-being, bringing about
its own ruin.
3 Where Augustine put the question of creation in the form, "How is the unity of
being related to plurality of manifestation ? " the notion of creation is really always
eliminated. But he never entirely gave up this way of putting the question ; for, at
bottom, things possess their independence only in their manifestation, while, in so
far as they exist, they form the ground of knowledge for the existence of God. But
besides this, Augustine still asserted vigorously the creatio ex nihilo (" omnes naturae
€x deo, non de deo," Denat. bon. c. Manich., I.). See note 4, p. 120.
^ He discovered these, and inspired hundreds of mystics after him.. We have no
right to deny that this contemplative view of being, not-being, and the harmony of
being evolving itself in the phenomenal, is also a sphere of piety. , ,
1 16 HISTORY OF DOGMA. [CHAP. IV.
goods, being, and he could harmonise this desire excellently

with his Neoplatonic doctrine. He farther found the desire to
obtain an ever higher happiness, and ever loftier forms of good,
an inexhaustible and noble longing, and this discovery also
agreed with the doctrine. Unrest, hunger and thirst for God,
horror and disgust at the enjoyment of lower kinds of good, .
were not to be stifled for the soul, so far as it exists, comes

;
certainly from God, and belongs to Him (ex deo and ad deum).
But now he discovered a dreadful fact the will, as a matter of :
fact, would not what it would, or at least seemed to will. No, it

was no seeming it was the most dreadful of paradoxes we
; ;
will to come to God, and we cannot, i.e., we will not.^ Augustine

felt this state along with the whole weight of responsibility; that
responsibility was never lessened for him by the view that the
will in not seeking God was seeking nothing, that it therefore by
self-will was properly "annulling itself until it no longer existed."
Nor was it mitigated for him by the correlative consideration, that
the individual will, ruled by its desire, was not free. Rather,
from the dread sense of responsibility, God appeared as tJte good,
We have the most profound description of this state in Confess. VIII. 17-26;
1
Augustine cails it a " monstrum " (monstrous phenomenon). He solves the problem
disclosed, in so far as it is capable of solution, not by an appeal to the enslaved" will,
accordingly not by the " non possumus," but as an indeterminist by ihe reflection,
"noh ex toto volumus, non ergo ex toto [nobis] imperamus." (21), "I was
afraid that Thou mightest soon hear me, and heal me of the sickness of lust, whose
satisfaction I wished more than its eradication. And I was deluded, therefore I
. . .
put off following Thee alone from day to day, because I had not yet seen any certain
aim for my striving. And now the day was at hand, and the voice of my conscience
exhorted me Didst thou not say thou wouldst not cast the vain burden from
:
'
thee, only because the truth was still uncertain? Behold now thou art certain of the
truth, but (thou wilt not).' The way to union with God, and the attainment of
. . .
the goal, coincide with the will to reach this goal, though, indeed, only with the
determined and pure will. And thus during this inner fever and irresoluteness I
. . .
was w,ont to make many movements with my body, which can only be performed
when the will makes definite resolves, and become impossible if the corresponding
limbs are wanting, or are fettered, worn out, asleep, or hindered in any way. If,
e.g., I tore a hair out, beat my brow, or embraced my knee with folded hands, I did
it because I willed it. But I might have willed and not done it, if the power of
motion in my limbs had forsaken me. So many things, then, I did in a sphere,
where to will was not the same as to be able. And' yet I did not that which both I
longed incomparably more to do, and which I could do whenever I really earnestly
'willed it ; because, as soon as 1 had willed it, I had really already made it mine in
willing. For in these things the ability was one with the will, and really to resolve
CHAP. IV.] DOCTRIlSrES OF FIRST AND LAST THINGS. 11/
and the self-seeking life of impulse, which determined the will
and gave itsmotive, constituted evil. The " summum bonum '*
now first —
obtained its deeper meaning it was no longer merely
the permanent resting point for disturbed thinkers, or the
exhilarating enjoyment of life for jaded mortals it now meant :
that which ought be} that which should be the fundamental

to
motive ruling the will, should give the will its liberty, and
therewith for the first time its power over the sphere of the
natural, freeing the inexhaustible longing of man for the good
from the dire necessity of sinning (misera necessitas peccandi),
and accordingly first making that innate longing effectual. In
a word, it now meant the good. And thus the notion of the
good itself was divested of all accretions from the intellect, and
all eudaimonist husks and wrappings. In this contemplation
that overpowered him, the sole object was the good will, the
moral imperative vitalised, to renounce selfish pleasure. But at
the same time he acquired the experience which he himself
could not analyse, which no thinker will undertake to analyse,
that this good laid hold of him as love, and snatched him from
was to do. And yet, in my case, it was not done ; and more readily did my body
obey the weakest willing of my soul, in moving its limbs at its nod, than the soul
obeyed itself where it was called upon to realise its great desire by a simple effort of the
will. How is such a prodigy possible, and what is its reason ? The soul commands
the body, and it obeys instantly ; the soul commands itself, and is resisted. The
soul commands the hand to be moved, and it is done so promptly that command and
performance can scarcely be distinguished and yet the soul is spirit, but the hand is
;
a member of the body. The soul commands the soul itself to an act of will ; it is its
pwn command, yet it does not carry it out. How is such a prpdigy possible, and
what is its reason ? The soul commands an act of will, I say ; its command consists
simply in willing ; and yet that command is not carried out. Sed non ex toto vult ;
non ergo ex toto imperat. N&m in tantum imperat, in quantum vult, et in tantum non
fit quod imperat, in quantum non vult. Quoniam voluntas imperat ut sit voluntas,
nee alia sed ipsa. Non itcujite plena imperat ideo non est quod imperat. Nam si
plena esset, nee imperaret ut esset, quia jam esset. Non igitur monstrum partim velle,
partim nolle, sed segritudo animi est, quia non totus assurgit, veritate sublevatus,
consuetudine prsegravatus. Et ideo sunt duse voluntates, quia una earum tota non
est, et hoc adest alteri quod deest alteri."
1 " What ought to be ? How
cannot the inner nature exhibit, itself by reflection,
but can by action?" (Scipio, Metaphysik des Aug., p. 7.) Augustine was the first
to put this question clearly. "Antiquity conceived the whole of life, we might say,
in a naive fashion from the standpoint of science : the spiritual appeared as natural,
and virtue as a natural force. ,

n8 HISTORY OF DOGMA. [CHAP. IV.
the misery of the monstrous inconsistency of existence.^

Thereby the notion of God received a wholly new content:
the good which could do that was omnipotent. In the one act of
liberation was given the identity of omnipotent being and the
good, the summum ov {supreme being) was holiness working on the
will in the form of omnipotent love. This was what Augustine
felt and described. A stream of divine conceptions was now
set loose, partly given in the old language, but with a meaning
felt for the first time, wonderfully combined with the statement
of the philosophical knowledge of God, but regulating and

transforming it. The Supreme Being (summum esse) is the
Supreme Good He is a person ; the ontological defect of
;
creaturely being becomes the moral defect of godlessness of

will ; evil is here as there negative ;
^ but in the former case it
is the negation of substance (privatio substantiae), in the

latter that of good (privatio boni), meaning the defect
arising from freedom. The good indeed still remains
1 Augustine indeed could further explainwhy the form, in which the good takes
possession of and must consist in the infusion of love. So long as
delivers the soul,
the soul along with its will is confronted by duty (an ought), and commands itself to
obey, it has not completely appropriated the good; "nam si plena esset, nee
imperaret ut esset, quia jam esset" (Confess. VIII. 2l). Accordingly, the fact that
it admits the duty, does not yet create an effective will ex toto. It must accordingly
so love what it no longer needs command itself; nay, duty (the
ought, that it
ought) must be is W plena in voluntate bona.

only love ; only then
its The "abyssus
when by love we " totum illud, quod vole-
corruptionis nostrse " is only exhausted
bamus nolumus et totum illud, quod deus vult, volumus (Confess. IX. l).
^ Confess. VII. l8 " Malum si substantia esset, bonura esset. Aut enim esset
:
incorruptihilis substantia, magnum utique bonum ; aut substantia corruptibilis esset,

quae nisi bona esset, corrumpi non posset."
But since evil thus always exists in a
good substance (more accurately springs from the bad will of the good substance),
:
it is absolutely inexplicable see e.g., De civitat. dei, XII. 7

;
" Nemo igitur quaerat :
efficientem causam malse voluntatis ; non enim est efhciens sed deficiens (that is, the
aspiration after nothing, after the annulling of life, constitutes the content of the bad
will), quia nee ilia effectio sed defectio. Deficere namque ab eo, quod summe est, ad
id, quod minus est, hoc est incipere habere voluntatem malam. Causas porro
defectionum istarum, cum efficientes non sint, ut dixi, sed deficientes, velle invenire
tale est, ac si quisquam velit videre tenebras vel audire silentium, quod tamen utrum-
que nobis notum est, neque illud nisi per oculos, neque hoc nisi per autes, non sane
in specie, sed in speciei privatione. Nemo ergo ex me scire quaerat, quod me nescire
scio, nisi forte, ut nescire discat, quod scire non posse sciendum est. Ea quippe
quEe non in specie, sed in ejus privatione sciuntur, si dici aut intellegi potest
quodammodo nesciendo sciuntur, ut sciendo nesciantur.".
— ";
CHAP. IV.] DOCTRINES OF FIRST AND LAST THINGS. II9
the divine being as fulness of life ; but for man it is summed

up in the " common which issues from the divine
morality "
being and divine love. That is, he cannot appropriate it save

in the will, which gladly forsakes its old nature, and loves that
which dwells above all that is sensuous and selfish. Nothing is
good except a good will: this principle was most closely combined
by Augustine with the other: nothing is good but God; and
love became for him the middle term. For the last and highest
point reached in his knowledge was his combination of the
thought that all substance was from God " (omnis substantia
''
a deo) with the other that "all good was" from God (omne
bonum a deo). The conception of God as universal and
sole worker, shaded into the other that God, just because
he is God and source of all being, is also the only author
and source of good in the form of self-imparting love.^
It belongs just as essentially to God to be grace (gratia)
imparting itself in uncaused cause of causes
love, as to be the
(causa causatrix non causata). If we express this anthropo-

logically goodness does not make man independent of God
:
that was the old conception^but in goodness the constant

natural dependence of all his creatures on God finds expression
as a willed dependence securing the existence of the creaturely
spirit. The latter only exists in yielding himself, only lives in
dying, is when he suffers himself to be entirely ruled
only- free
by God, only good if his will is God's will. These are the
is
grand paradoxes with which he contrasted the " monstrous

paradoxes discussed above. But meanwhile there is no mistake
that the metaphysical background everywhere, shows in the
ethical view ; it is seen, first, in the ascetic trait which clings to
1Augustine says of love (De civ. XI. 28), that we not only love
its objects, but
itself. "Amor amatur, et hinc probamus, quod in hominibus, qui rectius amantur,
ipse magis amatur." This observation led him to see God everywhere in love. As
God is in all being, so is he also in love nay, his existence in being is ultimately
;
identical with his existence in love. Therefore love is beginning, middle, and end.
It is the final object of theological thought, and the fundamental form of true spiritual
life.
" Caritas inchoata inchoata justilia est ; caritas provecta provecta justitia est
caritas magna magna justitia est ; caritas perfecta perfecta justitia est" (De nat. et
grat. 84). But since in life in general voluntas = caritas
(De trin. XV. 38) "quid:
est aliud caritas quam voluntas?", we here find once more the profound connection
between ethics and psychology.
the notion of the good in spite of its simple form (joy in God);
secondly, in uncertainty as to the notion of love, into which an
intellectual element still enters thirdly, in the conception of
;
grace (gratia), which appears not infrequently as the almost

natural mode of the divine existence.
The instruction how to hold communion with God displays
still more clearly the interweaving of metaphysical and ethical
views, that wonderful oscillation, hesitancy, and wavering be-
tween the intellectual and that which lives and is experienced
in the depths of the soul.^ On the one hand, it is required to
enjoy God nay, he is the only " thing " (res) which may be
;
enjoyed, all else may only be used. But to enjoy means " to
cling to anything by love for its own sake " (alicui rei amore
inhaerere propter se ipsam ").^ God is steadfastly to be enjoyed
— the Neoplatonists are reproached with not reaching this.^
This enjoying is inseparably connected with the thought of
God's " beauty," and in turn with the sense that he is all in all
and indescribable.* But, on the other hand, Augustine thrust
Âugustine's ability to unite the Neoplatonic ontological speculation with the
results of his examinalion of the practical spiritual life was due inter alia especially
to his complete abstinence, in the former case, from accepting ritualistic elements, or
from introducing into his speculation matter taken from the Cultus and the religion
of the second order. If at first the stage of spiritual development which he occupied
(when outside the Church), of itself protected him from admitting these deleterious
elements, yet it was a conspicuous and hitherto unappreciated side of his greatness
that he always kept clear of ritualistic mysticism. Thereby he rendered an invaluable
service not only to his disciples in mysticism, but to the whole Western Church.
2De doctr. christ., I., 3 sq.
'See Confess. , VII. 24 " et qseerebam viam comparandi roboris quod esset
:
idoneum ad fruendum te, etc.," 26: " certus quidem in istis eram, nimis tamen in-
firmus ad fruendum te."
^ Augustine has often repeated the old Platonic assertion of the impossibility of de-
fining the nature of God, and that not always with a feeling of dissatisfaction, but as
an expression of romantic satisfaction (" ineffabilis simplex natura" ; " facilius dicimus
quid non sit, quam quod sit "). He contributed much, besides, to the relative eluci-
dation of negative definitions and of properties and accidents, and created scholastic
terminology see especially De trinit., XV.
; He is the father of Western theological
dialectic but also the inventor of the dialectic of the pious consciousness. From the
;
anti-Manicheean controversy sprang the desire to conceive all God's separate attributes
as identical, i.e., the interest in the indivisibility of God — God is essence, not sub-
stance ; be thought of without accidents ; see De trinit., VII.,
for the latter cannot
10; and this interest went so far as to hold that e.\en habere and ej.re coincided in
God (De civ., XI. 10: " ideo simplex dicitur quoniam quod habet hoc est"). In
CHAP. IV.] DOCTRINES OF BIKST AND LAST THINGS. 121
aside the thought that God was a substance (res) in the interest
of a living communion with him. God was a person, and in
the phrase " to cleave by love " (" amore inhserere ") the em-
phasis falls in that case on the love (amor) which rests on faith
order to guard God from corruptibilitas, compositeness of any sort was denied. But,
Augustine had, nevertheless, to make a distinction in God, in order to
at this. point,
discriminate the divine vporld-plan from him, and not to fall completely into Pan-
theism. (The stamped on many passages in the work De trinit., see e.g.,
latter is
IV., 3, "Quia unum verbum dei est, per quod facta sunt omnia, quod est incom-
mutabilis Veritas-, ibi principaliter atque incommutabiliter sunt omnia simul, et omnia
vita sunt et omnia unum sunt.") But since he always harked to ihe conviction that
ibeing, and wisdom, and goodness, are identical in God, he did not reach what he
aimed at. This difSculty increased still further for him, where he combined specu-
lation as to the nature of God with that regarding the Trinity. (Dorner, p. 22 ff.)
most clearly in the doctrine of the divine world-plan. It always threatens

It is seen
to submerge the world in the Son as a unity, and to take away its difference (it is
— —
wrong, however at least for the period after c, A.D. 400 to say conversely that
the intelligible world is for Augustine identical with the Son, or is the Son). The
vacillation is continued in the doctrine of creation. But Dorner (p. 40 f. ) is wrong
(when he says: "Augustine had no conception as yet that the notion of causality,
clearly conceived, is sufficient to establish the distinction between God and the world."
Augustine had undoubtedly no such conception, but this time it is not he, but Dorner,
who shows his simplicity. The notion of causality, " clearly conceived," can never
establish a distinction, but only a transformation. If he had meant to give expression
to the former, he required to introduce more into the cause than the effect ; that is,
it was necessary to furnish the cause with properties and powers which did npt pass
into the causatum (effect). But this already means that the scheme of cause and
effect is inadequate to establish the difference. Augustine, certainly, had no clear
conception of such a thing ; but he felt that mere causality was useless. He adopted
the expedient of calling in " nihil " (nothing) to his aid, the negation God works in
:
nothing. This "nothing" was the cause of the world not being a transformation
or evolution of God, but of its appearing as an inferior or irridescent product, which,
because it is a divina operatio, exists (yet not independently of God), and which, so
far as independent, does not exist, since its independence resides in the nihil. The
'sentence " mundus de nihilo a deo factus "—the root principle of Augustinian cosmo-
—
logy is ultimately to be taken dualistically ; but the dualism is concealed by the
second element consisting in negation, and therefore only revealing itself in the
privative form (of mutability, transitoriness). But in the end the purely negative
character of the second element cannot be absolutely retained (Augustiiie never, cer-
tainly, identified it with matter); it purported to be absolute impotence, but com-
bined with the divine activity it became the resisting factor, and we know how it does
resist in sin. Accordingly, the question most fatal to Augustine would have been :
Who created this nothing ? As a matter of fact this question breaks down the whole
construction. Absurd as it sounds, it is justified. Augustine cannot explain negation
with its determinative power existing side by side with the divina operatio; for it is
no explanation to say that it did not exist at all, since it merely had negative effects.
(fides), and includes hope (spes). " God to be worshipped

with hope, and love (" Fide, spe, caritate colendum
faith,
deum ").^ Augustine was so strongly possessed by the feeling,
never, indeed, clearly formulated, that God is a person whom we
must trust and love, that this conviction was even a latent
standard in his Trinitarian speculations.^ Faith, hope, and love
had, in that case, however, nothing further to do with " free-
dom " in the proper sense of the word. They were God's gifts,
and constituted a spiritual relation to Him, from which sprang
good resolves (bonum velle) and righteousness (justitia). But,
indeed, whenever Augustine looked from this life to eternal life,
the possession of faith, love, and hope assumed a temporary
aspect. " But when the mind has been imbued with the com-
mencement of faith which works by love, it aspires by a good

life to reach the manifestation in which holy and perfect hearts
perceive the ineffable beauty whose complete vision is the Jtighest

felicity. This is surely what thou requirest, what is to be '
esteemed the first and the last thing,' to begin with faith, to be
perfected in sight" (Enchir. 5 ; see De doctr., II. 34 sq.).* Cer-
tain as it is comes out in this, it
that the Neoplatonic tendency
is as certain that we have more than a mere " remnant of
mystical natural religion "
; for the feeling that " presses up-
ward and forward " from the faith in what is not seen, to the
Yet theory, sometimes acosmic, sometimes dualistic, in form, is everywhere corrected

in Augustine, whether by the expression of a wise nescience, or by faith in God as
Father. The criticism here used has been attacked by Loofs (R.-Encypl. 3, Vol. II.,
p. 271). We have to admit that it goes more deeply into the reason of his views than
Augustine's words require. But I do not believe that the statement given by Loofs
is adequate " God so created his creatures from nothing that some are less fair,
:
less good than others, and, therefore, have less being (esse)." Could Augustine have
actually contented himself with these facts without asking whence this " less " ?
1 Enchirid. 3.
See Vol. IV., p. 129 ff.

2 I do not enter further into the doctrine of the
Trinity, but remark that the term " tres personse" was very fatal to Augustine,
and that all his original efforts in dealing with the Trinity lead away from cos-
mical and hypercosmical plurality to conceptions that make it express inner, spiritual
self-movement in the one God.
3 Cum autem initio fidei quae per dilectionem operatur imbuta mens fuerit, tendit
bene vivendo etiam ad speciem pervenire, ubi est Sanctis et perfectis cordibus nota
ineffabilis pulchritudo, cujus plena visio est summa felicitas. Hoc est nimirum quod
requiris, "quid primum, quid ultimum teneatur," inchoari fide, perfici specie.
'
CHAP. IV.] DOCTRINES OF FIRST AND LAST THINGS. I23/
seeing of what believed, is not only the innate germ of

is
religion, but
enduring stimulus.^ The idea of the world
its
sketched from contemplation of the inner life and the sense of
responsibility, which was combined ,with that of metaphysical
cosmological speculation, led finally to a wholly different state
of feeling from the latter. The optimism founded on esthetics
vanished before the " monstrum " of humanity which, infirm of
not and did not what at bottom it desired, and fell
will,^ willed
into the abyss of perdition. They are only a few who suffer
themselves to be saved by grace. The mass is a massa perdi-
tionis, which death allures. " Woe is thee, thou torrent of
human custom ! Who shall stop thy course .? How long will
it be before thou art dried up ? and whom wilt thou, O offspring
of Eve, roll into the huge and hideous ocean, which even they
^ We .may here touch briefly

on the question several times recently discussed, as to
the supremacy of the will in Augustine. Kahl has maintained it. But Siebeck (I.e.
183 f.) lias with reason rejected it ; (see also my notice of Kahl's book in the ThLZ.,
1886, No. 25) ; and Kahl has himself to admit " that at the last stage of knowledge
Neoplatonic intellectualism, which explains volition awjy in view of thougllt, has
frequently traversed the logical consequences of Augustine's standpoint." But it is
just the last stage that decides. On the other hand, Kahl is quite right in apprecia-
ting so highly the importance of the will in Augustine. The kernel of our nature
exists indisputahly according to Augustine in our will ; therefore, in order that the
Veritas, the scire deum et animam may be able to obtain supremacy, and become, as
it were, the unique function of man, the will must be won on its behalf. This takes
place through God's grace, which leads the soul to will and love spiritual truth, i.e.^
God. Only now is it rendered possible for the intellect to assume supremacy.
Accordingly the freeing of the will is ultimately the substitution of the supremacy of
the intellect for that of the will. (Compare,
the passage Confess. IX. 24:
e.g.,
"regio ubertatis indeficientis, ubi pascis Israel in seternum veritatis pabulo, et ubi
vitasafiientia'esl"; hut for ihis life it holds true that " sapientia hominis pietas.")
Yet in so far as the supremacy of the intellect could not maintain itself without the
amor essendi et sciendi, the will remains the co-efEcient of the intellect even in the
highest sphere. That is, briefly, Augustine's view of the relation of the will and
intellect. It the return to Augustine in the Middle Ages brought about
explains why
the complete subordination of the intellect to the will ; for Augustine himself so pre-
sented the case that no inner state and no activity of thought existed apart from the
will, But if that were so, Augustine's opinion, that the vision (visio) of God was the
supreme goal, could not but in the end pass away. It was necessary to demon-
strate a goal which corresponded to the assured fact that man was will (see Duns
Scotus).
2 See De civit. dei, XIV. 3 sq. ; it is not the body (sensuousness) that is the ulti-
mate cause of sin.

scarcely overpass who have climbed Church] ?"i the tree' [the
The misery of the earth whatever moves and
is unspeakable ;
cherishes an independent life upon it is its own punishment ;
for he who decreed sins (the ordinator peccatorum) has

ordained that every sin judges itself, that every unregulated
spirit is its own punishment.
^
But from the beginning the historical Christian tradition

penetrated with its influence the sequence of thoughts (on
nature and grace), which the pious thinker had derived from his
speculations on nature and his spiritual experience. Brought
up from boyhood as a Catholic Christian, he has himself con-
fessed that nothing ever satisfied him which did not bear the
name of Christ.^ The description of the years when he
wandered in doubt is traversed as with a scarlet cord by the
bond that united him with Christ. Without many words,
indeed with a modest reserve, he recalls in the Confessions the
relation to Christ that had never died out in him, until in VII.
24 f., he can emphasise it strongly. We cannot doubt that even
those expositions of his which are apparently indifferent to the
Church traditions of Christianity —on the personal God,
living
the distinction between God and the world, on God as Creator,
on grace as the omnipotent principle — were already influenced
by that tradition. And we must remember that his intense
study of Paul and the Psalms began whenever, having broken
1 Confess.
I. 25 Vse tibi flumen moiis humani ? quis resistet tibi ? quamdiu non
:
siccaberis ?quosque volves Evse filius in mare magnum et formidolosum, quod vix
transeunt qui lignum [ecclesiam] conscenderint ?
2 There is a wonderful contrast in Augustine between the profound pessimistic view
of the world, and the conception, strictly held in theory, that everything takes place
under the uniform and unchangeable activity of God. What a difference between
the statement of the problem and the result And in order to remove this difference
!
the metaphysician refers us to the nothing. —

The course of the world is so conii-
dently regarded as caused in whole and in detail by God, nay, is, as it were, taken
up into the unchangeableness of God himself, that even miracles are only conceived
to be events contrary to nature as known to us (Genes, ad lit. VI. 13 ; cf. De civ.
X. 12 ;XXI. 1-8 ; nothing happens against nature ; the world is itself the greatest,
nay, the sole miracle ; see Nitzsch, Aug's Lehre v. Wunder, 1865 ; Dorner, p. 71 f.),
and yet everything shapes itself into a vast tragedy. In this nothing there still indeed
lurks in Augustine a part of Manichseism ; but in his vital view of the world it is not
the " nothing" which plays a part, but the sin of wicked pleasure — self-will.
3 Confess. III. 8 ; V. 25 ; etc.
;
CHAP. IV.] DOCTRINES OF FIRST AND LAST THINGS. 12$
with Manichseism, he had been convinced by Neoplatonism

that God was a spiritual substance (spiritalis substantia). Even
the expositions in the earliest writings which are apparently
purely philosophical, were already dominated by the Christian
conviction that God, the world, and the Ego were to be
distinguished, and that room was to be made for the distinction
in mystical speculation. Further, all attempts to break' through
the iron scheme of God's unchangeableness (in his active
presence in the world) are to be explained from the impression
made by Christian history upon Augustine.
However, we cannot here take in hand to show how Christ
and the Church gradually obtained a fixed fundamental posi-
tion in hismode of thought. His reply to Laurentius in the
Enchiridion, that " Christ is the sure and peculiar foundation of
the Catholic faith," (certum propriumque fidei catholicae funda-
mentum Christus est), would have been made in the same terms
many years before, and, indeed, though his conceptions of Christ
were then still uncertain, as early as about A.D. 387.^ Christ,
the way, strength, and authority, explained for him the sig-
nificance of Christ. It is very noteworthy that in the Confes-
sions Vn., 24 sq., and other passages where he brings the
first and last things,
Christian religion into the question as to the
he does not produce general theories about revelation, but at
once gives the central place to Christ and the Church.^ The
1 See the avowals in Confess. VII. 25.

2 Naturally, general investigations are not wantiiig of the nature of revelation as a
vfhole, iis relation to ratio, its stages (punishment of sin, law, prophecy), etc., but
they have no secure connection with his dogmatics ; they are dependant on the
occasions that called them forth, and they are not clearly thought out. In any case,
however, so many elements are found inthem which connect them with Greek
speculations, and which exerted a powerful influence at a later date
in turn others
(see Abelard), that one or two references are necessary (cf. Schmidt, Crigenes and
Aug. als Apolegeten in the Jahrbb. f. deutsche Theol. VIII. ; Bohringer, p. 204 ff.
Renter, p. 90 f., 350 ff., 400). Augustine occupies himself here, as always, with a
problem whose factors ultimately do, not admit of being reconciled. On the one
hand, he never gave up the lofty appreciation of reason (ratio), of independent know-
ledge, in which being and life are embraced. Originally (in his first period, after
A.D. 386), although he had already seen the importance of aucioritas, he set upas
the goal of the ratio the overcoming of auctoritas, which required to precede it only
for a time (De ord. II., 26, 27). " Ratio was to him the organ in which God reveals
himself to man, and in which man perceives God>" In after times this thought was
-126 HISTORY OF DOGMA. [CHAP. IV
two decisive principles on which he laid stress were that the

Catholic Church alone introduces us into communion with
Christ, and that it is only through communion with Christ
that we participate in God's grace. That is, he is only
, never given up ; but it was limited by the distinction between subjective and objective
reason, by the increasing perception of the extent of the influence exerted on human
reason by the will, by the assumption that one consequence of original sin was ignor-
ance, and, finally, by the view that while knowledge, due to faith, would always be
uncertain here below, the soul longed after the real, i.e., the absolute and absolutely
sure, knowledge. The latter alone superseded ratio as the organ by which God is
known, as guide were limitations pure and

to the vita beata ; the other limitations
simple. And the constancy with which, in spite of these, Augustine at all times
valued ratio is proved by those striking expositions, which occur in his earliest and
latest writings, of Christianity as the disclosure of the one true religion which had
always existed. The whole work De civitate dei is, indeed, built upon this thought
—
the civitas dei not being first created by the appearance of Christ which, indeed, —
Tias two other roots besides Rationalism, namely, the conception of the absolute
'immutability of God, and the intention to defend Christianity and its God against
Neoplatonic and pagan attacks. (The first two roots, as can be easily shown, are
reducible ultimately to one single conception. The apologetic idea is of quite a
different kind. Christianity is held to be as old as the world, in order that the re-
proach of its late arrival may fall to the ground. Here the wholly incongruous idea
is introduced that Christians before Christ had believed on his future appearance.
Reuter has shown excellently (p. 90 ff.) how even the particularist doctrine of pre-
destination has its share in the universalist and humanist conception ; he also deserves
the greatest gratitude for collecting the numerous passages in which that conception
is elaborated. ) Even before the appearance of Christ the civitas dei existed ; to it be-
longed pagans and Jews. Christianity is as old as the world. It is the natural religion
which has existed from the beginning under various forms and names. Through Christ
it received the name of the Christian religion; "res ipsa quse nunc Christiana religio
nuncupatur, erat apud antiquos, nee defuit ab initio generis humani, quousque ipse Chris-
tus venit in came, unde vera religio, quse jam erat, coepit appellari Christiana " (Retract.
I., 12, 3) ; see especially Ep. 102 and De civit. XVIII., 47, where the incongruous
thought is inserted that the unus mediator was revealed to the heathens who belonged to
the heavenly Jerusalem in the earliest time. The latter idea is by no means inserted
everywhere ; there was rather, up
end of his life, in spite and because of his
to the
doctrine Of particular predestinating grace, an undercurrent in Augustine's thought :
co-ordinating God and free knowledge, he recognised behind the system of the
Church a free science, and in accordance therewith conceived also God and the
world to be the abiding objects of knowledge. With this idea, however, as in
the case of Orjgen, Christ at once disappears. The ultimate reason of this consists
in the fact that Augustine, with all his progress in knowledge, never advanced to
history. The great psychologist was still blind to the nature of historical develop-
ment, to what personality achieved in history, and what history had accomplished
fur mankind. He had only two methods of observation at his disposal either the —
mythological contemplation of history, or a rationalistic neutralising. The man who
felt so clearly and testified so convincingly that freedom lay in the change of will
CHAP. IV.] DOCTRINES OF FIRST AND LAST THINGS. 127
certain of the speculative conception of the idea of the good, and its
real activity as love when it is proclaimed authoritatively by the
Church and supported by the conception of Christ.
By the conception formed of Christ. Here a new element
when it received a strength binding us to the good, was yet incapable as a thinker of
drawing clearly the consequences of this experience. But those should not blame
him who cannot free themselves from the illusion that an absolute knowledge of
some sort must be possible to man ; for the effort to obtain such a knowledge
is the ultimate cause of the inability to understand history as history. He
who is only happy with absolute knowledge is either blind to history, or it
becomes a Medusa's head to him. Yet rationalism is only the undercurrent, though
here and there, it does force its way to the surface. More surely and more constantly
Augustine appeased with revelation his hunger for the absolute, which he was unable
to distinguish from aiming at force and strength (God and goodness). His feelings
were the same as Faust's "We long for revelation." Now, it is very characteristic
:
that in dealing with the notion of revelation, Augustine has expounded nothing more
clearly than the thought that revelation is absolutely authorilative. We can leave out '
of account his other views on its necessity, nature, etc. The decisive fact for him is
that revelation does not merely recommenditself by its intrinsic worth. Accordingly,
the external attestation is the main
Augustine discussed this (especially in his'
point.
work De civit.) -much more carefully and comprehensively than earlier Apologists,
in order to establish the right to demand simple submission to the, contents of revelation.
Auctoritas scaA. Jides were inseparably connected; indeed, they occupied an almost
exclusive relation to each other (see De util. cred., 25 sq.). We indeed find him
explaining in his writings of all periods that authority is milk-food, and
that," on the
other hand, the demand on authority is not

in matters of religion for faith resting
. exceptional, but that all the affairs of life of a deeper nature rest on such a faith. But
these are simply sops to Cerberus. Man needs authority to discipline his mind, and to
support a certainty not to be obtained elsewhere. Augustine was especially convinced
of this as against heretics (ManichEeans). Heathens he could refute to a certain
extent from reason, heretics he could not. But even apart from this, since the
power which binds the will to God presented itself to him as the rock-fast conviction
of the unseen, even the " strong " could not dispense with faith in authority. The
gradual progress from faith to knowledge, which was well-known to him (" Every
one who knows also believes, although not every one who believes knows,") was still
a progress constantly accompanied by faith. The saying, "fides praecedit rationem,"
of which he has given so many variations (see e.g., Ep. 120, 2 sq.: " fides prascedit
rationem," or paradoxically :
" rationabilitsr visum est, ut fides prsecedat rationem,")
did not signify a suspension of faith at the higher stages. Or, rather, and here the .izi:
et Non holds good, Augustine was never clear about the relation of faith and
knowledge he handed over this problem to the future. On the one hand he trusted
;
ratio ; but, on the other hand, he did not, relying only on God, and his Genius ruling
in experience. Faith's authority was given for him in Scripture and the Church.
But here, again, he only maintained and transmitted the disposition to obey, virhile
his theoretical expositions are beset by sheer contradictions and ambiguities ; for he
has neither worked out the sufficiency, infallibility, and independence of Scripture,
nor demonstrated the infallibility of the Church, nor defined the relation of Scripture
—
'
entered. Augustine supported, times without number, the old

Western scheme of the twofold nature (utraque natura), the
word and man one person (verbum et homo una persona)
(we may leave unnoticed the rare, inaccurate expressions
"permixtio," " Ep. 137, 11, 12), the form of
mixtura," e.g.
God and form of a slave, and he contributed much to fortify

this scheme in the West with its sharply defined division
between what was done by the human, and what by the
divine. But the unusual energy with which he rejected
—
ApoUinarianism from his earliest to his latest writings is —
enough to show that his deepest interest centred in the human
soul of Jesus. The passages are extremely rare in which he
adopts the same interpretation as Cyril of the confession " the :
Word became flesh," and the doctrine of the deification of all

human nature by the Incarnation is not represented, or, at any
rate, only extremely doubtfully represented, by him. (Passages
referring to it are not wholly awanting, but they are extremely
rare.) He rather explains the incarnation of the Word from
another point of view, and accordingly, though he has points of
contact with Origein, he describes it quite differently from the
Greeks. Starting from the speculative consideration, to him a
certainty, that it is always the whole Trinity that acts, and that
its operation is absolutely invariable, the Incarnation was also a
work of the whole Trinity. The Trinity produced the manifes-
Son (De trin. in many places). The
tation held to signify the
Word (verbum) was not really more closely related than the
and the Church. Sometimes Scripture is a court of appeal which owes its authority
to the Church, sometimes the Church doctrine and all consuetude are to be measured
by Scripture (Scripture is the only source of doctrina Christiana), sometimes Church
and Scripture are held to constitute one whole in one place the Church seems to
;
find in the Council its infallible mouthpiece, in the other, the perfectibility of Councils
themselves is maintained. " The idea of the Church's infallibility belongs to
Augustine's popular Catholic presuppositions which grew out of his Catholic faith.
It was never directly or expressly expounded by him, or dogmatically discussed.

Therefore he cannot have - felt the necessity of adjusting an exhaustive or precise
doctrine regarding the legitimate form of the supreme representation of the Church
by supposition infallible. This uncertainty and vagueness perhaps " (rather, indisput-
ably) " spring from the vacillations of his thought regarding authority arid reason,
faith and knowledge '' (see Renter, pp. 345-358 ; Bohringer, pp. 217-256; Dorner, ppi
233-244 ; further, above pp. 77-83, and Vol. III., p. 203 ff.).
CHAP. IV.] DOCTRINES OF FIRST AND LAST THINGS. 120
whole Trinity to the Son. But since the Trinity could not act
upon Jesus except as it always did, the uniqueness and power of
thePerson of Jestis Christ were to be derived from the 'receptive-
ness with which the man Jesus met the operatio ditina ; in other
words, Augustine started from the human nature (soul) in his
construction of the God-man. The human nature received the
Word into its spirit ; the human soul, because it acted as inter-
mediary (medians), was also the centre of the God-man.
Accordingly, the Word did not become flesh, if that be taken to
mean that a transformation of any sort took place, but the
divina operatio trinitatis could so work upon the human spirit
of Jesus, that the Word was permanently attached to him, and
was united with him to form one person.
This receptiveness ^
of Jesus was, as in all other cases, caused by the election of

grace; it was a gift of God (munus'dei), an incomprehensible
act of divine grace nay, it was the same divine grace that for-
;
gives us our sins which led the man Jesus to form one person
with the Word and made him sinless. The Incarnation thus
appeared simply to be parallel to the grace which makes us
willing who were unwilling, and is independent of every histori-
cal fact. 2
^ The figure often used by Augustine that the Word was united with the man Jesus
as our souls are with our bodies is absolutely unsuitable. Augustine borrowed it from
antiquity without realising that it really conflicted with his own conception.
Ênchir., 36: "Hie omnino granditer et evidenter dei gratia commendatur.
Quid enim natura humana in homine Ciiristi meruit ut in unitatem personse unici filii
dei singulariter esset assumpta Quae bona voluntas, cujus boni propositi studium,
!
quae bona opera praecesserunt, quihus mereretur iste homo una fieri persona cum deo?
Numquid antea fuit homo, et hoc ei singulare beneficiuni prsestitum est, cum singu-
lariter promereretur deum ? Nempe ex quo homo esse coepit, non aliud ccepit esse
homo quam dei filius et hoc unicus, et propter deum verbum, quod illo suscepto caro
:
factum est, utique deus. Unde naturae humanee tanta gloria, nullis prsecedenti-
. . .
bus meritis sine dubitatione gratuita, nisi quia magna hie et sola dei gratia fideliter et
sobrie considerantibus evidenter ostenditur, ut intellegant homines pereandem gratiam
sejustificari a per quam factum est ut homo Christus nullum- habere posset
peccatis,
peccatum." 40 " Natus Christus insinuat nobis gratiam dei, qua homo nullis prs-
:
Cedentibus meritis in ipso exordio naturae suse quo esse coepit, verbo deo copularetur
in tantam personse unitatem, ut idem ipse esset filius dei qui filius hominis, etc."
De dbno persev., 67. Op. imperf., I., 138: "Qua gratia homo Jesus ab initio
factus est bonus, eadem gratia homines qui sunt membra ejus ex malis fiunt boni."
i)e Drsedest. 30: " Est etiam praeclarissimum lumen praedestinationis et gratis ipse
salvator, ipse mediator dei et hominum homo Christus Jesus, qui ut hoc esset, quibus
I
"
But it was not so meant. While, indeed, it is here again

evident, the conception of the divine grace in Christ
that
was, at bottom, subordinate to predestinating grace, and
that the latter was independent of the former,^ yet Augustine
by no means confined himself to dealing with the ultimate
grounds of his conceptions. Rather the Incarnation benefited
us ; the salvation bestowed was dependent on it for us " who
members " (qui sumus membra ejus).^ But how far?
are his
Where Augustine speaks as a Churchman, he thinks of the
sacraments, the powers of faith, forgiveness and love, which
were the inheritance left the Church by the God-man (see
under). But where he expresses the living Christian piety
which actuated him, he had three wholly distinct concep-
tions by which he realised that Christ, the God-man,
was the rock of his faitlj.^ The Incarnation was the great
tandem suis vel operum vel fidei praecedentibus meritis natura humana quae in illo est
comparavit ? . . . Singulariter nostra natura in Jesu nuUis suis prsecedentibus meri-

tis accepit admiranda (scil, the union with deity). Respondeat hie homo deo, si
audet, et dicat : Cur non et ego ? Et si audierit : O homo, tu quis es qui respondeas
deo, etc." De coriept. et grat. 30 :
" Deus naturam nostram id est animam raliona-
lem carnemque hominis Christi suscepit, susceptione singulariter mirabili vel mirabi-
liter singulari, ut prsecedentibus meritis filius del sic esset ab initio
nuUis justitise suae
quo esse homo verbum, quod sine initio est, una persona esset."
coepisset, ut ipse et
De iiecc. mer. II. 27. Augustine says in Confess. VII. 25 " Ego autem ali- :
qiianto postcrius didicisse me fateor, in eo quod verbum caro factum est, quomodo
catholica vtritas a Photini falsitate dirimatur." Our account given above will have
shown, however, that he never entirely learnt this. His Christology, at all times,
retained a strong trace of affinity with that of Paul of Samosata and Photinus (only all
merit was excluded on the part of the man Jesus), because he knew that his faith
could not dispense with the man Jesus, and he supplanted the pseudo-theological
speculation as to the Word by the evangelical one that the Word had become the
content of Christ's soul.
1 Therefore, also, the uncertainty which we Augustine as to whether
find already in
the Incarnation was necessary. In De
XIII. 13, he answers the momentous
Trinit.
question whether God might not have chosen another way, by leaving the possibility
open, but describing the way selected as bonus, divinm digniiaii congruus and con-
venientior. By this he opened up a peiilous perspective to the Middle Ages.
2 Op. imperf. I.e.
3 He by him before his conversion that Christ was

definitely rejects the idea held
only a teacher ; 25: " Tantum sentiebam de domino
see, e.g.. Confess. VII.
Christo meo, quantum de excellentis sapientise viro, cui nuUus posset sequari ; prie-
sertim quia mirabiliter natus ex virgine ad exemplum contemnendorum temporaliutn
pro adipiscenda immortalitate divina pro nobis cura tantam auotoritatetn magisterii
meruisse videbatur.
.CHAP. IV.] DOCTRINES OF FIRST AND LAST THINGS. 131
proof of God's love towards us ^ the humility of God and ;
Christ attested in it breaks down our pride and teaches us that

" all goodness is made perfect in humility " (omne bonum in
humilitate perficitur) the truth which was eternal is made
;
comprehensible to us in Christ lying in the dust we can appre- :
hend God who redeems us by revealing himself in our lowliness.

Throughout all this we are met by the living impression of
Christ's person,^ and it is humility, which Paul also regarded as
so important, that stands out as its clearest and most weighty
attributes.^ The type of humility exhibited in majesty this it —
was that overpowered Augustine pride was sin, and humility :
•was the sphere and force of goodness. From this he learned and
implanted in the Church the new disposition of reverence for
'De trin. XIII. 13: "Quid tam necessarium fuit ad erigendam spem nostram,
quam ut demonstraretur nobis, quanti nos fenderet deusquantumque diligeret?"
That takes place through the Incarnation.
2 The work " of Christ falls to be discussed afterwards ; for we cannot include
'
'
Augustine's views concerning it among his fundamental conceptions. In part they

alternate (between redemption from the devil, sacrifice, and removal of original sin
by death), and in part they are dependant on his specific view of original sin. Where
he indulges in expositions of practical piety, he has no theory at all regarding
Christ's work.
3 The clearest, and on account of the historical connection the most decisive,
testimony given in Confess. VII. 24-27, where, in telling what Christ had become
is
to him, he at the same time explains why Neoplatonism was insufficient. He knew
what the Neoplatonists perceived, but " quserebam viam comparandi roboris quod
esset idoneum ad fruendum te, nee inveniebam donee amplecterer mediatorem dei et
hominum, hominem Christum Jesum vocantem et dicentem Ego sum via et Veritas :
et vita, et cibum, cui capiendo invalidus eram, miscentem carni ; quoniam verbum
caro factum est, ut infantiiE nostra lactesceret sapientia tua per quam creasti omnia.
Non enim tenebam dominum meum Jesum, humilis humilem, nee cujus ret magistra
esset ejus infirmitas noveram. Verbum enim tuum ffiterna Veritas subditos . . .
erigit ad se ipsam in inferioribus autem sedificavit sibi humilem domum de limo

:
nostra, per quam subdendos deprimeret a seipsis et ad se trajiceret, sanans tumorem

et nutriens amorem, ne fiducia sui progrederentur lovgius, sedpotius infirmarentur
mdentes ante pedes suos injirmam divinitatem ex patticipatione tunica pellicea nostm,
et lassi frosternerentur in earn, ilia autem surgens lavaret eos." He then explains
in the sequel that the Neoplatonic writings led him to thoroughly understand the
nature of God, but " garriebam plane qtiasi peritus, et nisi in Christo salvatore
:
nostro viam tuam quasrerem, non peritus, sed periturus essem." I sought to be wise,
puffed up by knowledge. " Ubi enim erat ilia cedificans caritas afundamento humi-
'
litatis, quod est Christus Jesus

?" This love rooted in humility those writings could
not teach me. It was from the Bible I first learned " quid interesset inXer preesump-
:
tionem et confessionem, inter videntes quo eundum sit nee videntes qua, et viam
humility. The new bias which he thus gave to Christology

continued to exert its influence in the Middle Ages, and dis-
played itself ii> rays of varying brilliancy and strength although, ;
as a consequence of the Adoptian controversy, Greek Christo-

logy once more entered in force, from the ninth century, and
hindered piety from expressing its knowledge clearly in dogma.
We now understand also why Augustine attached such value
to the human element (homo) This was not merely
in Christ.
due to a consequence of theology (see above), but it was in
his
a much higher degree the pious view of Christ that demanded
this conception. He could not realise Christ's humility with
certainty in the Incarnation for the latter sprang from the
;
universal working of God, predestinating grace, and Jesus' re-

^ceptiveness but humility was the constant "habit" of the
;
divino-human personality. Thus the true nature of Jesus Christ

Vvâs really known :" strength is made perfect in weakness"
(robur in infirmitate perficitur). That lowliness, suffering, shame,
misery, and death are means of sanctification ; nay, that self-
less and therefore ever suffering love is the only means of sancti-
fication (" I sanctify myself for them " ; that what is great and
)
ducentsm ad beatificam patriam, non iantum cernendatii, sed et habitandam" Now

I read Paul. " Et apparuit mihi una facies eloquiorum castorum. Et coepi et inveni
quidquid iliac varum legeram, hoc cum, commendatione gratia tua did, ut qui videt
non sic glorietur quasi non acceperit, non solum id quod videt, sed etiam ut videat>
et ut te non solum admoneatur ut videat, sed etiam sanetur ut teneat, et qui de
longinquo videre non potest, viam tamen ambulet, qua veniat et videat et teneat."
For if a man delights in the law of God after the inner man, what does he do with
the other law in his members ? What shall wretched man do ? Who shall
. . .
deliver him from the body of this death ? Who but thy grace through our Lord
Jesus Christ by whom the handwriting which was against us was abolished. " Hoc
illee litterffi non habent. Non habent illse paginse vultum pietatis hujus, lacrimas
confessionis, sacrificium tuum, spiritum contribulatum. . . . Nemo ibi cantat i
Nonne deo subdita erit anirna mea. Ab

enim salutare meum. Nemo ibi audit
ipso
vocantem Venite ad me, omnes qui laboratis.
: Dedignantur ab eo discere quoniam
mitis est et humilis corde. Abscondisti enim hasc a sapientibus et prudentibus, et
revelasti ea parvulis." " For it is one thing from the mountain's wooded top to see
the land of peace and yet to find no way to it, and another to keep steadfastly on
the way thither." Compare with this the elaborate criticism of Platonism in De
civit. dei,X., esp. ch. 24 and 32, where Christ is presented as " universalis animse
liberandse via," while his significance is for the rest explained much more in the
popular Catholic fashion than in the Confessions. In ch. i ff. there is even aa
attempt to conceive the angels and saints as a heavenly hierarchy as the Greeks do.
—
CHAP. IV.] DOCTRINES OF FIRST AND LAST THINGS. 1 33
good always appears in a lowly state, and by the power of the

contrast triumphs over pride ; that humility alone has an eye
wherewith to see the divine that every feeling in the good is
;
accompanied by the sense of being pardoned that was the — ~
very core of Augustine's Christology. He, for his part, did not
drag it into the region of sesthetics, or direct the imagination to
busy itself with separate visions of lowliness. No, with him it
still existed wholly on the clear height of ethical thought, of
modest reverence for the purport of Christ's whole life, whose

splendour had been realised in humility. " Reverence for that
which is beneath us is a final stage which mankind could and
had to reach. But what was involved not only in despising the
earth and claiming a higher birthplace, but in recognising low-
liness and poverty, ridicule and contempt, shame and misery,
suffering and death as divine, nay, in revering sin and trans-
gression not as hindrances, but as furtherances of sanctification."
Augustine could have written these words for no idea was ;
more strongly marked in his view of Christ than that he had

—
ennobled what we shrank from shame, pain, sorrow, death
and had stripped of value what we desired success, honour, —
enjoyment. " By abstinence he rendered contemptible all that
we aimed at, and because of which we lived badly. By his
suffering he disarmed what we fled from. No single sin can be
committed if we do not desire what he despised, or shirk what
he endured."
But Augustine did not succeed in reducing this conception of
the person of Christ to dogmatic formulas. Can we confine the
sun's ray in a bucket ? He held by the old formulas as forming
an element of tradition and as expressing the uniqueness of
Christ but to him the true foundation of the Church was Christ,
;
because he knew that the impression made by his character had

broken down his own pride, and had given him the power to
find God in lowliness and to apprehend him in humility. Thus
the living Christ had become to him the truth ^ and the way to
1 Augustine accordingly testifies that in order that the truth which is perceived
should also be loved and extolled, a person is necessary who should conduct us and
that on the path of humility. This is the burden of his Confessions. The truth itself
had been shown clearly to him by the Neoplatonists ; but it had notobecome his
;
blessedness, and he who was preached by the Church his

authority.^
But what is the beatific fatherland, the blessed life, to which
Christ is the way and the strengthhave already dis-

? We
cussed it (p. 91 f.), and we need only here mention a few
additional points.
The blessed life is eternal peace, the constant contemplation
of God Knowledge remains man's goal
in the other world.^
even the notion of the enjoyment of God (fruitio dei), or that
other of heavenly peace, does not certainly divert us from it.^
Knowledge, is, however, contrasted with action, and the future
state is wholly different from the present. From this it follows
that Augustine retained the popular Catholic feeling that directed
men in this life wholly to hope, asceticism, and the contemplation
[of God] in worship, for though that can never be attained in
this world which the future will bring, yet life here must be
regulated by the state which will be enjoyed afterwards.
Hence Augustine championed monachism and opposed Jovinian
so decidedly hence he regarded the world in the same light as
;
the ancient Catholic Fathers hence he valued as highly as ;
they did the distinction between precepts and counsels hence ;
he never looked even on the highest blessings (munera dei)

which we can here enjoy as containing the reality, but only a
spiritual possession. Augustine knew only one person capable of so impressing the
truth as to make it loved and extolled, and he alone could do this, because he was
the revelation of the verbum dei in hu?nilitate. When Christendom has attained
securelyand clearly to this Christology," it will no longer demand to be freed
'
'
from the yoke of Christology.

1 This is linked together by Augustine in a wonderful fashion. The scepticism of
the thinker in genere and the doubts, never overcome in his own mind as to the
.
Catholic doctrine in specie, demanded that Christ should be the indisputable authority
of the Church. To this is added, in connection with gratia infusa, the Christ of the
sacraments. I do not discuss this authoritative Christ more fully, because he coin-
cides with the authority of the Church itself, and we have already dealt with the
latter.
2 De civ. dei XIX. 13 :
" Pax cselestis civitatis ordinatissima et concordissima
societas fruendi deo et invicem in deo." Enchir. 29 :
" Contemplatio ejus artificis,
qui vocat ea qu£e non sunt tamquam ea quse sunt, atque in mensura et numero et
pondere cuncta disponit," see 63.
* Yet the conception of blessedness as peace undoubtedly involves a tendency to
think primarily of the will.

CHAP, IV.] DOCTRINES OF FIRST AND LAST THINGS. 135
pledge and similitude for set in the sphere of the transitory

;
they were themselves transitory hence, finally, he did not

;
think of the earthly Church when seeking to realise the first

and last things, for God alone, constantly seen and enjoyed,
was the supreme blessing; and even the divine kingdom, so far
as it was earthly, was transitory.
But even here much that was new .emerged in the form of
undercurrents, and the old was modified in many respects, a
few details being almost set aside. It is therefore easy to point
to numerous dissonances in Augustine's idea of the goal ; but
he who does not an irresponsible critic or impartial
criticise like
logician will admit that he knows no more than Augustine,, and
that he also cannot do better than alternate between different
points of view. Let us pick out the following points in detail.
t. Augustine put an end to the doubt whether virtue was not
perhaps the supreme good he reduced virtues to dependance

;
on God— to grace; see Ep. 155, 12 sq.^ He, indeed, re-

admitted the thought at a new and higher stage— merits called
forth by grace, righteousness made perfect by love. But the
mood at any rate is changed.
2. Augustine did not follow the lead of the Greek Church :
he did not cultivate systematic mysticism with a view to the

future state, or regard and treat the cultus as a means by which
to anticipate deification. He set aside the elements of physical
magic in religious doctrine, and by this means spiritualised the
ideas of the other world. The ascetic life of the churchman
was to be spiritual and moral. Statements, indeed, are not
wholly wanting in his works to the effect that eternal life can be
experienced in ecstatic visions in this world but he is thinking ;
then especially of Biblical characters (Paul), and in the course

of his Christian development he thrust the whole conception
more and more into the background.
Augustine's profound knowledge of the will, and his
3.
perception of the extent to which the latter swayed even know-
ledge, led to his discovery of the principle, that goodness
and
1 The whole of Book XIX. of De civit, dei— it is perhaps on the whole the most
In Ch. IV., it is expressly denied that
important— comes to be considered here.
virtue is the supreme good.

blessing, accordingly also final salvation, coincided in the

dependance of the will on God. By this means he broke
through intellectualism, and a superlative blessing was shown
to exist even in this world. " It is a good thing for me to
cleave to God." This " cleaving " is produced by the Holy
Spirit, and he thereby imparts love and blessedness to the

heart.^ In presence of the realisation of this blessedness, the
antithesis of time and eternity, life and death, disappears.^
4. Starting from this, he arrived at a series of views which
necessarily exerted a powerful influence on the popular frame
of mind.
(a) Of by which man clings to God
the three virtues, graces,
— faith, —
and hope love continues to exist in eternity.
love,
Accordingly, love, unchanging and grateful, connects this world
with the next.
(d) Thereby, however, the quietism of knowledge is also
modified. Seeing is to be nothing but loving an element of ;
adjustment of all discords in feeling and will is introduced into

the notion of blessedness, and although "rational contempla-
1 See De spirilu et lit. 5 (the passage follows afterwards).

2 That Augustine was able from this point of view to make the conscious feeling of
blessedness a force entering into the affairs of this world, is shown by the passage De
civit. dei XIX. 14, which, indeed, so far as I know, is almost unique. "Et
quoniam (Christianus) quamdin est in isto mortal! corpore, peregrinatur a domino^
ambulat per fidem non per speciem ; ac per hoc omnem pacem vel corporis vel
animEe vel simul corporis et animse refert ad illam pacem, quae homini mortali est
cum immortal! deo, ut e! sit ordinata in fide sub seterna lege obcedientia. Jam vero
quia duo praecipua prsecepta, hoc est dilectionem dei et dilectionem proximi, docet
magister deus , consequens est, ut etiam proximo ad diligendum deum consulat,
. .
quem jubetnr sicut se ipsum diligpre (sic uxori, sic filiis, sic domesticis, sic ceteris quibiis
potuerit hominibus), et ad hoc sibi a proximo, si forte indiget, consuli velit ac per ;
hoc erit pacatus, quantum in ipso est, omni homini pace horainum, id est ordinata
Concordia cujus hie ordo est, primum ut nuUi noceat, deinde ut gtiam prosit cui
potuerit, Primitus ergo inest ei suorum cura ; ad eos quippe habet opportuniorem
(acilioremque aditum consulendi, vel naturse ordine vel ipsius societatis humanse.
Unde apostolus dicit : ' Quisquis autem siiisj et maxima domesticis non proyidet,
fidem denegat et est infideli deterior.' Hinc itaque etiam pax domestica oritur, id
imperandi oboediendiqite concordia cohabitantium. Imperaut enim, qui
est ordinati
consulunt : sicut vir uxori, parentes fiiiis, domini servis. . . . Sed in domo justi
viventes ex fide et adhuc ab ilia caelesti civitate peregrinantis etiam qui imperant
serviunt eis, quibus videntur imperare. Neque enim dominandi cupiditate imperant,
sed officio consulendi, nee principandi superbia, sed providendi misericordia."
:
tion " (contemplatio rationalis) is always ranked above " rational

action" (actio rationalis), a high value is always attached to
practical and active love.^
A
higher meaning was now given, not indeed to the
(c)
earthly world, but to the earthly Church and its peculiar

privileges (within it) in this world. The idea of the city of God
on earth, formulated long before by others, was yet, as we shall
see in the next section, first raised by Augustine into the sphere
of religious thought. In front of the Holy of Holies, the first
and last things, he beheld, as it were, a sanctuary, the Church
on earth, with the blessings granted it by God. He saw that it
was a self-rewarding task, nay, a sacred duty, to cherish this
sanctuary, to establish it in the world, to rank it higher than
worldly and to devote to it all earthly goods, in order again
ties,
to receive them from it as legitimate possessions. He thus,

following, indeed, the impulses given by the Western tradition,
also created, we may
use so bold a phrase, a religion of the
if
second order. But

second-order religion, was not, as in the
this
case of the Greeks, the formless creation of a superstitious
cultus. It was on the contrary a doctrine which dealt with the
Church in its relation to the world as an active and moral
power transforming and governing society, as an organism, in
which Christ was actively present, of the sacraments, of good-
ness and righteousness. Ecclesiasticism and theology were
meant to be thoroughly united, the former serving the latter,
the one like Martha, the other like Mary.^ They ministered to
1 The element of " pax " obtains a value higher than and independent of know-
ledge (see above). That is shown also in the fact that the definitive state of the un-
saved (De civit. dei, XIX., 28) is not described as ignorance, but as constant war
" Quod bellum gravius et amarius cogitari potest, quam ubi voluntas sic adversa est
passioni ef passio voluntati, ut nullius earum victoria tales inimicitise finianlur. et ubi
cum ipsa natura corporis vis doloris, ut neutrum alteri cedat ? Hie [in
sic confligit
terra] enim quando contingit iste conflictus, aut dolor vincit et sensum mors adimit,
aut natura vincit et dolorem sanitas tollit. Ibi autem et dolor perinanet ut affligat, et
natura perdurat ut sentiat quia utrumque ideo non deficit, ne poena deficiat." Un-
;
doubtedly, as regards the sainted (see Book, XXII.), the conception comes again and
again to the front that their felicity will consist in seeing God.
2 Augustine has (De trin. I. 20) applied this comparison to the Churches of the
future and present world ; we may also adopt it to the relations of his doctrines of
the Church and of God.
the same object, and righteousness made perfect by love was

the element in which both lived.^
{d) While the ascetic life remained the ideal for the indi-
vidual, Augustine modified the popular tendency also in
monachism by never forgetting, with all his appreciation of
external works (poverty, virginity, etc.), that faith, hope, and
charity were alone of decisive importance, and that therefore
the worth of the man who possessed these virtues might no
longer be determined by his outward performances. He knew,
besides, better than anyone else, that external works might be
accomplished with a godless heart not only by heretical —
monks, where this was self-evident, but also by Catholics, Ep.,
781 79, and, uniting ascetics as closely as possible to the Church,
he urged them to engage in active work. Here, again, we see
that he broke through the barren system which made blessed-
ness consist in contemplatio rationalis and that alone.
This is, in brief, Augustine's doctrine of the first and last

things, together .with indications that point to that sphere which
belongs though not directly yet indirectly to those things, viz.,
the equipment and tasks of the Church in our present state.
" Doctrine " of the first and last things is really an incorrect ex-
pression for, and this is the supreme thing to be said in clos-

;
ing the subject, it was not to him a matter of " doctrine," but of
the faithful reproduction of his experiences. The most thorough-
going modification by Augustine of traditional dogmatic
Christianity consisted in his perception " that Christianity is
^ Ritschl published in his Treatise on the method of the earliest history of dogma
(Jahrb. f. deutsche Theol., 1871) the grand conception that the Areopagite in the
East, and Augustine in the West, were parallels ; that the former founded a ritualis-
tic ecclesiasticism, the latter an ecclesiasticism of moral tasks, in the service of a
world-wide Christianity ; that both thus modified in the same direction, but with en-
tirely different means, the old state of feeling (the bare hope of the future life). This-
conception is substantially correct ;f we keep firm hold of the fact that the traditional
popular Catholic system was not modified by either to its utmost limit, and that both
followed impulses which had been at work in their Churches even before their time.
The doctrine regarding the Church was not Augustine's " central idea," but he took
what every Catholic was certain of, and made it a matter of clearer, in part for the
first time of any clear, conviction ; and moved by very varied causes, he finally pro-
duced an ecclesiasticism whose independent value he himself never thoroughly per-

ceived.
ultimately different from everything called 'doctrine '" (Reuter,

P- 494)' The law is doctrine the gospel is power. The law
;
produces enlightenment; the gospel peace. This Augustine

clearly perceived, and thereby set religion in the sphere of a
vital, spiritual experience, while he disassociated it from know-
ledge and inference. He once more, indeed, placed his newly-
discovered truth on the plane of the old for he was a Catholic
;
Christian but the connection with the past which belongs to

;
every effective reformer need not prevent us from exhibiting his

originality. Anyone who seeks to give effect to the "whole"
Augustine and the " whole " Luther is suspected of seeking to
evade the " true " Augustine and the " true " Luther for what ;
man's peculiarity and strength are fully expressed in the

breadth of all he has said and done ? One or two glorious
passages from Augustine should show, in conclusion, that he
divested the Christian religion of what is called "doctrine" or
I know nothing but
" dogma." " I possess nothing but will ;
that what is fleeting and transitory ought to be despised, and

what is certain and eternal ought to be sought for. If those . . .
who flee to thee find thee by faith, grant faith ; if by virtue,

grant virtue if by knowledge, grant knowledge. Increase in
;
me faith, hope, love." " But we say that man's will is divinely
aided to do what is righteous, so that, besides his creation with
free-will, and besides the doctrine by which he is taught how he
should live, man receives the Holy Spirit in order that there tnay
be created in his mind, even now when he still walks by faith, and
not by appearance, the delight in and love of that supreme and un-
changeable good tvhich is God ; in order that this pledge, as it
were, having been given him of the free gift, a man may fer-
vently long to cling to his Creator, and be inflamed with desire
to enter into the participation of that true light, that he may
receive good from him from whom
he has his being. For if
the way of truth be hidden, free-will is of no use except for sin-
ning, and when that which ought to be done, or striven for, be-
gins to reveal itself, nothing is done, or undertaken, and the
good life is not lived, unless it delights and is loved. But that
it may be loved, the love of God is diffused in our hearts, not
by free choice emanating from ourselves, but by the Holy

^
Spirit given unto us." commands by

" What the law of works
by believing. This is the
threatening, the law of faith effects
wisdom which is called piety, by which the father of lights is
worshipped, by whom every excellence is given, and every gift
made perfect. ... By the law of works God says: Do what I
command; by the law of faith we say to God Grant what :
thou commandest. We have not received the spirit of this

. . .
world, says the most constant preacher of grace, but the spirit
which is from God, that we may know what things have been
granted us by God. But what is the spirit of this world but the
spirit of pride ? Nor are they deceived by any other spirit,
. . .
who, being ignorant of God's righteousness, and seeking to

establish their own, are not subject to God's righteousness.
Whence it seems to me that he is a son offaith who knows from
whom he hopes to receive what he does not yet possess, rather than
he who attributes to himself what he has. We conclude that a
man is not justified by the letter, but by the spirit, not by the
merits of his deeds, but by free grace."
2. The Donatist Controversy. The Work : De civitate Dei.

Doctrine of the Church, and Means of Grace.
Augustine was still occupied with the controversy with the

Manichseans, in which he so sharply emphasised the authority
1 Solil. I.
S :
" Nihil aliud habeo quam voluntatem ; nihil aliud scio nisi fluxa et
caduca spernenda esse, certa et Eeterna requirenda ... si fide te inveniunt, qui ad
te refugiunt, fidem da, si virtute, virtutem, si scientia, scientiam. Auge in me fidem,
auge spem, auge caritatem." De spiritu et.lit., 5 "Nos autem dicimus : humanam
voluntatem sic divinitus adjuvari ad faciendam justitiam, ut prseter quod creatus est
homo cum libero arbitrio voluntatis, prseterque doctrinam qua ei prsecipitur quemad-
mndum vivere debeat, accipiat spiritum sanctum, quo fiat in animo ejus delectatio
dilectioque summi atque incommutabdlis boni quod deus est, etiam nunc cum
illius
adhuc per fidem ambulatur, nondum per speciem ut hac sibi velut arra data gratuiti
:
muneris inardescat inhaerere creatori atque inflammetur accedere ad participationem

illius veriluminis, ut ex illo ei bene sit, a quo habet ut sit. Nam neque liberum
arbitrium quidquam nisi ad peccandum valet, si lateat veritatis via, et cum id quod
agendum et quo nitendum est coeperit non latere, nisi etiam delectet et ametur, non
agitur, non suscipitur, non bene vivilur. Ut autem diligatur, caritas dei diifunditur in
cordibiis nostris, non per arbitrium liberum quod surgit ex nobis, sed per spiritum
sanctum qui datus est nobis." L.c, 22 " Quod operum lex minando imperat, hoc
:
fidei lex credendo impetrat. Ipsa est ilia sapientia qua pietas vocatur, qua colitur
CHAP. IV.] THE PONATIST CONTROVERSY. I4I
of the Catholic Church,^ when his ecclesiastical position Pres- —

byter, A.D. 392, Bishop, A.D. 396, in Hippo compelled him to —
take up the fight with the Donatists. In Hippo these formed
the majority of the inhabitants, and so violent was their hatred
that they even refused to make bread for the Catholics.
Augustine fought with them from 393 to 411, and wrote
against them a succession of works, some of these being very-
comprehensive.^ We must here take for granted a knowledge
of the course of the controversy at Synods, and as influenced by
the intrusion of the Civil power.^ It was carried on upon the
ground prepared by Cyprian. His authority was accepted by
the opponents. Accordingly, internal antitheses developed in
the dispute which had remained latent in Cyprian's theory.
The new-fashioned Catholic theory had been already stated im-
pressively by Optatus
(see above, p. 42 ff.). It was reserved to
Augustine to extend and complete it. But, as it usually
happens in such questions, every newly-acquired position opened
up new questions, and for one solution created any number of
pater luminum, a quo est omne datum optimum et omne donum perfectum. . . .
Lege operum deus Fac quod jubeo lege fidei dicilur deo Da quod jubes.
dicit : ; :
. . Non spiritumhujus mundi accepimus, ait constantissimus gratis prsedicator, sed

.
spiritum qui ex deo est, ut sciamus quae a deo donata sunt nobis. Quis est autem
spiritus mundi hujus, nisi superbise spiritus ? . . . Nee alio spiritu decipiuntur etiam
illi qui ignorantes dei justiliam et suam justitiam volentes constituere, justitise dei non
sunt subjecti. Unde mihi videtur magis esse fidei filius, qui novit a quo speret quod
nondum habet, quam qui sibi tribuit id quod habet. Colligimus non justificari
hominem littera, sed spiritu, non factorum meritis, sed gratuita gratia."
1 The Manichseans professed, in tlie controversy of the day, to be the men of "free
inquiry " (" docendi fontem aperire gloriantur " De utilit. 21). We cannot here dis-
cuss how were Augustine did not conscientiously feel that his breach with
far they ;
them was a breach with free inquiry. Therefore the efforts from the outset to define
the relations oi ratio and auctoritas, and to save what was still possible of the former.
^ Psalmus c. partem Donati —
C. Parmeniani epist. ad Tichonium b. IH. De bapt.. —
c. Donatistas, b. VII. —
C. litteras Petiliani, b. III. —
Ep. ad Catholicos c. Donatisias
—C. Cresconium, b. IV. — De unico bapt. c. Petilianum — Breviculus CoUationis c.
Donatistis — Post collationem ad Donatistas. Further, at a later date ;. Sermo ad

Csesareensis ecclesije plebem — De gestis cum Emerito — C. Gaudentium Donatistam
episcopurn, b. II. The Sermo de Rusticiano is a forgery by the notorious Hierouy-
mus Viguerius.
^ at least from A.D. 407, the suppression by force of the Dona-
Augustine supported,
tistsby the Christian state in the interest of " loving discipline." The discussion of
A.D. 411 was a tragi-comedy. Last traces of the Donatists are still found in the time
of Gregory I. , who anew invoked the aid of the Civil power against them.
;
problems. And thus Augustine left more problems than he

had solved.
The controversy did not now deal directly with the hier-
archical constitution of the Church. Episcopacy was an ac-
cepted fact. The competency of the Church was questioned,
and therewith its nature, significance, and extent. That
ultimately the constitution of the Church should be dragged
into the same peril was inevitable ; for the hierarchy is, of
course, the tenderest part in a constitution based upon it.
The schism was in itself the greatest evil. But in order to get
over it, it was necessary to go to its roots and show that it was
utterly impossible to sever oneself from the Catholic Church, that

the unity, as well as truth of the Church, was indestructible. The
main thesis of the Donatists was to the effect that the em-
pirical isonly the true Church when those who propagate it, the
priests, are " pure " for no one can propagate what he does
;
not himself possess."^ The true Church thus needs pure priests
it must therefore declare consecration by traditores to be in-
valid and it cannot admit the efficacy of baptism administered

;
—
by the impure heretics, or those guilty of mortal sins finally, ;
it must exclude all that is manifestly stained and unworthy.
This was followed by the breach with such Christian com-

munions as did not strictly observe these rules, and by the practice
of re-baptism.^ Separation was imperative, no matter how
great or small the extent of the Church. This thesis was
supplemented, during the period of the State persecutions, by a
second, that the persecuted Church was the true one, and that
the State had nothing to do with the Church.
Augustine's counter-argument, based on Cyprian, Ambrosias-
ter, and Optatus, but partly disavowing, though with due
respect, the first-named, went far beyond a bare refutation of
1 C. I. 3
lift. " Qui fidem a peifido sumpserit non fidem percipit, sed
Petil :
reatum." 2: "Conscientia dantis adtenditur, qui abluat accipientis." Other

I.
Donatistic theses ran (I.e.) " Omnes res origine et radice consistit, et si caput non
habet aliquid, nihil est." "Nee quidquam bene regenerat, nisi bono seniine (boni
saeerdotis) regeneretur." "QuEe potest esse perversitas ut qui suis criminibus reus
est, alium faeiat innoeentem ?"
''The Donatisls, of course, did not regard it as re-baptism. I.e. "non repetimus
quod jam erat, sed damus quod non erat."
CHAP. IV.] THE PONATIST CONTROVERSY. I43
the separatists. He created the beginnings of a doctrine of the

Church, and means of grace, of the Church as institute of salva-
tion, the organism of the good, i.e., of divine powers in the
world. Nor did the Donatist controversy furnish him with his
only motive for developing this doctrine. The dispute with the
Manichseans had already roused his interest in the authority of
the Church, and led him to look more closely into it than his
predecessors (see above, p. ^(^ ff ), who, indeed, were quite at one
with him in their practical attitude to the Church. The Pela-
gian controversy, the state of the world, and the defence of
Christianity against heathen attacks, had an extrernely im-
portant influence on conceptions of the Church. Thus Augustine
created the Catholic doctrine of the Catholic Church on earth,
and we attempt in what follows to give, as far as possible, a
complete and connected account of it. Finally, the earthly
Church was and remained absolutely nothing but a means for
the eternal salvation of the individual, and therefore the doctrine'^
of the Church was also meant to be nothing but a subsidiary
doctrine. But if all dogmatic ran the risk, with its means and
subsidiary conceptions, of obscuring the important point, the
danger was imminent here. Does not the doctrine of salvation
appear in Catholicism to be almost nullified by the " subsidiary
doctrine," the doctrine of the Church ?
—
Grace and Authority these two powers had, according to
Augustine's self-criticism, effected his conversion. The authority
was the Church. Every one knew what the Church was the :
empirical, visible Church, which had triumphed ever since the

days of Constantine. A " logical definition " of the Church was
therefore unnecessary. The important point was to show that
men needed an authority, and why it was the authority. The
weak intellect needed revelation,which brings truth to the
individual, before he himself is capable of finding it; this
revelation is bound up in the Church. The fact that the
1 Doctrine is, strictly speaking, inaccurate ; for Catholicism does not know of any
•' doctrines" liere, but describes an actual st^te of matters brought about by God,
Church was the authority for doctrine constituted for long

Augustine's only interest in it. He produced in support of this
principle proofs of subjective necessity and of an objective
nature ;
yet he never reached in his exposition the stringency
and certainty which as a Catholic he simply felt for who can ;
demonstrate that an external authority must be authoritative ?

The most important point was that the Church proclaimed
itself to be the authority in doctrine. One was certainly a
member of the Church only in so far as he submitted to its
authority. There was no other way of belonging to it. Con-
versely, its significance seemed, on superficial reflection, to be
entirely limited to doctrinal authority. We occupy our true
relation to God and Christ, we possess and expect heavenly
blessings only when we follow the doctrinal instructions given
by the Church.
Augustine embraced this " superficial reflection " until his
ecclesiastical office and the Donatist controversy led him to
more comprehensive considerations. He had arrived at his
doctrine of predestinating grace without any external instiga-
tion by independent meditation on the nature of conversion
and piety. The development of his doctrine regarding the
Church, so far as it carried out popular Catholic ideas, was
entirely dependent on the external circumstances in which he
found himself placed. But he did not himself feel that he was
stating a doctrine he was only describing an actual position
;
accepted all along by every Catholic, one which each had to

interpret to himself, but without subtraction or addition. In
addition to the importance of the Church as a doctrinal authority,
he also felt its significance as a sacred institution which im-
parted grace. On its latter feature he especially reflected ; but
the Church appeared to him much more vividly after he had
gained his doctrine of grace : it was the one communion of
saints, the dwelling-place of the Spirit who created faith, love,
and hope. We
condense his most important statements.
I. The Catholic Church, held together by the Holy Spirit,
who is also the bond of union in the Trinity, possesses its most
important mark in its unity, and that a unity in faith, love, and
*'
hope, as well as in Catholicity.
CHAP. IV.] THE DONATIST CONTROVERSY. J4S
^
2. This unity
in the midst of the divisions existing among
menthe greatest of miracles, the proof that the Church is not
is
the work of men, but of the Holy Spirit.

3.. This follows more clearly when we consider that
still
unity presupposes love. Love is, however, the proper sphere

of the Spirit's activity or more correctly, all love finds its
;
source in ;the Holy Spirit ^ for faith and hope can be acquired
to a certain extent independently therefore also outside of the —
—
Church but love issues only from the Holy Spirit. The
Church, accordingly, because it is a unity, is the alliance of love,
in which alone sinners can be purified for the Spirit only ;
works in " love the bond of unity " (in unitatis vinculo caritate).
If then the unity of the Church rests primarily on faith, yet it
rests essentially on the sway of the spirit of love alone, which
presupposes faith.^
The unity of the Church, represented in Holy Scripture
4.
by many symbols and figures, obtains its strongest guarantee
from the fact that Christ has made the Church his bride and
his body. This relationship is so close that we can absolutely
call theChurch " Christ " ^ for it constitutes a real unity with ;
Christ. Those who are in the Church are thus " among the
members of Christ " (in membris Christi) the means and bond ;
of this union are in turn nothing but love, more precisely the
love that resides in unity (caritas unitatis).
1 Grace is love and love is grace : "caritas est gratia testamenti novi."
2 C. Crescon.34 " Non autem existimo quemquam ita desipere, ut creHat ad
I. :
ecclesiae pertinere unitatem eum qui non habet caritatem. Sicut ergo deus unus
colitur ignoranter etiam extra ecclesiam nee ideo non est ipse,.et fides una habetur
•sine caritate etiam extra ecclesiam, nee ideo non est ipse, ita et unus baptismus, etc."
God and faitli also exist extra ecclesiam but not !"/ze." Tlie relevant passages are
so numerous that it would give a The conception given
false idea to quote singly.
here constitutes the core of Augustine's doctrine of the Church : The Holy Ghost,
"love, unity, and Church occupy an exclusive connection : " caritas Christiana nisi in
unitate ecclesi^ non potest custodiri, etsi baptismum et fidem teneatis " (c. Pet. litt.
II. 172). . ,- .
3 De unit eccl. 7 :
" totus Christus caput et corpus est." De civit. XXI. 25. De
pecc. mer. 59 " Homines sancti et fideles fiunt cum homine Christo unus Christus,
I. :
ut omnibus per ejus banc gratiam societatemque adscendentibus ipse unus Christus
adscendat in caelum, qui de cEelo descendit." Sermo 354, i: " Praedicat Christus
Christum." .; ,
K
5. Heretics, i.e., those who follow a faith chosen by themselves,

cannot be in the Church, because they would at once destroy
itspresupposition, the unity of faith the Church, however, is ;
not a society like the State, which tolerates all sorts of philoso-
phers in its midst. Expelled heretics serve the good of the
Church, just as everything must benefit those who love God, for
they exercise them in patience (by means of persecutions), in
wisdom (by false contentions), and in love to their enemies, which
has to be evinced on the one hand in saving beneficence, and on
the other in the terrors of discipline.^
6. But neither do the Schismatics, i.e., those who possessed
the true faith, belong to the Church for in abandoning its ;
—
unity being urged thereto by pride like the heretics they —
show that they do not possess love, and accordingly are beyond
the pale of the operations of the Holy Spirit. Accordingly the
Catholic Church is the only Church.
7. From this it follows that salvation (salus) is not to be
found outside the Church, for since love is confined to the visible
Church, even heroic acts of faith, and faith itself, are destitute
of the saving stamp, which exists through love alone.^ Means
of sanctification, a sort of faith, and miraculous powers may
accordingly exist outside of the Church (see afterwards), but
they cannot produce the effect and afford the benefit they are
meant to have.
8. The second mark of the Church is holiness. This consists
in the fact that it is holy through union with Christ and the
its
activity of the Spirit, —

possesses the means in the Word and
sacraments —of sanctifying its individual members, i.e., of per-
fecting them and has also actually attained this end.
in love,
That it does not succeed in doing so in the case of all who are
in its midst^ — for only be without spot or wrinkle
it will the in
world beyond —nay, that cannot entirely destroy except
it sin
1 De civit. dei, XVIII. 51, I.

" Ep. 1 73, Foris ab ecclesia constitutus et separatus a compagine unitatis et
6 :
vinculo caritatis aeterno supplicio puniveris, etiam si pro Christi nomine vivus
incenderis."
3 The Biblical texts are heTe used that had been already quoted against Calixtus
and the Anti-Novatians (Noah's Ark, The Wheat and Tares, etc.),
"
CHAP. IV.] THE- DONATIST CONTROVERSY. I47
in a very few, detracts nothing from its holiness. Even a pre-

ponderance of the wicked and hypocritical over the good and
spiritual 1 does not lessen it, for there would be no Church at all
if the Donatist thesis were correct, that unholy members put an
end to the Church's existence. The Donatists required to limit

their own contention in a quite capricious fashion, in order to
avoid destroying the Church.^
9. Although the tares are not to be rooted out, since men are
not omniscient, and this world is not the scene of the consumma-
tion, yet the Church exercises its discipline, and in certain
circumstances even excommunicates ; but it does not do so
properly in order to preserve its holiness, but to educate its
members or guard them against infection. But the Church can
also tolerate. " They do not know the wicked in the Catholic
unity, or they tolerate those they sake of unity." ^ know for the
It can even suffer manifest and gross sinners, if in a particular
case the iniliction of punishment might result in greater harm.*
It is itself secured from contamination by the profane by never
approving evil, and always retaining its control over the means
of sanctification.^
10. But it is indeed an attribute of its holiness also to beget
actually holy members. It can furnish evidence of this, since a
few have attained perfection in it, since miracles and signs have
constantly been wrought, and a general elevation and sanctifica-
tion of morals been achieved by it, and since, fina,lly, its whole
membership will in the end be holy.
11. Its holiness is, however, shown more clearly in the fact
Augustine seems to have thought that the bad were in the majority even in the
1
Church. He at anyrate held that the majority of men would be lost (Enchir. 97).
2 De bapt. II. 8 If the Donatists were right, there would have been no Church
:
even in Cyprian's time ; their own origin would therefore have been unholy.
Augustine often reproaches them with the number of gross sinners in their midst.
Their grossest sin, it is true, was^ —schism (c. litt. Pet. II. 221).
3 25
C. Petil. "Malos in unitate catholica vel non noverunt, vel pro unitate
I. :
tolerant quos noverunt."

* Here and there in Augustine the thought occurs that the new covenant was
throughout milder than the old.

^ C. litt. Pet. III. 4 :
" Licet a malis interirn vita, moribus, corde ac voluntate
separari atque discedere, quee separatio semper oportet custodiatur. Corporalis
autem separatio ad SKCuli finem fidenter, patienter, fortiter exsptfctatur.
;
that it \% only within the Church that personal holiness can be

attained (see above sub. J))-
1 2. The unholy in the Church unquestionably belong to it
forbeing in its unity they are subject to the operation of the

means of sanctification, and can still become good and spiritual.
Yet they do not belong to the inner court of the Church, but
form a wider circle in it. [They are " vessels tô dishonour in
the house of God " (vasa in contumeliam in domo dei) they ;
are not themselves, like the " vessels to honour " (vasa in
honorem), the house of God, but are " in it " they are " in the ;
communion of the sacraments," not in the proper society of the

house, but " adjoined to the communion of the saints " (congre-
gationi sanctorum admixti) they are in a sense not in the
;
Church, because they are not the Church self therefore the ;
Church can also be described as a " mixed body " (corpus per-
mixtum).]^ Nay, even the heretics and schismatics, in so far as
they have appropriated the Church's means of sanctification

(see under), belong to the Catholic Church, since the latter makes
them sons without requiring to impart a second baptism.^ The
character of the Church's holiness is not modified by these
wider circles in the sphere to which it extends for, as regards ;
its foundation, means, and aim, it always remains the same, and
a time will come when the holiness of all its members for —
Augustine does not neglect this mark will be an actual fact. —
1 Sermo 4, 11 " Omnes quotquat fuerunt sancti, ad ipsam ecclesiam pertinent."
:
2 " Corpus permixtum " against the second rule of Tichonius, who had spoken of a
bipartite body of the Lord, a term rejected by Augustine. Not a few of Augustine's
arguments here suggest the idea that an invisible Church present " in occulto " in the
visible was the true Church (De bapt. V. 38).
3De bapt. I. 13 The question of the Donatists was whether in the view of
:
Catholics baptism begot "sons" in the Donatist Church. If the Catholics said it
did, then it should follow that the Donatists had a Church, and since there was only
one, the Church ; but if the question was answered in the negative, then they drew
the inference " Cur ergo apud vos non renascuntur per baptismum, qui transeunt a
:
nobis ad vos, cum apud nosfuerint baptizati, si nondum nati sunt?" To this Au-
gustine replies " Quasi vero ex hoc generet unde separata est, et non ex hoc unde
:
conjuncta est. Separata est enim a vinculo caritatis et pacio, sed juncta est in uno
baptismate. Itaque est u-na ecclesia, qua solq. Caiholica nominatur ; et quidquid
suum habet in com'munionibus diversorum a sua unitate separatis, per hoc quod suum
in eis habet, ipsa uiique generat, non illiE."
:;
CHAP. IV.] THE DONATIST- CONTROVERSY. I49
13. The third mark of the Church is Catholicity. It is that

which, combined with unity, furnishes the most impressive ex-
ternal proof, and the surest criterion of its truth. That is,
Catholicity — extension over the globe—was prophesied, and had

been realised, although it must be described as a miracle, that
an association which required such faith and obedience, and
handed down such mysteries, should have obtained this exten-
sion. The obvious miracle is precisely the evidence of the truth.
Donatists cannot be the Church, because they are virtually con-
fined to Africa. The Church can only exist where it proves its
Catholicity by union with Rome and the ancient Oriental
Churches, with the communities of the whole globe. The
objection that men's sin hinders the extension is without weight
would have had to be prophesied. But it is the oppo-
for that
site was prophesied and fulfilled.^ The reminder, also,
that
that many heresies were extended over the world is of no
consequence; for, firstly, almost all heresies are national,^
secondly, even the most wide-spread heresy finds another exist-
ing at its side, and thereby reveals its falsehood. [This is the
old sophism on the one hand, disintegration is regarded as the
:
essential characteristic of heresies on the other, they are ;
represented as forming a unity in order that the existence of

others side by side with it may be urged against each in tUrn.]
14. The fourth mark of the Church is its apostolicity. It was
displayed in- the Catholic Church, (i) in the possession of apo-
stolic writings,^ and doctrine, (2) in its ability to trace its ex-
istence up to the Apostolic communities and the Apostles, and
to point to its unity (communicatio) with the churches founded
by the latter.^ This proof was especially to be adduced in the
1 A Donatist, "historicus doctus," indeed urged the telling objection (Ep. 93, 23)
" Quantum ad totiusmundi pertinet partes, modica pars est in compensatione totius
mundi, in qua fides Christiana nominatur." Augustine, naturally, was unable really
to weaken the force of this objection.
^ We have already remarked that Augustine held these to have at least in many —
respects —
an independent authority ; see Doctrina Christ, and Ep 54, 55. In not a
few expositions it seems as if the appeal to the Church was solely to the Church that
possessed Scripture.
3 Besides the whole of the anti-Donatist writings, see, e.g., Ep. 43, 21; 44, 3^
49. 2, 3; S*. S; S3. 3- ..:...
ISO HISTORY OF DOGMA. [CHAP. IV.
succession of the Bishops, though their importance is for the

rest not so strongly emphasised by Augustine as by Cyprian ;
indeed passages occur in his works in which the universal priest-

hood, as maintained by Tertullian, is proclaimed.^
15. While among the apostolic communities those of the East
are also very important, yet that of Rome, and in consequence
its Bishop, hold the first place. Peter is the representative of
the Apostles, of Christians in general (JEp. 53, 2 " totius :
ecclesiae figuram gerens"), of weak Christians, and of Bishops,

or the Episcopal ministry. Augustine maintained the theory
of Cyprian and Optatus regarding Peter's chair it was occupied :
by the Roman Bishop and it was necessary to be in accord

with it, because it was the apostolic seat par excellence, i.e., the
bearer of the doctrinal authority and unity of the Church. His
statements as to the infallibility of the Roman chair are as un-
certain and contradictory as those dealing with the Councils
and Episcopate. He had no doubt that a Council ranked above
the Roman Bishop (Ep. 43, 19).^
16. Augustine was convinced of the infallibility of the Catho-
lic Church for it is a necessary consequence of its authority as
;
based on Apostolicity. But he never had any occasion to think

out this predicate, and to establish it in the representation and
decisions of the Church. Therefore he made many admissions,
partly without thought, partly when hard pressed, which, logic-
ally understood, destroyed the Church's infallibility.
17. So also he holds the indispensableness of the Church, for
it follows from the exclusive relation to Christ and the Holy
Spirit revealed in its unity and holiness. This indispensableness
isexpressed in the term " Mother Church "^ (ecclesia mater or
corpus Christi); on modifications, see later.
18. Finally, he was also convinced of the permanence of the
1 De civit. dei, XX. 10 : Distinction between sacerdotes a.w\ firoprie sacerdotes.

' Augustine's attitude to the Roman Bishop, i.e. to the infallible Roman tradition,
is shown Zosimus (Reuter p. 312 ff., 325 ff.) and in the ex-
clearly in his criticism of
tremely valuable 36 Epistle, which discusses the work of an anonymous Roman
writer, who had glorified the Roman Church along with Peter (c. 21 " Petrus, apo-
stolorum caput, coeli janitor, ecclesise fundamentum"), and had declared statutory
institutions of the Roman Church to be universally binding.
8 C. fitt Pet. III. 10 "deum patrem et ejus ecclesiam matrem habere."
:
,CHAP. IV.] THE. DON ATIST CONTROVERSY. 151
Church, and therewith also of its primeval character for this ;
follows from the exclusive relation to God yet ideas entered ;
into the conception of permanence and primevalness, which did

not flow from any consideration of the empirical Church (" the
heavenly Church " on the one hand, the " city of God " on the
other on this see under).
;
19. The empirical Catholic Church is also the " Kingdom of

God " (regnurri dei, civitas del). As a matter of fact these terms
are primarily employed in a view which is indifferent to the
empirical Church (see under) but since to Augustine there was
;
•
ultimately only one Church, everything that was true of it was

also applicable to the empirical Church. At all times he re-
ferred to the CatholicChurch the old term which had long been
applied to the Church, " the kingdom (city) of God," of course
having in mind not that the Church was the mixed, but the
true body (corpus permixtum, verum).^
20. But Augustine gave a much stronger hold than his pre-
decessors to the conception that the Church is the kingdom of
God, and by the manner in which in his " Divine Comedy," the
" De civitate dei," he contrasted the Church with the State, far
more than his own expressed view, he roused the conviction
that the empirical Catholic Church sans phrase was the kingdom
of God, and the independent State that of the devil. That is,
although primarily the earthly State (civitas terrena) consisted
for Augustine in the society of the profane and reprobate,
inclusive of demons, while the city of God (civitas dei) was the
1 Perhaps the most cogent evidence of this is Ep. 36, 17. The anonymous Roman
Christian had appealed to the verse " Non est regnurh dei esca et potus," and simply
identified "regnum dei" with " ecclesia," to prove that the Roman command to fast
on the Sabbath was apostolic. Augustine does not reject this identification, but only
the inference drawn from it by the anonymous writer. Here, however, ecclesia ;s
manifestly the Catholic Church. In De trinit. I. 16, 20, 21, Augustine has no doubt
that the regnum, vifhich Christ will hand over to the Father, " omnes jusli sunt, in
quibus nunc regnat mediator," or the " credentes et viventes ex fide ; fideles quippe
ejus quos redemit sanguine suo dicti sunt regnum ejus." That is the Church ; but at
the same time it is self-evident that its " wrinkles" are ignored, yet not so its organi-
sation ; see on Ps. CXXVI. 3 : " Quae autem domus dei et ipsa civitas ? Domus
enim dei populus dei, quia domus dei templum dei . . omnes fideles, quae est
.
domus dei, cum angelis faciunt unam civitatem. Habet custodes. Christus custodie-
bat, custos erat. Et episcopi hoc faciunt. Nam ideo altior locus positus est episcopis,
ut ipsi superintendant et tamquam custodiant populum." .

152 . HISTORY OF DOGMA. [CIIAP. IV.
heavenly communion of all saints of all times, cofnprising thfe

angels, yet he held: that the former found their earthly historical
form of expression and manifestation in the secular State, the
latter in the empirical Church for there were by no means
;
two cities, kingdoms, temples, or houses of God. Accordingly

the kingdom of God is the Church. .And, carried away by the
Church's authority and triumph in the world, as also profoundly
moved by the fall of the Roman world-empire, whose internal
and external power manifestly no longer existed save in the
Church, Augustine saw in the present epoch, i.e., in the Church's
History, the millennial kingdom that had been announced by
John (De civit. XX.). By this means he revised, without comr
pletely abolishing, the ancient Chiliasm of the Latin Church.^
But if it were once determined that the millenniai kingdom was
now, since Christ's appearance, in existence, the Church was ele-
vated to the throne of supremacy over the world ; for while this
kingdom consists in Christ's reign, he only reigns in the present
through the Church. Augustine neither followed out nor
clearly perceived the hierarchical tendency of his position ;
yet
he reasoned out the present reign of Christ which he had to
demonstrate (XX. 9-13) by reflecting that only the "saints"
(sancti) reign with Christ, and not, say, the "tares" that thus ;
only those reign in the kingdom who themselves constitute the

kingdom and that they reign because they aim at what is
;
above, fight the fight of sanctification, and practise patience in

suffering, etc. But he himself prepared the way directly for
the sacerdotal interpretation of his thought, or positively ex-
pressed it, in two of his arguments. The one was drawn from
him by exegesis,^ the other is a result of a manifest view of his
own. In the first place, viz., he had to show that Rev. XX. 4
1How far he went in this is shown by observing that in B. XX. he has connected
with the present, as already fulfilled, not a few passages which plainly refer to Christ's
Second Advent ; see c. S :
" Multa prseterea quae de ultimo judicio ita dici videntur,
ut diligenter considerata reperiantur ambigua vel magis ad aliud pertinentia, sive
scilicet ad eum salva oris adventum, quo per totum hoc tempus in ecclesia sua venit,
hoc est in membris suis, particulatim atqttepaulatim, qiioniam tota corpus est ejus, sive ad
excidium terrenas Hierusalem, quia et de illo cum loquitur, plerumque sic loquitur
tamquam de fine sseculi atque illo die judicii novissimo et magno loquatur." Yet he
'has left standing much of the dramatic eschatology. ,
' See Reuter, Studie IH.

;
CHAP. IV.] THE DONATIST CONTROVERSY. 153
(" those sitting on thrones judge ") was even now being fulfilled.
He found this fulfilment in the heads of the Church, who controlled
the keys of binding and loosing, accordingly in the clergy (XX. 9).
Secondly, he prepared the way for the supremacy of the Church
over the State ^ in his explicit arguments both against and in
favour of the latter (XIX., and even before this in V.). The
earthly State (civitas terrena) and accordingly secular kingdoms
are sprung from sin, the virtue of the ambitious, and simply
because they strive for earthly possessions summed up in the —
pax terrena, carried out in all earthly affairs they are sinful, —
and must finally perish, even if they be legitimate and salutary
on earth. The secular kingdom is finally, indeed, a vast robbery
(IV. 4) " righteousness being abolished, what are kingdoms
:
but great robberies ? ") ^ which ends in hell in everlasting war

the Roman Republic never possessed peace (XIX. 21). From
this point of view the Divine State is the only legitimate asso-
ciation.
But Augustine had yet another version to give of the matter.
The establishment of earthly peace (pax terrena) see its mani- —
fold forms in XIX. 13 —
is necessary upon earth. Even those
who treasure heavenly peace as the highest good are bound to
care on earth by love for earthly peace. (Already the Jewish
State was legitimate in this sense see the description IV. 34,
;
and the general principle XV. 2: "We therefore find two

forms in the earthly State, one demonstrating its present
existence, the other serving to signify the heavenly State by its
presence here the Divine State is also to be understood by

" ;
*
the earthly, in so far as the former is copied on earth.) The

Roman kingdom has become Christian, and Augustine rejoices
in the fact.* But it is only by the help oijustitia that rests on
love that the State can secure earthly peace, and lose the
Augustine had already written in Ep. 35 (A.D. 396, c. 3)

1 " Dominus jugo suo in
:
gremio ecclesise toto orbe diffuse omnia terrena regna subjecit."

2 " Remota justitia quid sunt regna nisi magna latrocinia " ?
3 " Invenimus ergo in terrena civitate duas formas, unam suam praesentiam demon-
strantem, alteram cselesti civitati significandae sua prseseiitia servientem."

4 It is not, accordingly, involved under all circumstances in the notion of the earthly
State that it is the organism of sin. Passages on the Christian State, Christian ages,
and Catholic emperors, are given in Reuter, p. 141.
character of being a robbery (latrocinium).But ri'ghteousness

and love only where the worship of the true God is found,
exist
in the Church, God's State.^ Accordingly the State must be
dependent on the kingdom of God in other words, those who, ;
as rulers, administer the earthly peace of society, are legitimate

and " blessed " (felices), when they make " their power sub-
servient to the divine majesty for the extension as widely as
possible of the worship of God, if they love that kingdom more,
where they do not fear having colleagues" ^ Rulers, therefore,
must not only be Christians, but must serve the Church in order
to attain their own object (pax terrena) ; for outside the Divine
— —
State of love and righteousness there are no virtues, but only
the semblance of virtues, ?.^., splendid vices (XIX. 25). How-
ever much Augustine may have recognised, here and elsewhere,
the relative independence and title of the State,^ the proposition
stands, that since the Church is the kingdom of God it is the
duty of the State to serve it, because the State becomes more
legitimate by being, as it were, embodied in it.* It is especially
the duty of the State, however, to aid the Church by forcible
measures against idolatry, heretics, and schismatics for com- ;
pulsion is suitable in such cases to prevent the good from being

seduced, to instruct the wavering and ignorant, and to punish
the wicked. But it by no means follows from this that in
Augustine's view the State was to pursue anything that might
be called an independent ecclesiastical or religious policy. It
rather in matters of religion constantly supports the cause of
the Church, and this at once implies that it is to receive its
1 Augustine, indeed, also holds that there isan earthly justitia, which is a
great good contrasted with flagitia and facinora ; he can even appreciate the value of
relative blessings (Reuter, p. 135 ff.), but this righteousness finally is dissipated,
because, not having itself issued from "the Good," it cannot permanently institute
anything good.
2V. 24: If they "suam potestatem ad dei cultutn maxime dilatandum majestati
ejus famulam faciunt, si plus amant illud regnum, ubi non timent habere consortes."
3 What holds true of the State applies equally, of course, to all particular blessings
marriage, family, property, etc.

^ Augustine, therefore, hold^ a different view from Optatus (see above, p. 48) ; at
least, a second consideration is frequent, in which the Church does not exist in the
Roman empire, but that empire is attached to the Church. In matters of terrena
felicitas the Church, according to Augustine, was bound to obey the State.
CHAP. IV.] THE DONATIST CONTROVERSY. 1 55
instructions from the Church. And this was actually Augustine's

procedure. His conception of the " Christian State " did not
include any imperial papistical title on the part of the civil
power; such a title was rather absolutely precluded. Even if the
Church begged for clemency to heretics, against whom it had
itself invoked the arm of the State, this did not establish the
independent right of the latter to inflict punishment it served :
the Church in punishing, and it gratified it in practising

clemency.^
II. 21. Augustine was compelled by the Donatist practice of
re-baptism and re-ordination to examine more closely, following

Optatus, the significance and efficacy of the functions of the
Church. It was inevitable that in doing so he should give a
more prominent place to the notion of the Church as the com-
munion of the Sacraments, and at the same time have instituted
extremely sophistical discussions on the Sacraments which, —
however, he did not yet carry out to their conclusion in order —
to prove their objectivity, and make them independent of men,
yet without completely externalising them, while vindicating
them as the Church's exclusive property.
22.To begin with, it was an immense advance, only possible
to so spiritual a man as Augustine, to rank the Word along
with the Sacraments. It is to him we owe the phrase " the
Word and Sacraments." If he did not duly appreciate and
carry out the import of the " Word," yet he perceived that as
gospel it lay at the root of every saving rite of the Church.^
1 On the relation of Church and State, see Dorner, pp. 295-312, and the modifi-
cations considered necessary by Renter in Studien, 3 and 6. Augustine did not at
firstapprove the theory of inquisition and compulsion (c. Ep. Man. c. 1-3), but he
was convinced of its necessity in the Donatist controversy (" coge intrare"). He
novf held all means of compulsion legitimate except the death penalty ; Optatus
approved of the latter also. If it is not difficult to demonstrate that Augustine always
recognised an independent right of the State to be obeyed, yet that proves little. It
may, indeed, be the case that Augustine valued the State relatively more highly than
the ancient Christians, Vfho were still more strongly influenced by eschatological
views. But we may not forget that he advanced not only the ccelestis societas, but the
catholica, in opposition to the State.
2 Ep. 21, 3: " sacramentum et verbum dei populo ministrare." Very frequently
verbum-^ evangelium — C\a\it and the first cause of regeneration. C. litt. Pet. I. 8 :
" Semen quo regeneror verbum dei est." The objective efficacy of the Word is
; '
1S6 HISTORY OF DOGMA. [CHAP. IV.
23. Exhaustively as he dealt with the Sacraments, he was far

from outlining a doctrine regarding them he contented himself ;
rather with empirical reflections' on ecclesiastical procedure and

its defence. He did not evolve a harmonious theory either of
the number or notion of the Sacraments.^ Every material sign
with which a salvation-conferring word was connected was to
him a Sacrament. " The word is added to the element, and a
Sacrament is constituted, itself being, as it were, a visible word."^
The emphasis rests so strongly on the Word and faith (on John
XXV. 12: "believe and thou hast eaten") that the sign is
simply described in many places, and indeed, as a rule, as a
figure. But this view is modified by the fact that in almost as
many passages the Word, with its saving power, is also con-
ceived as a sign of an accompanying invisible entity,* and all
are admonished to take whatever is here presented to the senses
as a guarantee of the reality.But everything beyond this is
involved in obscurity, since we do not know
to what signs
Augustine would have us apply his ideas about the Sacrament
—
sharply emphasised, but outside of the Church it does not succeed in infusing love.
C. Pet. in. 67 : " minister verbi et sacramenti evangehci, si bonus est, consocius fit
evangelii, si autem malus est, non ideo dispensator non est evangelii." II. 11 :
" JSascitur credens non ex mmistri stcrilitate, sed ex veritatis foecunditate. " Still,
Luther was right when he included even Augustine among the new-fashioned theo-
logianswho talk much about the Sacraments and little about the Word.
1 "Aliud videtur aliud intelligitur " (Sermo 272) is Augustine's main thought,
which Ratramnus afterwards enforced so energetically. Hahn (L. v. d. Sacram., p.

II ff.) has detailed Augustine's various statements on the notion of the Sacrament.
We learn, e.g., from Ep. 36 and 54, the strange point of view from which at times he
regarded the conceptinn of the Sacrament see 54, I :
" Dominus' nosier, sicut ipse
:
in evangelio loquiiur, leni jugo suo nos subdidit et sarcinae levi unde sacramentis
;
numero paucissimis, observatione facillimis, significatione priestantissimis societotem

novi populi coUigavit." Baptism and the Lord's Supper follow "et si quid aliud in
scripturis canonicis commendatur. . Ilia autem quae non scripta, sed tradita cus-
. .
todimus, quEe quidem toto teriarum orbe servantur, datur intelligi vel ab ipsis aposto-
lis, vel plenariis conciliis, quorum est in ecclesia saluberrima auctoritas, commendata
atque statuta retineri, sicut quod domini passio et resurrectio et ascensio in cselum et
adventus de ceelo spiritus sancti anniversaria sollemnitate celebrantur, et si quid aliud
ab universa, quacumque se diffundit, ecclesia."
tale occurrit quocl servatur
^ On John T. 80, 3 " Accedit verbum ad elementum et fit sacramentum, etiam
:
ipsum tamquam visibile verbum.

3 De catech. rud. 50 " Signacula quidem rerum divinarum esse visibilia, sed res
:
ipsas invisibiles in eis honorari."

CHAP. IV.] THE JDONATIST CONTROVERSY. 1 57
in De doctr. Christ, he speaks as if Baptism and the Lord's

Supper were almost alone in question, but in other passages his
language is different.^
24. He himself had no occasion to pursue his reflections

further in this direction. On the other hand, the Donatist
thesis that the efficacy of theSacrament depended on the cele-
brant, and the Donatist practice of re-baptism, forced him to
set up two self-contradictory positions. First, the Sacraments
are otdy efficacious in the Church, but they are also efficacious
If he abandoned the former prin-
in circles outside the Church.
he denied the indispensableness of the Church
ciple, if he ;
sacrificed the second, he would have required to approve of re-

baptism. Secondly, the Sacraments are independent of any
human disposition, and they are inseparably attached to the
Catholic Church and faith. To give up the one thesis meant
that the Donatist was right; to doubt the other was to make the
Sacrament a magical performance indifferent to Christianity and
faith. In order to remove these contradictions, it was necessary
to look for distinctions. These he found, not, say, by discrimi-
nating between the offer and bestowal of grace, but by assum-
ing a twofold efficacy of the Sacraments. These were (i) an
indelible marking of every recipient, which took place wherever
the Sacrament was administered, no matter by whom,^ and (2)
an adininistration of grace, in which the believer participated
onty in the union of the Catholic Church. According to this he
could teach that the Sacraments belong exclusively to the
:
'Catholic Church, and only in it bestow grace on faith but they ;
can be. purloined from that Church, since, " being holy in them-
selves," they primarily produce an effect which depends solely
;on the Word and sign (the impression of an indelible " stamp "),
1 Halin (p. 12) gives the following definition as Augustinian " The Sacrament is
:
a corporeal sign, instituted by God, of a holy object, which, from its nature, it is
;
adapted by a certain resemblance to represent, and by means of it God, under cer-
tain conditions, imparts his grace to those who mike use of.it."
^ Ep. 173, 3 " Vos eves Christi estis, characterem dominicum portatis in sacra-
:
.
mento." De bapt. c. Donat. IV. ,16 : " Manifestum est, fieri posse, ut in eis qui
sunt ex parte diaboli sanctum sit sacramentum Christi, non ad salutem, sed ad judi-
cium eorum sigji?. nostri imperatoris. in eis cognoscimus
. . . desertores sunt."
. . ,
VI. I " Oves dominicum characterem a fallacibus depreedatoribus foris adeptse."

:
IS8 HISTORY OF DOGMA. [CHAP. IV.
and not on a human factor.^ Heretics have stolen it, and

administer it validly in their associations. Therefore the
Church does not again baptise repentant heretics (schismatics),
being certain that at the moment of faithful submission to the
Catholic communion of love, the Sacrament is " efficacious for
salvation" (ad salutem valet) to him who had been baptised
outside its pale.^
25. This theory could not but leave the nature of the
" stamp " impressed and its relation to the communication of
grace obscure.^ The legal claim of schismatics and heretics to

belong to the Catholic Church appears to be the most important,
and, indeed, the sole effect of the " objectivity " of the Sacra-
rngnts outside the Church.* But the theory was only worked
out by Augustine in baptism and ordination, though even here
he did not succeed in settling all the problems that arose, or in
actually demonstrating the " objectivity." But in his treatment
of the Lord's Supper, e.g., it cannot be demonstrated at all. For
^ De bapt. IV. 16 " Per se ipsum considerandus est baptismus verbis evangelicis,
:
non adjuncta neque permixta ulla perversitate atque malitia sive accipientium sive
tradentium non cogitandum, quis det sed quid det." C. litt. Pet. 1.8:
, . .
" (Against various Donatist theses, e.g., ' conscientia dantis adtenditur, qui abluat ac-
cipientis') Saspe mihi ignota est humana conscientia, sed certus sum de Christi
misericordia ... non est perfidus Chiistus, a quo fidem percipio, non reatutn . . .
origo niea Cliristus est, radix mea Christus est semen quo regeneror, verbum
. . .
dei est . . . etiam si ille, per quem audio, quse mihi dicit ipse non facit ... me
innocentem non facit nisi qui moituus est propter delicta nostra et resurrexit propter
justificationera nostram. Non enim in ministrum, per quem baptizor, credo, sed in
eum, qui justificat impium."
^ We have to emphasise the distinction between " habere " and " utiliter habere "
often drawn in the writings against the Doiiatists c. Cresc. I. 34 : " Vobis ;
(Donatistis) pacem nos annuntiamus, non ut, cum ad nos veneritis, alteram baplismum
accipiatis, sed ut eum qui jam apud vos erat utiliter habeatis," or "una catholica
ecclesia non in qua sola unus baptismus habetur, sed in qua sola unus baptismus
salubriter habetur." De bapt. c. Donat. IV. 24 " Qui in invidia intus et malevo- :
lentia sine caritate vivunt, verum baptisma possunt et accipere et tradere. (Sed)
salus, inquit Cyprianus, extra ecclesiam non est. Quis negat ? Et idee quascumque
ipsius ecclesiiE habentur, extra ecclesiam non valent ad salutem. Sed aliud est non
habere, aliud non utiliter habere."
s In the Catholic Church the seal and salvation coincide
where faith is present.
Augustine's primary concern was that the believer should receive in the Sacrament a
firm conviction of the mercy of Christ.
* Augustine did not really lay any stress on legal relation ; but he- did, as a
matter
of fact, a great deal to set matters in this light.
.
since, according to him, the reality of the Sacrament (res sacra-

menti) was invisible incorporation in the body of Christ ( Augus-
tine deals with the elements symbolically), and the eucharistic
sacrifice was the sacrifice of love or peace, the co-operation of
the Catholic Church is always taken to be essential to t/ie Lord's
Supper. Accordingly there is here no " stamp " independent of
the Church.^ But in the case of Baptism, he could assume that
1 Sermo 57, 7 " Eucharistia panis noster quotidianus est ; sed sic accipiamus
:
illuni, ut non solum ventre sed et mente reficiamur. Virtus enim ipsa, quae ibi
intelligitur, unitas est, ut redacti in corpus ejus, effecti membra ejus, simus quod
accipimus." 272 " panis est corpus Christi
: corpus Christi si vis intelligere,
. . ,
apostolum audi : vos estis corpus Christi." Augustine maintains the traditional con-
ception that, in speaking of the " body of Christ," we may think of all the ideas
connected vifith the vioii (the body is TvevixaTinbv, is itself spirit, is the Church), but
he prefers the latter, and, like the ancient Church, suffers the reference to forgiveness
of sins to fall into the background, Unitas and vita (De pecc. mer. I. 34) occupy
the foreground. more than in that of any other
Therefore in this case also, nay,
signum, the sign is wholly irrelevant. This " sacramentum unitatis" assures
believers and gives them what they are, on condition of their po-sessing faith. (On
John XXVI. I "credere in eum, hoc est manducare panem vivum " ; De civit.
:
XX I. 25. ) No one has more strongly resisted the realistic interpretation of the Lord's
Supper, and pointed out that what " visibiliter celebratur, oportet invisibiliter
intelligi " (On Ps. XCVIII. 9 fin.). " The flesh profits nothing," and Christ is not
on earth " secundum corporis prxsentiam." Now it is possible that, like the Greeks,
Augustine might here or there have entertained the thought that the sacramental
body of the Lord must also be identified with the real. But I have found no passage
which clearly supports this (see also Dorner, p. 267 ff. ). All we can say is that not
a few passages at a first glance can be, and soon were, understood in this way.
Augustine, the spiritual thinker, has in general greatly weakened the dogmatic signifi-
cance of the Sacrament. He indeed describes it, like Baptism, as necessary to salva-
tion ; but since he hardly ever cites the argument that
it is connected with the
resurrection and eternal reduced to the unity and love which find
life, the necessity is
one expression along with others in the Lord's Supper. The holy food is rather, in
general, a declaration and assurance, or the avowal of an existing state, than a gift.
In this Augustine agrees undoubtedly with the so-called pre-Reformers and Zwingli.
This leads us to the import of the rite as a sacrifice (" sacrificium corporis Christi ").
Here there are four possible views. The Church presents itself as a sacrifice in
body ;
Christ's Christ's sacrificial death is symbolically repeated by the priest in
memory of him body is really offered anew by the priest ; and Christ, as
; Christ's
priest, continuallyand everywhere presents himself as a sacrifice to the Father. Of
these views, I, 2, and 4 can certainly be instanced in Augustine, but not the third.
He strictly maintains the prerogative of the priest ; but there is as little mention of a
<' conficere corpus Christi " as of Transubstantiation ; for the passage (.Sermo 234, 2)
to which Catholics delight to appeal "non omnis panis sed accipiensbenedictionem

:
fitcorpus Christi," only means that, as in all Sacraments, the res isnow added to \}ae.fanis,
and makes it the signum reiinvisibilis ; by consecration the bread becomes something
^6o HISTORY OF DOGMA. [CHAR IT.
itcould establish, even outside of the Church, an inalienable

relation to the triune God, whose place could not be supplied by
anything else, "^Âchm certain circumstances createda kind of faith,
but which only bestowed salvation within the pale of the Church.^
differentfrom what it was before. The res invisibilis is not, however, the real body,
but incorporation into Christ's body, which is the Church. According to Augustine,
the unworthy also obtain the valid Sacrament, but what they do receive is indeed
wholly obscure. I could not say with Dorner (p. 274) " Augustine does not know
:
of any participation in the real (?) body and blood on the part of unbelievers."
1 It is now the proper administration of baptism (rite) that is em-
phasised. The Sacrament belongs to God therefore it cannot be rendered
;
invalid by sin or heresy. The indispensableness of baptism rests of sheer necesr

sity on the " stamp," and that is the most fatal turn it could take, because in
that case faithis by no means certainly implied. The " Punici " are praised in De
pecc. mer. I. 34, because they simply call baptism "salus " ; but yet the indispens-
ableness of the rite is not held to consist in its power of conferring salvation, but in
the stamp. This indispensableness is only infringed by the baptism of blood, or by the
wish to receive baptism where circumstances render that impossible. In the corres-
ponding line oftliought baptism rightly administered among heretics appears, because
possessed unlawfully, to be actually inefficacious, nay, it brings a judgment. The
Euphrates, which flows in Paradise and in profane cfmntries, only brings forth fruit
in the former. Therefore the controversy between Dorner and Schmidt, whether
Augustine did or did not hold the Sacrament to be dependent on the Catholic Church,
is idle. It is independent of it, in so far as it is necessary ; dependent, if it is to be-
stow salvation. Yet Dornep (I.e. p. 252 f., and elsewhere) seems to me to be advanc-
ing not an Augustinian conception, but at most a deduction from one, when he
maintains that Augustine does not contradict the idea that the Churcli is rendered
holy by membership, by emphasising the Sacraments, but by laying stress on the
its
.sanctity of the whole, namely the Church. He repeatedly makes the suggestion,
however, in order to remove the difficulties in Augustine's notion of the Sacraments,
that he must have distinguished between the offer and bestowal of grace ; even the
former securing their objective validity. But this is extremely questionable, and
would fall short of Augustine for his correct religious view is that grace operates and
;
does not merely make an offer. Augustine, besides, has wavered to such an extent
in marking off the place of the stamp, and of saving efficacy in baptism, that he has
even supposed a momentary forgiveness of sin in the case of heretics (De bapt. I.
19; III. 18: " rursus debita redeunt per hseresis aut schismatis obstinationem et
ideo necessarium ha1)ent hujusmodi homines venire ad Catholicam pacem ; " for, on
John XXVII. 6 " pax ecclesiae dimittit peccata et ab ecclesise pace alienatio tenet
:
peccata petra tenet, petra dimittit columba tenet, columba dimittit unitas tenet,
; ; ;
unitas dimittit "). The most questionable feature of Augustine's doctrine of baptism
(within the Church) is that he not only did not get rid of the magical idea, but
strengthened it by his interest in infant baptism. While he intended that baptism
and faith should be connected, infant baptism made a cleavage between them. He
deduced the indispensableness of infant baptism from original sin, but by no means
also from the tendency to make the salvation of all men dependent On the Church (see
Dorner, p. 257). In order to conserve faith in baptism, Augustine assumed a kind
CHAP. IV.] THE DONATIST CONTROVERSY. l6l
And of Ordination he could teach that, properly

in the case be-
stowed, conveyed the inalienable power to administer
it the
Sacraments, although the recipient, if he stood outside the
Church, only officiated to his own perdition.^ In both cases his
of vicarious faith on the part of god-parents, but, as it would appear, he laid no stress
on it, since his true opinion was that baptism took the place of faith for children.
However, the whole doctrine of baptism is ultimately for Augustine merely prelimin-
ary. Baptism is indispensable, but it is, after all, nothing more. The main thing is
the active presence of the Holy Spirit in the soul so that, from this point of view,
;
baptism is of no real importance for salvation. But Augustine was far from drawing
this inference.
^ Little reflection had hitherto been given in the Church to ordination. The Dona-
tists furnished a motive for thinking about it, and it was once more Augustine who
bestowed on the Church a series of sacerdotal ideas, without himself being interested
in their sacerdotal tendency. The practice had indeed for long been sacerdotal ; but
it was only by combination with baptism, and the principle that ordination
its fateful
did not require (as against Cyprian) a moral disposition to render it valid, that the
new sacrament became perfect. It now conferred an inalienable stamp, and was,
therefore, if it had been properly administered, even though outside the Church, not
repeated, and as it communicated an objective holiness, it gave the power also to
propagate holiness. From Book I. c. I of De bapt. c. Donat. onwards, the sacra-
mentuni baptismi and the sacramentum baptismi dandi are treated in common *(§ 2 :
" sicut baptizatus, si ab unitate sacramentum baptismi non amittit, sic

recesserit,
etiam ordinatus, si ab unitate recesserit, sacramentum dandi baptismi non amittit."
C. ep. Farm. II. 28: " utrumque in Catholica non licet it!erari." The clearest
passage is De bono conjug. 32: " Quemadmodum si fiat ordinatio cleri ad plebem
congregandam, etiamsi plebis congregatio non subsequatur, manet tamen in illis
ordinatis sacramentum ordinationis, et si aliqua culpa quisquam ab ofidcio removeatur,
Sacramento domini semel imposito non carebit, quamvis ad judicium permanente ").
The priests are alone appointed to administer the sacraments (in c. ep. Farm. II. 29
we have the remarkably tortuous explanation of lay-baptism ; Augustine holds that '
it is a veniale delictum, even when the necessity is urgent ; he, at least, believes it
possible that But baptism, even when unnecessarily usurped by laymen, is

it is so.
valid, although ilKcite datum ; for the " stamp " is there. Yet Augustine warns ur-
gently against encroaching on the office of the priest.) None but the priest can
celebrate the Lord's Supper. That was ancient tradition. The judicial functions of
priests fall into the background in Augustine (as compared with Cyprian). We do
not find in him, in a technical form, a sacrament of penance. Yet it actually existed,
and he was the first to give it a substructure by his conception that the gratia Christi
was not exhausted in the retrospective effect of baptismal grace. In that period,
baptism and penance were named together as if they were the two chief Sacraments,
without the latter being expressly called a Sacrament ; see Pelagius' confession of
faith (Hahn, § 133) " Hominem, si post baptismum lapsus fuerit, per paenitentiam
:
credimus posse salvari ; " which is almost identical with that of Julian of Eclanum
(I.e. §135): " Eum, qui post baptismum peccaverit, per paenitentiam credimus
posse salvari ;" and Augustine's (Enchir. 46) :
" Peccata, quae male agendo postea
L
view was determined by the following considerations. First, he

sought to defend the Church, and to put the Donatists in the
wrong. Secondly, he desired to indicate the mark of the
Church's holiness, which could not, with certainty, be established
in any other way, in the objective holiness of the Sacraments.
And, thirdly, he wished to give expression to the thought that
there must exist somewhere, in the action of the Church, an
element to which faith can cling, which is not supported by
men, but which sustains faith itself, and corresponds to the
assurance which the believer rests on grace. Augustine's
doctrine of grace has a very great share in his doctrine of the
sacraments, or, more accurately, of the sacrament of baptism.
On the other hand, he had by no means any sacerdotal interest
in this conception. But it could not fail afterwards to develop in
an essentially sacerdotal sense. But, at the same time, men were
impelled in quite a different direction by the distinction between
the outward rite and accompanying effect, by the value given
to the " Word " and the desire to maintain the objectivity of the
Sacrament. The above distinction could not but lead in later
times to a spiritualising which refined away the Sacraments, or,
on the other hand, centred them in the " Word," where stress
was laid on a given and certain authority, and therewith on the
supremacy of the Word. Both these cases occurred. Not only
does the Mediaeval Catholic doctrine of the Sacraments go back
to Augustine, but so do the spiritualists of the Middle Ages,
and, in turn, Luther and Calvin are indebted to him for sug-
gestions.^
committumur, possunt et paenitendo sanari, sicut etiam post baptismum fieri videmus ;"
(c. 65) : " Neque de ipsis criminibus quamlibet magnis remittendis in sancta ecclesia
del misericordia desperanda est agentibus psenitentiam secundum modum sui cujusque
peccati." He is not speaking of baptism, but of the Church's treatment of its mem-
bers after baptism, when he says (I.e. c. 83) : " Qui vero in ecclesia remitti peccata
non credens contemnit tantam divini muneris largitatem et in hac obstinatione mentis
diem claudit extremum, reus est illo irremissibili peccato in spiritum sanctum."
1 A passage in Augustine's letter to Januarius (Ep.
55, c. 2) on the nature of the
sacrament became very important for after ages " Primum oportet noveris diem
:
natalem domini non in sacramento celebrari, sed tantum in memoriam revocari quod
natus sit, ac per hoc nihil opus erat, nisi revolutum anni diem, quo ipsa res acta est,
CHAP. IV;] THE DONATIST CONTROVERSY. 163
Augustine's conception, above described, of the visible

Church and means of grace is full of self-contradictions. His
identification of the Church with the visible Catholic Church
was not a success. He meant that there should be only one
Church, and that none but believers should belong to it but ;
the wicked and hypocrites were also in it, without being it nay, ;
even heretics were in a sense in it, since they participated in

the Sacraments. But in that case is the Church still visible ?
It is —
in the Sacraments. But the Church which is visible in
the Sacraments is certainly not the bride and body of Christ,
the indispensable institution of salvation that is alone the ;
Church which possessed by the spirit of love and yet it is

is ;
masked by the presence of the wicked and hypocritical. And

the Sacrament cannot be relied upon for while it is certainly ;
not efficacious for salvation outside the Catholic Church, it is

by no means certainly efficacious within it. The one Church is
the true body of Christ, a mixed body, and the outward
society of the Sacraments in each instance we have a different
;
circle but it is as essential and important that it should be the

;
one as the other. What is the meaning, then, " of being in the
Church " (in ecclesia esse) ? Every speculation on the notions
of things is fated to stumble on contradictions ; everything can
be something else, anything is everything, and everything is
nothing. The speculation surprises us with a hundred points
of view —that is its strength —to end in none of them being
really authoritative.
But all Augustine's deliverances on this subject are seen to
be merely conditional in their value, not only from their self-
contradictions, but from the fact that the theologian is not, or is
only to a very limited extent, expressing his religious conviction.
He felt and wrote as he did because he was the defender of the
practice of the Church, whose authority he needed for his faith.
But this faith took quite other directions. Even those incon-
festa devotione signari. Sacranientum est autem in aliqiia celebratione, cuvi rei gestis
commemoratio itafit, ut aliquid etiam significari intelligatur, quod sancte accipiendum
est. Eo itaque modo egimus pascha ut non solum in memoriam quod gestum est, re-
vocemus, id est, quod mortuus est Christus at resurrexit, sed etiam cetera, quae circa
ea adtestantur ad sacramenti significationem non omittamus."
sistencies, which indeed were partly traditional, show that his

conception of the Church was penetrated by an element which
resisted the idea that it was visible. This element, however,
was itself by no means congruous throughout, but again com-
prehended various though intertwined features.
1. The Church is heavenly ; as bride and body of Christ it is
quite essentially a heavenly society (cselestis societas). This

ancient traditional idea stood in the foreground of Augustine's
practical faith. Wtiat the Church is, it cannot at all be on earth ;
it possesses its truth, its seat, in heaven. There alone is to be
' found the true sphere of its members ; a small fragment wander
as pilgrims here upon earth for a time. It may indeed be said
that upon earth we have only the copy of the heavenly Church ;
for in so far as the earthly fragment is a " civitas terrena " (an
it is not yet what it will be.
earthly state) It is united with
the heavenly Church by hope. It is folly to regard the present
Church as the_ Kingdom of Heaven.
left them but " What is
to assert that the kingdom of heaven

belongs to the itself
temporal life in which we now exist ? For why should not
blind presumption advance to such a pitch of madness ? And
what is wilder than that assertion ? For although the Church
even as it now exists is sometimes called the kingdom of
heaven, it is surely so named because of its future and eternal
existence .'
" ^
2. The Church is primeval, and its members are therefore not

all included in the visible institution of the Catholic Church.
We now meet with the conception expounded by Augustine in
his great work " De civitate dei," at which he wrought for
V almost The civitas dei, i.e., the society in which

fifteen years.
there rules "the love of God to the contempt of self" (amor dei
usque ad contemptum sui, XIV. 28), and which therefore aspires
to " heavenly peace " (pax cslestis), began in the angelic world.
With this the above conception (see sub. i) is combined : the
1 De virgin. 24 : "Quid aliud istis restat nisi ut ipsum legnum cselorum ad lianc
temporalem vitam, in qua nunc sumus, asserant pertinere ? Cur enim non et in banc
insaniam progrediatur cjeca prsesumptio ? Et quid hac assertione furiosius ? Nam
etsi regnum caslorum aliquando ecclesia etiam quse hoc tempore est appellatur ad
hoc utique sic appellatur, quia futurse vitse sempiternseque coUigitur." It is needless
to quote more passages, they are so numerous.
"

65
city of God is it embraces all

the heavenly Jerusalem. But
believers of the past, present, and future
mingled with the ; it
earthly State (civitas terrena) before the Deluge,^ ran through a

history on earth in six periods (the Deluge, Abraham, David,
the Exile, Christ, and Christ's second Advent), and continues
intermingled with the secular State to the end. With the tran-
scendental conception of the City of God is thus combined,
here and elsewhere,^ the universalist belief applied to the
present world * Christianity, old as the world, has everywhere
:
and in all ages had its confessors who " without doubt " have
received salvation ; for the " Word " was ever the same, and
has always been at work under the most varied forms (" prius
occultius, postea manifestius ") * down to the Incarnation. He
who believed on this Word, that is Christ, received eternal
salvation.^
3. The Church is the communion of those who believe in the
crucified Christ, and are subject to the influences of his death,
and who are therefore holy and spiritual (sancti et spiritales).
To this view we are conducted by the conclusion from the
previous one, the humanist and universalist element being
stript away. If we ask Where is the Church ? Augustine
:
answers in innumerable passages, wherever the communion of

these holy and spiritual persons is found. They are Christ's
body, the house, temple, or city of God. Grace on the one
hand, faith, love, and hope on the other, constitute accordingly
the notion of the Church. Or briefly " the Church which is ;
on earth exists by the remission of sins," or still more certainly

" the Church exists in love." ^ In any number of expositions
Augustine ignores every idea of the Church except this, which
leads him to think of a spiritual communion alone, and he is as
^ See on this above, p. 1 51.

2 E.^., Ep. loz, quaest 2, esp. § 12.
3 See above, p. 152, n. 2. ,
* Formerly more hiddenly, afterwards more manifestly.

5 In this line of thought the historical Christ takes a very secondary place ; but it
is quite different in others; see Sermo n6, 6: "Per Christum factus est 'alter
mundus.
5 " Per remissionem peccatorum stat ecclesia quse est in terris." " In caritate stat
ecclesia."
indifferent to the conception of the Church being an outward

communion of the Sacraments as to the last one now to be
mentioned.^
4. the number of the elect. The final conse-
The Church is
quence of Augustine's doctrine of grace (see next section)

teaches that salvation depends on God's inscrutable predestina-
tion (election of grace) and on that alone. Therefore the
Church cannot be anything but the number of the elect. This
is not, however, absolutely comprehended in the external com-
munion of the Catholic Church for some have been elect, who—
were never Catholics, and others are elect who are not yet
Catholics. Nor is it simply identical with the communion of
the saints (that is of those who submit themselves in faith to
the operation of the means of grace) ; for these may include
for the time such as will yet relapse, and may not include others
who will ultimately be saved. Thus the thought ofpredestination
shatters every notion of the Church —
that mentioned under 2 can
alone to some extent hold its ground and renders valueless all —
divine ordinances, the institution and means of salvation. The
number of the elect is no Church. The elect of God are to be
found inside and outside the Church, under the operation and
remote from the operation of sacramental grace God has his ;
subjects among the enemy, and his enemies among those who
for the time being are " good." ^ Augustine, the Catholic, did
not, however, venture to draw the inexorable consequences of
this conception if he was ever led to see them he contented him-
;
more closely together the notions of the exter-

self with bringing
nalcommunion, communion of saints, Christ's body, city of God,
kingdom of heaven, and number of elect, and with thus making
1 Wesee here that the assumption that the Church was a corpus permixtum or an
externa communio sacramentorum was only a make-shift conception ; see the splendid
exposition De baptis. V. 38, which, however, passes into the doctrine of pre-
destination.
2 De bapt. V. 38 : " Numerus ille justorum, qui secundum propositum vocati
sunt, ipse est (ecclesia). . . . Sunt etiam quidam ex eo numero qui adhuc nequiter
vivant aut etiam in h^resibus vel in gentilium superstitionibus jaceant, et tamen
etiam illic novit dominus qui sunt ejus. Namque in ilia ineffabili prsescientia dei
multi qui foris videntur, intus sunt, et multi, qui intus videntur, foris sunt." We
return to this in dealing with Augustine's doctrine of predestination.
it appear as if they were identified. He stated his conviction

that the number of the elect was substantially confined to the
empirical Catholic Church, and that we must therefore use dili-
gently all its benefits. But on the other hand, the faith that
actuated his own life was too personal to let him bind grace, the
source of and hope, indissolubly to mechanical means
faith, love,
and external and he was too strongly dominated
institutions,
by the thought of God's majesty and self-sufficiency to bring
himself to examine God narrowly as to the why and how of his
actions. He never did maintain that predestination was real-
ised by means of the Church and its communication of grace.^
Augustine's different conceptions of the Church are only
united in the person of their originator, whose rich inner life
was ruled by varied tendencies. The attempts to harmonise
them which occur in his writings are, besides being few in
number, quite worthless. But the scholastic endeavour to com-
bine or pack together the different notions by new and flimsy
distinctions leads to theological
chatter. Even Augustine's
opponents apparently only a small part of the inconsis-
felt
tencies. Men at that time were far from seeking in religious
conceptions that kind of consistency which is even at the pre-
sent day felt as a want by only a small minority, and in any
case is no necessary condition of a sincere piety. Perhaps the
most important consequence of Augustine's doctrine of the
Church and Sacraments consists in the fact that a complex of
magical ceremonies and ideas, which was originally designed to
counter-balance a moralistic mode of thought based on the
doctrine of free-will, now held its ground alongside of a reli-
gious frame of mind. The Sacrament had a deteriorating effect
on the latter; but, on the other hand, it was only by this com-
bination that it was itself rendered capable of being reformed.
It is impossible to mistake, even in the case of Augustine him-
self, that the notion of the Church in which his own life centred
was swayed by the thought of the certainty of grace and earnest-

ness of faith and love, and that, similarly, his supreme intention,
in his doctrine of the means of grace, was to establish the com-
fort derived from the sure grace of God in Christ, which was
^ Here Reuter is entirely right as against Dorner.
,
independent of human agency. Augustine subordinated the

notions of the Church and Sacraments to the spiritual doctrine
of God, Christ, the gospel, faith and love, as far as that was at
all possible about A.D. 400.
3. The lêlagian Controversy. The Doctrine of Grace

and Sin.
Augustine's doctrine of grace and sin was constructed inde-

pendently of the Pelagian controversy. It was substantially
complete when he entered the conflict but he was by no means ;
clear as to its application in separate questions in the year of

his conversion. At the time of his fight with Manichaeism
(see the Tres libri de libero arbitrio) he had rather empha-
sised, following the tradition of the Church teachers, the inde-
pendence of human freedom, and had spoken of original sin
merely as inherited evil. It was his clerical office, a renewed
study of Romans, and the criticism of his spiritual development,
as instituted in the Confessions, that first led him to the Neo-
platonic Christian conviction that all good, and therefore faith,
came from God, and that man was only good and free in depen-
dence on God. Thus he gained a point of view which he con-
fessed at the close of his life he had not always possessed, and
which he opposed to the earlier, erroneous conceptions ^ that
friends and enemies frequently reminded him of It can be
said that his doctrine of grace, in so far as it was a doctrine of
God, was complete as early as A.D. 387 but it was not, in its ;
application to Bible history, or to the problem of conversion

and sanctification (in the Church), before the beginning of the
fifth century. It can also be shown that he was at all times
slightly influenced by the popular Catholic view, and this all the
more as he was not capable of drawing the whole consequences
of his system, which, if he had done so, would have led to
determinism.
This system did not evoke Pelagianism. Pelagius had taken
offence, indeed, before the outbreak of the controversy, at
Augustine's famous sentence " Grant what thou commandest,
:
' De praed. 7 ; De dono persev. 55 ; c. Jul. VI. 39 ; also the Retract.

CHAP. IV.] THE PELAGIAN CONTROVERSY. 169
and command what thou dost desire," and he had opposed it

at Rome ^ but by that date his doctrine was substantially
;
settled. The two great types of thought, involving the question

whether virtue or grace, morality or religion, the original and
inalienable constitution of man, or the power of Jesus Christ was
supreme, did not evolve tJiemselves in the controversy. They
gained in clearness and precision during its course,^ but both
arose, independently of each other, from the internal conditions'
"
of the Church. We can observe here, if anywhere, the " logic
of history. There has never, perhaps, been another crisis of
equal importance in Church history in which the opponents
have expressed the principles at issue so clearly and abstractly.
The Arian dispute before the Nicene Council can alone be
compared with it but in this case the controversy moved in a
;
narrow sphere of formulas already marked off by tradition. On

the other hand, in spite of the exegetical and pseudo-historical
materials that encumbered the' problems in this instance also,
there is a freshness about the Pelagian controversy and dis-
putants that is wanting in the Greek contentions.^ The
essentially literary character of the dispute, the absence of great
central incidents, did not prejudice it any way the main issue
;
was all the freer of irrelevant matter. But it is its most
1 De dono persev. 53 :
" Cum
Confessionum ediderim ante quam Pelagiana
libros
hseresis exstitisset, in eis certe dixi deo nostio et sspe dixi Da quod jubes et jube
:
quod vis. Quae raea verba Pelagius Romas, cum a quodam fratre et episcopo meo
fuissent eo prsesente commemorata, ferre non potuit et contradicens aliquanto
commotius paene cum eo qui ilia commemoraverat litigavit.
' De doctr. Christ. III. 46 " Hseresis Pelagiana multum nos, ut gratiam dei quae
:
per dominum nostrum Jesum Christum est, adversus earn defenderemus, exercuit."
' Pelagius and his friends were always convinced that the disputed questions, while
extremely important, were not dogmatic. We
can once more, therefore, study very
clearly what time was held to be dogma ; (see De gestis Pelag. 16
at that Pelagius :
denied at the Synod at Diospolis that statements of high dogmatic import were his ;
when it was proposed that he should anathematise those who taught them, he
replied :
" Anathematize quasi stultos, non quasi haereticos, si quidem non est dogma."
Caelestius says of Original sin (De pecc. orig. 3) " licet quaestionis res sit ista, non
:
hseresis." He also declared in the Libellus Hdei (26) submitted at Rome : "si quae
vero prseter fidem qusestiones natae sunt non ego quasi auctor alicujus dogmatis
. . .
definita haec auctoritate statui." Hahn, § 134. This was also the view at first of
Pope Zosimus (Ep. 3, 7). Julian (Op. imp. III. 106) saw dogmas in the doctrine
of the Trinity and Resurrection, " multisque aliis similibus."
—
memorable feature that the Western Church so speedily and

definitely rejected Pelagianism, while the latter, in its formulas,
still seemed to maintain that Church's ancient teaching. In the
crucial question, whether grace is to be reduced to nature, or the
new life to grace, in the difficulty how the polar antitheses of
" creaturely freedom and grace " are to be united,^ the Church
placed itself resolutely In doing so it

on the side of religion.
was as far from seeking to recognise all the consequences that
followed from this position as it had been a hundred years
earlier at Nicsea indeed it did not even examine them. But
;
it never recalled
—
perhaps it was no longer possible to recall
the step taken as soon as rationalistic moralism clearly revealed
its character.
Not only
is the inner logic of events proved by the simultane-
ous and independent emergence of Augustinianism and

Pelagianism, but the how strikes us by its consistency. On the
one side we have a hot-blooded man who had wrestled, while
striving for truth, to attain strength and salvation, to whom the
sublimest thoughts of the Neoplatonists, the Psalms, and Paul had
solved the problems of his inner life, and who had been over-
powered byhis experience of theliving God. On the other, we have
a monk and a eunuch,^ both without traces of any inner struggles,
both enthusiasts for virtue, and possessed by the idea of sum-
moning a morally listless Christendom to exert its will, and of
leading it to monachist perfection equally familiar with the ;
Fathers, desirous of establishing relations with the East, and well

versed in Antiochene exegesis ^ but, above all, following that
;
' Augustinianism and Pelagianism were akin in form, and opposed to the previous
mode of thought, in that both conceptions were based on the desire for unity. They
sought to get at the root of religion and morality, and had ceased to be satisfied with
recognising freedom and grace as independent and equivalent original data, as if
religion with its blessings were at the same time superior and subordinate to moral
goodness. The "either — or " asserted itself strongly.
2 Pelagius, a monk leading a free life — Cselestius, " naturte eunuchus matris
vitio
utero editus," both laymen, C^lestius auditorialis sckolasticus. Pelagius was a
Briton (an Irishman ? called Morgan ?), but in view of the intercourse between differ-
ent countries at the time, the birthplace is somewhat indifferent. Caelestius was won
over by Pelagius in Rome, and then gave up his worldly careers
3 It is uncertain whether Pelagius had been in the East before he appeared in
Rome. Caelestius had heard Rufinus in Rome, and stated that the latter would have
CHAP. IV.] THE PELAGIAN CONTROVERSY. 171
Stoic and Aristotelian popular philosophy theory of knowledge, —

psychology, ethics and dialectics which numbered so many —
adherents among cultured Christians of the West. The third
member of the league, Julian of Eclanum, the early widowed
Bishop, was more active and aggressive than the reserved and
prudent Felagius,^ more circumspect than Cselestius, the agitator,
and more cultured than either. Overbearing in manner, he had
a talent for dialectics, and, more stubborn than earnest, was en-
dowed with an insatiable delight in disputing, and a boyish eager-
ness to define conceptions and construct syllogisms. He was no
monk, but a child of the world, and jovial by nature. He was,
indeed, the first, and up to the sixteenth century, the unsur-
passed, unabashed representative of a self-satisfied Christianity.
Pelagius and Cselestius required the aid of Julian, if the moral-
istic mode of thought was not to be represented from one side
—
alone the religious view needed only one representative.
Certainly no dramatist could have better invented types of
these two contrasted conceptions of life than those furnished by
Augustine on the one hand, and the two earnest monks,
nothing to do with the " tradux peccati" (De pecc. orig. 3). Marius Mercator has
even sought to deduce Pelagianism from Theodore of Mopsuestia's teaching, and
supposed that Rufinus "the Syrian" (identical (?) with Rufinus of Aquileia) brought
it to Rome. Others have repeated this. While the direct points of contact at the
beginning are problematical, it is certain (l) that Pelagianism and Theodore's teach-
ing approximate very closely (see Gurjew, Theodor v. Mopsu. 1890 [in Russian] p.
44 ff. ) ; (2) that Theodore took up sides in the controversy against the teaching of
Augustine and Jerome he wrote a work "against those who maintain that men sin
:
by nature, and not own discretion;" (see Photius cod. 177); (3) that the
at their
Pelagians looked to him as a protector and Julian of Eclanum fled to him ; (4) that
the Pelagians and Semi-Pelagians were convinced that they could count on the
East (and even on the Church of Constantinople) for support, and that some of them
studied in Constantinople. Theodore's distinctive doctrine of Grace is not found in
Pelagian writings ; for this reason he could not ally himself thoroughly with Julian
(see Kihn, Theodor
v. Mopsu. p. 42 ff.). But their affinity was unquestionable. It
is no mere inference that leads Cassian (c. Nestor. I. 3 sq. ) to combine the
therefore
Nestorians with the Pelagians ("cognata h^resis"). The interests and methods
of both were the same. The comparison with Eunomius and Aetius is also
pertinent.
1 De pecc. orig. 13: " Quid inter Pelagium et Cselestium in hac qusestione distabit,
nisi quod ille apertior, iste occultior fuit ; ille pertinacior, iste mendacior, vel certe
ille liberior, hie astutior. " " Cselestius incredibili loquacitate." Many adherents of
the new teaching preferred to be called " Cselestiani."
Pelagius and Cselestius, and the daring, worldly bishop Julian

on the other.i
We have thus already indicated the origin of Pelagianism.
It is the consistent outcome of the Christian rationalism that had
long been wide spread in the West, especially among the more
cultured, that had been nourished by the popular philosophy
influenced by Stoicism and Aristotelianism,^ and had by means
of Julian received a bias to (Stoic) naturalism.* (We may not
1 The earnestness and "holiness" of Pelagius are often attested, especially by
Augustine himself and Paulinus of Nola. His untruthfulness, Indeed, throws a dark
shadow on his character ; but we have not the material to enable us to decide confi-
dently how far he was entrapped into it, or how far he reserved his opinion in the
legitimate endeavour to prevent a good cause being stifled by theology. Augustine,
the truthful, is here also disposed to treat charitably the falsehoods of his opponent.
But we must, above all, reflect that at that time priests and theologians lied shame-
lessly in self-defence, in speeches, protocols, and writings. Public opinion was much
less sensitive, especially when accused theologians were exculpating themselves, as can
be seen from Jerome's writings, though not from them alone. The people who got
so angry over Pelagius' lies were no small hypocrites. Augustine was entitled to be
wroth ; but his work De gestis Pelagii shows how considerate and tolerant he
remained in spite of everything. Pelagius and Cselestius must have belonged to
those lucky people who, cold by nature and temperate by training, never notice any
appreciable difference between what they ought to do and what they actually do.
Julian was an emotional character, a young man full of self-confidence (c. Julian II.
30 " itane tandem, juvenis confidentissime, consolari te debes, quia talibus displices,
:
an lugere?"), who, in his youth, had had dealings with the Roman Bishop Innocent
(c. Julian I. 13) and Augustine,
'
vir acer ingenio, in divinis scripturis doctus, Grseca
'
et Latina lingua scholasticus ; prius quam impietatem Pelagii in se aperiret, clarus in

doctoribus ecclesise fuit " (Gennad. script, eccl. 46). In particular, he was unusually
learned in the history of philosophy. Early author and bishop, he seems, like so
many precocious geniuses, never to have got beyond the stage reached by the clever
youth. Fancy and passionate energy checked his growth, and made him the fanatical
exponent of the moralistic theory. In any case he is not to be taken lightly. The
ancient Church produced few geniuses so bold and heedless. His criticism is often
excellent, and always acute. But even if we admitted that his whole criticism was
correct, we would find ourselves in the end in possession of nothing but chaff. We
also miss in his case that earnest sense of duty which we do not look for in vain in
Pelagius. For this very reason, the delightful impression produced by a serene
spirit, who appeared to avenge despised reason and authoritative morality, is always
spoiled by the disagreeable effect caused by the creaking sound of a critical chopping-
machine. An excellent monograph on Julian by Bruckner will appear immediately
in the " Texten und Unters."
2 Cicero's words: "virtutem nemo unquam acceptam deo retulit," could be
inscribed as a motto over Pelagianism.
3 Pelagianism and Augustinianism are also akin in form, in that in both the old
dramatic eschatological element, which had hitherto played so great a r6le in the
CHAP. IV.] COURSE OF THE CONTROVERSY. 173
overlook the fact that it originally fell back upon monachism,
still in its early stages in the West, and that the two phenomena
at sought a mutual support in each other.y Nature, free-
first
will, virtue —
and law, these strictly defined and made inde-
pendent of the notion of God were the catch-words of Pela- —
gianism self-acquired virtue is the supreme good which is
:
followed by reward. Religion and morality lie in the sphere of

the free spirit ^ they are won at any moment by man's own
;
effort. The extent to which this mode of thought was diffused

is revealed, not only by the uncertain utterances of theologians,
who in many of their expositions show that they know better,*

but above all by the Institutes of Lactantius.* In what follows
we have first to describe briefly the external course of the con-
troversy, then to state the Pelagian line of thought, and finally
to expound Augustine's doctrine.^
I. We first meet with Pelagius in Rome.
In every century
there have appeared preachers in Italy who have had
the power
of thrilling for the moment the vivacious and emotional Italians.
Pelagius was one of the first (De pecc. orig. 24 :
" He lived for
West, and had balanced moralism, wholly disappears. But Julian was the first to
secularise the type of thought.
^ The Antiochene theologians also were notoriously zealous defenders of monach-
ism.
' Here we have a third point (see p. 1 70, n. i ) in which Pelagianism and Augustinian-
ism are akin in form. Neither is interested in the mysticism of the cultus ; their
authors rather strive to direct spiritual things in spiritual channels, though Augustine,
indeed, did not entirely succeed in doing so.
s See the remarks on Ambrose, p. 50. Perhaps the three rules of Tichonius best
show the confusion that prevailed (Aug. de doctr. christ. III. 46 : "opera a deo dari
merito fidei, ipsam vero fidem sic esse a nobis ut nobis non sit a deo. " Yet Augustine
sought (c. Julian. L. I.) to give traditional evidence for his doctrine.
* One passage ) became famous in the controversy
(IV. 24 sq. " oportet magistrum :
doctoremque homini similHmum fieri, ut vincendo peccatum doceat hominem

virtutis
vincere posse peccatum ut desideriis carnis edomitis doceret, non necessitatis
. . .
esse peccare, sed propositi ac voluntatis."

6 Our sources are the writings of Pelagius, Cselestius, and Julian (chiefly in Jerome
and Augustine) Augustine's works (T. X. and c. 20, letters among which Epp. 186,
194 are the most important), Jerome, Orosius, Marius Mercator, and the relevant
Papal letters. Mansi T. IV., Hefele, Vol. II. For other literature see above, p.
61. Marius was the most active opponent of the Pelagians towards the close of the
controversy, and obtained their condemnation in the East (see Migne, T. 48, and the
Art. in the Diet, of Chr. Biog).
;
1/4 HISTORY OF DOGMA. [CHAP. IV.
a very long time in Rome "). Roused to anger by an inert

Christendom, that excused itself by pleading the frailty of the
flesh and the impossibility of fulfilling the grievous command-
ments of God, he preached that God commanded nothing im-
possible, that man possessed the power of doing the good if
only he willed, and that the weakness of the flesh was merely a
pretext. " In dealing with ethics and the principles of a holy
life, I first demonstrate the power to decide and act inherent
in human nature, and show what it can achieve, lest the mind
be careless and sluggish in pursuit of virtue in proportion to its
want of belief in its power, and in its ignorance of its attributes
think that it does not possess them." ^ In opposition to Jovinian,
whose teaching can only have encouraged laxity, he proclaimed
and urged on Christians the demands of monachism for with ;
nothing less was this preacher concerned.^ Of unquestioned

orthodoxy,^ prominent also as exegete and theologian in the
capital of Christendom,* so barren in literary work, he was so
energetic in his labour that news of his success penetrated to
North Africa.^ He took to do with the practical alone. Ap-
parently he avoided theological polemics but when Augustine's ;
Confessions began to produce their narcotic effects, he opposed
1 Pelag. Ep. ad Demetr. " ne tanto remissior sit ad virtutem animus ac tardior,
:
quanto minus se posse credat et dum quod inesse sibi ignorat id se existimet non
habere."
^ He was, perhaps, not the first ; we do not know whom Augustine meant in De
pecc. orig. 25 (" Pelagius et Caelestius hujus perversitatis auctores vel perhibentur
vel etiam probantur, vel certe si auctores non sunt, sed hoc ab aliis didicerunt,
assertores tamen atque doctores "), and De gest Pelag. 61 ("post veteres
hsereses inventa etiam modo hseresis est non ab episcopis seu presbyteris vel
quibuscumque clericis, sed a quibusdam veluti monachis"). Pelagius and Caelestius
may themselves be understood in the second passage.
3 The Confession of Faith, afterwards tendered (Hahn, § 133), is clear and confident
in its dogmatic parts. The unity of the Godhead is not so strongly pronounced in
the doctrine of the Trinity as with Augustine ; Pelagius resembled the Greeks more
strongly in this respect also.
* At Rome Pelagius wrote the Ep. to Pauhnus of Nola, the three books De fide
trinitatis, his Eulogia and Commentaries on Paul's which Augustine Epistles, to
afterwards referred. The latter have been preserved
for us among Jerome's works
but their genuineness is suspected. Augustine mentions, besides, an Ep. ad Constan-
tium episc. (De grat. 39) ; it is not known when it was written.
' De gestis Pelag. 46 " Pelagii nomen cum magna ejus laude cognovi."
:
——
CHAP. IV.] COURSE OF THE CONTROVERSY. 1/5
them. Yet
positive teaching, the emphasising of the freedom
of the always remained to him the chief thing. On the
will,
other hand, his disciple and friend Caelestius^ seems to have
attacked original sin (tradux peccati) from the first. His con-
verts proclaimed as their watchword that the forgiveness of sin
was not the object of infant baptism.^ When Alaric stormed
Rome, the two preachers retreated by Sicily to North Africa,
They intended to visit Augustine but Pelagius and he did not
;
meet either in Hippo or Carthage.^ Probably the former left

suddenly when he saw that he would not attain his ends in
Africa, but would only cause theological strife. On the other
hand, Cselestius remained, and became candidate for the post of
Presbyter in Carthage. But as early as A.D. 412 (411) he was
accused by Paulinus, Deacon in Milan (afterwards Ambrose's
biographer), at a Synod held in Carthage before Bishop
Aurelius.* The points of the complaint, reduced to writing,
were as follows : —
He taught " that Adam was made mortal
and would have died whether he had or had not sinned that —
Adam's sin injured himself alone, and not the human race
infants at birth are in that state in which Adam was before his
—
falsehood that the whole human race neither dies on account
of Adam's death or falsehood, nor will rise again in virtue of
. Christ's resurrection —
the law admits men to the kingdom of
—
heaven as well as the gospel even before the advent of our
Lord there were impeccable men, i.e., men without sin that —
man can be without sin and can keep the divine commands
easily if he will." ^ Caelestius declared at the conference that
1 By him are three works de nionasterio. ' ' Caelesti opuscula," De gratia, 32.
2 So Augustine heard when in Carthage ; see De peco. mer. HI. 12.
3 De gestis Pelag. 46.
^Marius Merc. Common, and Aug., De pecc. orig., 2 sq. It is worthy of note
that the complaint came from a disciple of Ambrose. This establishes the continuity
of the Antipelagian teaching.
^ "Adam mortalem factum, qui sive peccaret sive non peccaret moriturus fuisset
—
peccatum Adas ipsum solum Isesit, non genus humanum parvuli qui nascuntur in eo
statu sunt, in quo fuit Adam ante prsevaricationem —
neque per mortem vel praivari-
cationem Adas omne genus hominum moritur, nee per resurrectionem Christi omne
—
genus hominum resurget lex sic mittit ad regnum ccelorum quomodo et evangelium
—
•
et ante adventum domini fuerunt homines impeccabiles, i.e., sine peccato homineni —
—
infantsneeded baptism and had to be baptised that since he

;
maintained this his orthodoxy was proved that original sin

;
(tradux peccati) was at any rate an open question, " because I

have heard many members of the Catholic Church deny it,
and also others assent to it." ^ He was, nevertheless, excom-

municated. In the Libellus Brevissimus, which he wrote in his
own defence, he admitted the necessity of baptism if children
were to be saved; but he held that there was a kingdom of
heaven distinct from eternal life. He would not hear of for-
giveness of sin in connection with infant baptism.^ He was
indisputably condemned because he undid the fixed connection
between baptism and forgiveness, thus, as it were, setting up
two baptisms, and offending against the Symbol. He now
went to Ephesus,^ there became Presbyter, and afterwards
betook himself to Constantinople.
posse esse sine peccato et mandata dei facile custodire, si velit." On the trans-
mission of these propositions, see Klasen, Pelagianismus, p. 48 f.
^
" Quia intra Catholicam constitutos plures audivi destruere nee non et alios
adstruere."
- De pecc. mer. I. 58, 62.
* He said to have stayed before this in Sicily, but that is merely a guess on
is
Augustine's part, an inference from the spread of Caalestian heresies there. See
Augustine's interesting Epp. 156, 157, 22, 23 sq. From these we learn that
letters,
Caelestius actually taught " divitem manentem in divitiis suis regnum dei non posse
:
ingredi, nisi omnia sua vendiderit nee prodesse eidem posse, si forte ex ipsis divitiis
;
mandata fecerit." In the " definitiones Caelestii " a document which came to Augus-
tine from Sicily, and whose origin is indeed uncertain, the Stoic method of forming
definitions is noteworthy. In it there also occurs the famous definition of sin — " that
which can be let alone " — (Goethe gives " What, then, do
the converse description :
you call sin ? With everyone I call it what can not be let alone.") The whole argu-
ment serves to prove that smct peccatiim vitari potest, man can be sinless (De perfect,
just. I sq.). In the passage just cited, and again at Diospolis (De gestis Pelag. 29
63) a work by Cselestius is mentioned, whose title is unknown. Not a few sentences
have been preserved (I.e.) " Plus facimus quam in lege et evangelis jussum est
:
gratiam dei et adjutorium non ad singulos actus dari, sed in libero arbitrio esse, vel in
—
lege ac doctrina dei gratiam secundum merita nostra dari, quia si peccatoribus illam
dat, videtur esse iniquus —
si gratia dei est, quando vincimus peccata, ergo ipse est in
culpa, quando a peccato vincimur, quia omnino custodire nos aut non potuit aut no-
—
luit unumquemque hominem omnes virtu tes posse habere et gratias filios dei non —
—
posse vocari nisi omni modo absque peccato fuerint effecti oblivionem et ignorantiam
non subjacere peccato, quoniam non secundum voluntatem eveniunt, sed secundum
—
necessitatem non esse liberum arbitrium, si dei indigeat auxilio, quoniam in propria
voluntate habet unusquisque aut facerealiquid aut nonfacere victoriam nostram non —
.
CHAP. IV.] COURSE OF THE CONTROVERSY. 177:-
Pelagius had gone to Palestine. He followed different tactics

from his friend, who hoped to serve the cause by his maxim of,
"shocking deeply" (fortiter scandalizare). Pelagius desired
peace he wrote a flattering letter to Augustine, who sent him
;
a friendly but reserved answer.^ He sought to attach himself

to Jerome, and to give no public offence. He plainly felt
hampered by Cselestius with his agitation for the sinlessness of
children, and against original sin. He wished to work for
something positive. How could anyone thrust a negative
point to the front, and check the movement for reform by pre-
cipitancy and theological bitterness ? He actually found good
friends.^ But his friendly relations with John, Bishop of
Jerusalem, could not please Jerome. Besides, reports of,
Pelagius' questionable doctrines came from the East, where, in
Palestine, there always were numerous natives of the West.
Jerome, who at the time was on good terms with Augustine,
broke with Pelagius,^ and wrote against him the Ep. ad Ctesi-
ex dei esse adjutorio, sad ex libero arbitrio —
anima non potest esse sine peccato,
si
ergo et deus subjacet peccato, cujas pars, hoc anima, peccato obnoxia est pteni-
est —
tentibus venia non datur secundum gratiam et misericovdiam dei, sed secundum
merita et laborem eorum, qui per panitentiam digni fuerint inisericordia. " We
readily see, what indeed has not hitherto been clearly perceived, that this writing of
Ccelestius must have been the real cause of offence. It could not but open the eyes
even of the waverers. We return to it in the text.

1 De gestis Pelag. $1, 52. The interpretation added by Augustine to a few con-
ventional phrases used in the letter seems to us superfluous and laboured. He, be-
sides, spared Pelagius in Carthage itself ; for in his first great work against Pelagian-
ism, De pecc. mer. et remiss, et de bapt. parvulorum ad_Marcellinum (412), the name
of Pelagius is not yet mentioned. Before this, Augustine had sought to influence the
Church only by sermons and discourses. Even the Tractate De spiritu et litera,
which followed immediately, is not directed against Pelagius.
2 I am disposed to regard as a forgery the letter of condolence to the widow
Livania (Fragments in Aug. De gestis Pel. 16, 19, Hieron. and Marius ;
partly re-
ported in the indictment at Diospolis). Yet we cannot decide with certainty. We
must allow the possibility of Pelagius having so expressed himself in a flattering
letter, not meant to be published, to a sanctimonious widow. Indeed, words like
the following sound like mockery :
" lUe ad deum digne elevat manus, ille orationem
bona conscientia effundit qui potest dicere, tu nosti, domine, quam sanctae et inno-
centes et mundae sunt ab omni molestia et iniquitate et rapina quas ad te extendo
manus, quemadmodum justa et munda labia et ab omni mendacio libera, quibus
offero tibi deprecationem, ut mihi miserearis. " Pharisee and Publican in one !
3The latter afterwards complained (c. Jul. II. 36), "quod Hieronymus ei tam.
quam semulo inviderit." That is very credible.
M
iyS HISTORY OF DOGMA. [CHAP. IV.
phontem (Ep. 133), and the Dialogi c. Pelag., writings which

constitute a model of irrational polemics. He put in the fore-
ground the question, " whether man can be without sin," and
at the same time did all he could to connect Pelagius with the
" heretic " Origen and other false teachers, But still greater
harm was done to Pelagius ^ by the appearance, at this precise
moment, of the work already known to us, in which Cselestius
played so regardlessly the r61e of the enfant terrible of the
party (see above).^
Augustine's disciple, the Spanish priest Orosius, who had
come to Jerome in order to call his attention to the dangers of
Pelagianism, ultimately succeeded in getting John of Jerusalem
to cite Pelagius, and to receive a formal report on his case in
presence of his presbyters (a.D. 415). But the inquiry ended
with the triumph of the accused. Orosius referred to the
authority of his celebrated teacher, and to that of Jerome and
the Synod of Carthage, but without success, and when Pelagius
was charged with teaching that man could be sinless and needed
no divine help, the latter declared that he taught that it was not
possible for man to become sinless without divine grace. With
this John entirely agreed. Now since Orosius for his part
would not maintain that man's nature was created evil by God,'
the Orientals did not see what the dispute was all about. The
conference, irregular and hampered by Orosius' inability to
speak Greek, was broken off: it was said that the quarrel might
be decided in the West, or more precisely in Rome.^ Pelagius
had repelled the first attack. But his opponents did not rest.
1 From motives of prudence he did not answer Jerome publicly ; for he wished to
avoid all controversy. Jerome was, for the rest, much more akin to him really than
Augustine. The former maintained, e.g., in a later controversial work, that it
was
orthodox to teach that the beginning of good resolves and faith is due to ourselves,
'^
Pelagius himself wrote to the nun Demetrias (A.D. 413 or 414) a letter still
pre-
served, and forming the clearest memorial of his doctrine, and shortly before the -
Synod of Diospolis he composed his book De natura, in which there is much that he
abjured at the Synod. It is extremely probable that this book also was not
meant
for the public, but only for his friends (against the charges of Jerome).
Augustine,
as soon as he got it, refuted it in his tractate De natura et gratia
(415). Pelagius had
essayed to give a dialectical proof of his anthropology in the book. Augustine's
work, De perfectione justiti^, composed also in A.D. 415, was aimed at Cielestius.
^ See Orosii Apolog.
CHAP. IV.] COURSE OF THE CONTROVERSY. I79
They succeeded, in December, 415, in getting him brought

before a Palestinian Synod, presided over by Eulogius of Csesa-
rea, at Diospolis, where, however, he was not confronted by his
accusers.^ He was at once able to appeal to the favourable
testimonies of many Bishops, who had warmly recognised his
efforts to promote morality. He did not disown the proposi-
tions ascribed to him regarding nature and grace, but he suc-
ceeded in explaining them so satisfactorily, that his judges
found him to be of blameless orthodoxy. The extravagant
sentences taken from the letter to Livania he in part set right,
and in part disowned, and when the Synod required him ex-
pressly to condemn them, he declared " I anathematise them
:
"^
as foolish, not as heretical, seeing it is no case of dogma
Hereupon the Synod decided " Now since with his own voice
:
Pelagius has anathematised the groundless nonsense, answering

rightly that a man can be without sin with the divine help and
grace, let him also reply to the other counts."^ There were
now laid before him the statements of Caelestius as to Adam,
Adam's sin, death, new-born children, the perdition of the rich,
sinlessness of God's children, the unessential character of divine
assistance —
in short, all those propositions which had either
been already condemned at Carthage, or were afterwards ad-
vanced by Caelestius in a much worse form. Pelagius was in
an awkward position. He hated all theological strife he knew ;
that Christian morality could only lose by it he wished to ;
leave the region of dogma alone.* Caelestius had only said,
'
The indictment was composed by two Gallic Bishops, Heros and Lazarus, who
had been forced to fly from their own country. It was very comprehensive ; but no
strict line was drawn between what Pelagius had himself said, and what belonged to
Caelestius. The two Bishops were, for the rest, afterwards treated as under suspicion
at the conferences in Rome.
2 " Anathematize quasi stultos, non quasi haereticos, si quidem non est dogma."
3 " Nunc quoniam propria voce anathematizavit Pelagius incertum stultiloquium,
recta respondens, hominem cum adjutorio dei et gratia posse esse sine peccato, respon-
deat et ad aha capitula."
* The above quoted phrase, " non est dogma," is extremely characteristic. It
shows how painfully anxious Pelagius was not to extend the sphere of dogma. In
this he quite shared the feeling always entertained even to the present day by the
Greeks. A Greek priest once said to the author that the great freedom of the Greek
Church, compared with the Western, consisted in the possibility of holding very dif-
1 8© HISTORY OF DOGMA. [CHAP. IV.
indeed, what he himself had described as correct when among"

his intimate friends but the former had spoken publicly and
regardlessly, and
— ;
"the tone makes the music." Thus Pelagius

considered himself justified in disowning almost all those state-
ments " but the rest even according to their own testimony
:
was not said by me, and for it I am not called upon to give
satisfaction." But he added: "I anathematise those who hold
or have held these views." With these words he pronounced
judgment on himself they were false. The Synod rehabilitated
;
him completely " Now since we have been satisfied by our

:
examination in our presence of Pelagius the monk, and he as-

sents to godly doctrines, while condemning those things con-
trary to the faith of the Church, we acknowledge him to belong
to our ecclesiastical and Catholic -Communion."^
No one can blame the Synod :^ Pelagius had, in fact, given
expression to its own ideas Augustinianism was neither known
;
nor understood and the " heresy of Caelestius " ^ was con-
;
demned.*
But Pelagius now found it necessary to defend himself to his
ferent views of sin, grace, justification, etc., if only the dogmas were adhered to.
Pelagius accordingly opposed the introduction of a great new
being included in
tradt
the dogmatic sphere. He saw merely the inevitable evils of such an advance. We
must judge his whole attitude up to his death from this point of view. Seeberg
(Dogmengesch. I., p. 282 f,) holds that the phrase, "non est dogma," was merely
meant to provide a means of defence ; but if we consider Pelagius' whole attitude, we
have no ground for taking any such view.
'De gestis Pelag. 44 " Reliqua vero et secundum ipsorum testimonium a me dicta
:
non sunt, pro quibus ego satisfacere non debeo." " Anathematizo illos qui sic tenent
aut aliquando tenuerunt." " Nunc quoniam satisfactum est nobis prosecutionibus
prsesentis Pelagii monachi, qui quidem piis doctrinis consentit, contraria vero ecclesi^
fidei anathematizat, communionis ecclesiasticse eum esse et catholicse confitemur."
2 " Synodus miserabilis," Jerome, Ep. 143, 2.
3Jerome, Ep. 143, i.

4In his work, De gestis Pelagii, Augustine, following a wiitten account, criticises
the proceedings of the Synod, and shows that Pelagius uttered the falsehood. The
latter, always anxious to keep peace, addressed a report of his own after the Synod to
Augustine (I.e. 57 sq.), in order to influence him in his fevour. But Augustine
rightly gave the preference to the other account, since Pelagius had omitted from his
the " anathematizo." Again work De pecc. orig., Augustine shows, from
in the
the writings of Pelagius with which he was acquainted, that the latter had got off by
evasions at Diospolis, and that he really held the same opinions as Cselestius. We —
can only excuse the man by repeating that he wished to do practical work, and felt
himself put out by dogmatic questions as to original sin, etc.
1
CHAP. IV.] COURSE OF THE CONTROVERSY. 1 8
own adherents. While on the one hand he was zealous in pro-

moting in the West the effect of the impression produced by
the decision in his favour, he wrote to a friendly priest/ that his
statement, " that a man can be without sin and keep the com-
mands of God
he will," had been recognised as ortho-
easily 2 if
dox. His work, De natura, made its appearance at the same

time, and he further published four books, De libero arbitrio,*
which, while written with all caution, disclosed his standpoint
more clearly than his earlier ones.*
But North Africa ® did not acquiesce in what had taken place.
The prestige of the West and orthodoxy were endangered.
Synods were held in A.D. 416 at Carthage and Mileve, Augustine
.being also present at the latter. Both turned to Innocent of
Rome, to whom C^lestius had appealed long before. Soon
after the epistles of the two Synods (Aug.. epp. 175, 176,) the
Pope received a third from five African Bishops, of whom
Augustine was one (Ep. 177).* It was evidently feared that
Pelagius might have influential friends in Rome.'^ The letters
referred to the condemnation, five years before, of Caslestius;
they pointed out that the Biblical doctrine of grace and the
doctrine of baptism were in danger, and demanded that, no
' De gestis, 54 sq.

^ There was no word of " easily " at Diospolis.
^ Augustine's tractates, De gratia Christi et De peccato originali, are directed against
this book.
^ De pecc. orig. 20 :
" Denique quomodo respondeat advertite et videte latebras
ambiguitatis falsitati pr^parare refugia, offundendo caliginem veritati, ita ut etiam nos
cum primum ea legimus, recta vel correcta propemodum gauderemus. Sed latiores
disputationes ejus in libris, ubi se quantumlibet operiat, plerumque aperire compel-
litur, fecerunt nobis et ipsa suspecta, ut adtentius intuentes inveniremus ambigua."
° Orosius had carried there information of the events.
. - * The letter was accompanied by Pelagius' work De natura and Augustine's reply.
' Ep. 177, 2. —To about this date belong, according to Caspari's investigations, the
Pelagian letters and tractates published by him A.D. 1890 (Briefe, Abhandlungen und
Predigten, etc. pp. 3-167, 223-389, Chiistiania), and ascribed on good grounds to Agri-
cola, of Britain. The fragments were written, however, in Italy. They add nothing
new knowledge Of Pelagianism. But they confirm the fact that the earliest
to our
Pelagianism — —
before Julian was associated with the most stringent monastic de-
mands, and was extremely rigorous. In particular, Agricola flatly forbids the pos-
session of wealth. He also regards ignorance of the divine will as no excuse for the
sinner, but as an aggravation.
matter how Pelagius might express himself, those should be

excommunicated who taught that man could overcome sin and
keep God's commands by virtue of his own nature, or that
baptism did not deliver children from a state of sin. It was
necessary to defeat the enemies of God's grace. It was not a
question of expelling Pelagius and Caelestius, but of opposing a
dangerous heresy.^
The Pope had, perhaps, never yet received petitions from
North African Synods which laid such stress on the importance
of the Roman Chair. Innocent sought to forge the iron while
itwas hot. In his four replies (Aug. Epp. 181-184= Innoc.
Epp. 30-33) he first congratulated the Africans on having acted
on the ancient rule, " that no matter might be finally decided,
even in the most remote provinces, until the Roman Chair had
been informed of it, in order that every just decision might be
confirmed by its authority " for truth issued from Rome, and
;
thence was communicated in tiny streams to the other Churches.

The Pope then praised their zeal against heretics, declared it
impious to deny the necessity of divine grace, or to promise
eternal life to children without baptism he who thought otherr ;
wise was to be expelled from the Church, unless he performed

due penance. "Therefore (Ep. 31, 6) we declare in virtue of
our Apostolic authority that Pelagius and Caelestius are
excluded from the communion of the Church until they deliver
;
themselves from the snares of the devil " if they did so, they
were not to be refused readmission. Any adherents of Pelagius
who might be in Rome would not venture to take his part after
this condemnation; besides, the acquittal of the man in the
East was not certain nothing indubitably authentic had been
;
laid before him, the Pope, and it appeared even from the pro-
ceedings, if they were genuine, that Pelagius had got off by
evasions if he felt himself to be innocent, he would have
;
' Epp.
177, 3 : " Non agitur de uno Pelagio, qui jam forte correctus est." The
consideration for him is very remarkable ; it is explained by his prestige and his justi-
fication at Diospolis. The letter of the five Bishops composed by Augustine and
sent afterwards vi'as obviously meant thoroughly to instruct the Pope, who was held
to be insufficiently informed as to the importance of the question. Yet we have at
the close, (c. 19) :
" Non rivulum nostrum tuo largo fonti augendo refundimus."
CHAP IV.] COURSE OF THE CONTROVERSY, }XS$
hastened to Rome that he might be acquitted by us he would ;
not summon him, however; those among whom he resided

might try him once more if he recanted, they could not
;
condemn him; there lurked much that was blasphemous, but

still more that was superfluous, in the book, De Natura;
" what orthodox believer might not argue most copiously about
the potentiality of nature, free-will, the whole grace of God and

daily grace ? "^ He who can read between the lines will readily
observe that the Pope left more than one back-door open, and
had no real interest in the controversy.^
Pelagius now sent his remarkably well-composed confession
of faith * to Rome, along with an elaborate vindication of him-
self.* The accusation that he refused baptism to children, or
promised them admission to heaven without it, and that he
taught that men could easily fulfil the divine commands, he
declared to be a calumny invented by his enemies. As
already at Diospolis, so now he guarded himself against the
worst charges, though they were not indeed unwarranted, partly
by mental reservations, and partly by modifications but we ;
cannot say that he was unfaithful to his main conception. He

declared that all men had received the power to will aright
from God, but that the divine aid (adjutorium) only operated
in the case of Christians. It was blasphemous to maintain that
God had given impossible He took his
commands to men.
stand between Augustine and Jovinian. letter did not This
reach Innocent, he having died. It was thus received by his
successor Zosimus. Caelestius, who had come to Rome and
submitted a Libellus fidei that left nothing to be desired in
1 Ep. 183, 2-5 : " Nam de naturse possibilitate, de libero
arbitrio, et de omni dei
gratia et quotidiana gratia cui non sit uberrimum disputare ? "
recte sentienti
8 This is not the view that has hitherto been taken of the letters ; Zosimus has
rather been simply contrasted with Innocent. Seeberg (p. 283) sees in the letter a
monument of the Pope's helplessness in dogma he was so ignorant as to admit that
:
the Africans were right, and yet to make them talk like Pelagians. That seems to
me an exaggeration.
3 Hahn. 133. In it we have the words "liberum sic confitemur arbitrium, ut
dicamus nos indigere dei semper auxilio " (but in what does the auxilium consist ?),
and "baptismum unum tenemus quod iisdem sacramenti verbis in infantibus, quibus
etiam in majoribus, asserimus esse celebrandum."
4 Fragments in Aug., De Gratia Christi et de pecc. orig.
; l84 HISTORY OF DOGMA. . .[CHAP. IV.
point of submission to the Pope, vindicated himself to the

latter. on the whole, seems now, when matters had
Caelestius,
become have sounded the retreat ^ he at least modi-
critical, to ;
fied his statements, and took care not to come into conflict with
the theory, deducible from the Church's practice, that infant
baptism did away with sin.^ After these similar declarations of
the two friends, Zosimus did not see that the dogma or Church
practice of baptism was endangered in any respect. At a
Roman Synod (417), Caelestius, who was ready to condemn
everything banned by the Pope, was rehabilitated;^ and
Pelagius, for whom Orientals interceded, was likewise declared
to have cleared himself. The complainants were described as
worthless beings, and the Africans were blamed for deciding too
hastily they were called upon to prove their charges within
;
two months. This result was communicated in two letters* to

the African Bishops.^ They were told that Pelagius had never
been separated from the Church, and that if there had been
great joy over the return of the lost son, how much greater
should be the joy of believing that those about whom false
reports had been circulated were neither dead nor lost (Ep.
4,8)1
The Carthaginians were indignant, but not discouraged. A
1 Fragments of the Libellus in Aug. , De pecc. orig. 5 sq.
2 L.c. " Infantes debere baptizari in remissionetn peccatorum secundum regulam
:
universalis ecclesise et secundum evangelii sententiam confitemur, quia dominus

Statuit, regnum ccelorum non nisi baptizatis posse conferri ; quod, quia vires natura
non habent, conferri necesse est per gratiae libertatem. In remissionem peccatorum
baptizandos infantes non idcirco diximus, ut peccatum extradua firmaie videamur
(he thus clung to this point), quod longe a catholico sensu alienum est, quia peccatum
non cum homine nascitur, quod postmodum exercetur ab homine, quia non nature
delictum, sed voluntatis esse demonstratur. Et illud ergo confiteri congruum, ne
diversa baptismatis geneva facere videamur, et hoc pi-semunire necessarium est, ne per
mysterii occasionem ad creatoris injuriam malum, antequam fiat ab homine, tradi
dicatur homini per naturam."
^ He wisely refused to discuss the separate points of complaint.
* Zosim., Epp. %, 4.
5 The Bishops
are arrogantly rebuked. For the rest, the whole question in
dispute regarded as due to an epidemic of curiosity, as superfluous and pernicious :
is
one ought to abide by Scripture. No wonder that Rome hesitated to declare a question
important in which the disputants were agreed as regards Holy Scripture, dogma, and
Church practice. The Church only took hesitatingly the momentous step involved in
acknowledging anything outside of these to be of equal importance to " dogmas." .
Synod (417) determined to adhere to the condemnation until it

was ascertained that both heretics saw in grace not merely an
enlightenment of the but the only power for good
intellect,
(righteousness), without which we can have absolutely no true
religion in thought, speech, and action.^ This resolution was
conveyed to Zosimus. Paulinus of Milan declared at the same
time in a letter to the Pope that he would not come to Rome
to prosecute Caelestius, for the case had been already decided.^
This energetic opposition made the Pope cautious. In his
reply ,^ he glorified Peter and his office in eloquent language,
but changed his whole procedure, declaring now that the
Africans were under a mistake if they believed that he had
trusted Caelestius* in everything, and had already come to a
decision. The case had not yet been prejudiced, and was in
the same position as before (March, 418). Immediately after
the arrival of this letter in Africa, a great Council was held
there —more than 200 Bishops being present and Pelagianism —
was condemned, without consulting the Pope, in 8 (9) unequivo-
cal Canons;^ indeed, such was the indignation felt against
—
Zosimus and on different grounds— that the Council, in its
17 Canon, threatened with excommunication any appeal to
Rome.* But it had first assured itself of the Emperor's support,
who had published on the 30th April, 418, an edict to the
Prefect of the Prsetorium, banishing the new heretics with their
followers from Rome, permitting their prosecution, and threat-
ening the guilty with stringent penalties.^
1 Prosper, c. collat. 5.
2 Zositn., Ep. 10.
^ Zosim., Ep. 15.
* It was with Caslestius that he was chiefly concerned.
5 Let him be condemned who derives death from natural necessity who denies
: ;
the presence of original sin in children arid rebels against Paul (Rom. V. 12) who ;
assigns any form of salvation to unbaptised children ; who refers God's justifying
grace in Christ merely to past sins who applies grace to knowledge alone, while
;
not perceiving in it the power necessary to us ; who sees in grace merely a means of
rendering the good easier, but not its indispensable condition ; or who derives the
confessions of sin by the pious from humility alone, and interprets their prayer for
pardon of guilt as applying solely to the guilt of others.
' The proceedings in Mansi III., p. 810 sq.
7 The edict in Aug. Opp. X. app., p. 105. It is certainly doubtful whether the
1 86 HISTORY. OF DOGMA. [CHAP. IV.
Zosimus, whose action had been hitherto influenced by the

strength of Pelagius' party in Rome, now laid down his arms.
In his Ep. tractatoria to all the Churches/ he informed them of
the excommunication of Caelestius and Pelagius, was now
convinced that the doctrines of the absolute importance ofjusti-
fying grace, and of original sin, belonged to the faith {de fide),
and required all Bishops to signify their assent by their signa-
tures. But eighteen Bishops refused ^ they appealed to a ;
General Council, and recalled with reason the fact that the Pope
had himself formerly considered a thorough conference to be
necessary. In their name Julian of Eclanum wrote two bold
letters to the Pope,^ while also rejecting the propositions once
set up by Caelestius.* From now onwards the stage was occu-
pied by this " most confident young man," for whom Augustine,
a friend of his family, possessed so much natural sympathy, and
whom, in spite of his rudeness, he always treated, as long as the
case lasted, affectionately and gently.^ At the instigation of
the new Pope, Boniface, Augustine refuted one of the letters
sent to Rome and circulated in Italy, as well as another by
Julian (addressed to Rufus of Thessalonica) in his work c. duas
epp. Pelagianorum (420). Julian, who had resigned or been
deposed from his bishopric, now took up his sharp and
Africans effected this ; perhaps it was instigated from Milan or by Italian Anti-
Pelagians. The attempt has been made to prove that Zosimus' change of front was-
independent of the edict.
1 Aug. Opp. X. app., p. 108.
2 C.'duas epp. Pel. I. 3.
' See Op. imperf. I. 18. Fragments in Marius.
^ The
confession of faith "contained in one of the letters (Hahn, § 135) shows also
that Julian wished to stand by Pelagius.
^ We must remember in excuse of Julian's violent and unmeasured polemics that
he was defending an already hopeless case. He himself knew this Op. imp. I. 1,2: —
"magnis impedimentis angoribus, quos intuenti mihi hac tempestate ecclesiarum
statura partim indignatio ingerit partim miseratio"
— "labentis mundi odia promere-
mur" — " rebus in pejorem partem properantibus, quod mundi fini suo incumbentis-
indicium est" (I.e. I. 12). His violence is in any case not explained from secret
uncertainty, for there certainly have been few theologians so thoroughly convinced as
he of being on the right path. Religious pioneers, besides, have as a rule surpassed
their opponents in strength of conviction. They also possess it more readily ; for the
certainty of religion and morality, as they understand it, is involved for them in
personal assurance.
;
restless pen.No one else pressed Augustine so hard as he he ;
compelled him to work out the consequences of his line of

thought; he displayed inexorably the contradictions in his
works, and showed how untenable was the great man's doctrine
when it was fully developed; he pointed out the traces of a
Manichaean type of thinking in Augustine, traces of which the

latter tried in vain to get rid. He could indeed explain that he
did not mean them, but could not show that they were not
there. Julian's charge that Augustine's teaching desecrated
marriage had made an impression on the powerful Comes
Valerius in Rome. Augustine sought to weaken the force of
the charge in his writing, De nuptiis et concupiscentia, Lib. I.
but Julian now wrote a work in

volumes against the
four
treatise. Augustine based a reply on extracts from the latter
(De nupt. et concup., 1. II.), and when he received the work itself,
he substituted, for this preliminary answer, a new work Libri sex :
c. Julianum haeresis Pelagianae defensorem. Julian replied to the

" Preliminary pamphlet " with a work in eight volumes (written
already in Cilicia). Augustine was engaged with the answer

to this work, Opus imperf. c. Julianum (1. sex), up to his death.
Since he follows Julian almost sentence by sentence, we possess
the most accurate information as to the latter's positions.^ In
his latest years, Augustine composed other foui: writings which
are not aimed directly at the Pelagians, but discuss objections
raised against his own doctrine by Catholics or Semi-Pelagians ^
(De gratia et libero arbitrio De correptione et gratia to the
; :
monks of Hadrumetum ; De praedestinatione sanctorum and De

dono perseverantiae, : Prosper and Hilary as against the
to
Gallic monks). In these works the doctrine of predestinating
grace isworked out in its strictest form.
The Pelagians nowhere came to form a sect or schismatical
party.* They were suppressed in the years after A.D. 418, with-
out it being necessary to apply any special force. The Emperor
1 When we realise the exceptional qualities of two such outstanding opponents, we
wish that nature had rolled them into one. What a man that would have been !
2 This name appears first in the Middle Ages. In ancient times men spoke of
the "reliquiae Pelagianorum."
3 They still hoped for their rehabilitation up to A.D. 430, and urged it in Rome on
every new Pope.
;
l8§ HISTORY OF DOGMA. [CHAP. IV.
once more published a sharp edict. Caelestius, who had hitherto

escaped punishment, was still chiefly dealt with. He was for-
bidden to reside in Italy, and sentence of exile was pronounced
on anyone who should harbour him. Pelagius is said -to have
been condemned by a Synod in Antioch. But this information,
given by Marius, is uncertain. He disappears from history.'
Julian and other Pelagians took refuge with Theodore in Cilicia.
There they were at first left in peace for either the controversy
;
was not understood, or the attitude to Augustinianism was

hostile. The indefatigable Caelestius was able in A.D. 424 to
demand once more an inquiry in Rome from Bishop Caelestine,
but then betook himself, without having obtained his object, to
Constantinople, where, since Julian and other friends were also
assembled, the party now pitched their headquarters.^ The
Patriarch Nestorius joined hands with them, a proceeding fatal
to both sides for Nestorius thereby incurred the displeasure of
;
the Pope, and the Pelagians fell into the ranks of the enemies
of the dominant party in the East (Cyril's). Marius Mercator
agitated successfully against them at the Court, and in the
comedy at Roman legates by getting
Ephesus Cyril obliged the
the Council to condemn the doctrine of Calestius, Rome having
concurred in his condemnation of Nestorius.^ Thus Pelagianism
had brought upon itself a kind of universal anathema, while in
the East there were perhaps not even a dozen Christians who
really disapproved of it,* and the West, in turn, was by no
means clear as to the consequences to which it would necessarily
be led by the condemnation of the Pelagians.
II. As regards the history of dogma, the "system" of
Pelagianism, i.e. of Julian of Eclanum, is tolerably indifferent
" It is noteworthy that Julian speaks in his works as if he now alone represented
the destituta Veritas, a claim that Augustine tells him shows extreme arrogance (see c.
Jul. II. 36)-
2 I do not here discuss more minutely the history of Julian, who once more paid a
passing visit to Rome ; see art. in the Encycl. of Christ. Biogr.
3 Julian's name was expressly mentioned
;
perhaps he was in Ephesus with Nes-
torius. maintained by Marius that he had been already condemned in his
It is
absence (with Theodore's concurrence) at a Cilician Synod.

* Bishop Atticus of Constantinople was undoubtedly a decided enemy of the
Pelagians ; but we do not know his motives.

CHAP. IV.] PJELAGIAN DOCTRINE. 189
for it was only producedafter the whole question was already

decided, and author was a theologian, who, by renouncing
its
his ecclesiastical office, had himself thrown away much of his

claim to be considered. From the standpoint of the history of
dogma, the controversy closed simply with rejection of the
doctrines, (i) that God's grace (in Christ) was not absolutely
necessary —before and —
baptism for the salvation of every
after
man, and (2) that the baptism of infants was not in the fullest
sense a baptism for remission of sins (in remissionem pecca-
torum). The contrary doctrines were the new dogmas!' But, ^^
since those two doctrines and the main theses of Pelagianism

involved a multitude of consequences, and since some of these
consequences were even then apparent, while others afterwards
occupied the Church up till and beyond the Reformation, it is
advisable to point out the fundamental features of the Pelagian
system, and the dontrary teaching of Augustinianism.^ In doing
so we have to remember that Pelagius would have nothing to do
with a system. To him " De fide " (of the faith) meant simply
the orthodox dogma and the ability of man to do the good. All
else were open questions which might be answered in the affirma-
tive or negative, among the rest original sin, which he denied.
He laid sole stress on preaching practical Christianity, i.e., the
monastic life, to a corrupt and worldly Christendom, and on de-
priving it was impossible to fulfil the
of the pretext that it
divine commands. one with his teacher in this

Caelestius, at
respect, attacked original sin more energetically, and fought by
the aid of definitions and syllogisms theological doctrines which
he held to be pernicious. But Julian was the first to develop
their mode of thought systematically, and to elevate it into a
Stoic Christian system.^ Yet he really added nothing essential
to what occurs scattered through the writings of Pelagius and
Caelestius. He only gave it all a naturalistic tendency, i.e., he
did away with the monastic intention of the type of thought.
But even in Pelagius, arguments occur which completely contra-
1 This is also necessary because the mode of thought at the root of Pelagianism
— —
never reappeared 'Up to the time, of Socinianism in so pure a form as in Julian.
2 Augustine says very gracefully (c. Jul. VI. 36) :"Quae tu si nori didicisses^
Pelagian! dogmatis raachina sine.architecto:necessafio remansisset."
igo HISTORY OF DOGMA. [CHAP. IV.
diet the ascetic monastic conception. In his letter to Deme-

trius he shows that fasting, abstinence and prayer are not of
such great importance they should not be carried to excess, as
;
is often done by beginners moderation should be observed in

;
all things, therefore even in good works. The main thing

is to change one's morals and to practise every kind of virtue.
And thus no one is to think that the vow of chastity can let
him dispense with the practice of spiritual virtues and the fight
with anger, vanity, and pride, etc. It was the actual development
of the character in goodness on which he laid stress. The monas-
tic idea appears subordinate to this thought, which in some
passages is expressed eloquently. The ancient call to wise
moderation has not a naturalistic impress in Pelagius. In
treating the thought of these three men as a whole we have to
remember this distinction, as also the fact that Pelagius and
Cffilestius for the most part paid due heed to Church practice,
and besides avoided almost entirely any appeal to the ancient
philosophers.^ They were all actuated by a courageous confi-
As regards form (Klasen, pp. 8i-li6), i.e. in their teaching as to Scripture, tradi-
tion, and authority, no innovations occur in Pelagius and Caelestius. Pelagianism,
indeed, implicitly involves the rejection of every doctrine, qua ratione defendi non
potest, and he interpreted Scripture accordingly examples of exegesis in Klasen
(see
I.e.). In his treatise, De natura, he quotes the Fathers in support of his form of doc-
trine, as Augustine did for his (Chrysostom was especially often quoted, but so also
vêre Jerome, Ambrose, and Lactantius). Julian, on the contrary, expressly gave the
first place to ratio : "Quod ratio arguit, non potest auctoritas vindicare" (Op. imp.
II. l6). With Origen —in sharp contrast to Augustine —
he observes the rule not
that a thing good, because God wills it and it stands in Scripture, but that reason
is
' Hsereat hoc maxime prudentis animo lectoris, omnibus scrip-

'
establishes what is good :
turis sacris solum illud, quod in honorem dei calholici sapiunt, contineri, sicut frequen-
tium sententiarum luce illustratur, et sicubi durior elocutio moverit quaesdonem, certum,
quidem esse, non ibi id quodinjustum est loci illius auctorumsapuisge secundumidautem ;
<3ebere intelligi, quod et ratio perspicua et aliorum locorum, in quibus non est ambigu-
itas, splendor apparuerit" (I.e. II. 22; cf. I. 4). " Sanctas. quidem apostoli esse
paginas confitemur, non ob aliud, nisi quia ratiord, pietati, fidei congruentes erudiunt
nos " (II. 144). Julian declares time and again that "wrong " and right must be the
standard to be applied to all traditions regarding God. Now if the interpretations of
Scripture given by Pelagius and Caelestius are " shallow," Julian's are sometimes
quite profane. Our first parents clothed themselves after the Fall, because they were
cold, and had learned for the first time the art of making clothes (c. Jul. IV. 79 sq.).
But the rationalist standpoint of historical criticism appears most clearly in Julian's
attitude to tradition. He is the author of the famous saying that we ought to weigh
and not count opinions (c. Julian, II. 35 : " non numerandas, sed ponderandas esse
CHAP. IV.] PELAGIAN DOCTRINE. ipi
dence in man's capacity for goodness, along with the need for
clearness of thought on religious and moral questions.
I. God's highest attributes are his goodness and justice, and,
in -fact, righteousness is the quality without which God cannot
sententias ; ad aliquid inveniendum multitudinem nihil prodesse caecorum"). He

says boldly that in dogmatic questions we must set aside the strepitus turbarum de
omni ordine conversation-is hominum, all de plebeia fcece selhdarii, milites, scholastici
auditoriales, tabemarii, cefarii, coqui^ lanii, adolescenies ex uionackis dissoiuti, and
further the turba qiialiumcumque clericorum ; " honorandam esse paucitatem, quam
ratio, eruditio, libertasque sublimat." Compare Op. imperf. I. 41, where Julian says
" et philosophorum ego senatum advocavero, tu continuo sellularios, opifices
si
omneque in nos vulgus accendas," and II. 14: "Traduciani pro se sursum deorsum
plebeculai'um aut mralium aut theatralium scita commendant." He justifies the
setting aside of laymen and the uneducated clergy; he says: "quia non possuni
secundum categoiias Aristotelis de dogmatibus judi'care." Here (c. Julian. II. 36, 37)
Julian's chief interest becomes Without Aristotle, no theology; every-
clearly evident.
thing else is clod-hoppers' theology but we have the cultured on our side (I.e. V. i.,
;
Augustine suggests that is a contention of all heretics, already soiled and worn by
frequent use). Julian adhered to Aristotle and Zeno he knew their ethics thoroughly
;
and reflected on their differences (c. Jul. II. 34 ; VI. 36 VI. 64 " de scholis Peri-
; :
pateticorum sive Stoicorum ; " Op. impf. I, 35, 36). In contents and method his
—
teaching was closely related to that of these philosophers Augustine alludes very
often to this. Besides, he quotes (c. Jul. IV .75) Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes,
Anaxagoras, Xenophanes, Parmenides, Leucippus, Democritus, Empedocles, Hera-
clitus, Melissus, Plato, and Pythagoras ("quis non ipso norainum sectarumque con-
globatarum strepitu terretur?" remarks Augustine). Of these philosophers along —
—
wilh whom Sallust and Cicero are quoted ^Julian says (I.e.), while granting they
were idolaters ("licet in scholis aliud disserentes "), that they had enjoyed, in the
midst of many errors, "de naturalibus aliquas veritatis partes," and that these were
rightly to be preferred to the dogma of original sin. Augustine justly .speaks of
" nebulae de Aristotelicis categoriis ; " but the Stoic element prevails in Julian. The
whole conception oi ratio and Nominalism is Stoic. The mania for definitions is also
Stoic and Ciceronian. Without definition no knowledge (Op. imp. II. 30, said
against Augustine "Ad quid ergo persuadendum aut scripturas releges aut conscios
:
nominabis, qui adhuc quod sentis non potes definire "). But these definitions never
rise out of the actual and thoroughly observed case —
and that was indeed also usual
in the Stoa —
but glide over it. Julian by no means despised altogether the appeal to
the Fathers. Here also he proved himself reasonable. It was only their formal
authority that he would have nothing to do with. His standpoint is most clearly ex-
pressed in c. Jul. I. 29 " Cum igitur liquido clareat banc sanam et veram esse
:
sententiam, quam primo loco ratio, deinde scripturarum munivit auctoritas et quam
sanctorum virorum semper celebravit eruditio, qui tamen veritati auctoritatem non sua
tribuere consensu, sed testimonium et gloriam de ejus suscepere consortio, nullum
prudentem conturbet conspiratio perditorum." Here we perceive the descending
series of authorities, which is yet only authoritative, in so far as the witnesses are
rational. The " Fathers " he really regarded as nothing, and well he knew how to
—
;
be thought of at all indeed, it can even be said that there is a

;
God, because there is righteousness.^ "Justice, as it is wont to

be defined by the learned (s. Aristotle) and as we can under-
stand, is (if the Stoics will allow us to prefer one to the other)
the greatest of all virtues, discharging diligently the duty of
restoring his own to each, without fraud, without favour."^ Its
genus is God its species are the promulgation and administra-

;
tion of the laws its difference consists in its being regulated by

;
circumstances its modus in its not requiring from anyone more

;
than his powers permit, and in not excluding mercy its quality ;
in sweetness to pious souls. This notion of righteousness

is so sure that it appears also to be ideally superior to
Holy Scripture (see Op. .imperf. II. ly): "Nothing can be
proved by the sacred writings which righteousness cannot
support." ®
2. It follows, from the goodness and righteousness of God,
that everything created —
by him is good and that not only at
the beginning — but what he now creates is likewise good.* Ac-
make use of the admissions wrung from Augustine regarding their authority (Op. imp.
IV. 112): " Sed bene quod nos onere talium personarum prior levasti. Nam in
libro ad Timasium cum s. Pelagius venerabilium virorum tam Ambrosii quam
Cypriani recordatus fuisset, qui liberum arbitrium in libris suis commendaverant,
respondisti nulla te gravari auctoritate talium, ita ut diceres eos processu vitse melioris,
si quid male senserant, expiasse." "Numquid" exclaims Julian — (I.e. IV. no)
" disputatorum prsejudicant " Julian
legi dei aut operi dei scripta ! felt most acutely
his having to call to its senses the West, in bondage to " stupid and godless" dogma
in the East alone did he now The rock on which he stood was
see salvation.
reason ; his winged organ was the word. He knew that God would honour him for
having alone to lead the cause of righteousness. He confronted, as the most resolute
" Aufklarer " of the ancient Church, its greatest religious personality.
' Cselestius in Aug., De perf. just.
15 ; Julian in the Op. imp. I. 27-38 and often.
— —
The thought of goodness characteristically enough is dropped, or accompanies it,
as it were, incidentally. The idea of righteousness as legislative, distributive, and
social, governs the whole system. " Lex dei fons ac magistra justitise," Op. imp-
1.4-
" Op. imp. I. 35 "Justitia est, ut ab eruditis definiri solet (s. Aristoteles), et ut
:
nos intelligere possumus, virtus (si per Stoicos liceat alteri alteram prseferre), virtutum
omnium maxima fiingens diligenter officio ad restituendum sua unicuique, sine fraude,
sine gratia. " By this is gained for religion and morality the supreme principle by
which man confronts God as judge in complete independence.
3 " Nihil potest per sanctas scripturas probari, quod justitia non possit tueri."
4 Op. imp. VI. 16.
CHAP. IV.] PELAGIAN DOCTRINE. 1 93
cordingly, the creature is good, and so also are marriage, the
and the saints. ^

law, free will,
3. Nature, which was created good, is not convertible, " be-
cause the things of nature persist from the beginning of existence
(substance) tc ''''
end." ^ " Natural properties are not converted
by accident.' . . jrdingly, there can be no " natural sins "
(peccata naturalia) ; for they could only have arisen if nature
had become evil.
4. Human nature is thus indestructibly good, and can only

be modified accidentally. To its constitution belongs and —
that was very good the will as free choice —
for " willing is ;
nothing but a movement of the mind without any compulsion." *

This free choice, with which reason is implied,^ is the highest
good in man's constitution, " he who upholds grace praises
human nature." * We know that Pelagius always beân in his
sermons by praising man's glorious constitution, his nature
which shows itself in free will and reason, and he never ''
wearied of extolling our " condition of willing " (conditio

^ Aug. c. duas epp. Pelag. III. 24 " Hae sunt nebulae Pelagianorum de laude
:
creaturse, laude nuptiarum, laude legis, laude liberi arbitiii, laude sanctorum, IV. I, 2.
" " Quia naturalia ab initio substantise usque ad terminum illius perseverant." (Op.
imp. II. 76).
' Naturalia per accidens non convertuntur." " Quod innascitur usque ad finem
ejus, cui adhaeserit, perseverat." L.c. I. 61.
* '
' Voluntas est nihil aliud quam motus animi cogente nullo " ( Op. imp. 1. V. ). More
precisely (I. 78-82) :
" Libertas arbritii, qua a deo emancipatus homo est, in admittendi
peccati et abstinendi a peccato possibilitate consistit. . . Posse bonum facere aula
virtutis est, posse malum facere testimonium libertatis est. Per hoc igitur suppetit
homini habere proprium bonum, per quod ei subest posse facere malum. Tota ergo
divini plenitudo judicii tarn junctum habet negotium cum hoc libertate hominum,
at harum qui unam agnoTierit ambas noverit. Sic igitur . . . et libertas humani cus-
todiatur arbitrii, quemadmodum divina ffiquitas custoditur . . . Libertas igitur arbitrii
possibilitas est vel admittendi vel vitandi peccati, expers cogentis necessitatis, quae in
suo utpote jure habet, utrum surgenlium partem sequatur, i.e., vel ardua asperaque
virtutum vel demersa etpa lustria voluptatum."
^ The Pelagians were very silent as to the relation of ratio and liberum arbitrium.
They did not even notice that it involved a main difficulty. All that they found it
necessary to say consisted in quite childish arguments. Even the above definition of
the will is absolutely untenable. After all, reason impels to what is bad as well as
good ; the wicked man does not act, at least, without reason. But what AoeS: justitia
mean, if the separate acts of will always pass into vacancy ? The original equilibrium^
forsooth, remains fixed
^ Op. imp. III. 188 " Qui gratiam confirmat, hominum laudat naturam."
:
7 "Libertas utiiusque partis."

" "
voluntatis), as contrasted with the " condition of necessity

(conditio necessitatis) creatures. " Nature was
of irrational
created so good that needs no help." ^ With reason as guide
it
(duce ratione) man can and should do the good, i.e., righteous-
ness (jus humanse societatis).^ God desires a voluntary per-
former of righteousness (voluntarius executor justitiae) it is ;
his will that we be capable of both, and that we do one. Ac-

cording to Pelagius freedom, of will is freedom to choose the good;
according to Julian it is simply freedom of choice. The possibility
of good as a natural facidty is from God,* willing and action are
our business * the possibility of both (possibilitas utriusque) is
;
as a psychological faculty inevitable (a necessario) ; for this

very reason a continual change is possible in it.°
5. Evil, sin, is willing to do that which righteousness forbids,

and from which we we
are free to abstain,® accordingly what
can avoid.'^ It is no element or body, no nature in that case —
God would be its author nor is it a perverted nature (natura
;
conversa), but it is always a momentary self-determination of

the will, which can never pass into nature so as to give rise to an
evil nature? But if this cannot happen, so much the less can
evil be inherited ; for that would do away with the goodness
1 Ep. ad Demetr.
2 Op. imp. I. 79. Here the humanist notion of the good is clear. To this Julian
adhered, in so far as he followed out the thought at all.
s De grat. Christi 5 ; de nat. et gratia, passim. (Expositions by Pelagius).
* The notion of freedom taught by the Pelagians lies in the possibilitas, and that
according to Julian, the possibilitas utriusque, not merely boni. In Pelagius the
possibilitas boni, and therewith responsibility, are more prominent. He does not
merely say that man has freedom of choice, but also (ep. ad Demetr.) that " in animi
nostiis naturalis qujedara sanctitas est.
6 Klasen (pp. 229-237) distinguishes a threefold possibilitas in the Pelagians' teach-
ing, i.e., so many distinctions are, in fact, required, if we would escape the contradic-
tions covered by the notion.
" Op. imp. I. 44 ; V. 28, 43 ; VI, 17 and often.
' Cselest. in Aug. de perfect. I.
8 Besides the indefiniteness of the relation of reason to freedom, the wrong defini-
tion of the will, the obscurity as to the notion of ratio, and the contradictions in the
notion of possibilitas, especially characteristic are the inability to give a concrete defini-
tion of evil, and the mythological fashion in which nature and will are distinguished.
Why should will and nature be so completely divided, if the possibilitas belongs to
nature ? What is nature in general over and above will, since it is by no means held
to be merely the flesh ?
;
CHAP. IV.] PELAGIAN DOCTRINE. 19S
and righteousness of God, the notion of sin (as that which can
be avoided), and the notion of redemption a " natural " guilt ;
could never be got rid of.^
6. Pelagius deduced the actual existence of sin from the

snares of the devil and sensuous lusts (gula and libido), and con-
demned concupiscence accordingly. It was necessary to over-
come it by virginity and continence. sprang not from the It
substance of the flesh (de substantia carnis), but from its works
(ex operibus carnis), otherwise God would be its author.
Pelagius took a serious view of this whole matter but he was ;
certain, on the other hand, that the body was subject to the
soul, and that thus the relationship willed by God could be
restored.^ But Julian felt that this was a vexed point. Whence
came the evil desires of the flesh (desideria carnis mala) if the
substance was good, and if it was yet manifest that they fre-
quently did not spring from the will ? The case of marriage,
which is unthinkable without sexual desire, showed Julian that
libido was permitted by God, and he attacked inexorably the

artificial distinctions which Augustine sought and was com-
pelled to make between nuptice and concupiscentia? Julian
taught that concupiscence was in itself indifferent and innocent;
for the actual creation was of all conceivable kinds the best
but this ci'eation embraced sexual and all other desires.* Libido
was guilty non in genere suo, nan in specie, non in modo, but only
in excessu; genus and species were from God, the modus de-
pended on an honest decision (arbitrium honestatis), excess
1 To this point the Pelagians applied their greatest acuteness, and made just objec-
tions, see under, Pelag. in Aug. de pecc. orig. 14 :
" Omne bonum ac malum, quo
vel laudabiles vel vituperabiles sumus, non nobiscum oritur, sed agitur a nobis :
capaces enim utriusque rei, non pleni nasciraur, et ut sine virtute ita et sine vitio
procreamur atque ante actionem proprise voluntatis id solum in homine est, quod
deus condidit."
^ See the Ep. ad Demetr. ; De nat. et grat. 60-71. A grave experience is re-
vealed in the confession (Ep. ad Demetr. 26) that the devil may often fill even those
who are separated from the world with such foul and impious thoughts, that they
imagine they are as wicked as when they loved the res saculi.
With his distinction of marriage as good and bad, Augustine resembles the charla-
tan who would exhibit a beast that devours itself; Jul. III. 47.
* See especially Op. imp. Book V., and c. Julian, Book V. Augustine calls him
" laudator concupiscentia ;
" c. Jul. III. 44.
;
followed from a fault of will (vitium voluntatis).^ If it were

otherwise, then baptism would necessarily eradicate, and not
merely regulate, concupiscence.^ Accordingly the latter, within
limits (intra ^ he who used it moderately,
modum), was good ;
used a blessing rightly he who indulged in it immoderately,

;
used a blessing badly but he who from love to virginity

;
despised even moderate indulgence, did not thereby use a good

thing better.^ The shame alluded to by Augustine, which is
felt even at the lawful enjoyment of desire, was explained by
Julian, following the Cynics, as mere convention and custom.*

Christ himself possessed concupiscence.®
7. It follows from this teaching that there can always have
been sinless men :
' Pelagius, indeed, argued further that since
every man could resist sin (easily), he who sinned passed into
hell at the Judgment;* for every sin was really mortal, the
sinner having acted against his ability to do better. Julian,
moreover, taught that every excess was a mortal sin, since it
was done absolutely without compulsion.^ In the end, it is
said, God punishes the wicked and rewards the virtuous. But
it remains wholly obscure how there can exist virtue (righteous-
ness) and sin at all if, in practising them, a character can never
be gained, if we are only concerned with fragmentary actions
from which no deposit is left or sum-total formed.
In the foregoing the fundamental conceptions of the Pelagians

are described. But they were also, of course, Catholic Christians
1 C. Jul. IV. 7 ; III. 27.
2 L.C. IV. 8.
3 L.C. IV. 52.
* is thus declared to be superfluous, I.e. III. 42.
Asceticism
B Op. imp. IV. 37-43- There undoubtedly occur other passages in Julian in which
the " blessing " of libido appears small, and virginity is admired.
s L.c. IV. 45-64, and elsewhere.
' We must here, indeed, remember the twofold meaning of posse.
' De gest. Pelag. II.

8 On this Pelagius laid great stress (see Op. imp. V.), expressly denying (against
Augustine) that man sins because he was created ex nihilo. By referring evil to the
will, every possibility of explaining its origin comes to an end ; for any such explana-
tion means proving its necessity. V. 41 :

" QuEeritis necessitatem rei quae esse non
potest si Huic motui animi libero, sine coactu originis inquieto,
patitur necessitatem.
si causa ipso motu detur antiquior, non gignitur omnino sed toUitur. " V. 57-60 " ideo :
habuit voluntatem malam, quia voluit."

" —
chap; IV.] PELAGIAN DOCTRINE. 197
they were accordingly compelled to harmonise these doctrines

of theirs with Holy Scripture and its historical contents, with
Christ and the teaching of the Church. How they did so we
have still briefly to discuss in what follows. It is apparent that
the difficulties in showing this agreement were extraordinarily
great, and, indeed, not only for them, but for everyone who
would harmonise a coherent rational doctrine with Gen. I.-IIL,
and with hundreds of passages in Scripture.
8. Adam was created with free will according to Pelagius —
also with " what is called natural holiness " (naturalis quae dicitur
which consisted just in free will and reason. Julian
sanctitas),
considered this state to be morally very high and intellectually
low.^ All are, however, agreed that Adam's endowments were
the peculiar and inalienable gift of divine grace (gratia).
9. Adam
sinned through free will (Julian esteemed this sin of
slight account);^ but by this sin his nature was not corrupted.
Nor was natural death a consequence of it, for it is natural but ;
spiritual death, the condemnation of the soul on account of sin,

was the result of sin.^
Natural death was accordingly not inherited from Adam
10. ;
moreover, spiritual death was only in so far as his descendants

likewise sinned. If all men died through Adam's death, then all
would necessarily rise again through the resurrection of Christ.*
11. Still much less was Adam's sin or guilt transmitted. The
doctrine of transmitted and original sin(tradux peccati and pecca-
tum originis)
is Manichaean and blasphemous; it is equally absur^
whether viewed in relation to God, or man, or the notion of sin, or

^ Op. imp. VI. 14-23.
^ Op. Imp. VI. 23 ; VI. 14, he lets it appear plainly enough that the Fall was an
advantage for Adam " porro ignorantia quam profunda quamque patiendi ejus dura
:
conditio, ut liberari ab ea nisi praevaricatione non posset, scientiam quippe boni

malique absque ansa condemnabili nequaquam capessiturus.
3 Thus first Caelestius (Karthago, s. Diospolis ; de pecc. mer. 2). So also Julian,
op. imp. II. 66. Common death is natural. Yet here JuUan has tried to compromise.
He will not deny that natural death has a connection with sin ; i.e., it had really to
be annulled by merits ; but his explanations in Book II. are very tortuous. Without
sin death would have been " levissima" ; but God cannot do away with it entirely
even for saints, for (VI. 30) " non est tanti unius meritum, ut universa quse natural-
:
iter sunt instituta perturbet."

* Thus already Caelestius.
Christ, or Holy Scripture. In relation to God, for his righteous-

ness annulled by imputing the sins of others, and regarding
is
as sinful a nature that has not yet sinned, just as much as

it would be by ushering into the world, laden with sin, human
beings born after Adam's fall. In relation to man, for a

vitiated nature is then equivalent to a bad nature if a nature ;
possesses but in that case the guilt falls upon

evil, it is bad ;
God, for he is responsible for our nature further, sin could ;
only propagate itself, if we assumed a procreation of souls but ;
this assumption is absurd finally, if sin is propagated through

;
marriage, so that desire in marriage is and transmits sin, mar-
riage is thereby condemned.

In relation to the notion of sin,
for sin is absolutely embraced by the will, so that it does not
exist at all, where there is no free-will further, even if it could;
propagate itself, it could not be transmitted by baptised parents ;
lastly, Augustine's contention that sin is itself used by God as a

punishment of sin, that there is a divine law of sin, etc., is absurd
and immoral. In relation to Christ, for were nature bad, it
could not be redeemed, or, were there an inherited sin which

became natural to man, Christ also must have possessed it.
In relation to Holy Scripture, as countless passages show
that sinis a matter of the will, and that God punishes each for
his own sins alone. Rom. V. 12, merely asserts that all die
because they themselves sin like Adam, or something similar ;
in any case it contains nothing to support inherited sin.^

12. Thus all men created by God are in the position in which
Adam was before the fall.^ An unessential difference exists
only in so far as Adam possessed at once the use of reason,
while children do not that Adam was still untaught, while
;
children are born into a society in which the custom of evil

prevails. Pelagius at least teaches this.* The mere capa-
1 It is superfluous to quote passages ; see the detailed account in Klasen, pp. Ii6-
182. Julian's explanation of Rom. V. 12 occurs in c. Jul. VI. 75-81. Besides
charging him with Manichaeism, Julian also accused Augustine of Traducianism,
though he was no Traducian. The heretical name of " Traduciani " was originated
by Julian (Op. imp. I. 6).
2, De pecc. orig. 14.

' Ep. ad Demetr. The reign of sin in the world is also elsewhere strongly empha-
sised by Pelagius.
?
;
CHAP. IV.] PELAGIAN DOCTRINE. 1 99
city of either (mera capacitas utriusque) is the original

innocence.^
13. The
habit of sinning, working by example, according to
Pelagius, weakens the will (?). Yet nothing can be said as to
how it really works for otherwise the indifference of the will ^
;
is destroyed. Probably the meaning was that the possibility

of good remained wholly intact, but the habit of sinning
darkened reason.^
14. It is when we come to discuss grace that it is hardest to
reproduce the view of the Pelagians for it was here that they ;
found it most necessary to accommodate their opinions. Very

strong assertions occur in Pelagius and Julian Cselestius was —
—
more reserved * as to the necessity of divine grace (adjutorium)
for every good work.^ We also find statements to the. effect
^ This talk of primitive innocence is already in Julian a case of accommodation
for innocence of course always remains really the same.C. Jul. III. 36: "homo
igitur innocentia quidem plenus, sed
capax nascitur, aut laudem aut repre-
virtutis
hensionem ex proposito accedente meriturus nee justos nasci parvulos nee
. . .
injustos, quod faturi sunt actibus suis, sed tantummodo infantiam innocentise dote
locupletem." But the same chapter shows what is after all meant by this "inno-
cence " Perfecta ignorantia
: (in scripturis justitia nominatur).
^ Op. imp. I. 91 : "liberum arbitrium et post peccata tam plenum est quara fuit
ante peccata."
Here, as in Stoicism, there is a gap in the system. Why is rational man
3
and bad? How can he possess ratio and an evil will at the same time
iriational
—
And how is the sinful habit explained? ^Julian also says, besides (Op. imp. I. 16)
" consuetudo peccati amorem delicti facit et exstinguit pudorem ; " but he means in
the teaching of Augustine.
* " The is not free, if it needs God's help" (De gestis 42).
will " Si per gratiam
(De gestis 30)omnia facimus, quando vincimur a peccato, non nos vincimur, sed dei
gratia, quse voluit nos adjuvare omni modo et non potuit."
^ We can, indeed, exemplify almost all the principles of Augustinianism from the
utterances of Pelagius and Julian. The number of passages in their works which
sound like good Church doctrine is very great. We should require to quote these
also in order to give an idea of the figure presented by the two men to the world ; but
this would carry us beyond our present limits. We do not, however, do injustice to
their thought by omitting them ; for they are only characteristic of their mode ot
expression. Pelagius never denied publicly that man always needed the divine grace,
that he could only adjuvante gratia esse sine peccato (see De gestis 16, 22, 31 ; De
gratia 2 : "anathemo qui vel sentit vel dicit, gratiam dei, qua Christus venit in hunc
mundum peccatores salvos facere, non solum per singulas horas aut per singula
momenta, sed etiam per singulos actus nostrns non esse necessariam, et qui hanc
conantur auferre, poenas sortiantur aeternas " ; see also his Confession to the Pope).
Julian used, if possible, still stronger expressions ; but both very often said exactly
:
200 HISTORY OF DOGMA, [CHAP. IV.
that grace facilitated goodness.^ Finally, others occur which

teach that grace is superfluous, nay, strictly speaking, in itself
impossible.^ It is no injustice to the Pelagians to take the two •
latter positions, which, to a certainextent can be combined, as

giving their true opinion for it was assuredly the chief inten-
;
tion of Pelagius to deprive Christians of their indolent reliance

on grace, and Julian's main object was to show that the human
constitution bore merit and salvation in its own lap. The
proposition " homo libero arbitrio emancipatus a deo " really
contains the protest against any grace.*
15. By grace we have throughout to understand in the
first place the grace of creation;* it is so glorious that
the opposite of what is here given. But they never did say that the grace of God
through Christ established freedom from sin and salvation.
1 These are the usual ones free will exists in all men, but it is only supported by
:
grace in the case of Christians (De gratia, 34) ; the rest only possess the " nudum et
inerme conditionis bonum." Similarly Julian, but still more strongly (Op. imp. I.
40): "quos fecit quia voluit nee condemnat nisi spretus ; si cum non spernitur,
faciat consecratione meliores, nee
detrimentum justitise patitur et munificentia
miserationis omatur." I. III " malK voluntati veniam pro insestimabili liberalitate
:
largitur et innocentiam, quam creat bonam, facit innovando adoptandoque meliorem "
(but can anything be better than good?). III. 106 "Quod ais, ad colendum recte
:
deum sine ipsius adjutorio dici a nobis sufficere unicuique libertatem arbitrii, omnino
mentiris. Cum igitiir cultus dei multis intelligatur modis, et in custodia mandatorum
et in execratione vitiorum et in simplicitate conversationis et in ordine
mysterioram et
in profunditate dogmatum ... qui fieri potest, ut nos in confuso dicamus, sine
adjutorio dei liberum arbitrium sufficiens ad ejus esse culturam cum utique ista . . .
omnia, tarn quae dogmatibus quam quEe mysteriis continentur, libertas arbitrii per se
non potuerit invenire, etc." There we see clearly how we are to understand the
" adjutorium " ; it consists solely in the law of dogmas and mysteries given by God and
not diiicovered by man, but not in a power. Therefore, because God had invented so
many institutions, Julian can proceed :
" hominem innumeris divinae gratiae speciebus
juvari . . . prsecipiendo, benedicendo, sanctificando, coercendo, provocando, illumin-
ando."
" Impossible as a power, since the will cannot actually be determined. On this
point Caelestius has alone expressed himself clearly, but Julian holds the same view,
as he is never tired saying: "cunctarum origo virtutum in rationabili animo sita
est."
3 This proposition of Julian's is properly the key to the whole mode of thought
man created free is with his whole sphere independent of God. He has no longer to
do with God, but with himself alone. God only re-enters at the end (at the judg-
ment).
• The statements of the Pelagians as to grace are very often rendered intentionally
(e.g., De gestis Pel. 22) ambiguous, by their understanding it to mean the grace
of
"
CHAP. IV.] PELAGIAN DOCTRINE. 201
there have been perfect men even among heathens and

Jews.^
16. In the second place, it denotes the law (lex) of God ;
indeed, all grace, in so far as it is not nature, can at bottom
have no other character than that of illumination and instruc-

tion (doctrina). This facilitates the doing of the good.^
17. Thirdly, grace means the grace of God through Christ.
This also is at bottom illuminatio et doctrina ; ^ Christ works
by his example.* Pelagius and Julian admit that the habit of
sinning was so great that Christ's appearance was necessary.^
Julian's conception of this appearance was that Christ owed
what he became to his free will.^ But it was necessary, over
and above instruction (doctrina), to assume, in conformity with
Church teaching and practice, an effective action through Christ
creation, and accordingly nature. Yet this is not tlie rule. Pelagius and Julian
distinguish three states : ex natura, sub lege, sub gratia (Chiisti) ; see C. duas epp, I.
39-
1 "Perfecta justitia " also in the old covenant (I.e.) and among "antiqui homines."
Julian often cites the perfect heathens, and sneers at Augustine's " splendida vitia.'
If the virtues of the heathens are not virtues, their eyes are not eyes (c. Jul. IV. 26-
30). Pelagius has made wholly contradictory statements on this point ; Julian
afterwards became more prudent he always held the opinion that there
; but, finally,
was no difterence between a good Christian and a good heathen.
^ The law was the first augnientum beneficiorum dei ; but it was at the same time
the fundamental form of all that God could further do after creation. Pelagius has
expressed himself very plainly (De gestis 30) " gratiam dei et adjutorium non ad
:
singulos actus dari (in other places he says the opposite) sed in libero arbitrio esse vel
in lege ac doctrina. " That accordingly
Augustine therefore says very rightly
is all.
'
that Pelagius only admitted the grace qua demonstrat et revelat deus quid agere
'
debeamus, non qua donat atque adjuvat ut agamus.

.
' See preceding note and Cselestius' statement; "lex sic mittit ad regnum
coelorum quomodo et evangelium."
^'Example and imitation, see Op. imp. II. 146 sq. C. Jul. V. 58: "tolle
exempli causam, tolle et pretii, quod pro nobis factus est." Julian also ultimately
reduced the death of Christ to a type, Op. imp. II. 223.
^ Op. imp. II. 217-222.
* It is very instructive that to Julian (as to Augustine) it is the man that forms the
• personality in Jesus. He is distinguished from Augustine by saying that the man
Jesus was chosen by God and united with Christ secundum merita. 'Vas frofectus is
also more marked Jesus was gradually adopted by the Word of God ; the
plainly ;
Jilius hominis gradually became the filius dei through the achievement of his will.
Accordingly, unless Augustine has greatly exaggerated, this still might be taught with
impunity at that time in the West (see Op. imp. IV. 84).
on the part of God. The Pelagians did not deny that this was
represented in baptism and the remissions granted by God;
they taught the forgiveness of sins through baptism. But they
could not show wherein this forgiveness consisted without
coming into conflict with freedom. As regards infant baptism,
they dared no longer dispute its necessity ; indeed, they dared
no longer flatly declare that it was not given for the remission
of sins. They derived a certain consecration and sanctification
from it, but they disputed the doctrine that children dying
unbaptised were lost ; these would only fail to enter the king-
dom of heaven, the highest grade of felicity.^
1 8. Finally, the Pelagians taught that this grace through
Christ was compatible with the righteousness (justitia) of God,
because the latter did not preclude an increase of benefits,^ but
that grace was given secundum merita (according to the merits
of the rational spirit) because in any other case God would have
been unjust* The contention, however, that it was absolutely
necessary was never seriously advocated by them, and was fre-
quently denied, and in the thesis that the operation of the
gospel is not different from that of the law, the former is in
point of fact completely reduced to the level of the latter. But
the law is itself nothing but a crutch not necessary to everyone.
Man is to be sinless this state we can attain by our will but
: ;
sinlessness (impeccantia) is rendered easy to the Christian for ;
by looking to Christ he can easily turn, and in baptism, the
1 The evasions in the case of baptism are so numerous that it is not worth while
mentioning separate instances. The

notion of forgiveness was in itself very irksome
to the Pelagians ; it could be at most a kind of indulgence, with difficulty compatible
with justice. They also touched on the question whether baptism extirpates sin or
removes guilt ; but for them the question was senseless. As regards infant baptism,
all their statements are to be derived from the fact that they would neither abolish it,
nor admit baptisms of different value. The

between regnum ccelorum and
distinction
vita cBtema was an eschatological rudiment, in this case welcome.
^ Op. imp. I. 72, III. 163 " augmenta beneficiorum divinorum utilia esse et neces-
:
saria omnibus in commune setatibus dicimus, ita tamen ut nee virtus nee peccatum
sine propria cuiquam voluntate tribuatur."
3 De gestis 30 " De gratiam secundum merita nostra dari, quia si peccatoribus
:
illam det, videtur esse iniquus. " This destroys the notion of grace ; for it is only as
gratuitous that it is grace. Here
takes the form of a means of rewarding the good.
it
But if grace is neither gratis nor a power, it is nothing but an empty word.
— —
CHAP. IV.] DOCTRINE OF AUGUSTINE. 203
mysteries, dogmas, and the commandments, he from the first

possesses nothing but means to promote virtue. All that Christ
did and the Church does is considered not as action but as
teaching.
The Pelagians deserve respect for their purity of motive, their
horror of the Manicha;an leaven and the opus operatum, their
insistence on clearness,and their intention to defend the Deity.^
But we cannot but decide that their doctrine fails to recognise
the misery of sin and evil, that in its deepest roots it is godless,
that it knows, and seeks to know, nothing of redemption, and
that it is dominated by an empty formalism (a notional myth-
ology) which does justice at no single point to actual quantities,
and on a closer examination consists of sheer contradictions.
In the form in which this doctrine was expressed by Pelagius
and in part also by Julian i.e., with all the accommodations to
which he condescended, it was not a novelty.^ But in its funda-
mental thought it was or, rather, it was an innovation because
;
it abandoned, in spite of all accommodations in expression, the pole of

the mystical doctrine of redemption, which the Church had stead-
fastly maintained side by side with the doctrine offreedom?
III. The fundamental notion of Pelagianism is nature em-
bracing free will (liberum arbitrium); the fundamental notion
of Augustinianism is grace, and in the Pelagian controversy the
grace of God through Christ* In Pelagianism the doctrine of
grace amounts to an " appendix " badly connected with the
main subject in Augustinianism the doctrine of nature is beset
;
1 That Augustinianism is identical with Manichseism runs through Julian's polemic

'
like a red line. ' Manichseorum sordes ac
Svib laude baptismatis eructat Augustinus
naturale peccatum, ut ecclesise catholicse pura hactenus sacramenta contaminet " (Op.
imp. I. 9).
2 His condemnation was, therefore— from a legal standpoint —not above question ;
the rejection of his energetic appeal to freedom in Church instruction not in every
respect salutary.
3 But from this point of view it could not be thoroughly opposed. Augustinianism
could alone overcome it. Augustine's criticism of this system will be best given
through an exposition of his own.
Therefore the Pelagians attacked Augustine's doctrine of nature, and he their
<•
doctrine of grace. Everything that Augustine has to say to the Pelagians springs
properly from the proof that they were ignorant of the nature of grace, and therefore
also of that of sin.
with contradictions, because it is impossible to give a rational

account of nature and history from the standpoint of the grace of
experience. For it is absolutely impossible to develop as a
rational doctrine the conviction of the transforming grace of
God who is must begin and end with the
also the creator ; it
confession " How incomprehensible are God's judgments and

:
how inscrutable his ways!" Augustine, sneered at as "Aris-

toteles Poenorum " as " philosophaster Pcenorum " (Op. imperf.
III. 198, V. 11), knew this also. But living in an age when it
was held to be culpable ignorance and unbelief not to answer
all possible questions, and penetrated by the vulgar conviction
that Holy Scripture solved all problems, he, too, made the high-
est facts and the feelings of the inner life which he had gained
in the gospel the starting-point of a description of " primitive
history " and the history of mankind that could not but end in
contradictions. At the same time, the pathological experiences
of the course of his life are mirrored in this description. The
stream of living water still bears in its depths traces of the
gloomy banks past which it once had flowed, and into which it
had almost sunk.^
I. Mankind is, as experience shows, a "mass of sin"
[massa peccati (perditionis)], waited on by death, and incapable
of raising itself to the good for having revolted from God, it
;
could no more return to him than an empty vessel could refill

itself. But in —
Christ the Redeemer and in him alone the —
grace of God manifested itself and entered on the work of man's
deliverance. Christ by his death removed the gulf between God
—
and mankind breaking the rule of the devil so that the grace —
of God, which for that reason is gratia per (propter^ Christum,
could pursue its work.^ This free grace {^gratia gratis
^ Since Augustine's fundamental theological conceptions have been already dis-

cussed above (see p. 94 fF. ), we have here only to examine the doctrine of grace, and
that of sin and the primitive state. This order is self-evident, while Pelagianism
started at the doctrine of an indestructible nature.
^ Expositions of the death of Christ as the ground of salvation are frequent in
Augustine. Cut they refer mostly to the reign of the devil, which was legally abro-
gated by Christ's death ; on the other hand, they are much rarer when Aueustine
speaks of positive redemption. This deliverance from the devil's power was the
common conception of Christ's death ; it was the pretium paid for us to the devil,
:
data) 1 working in the Church, is beginning, middle, and end. Its

aim is the rescue from the massa perditionis, that as guilty falls
justly a prey to eternal death, of a fixed number of elect (certus
numerus electorum), who enter eternal life. They are saved
because God, in virtue of his eternal decree of salvation, has pre-
destinated, chosen, called, justified, sanctified, and preserved
them.^ This is done through grace, which thus is (i) pre-
svhich he could not, however, retain. But it plays a subordinate part in Augustine's
•vhole system ; even the thought that God must be propitiated, of which we have
echoes in Augustine, is not strictly carried out. The grace of God to him means, as
a rule, the annulling of the state of sin. It is involved, however, in the nature of the
case, that the reference is uncertain ; for it ishard to demonstrate how a "state " is
changed effectively by the death of Christ. But the looseness of connection was also
a result of Augustine's conception of God ; for grace, at bottom, emanated from the
inscrutable decree of God, or the bonum esse.
Augustine rarely connects â^z'o infusa
in his thought with Christ, but with caritas, which
is the essence of the Good. Here
we have once more to remember that Christ himself, as a historical manifestation,
was an instance in Augustine's view of predestinating grace (see above, p. 129).
" Therefore the activity of Christ, who, as living eternally, works directly in us, is
loosely connected with the historical process of propitiation " (Dorner, p. 182). That
is, this
'
' ever living Christ " is In Enchir. 108, Augustine
himself nothing but grace.
has summed up all he had to say on the import of Christ's work ; but it will be
found that, although the reconciliatio cum deo — only, indeed, as restoration to God-
is not wanting, what is called "objective redemption"
in the is left pretty much
background. Augustine accordingly conceived the import of Christ spiritually
" Neque per ipsum liberaremur unum mediatorem dei et hominum hominem Jesum
Chiristum, nisi esset et deus. Sed cum factus est Adam homo, scil. rectus, mediatore
non opus erat. Cum vero genus humanum peccata lonê separaverunt a deo, per
,
mediatorem, qui solus sine peccato natus est, vixit, occisus est, reconciliari nos oporte-
bat deo usque ad carnis resurrectionem in vitam seternam, ut kumana superbia per
humilitatem dei argueretur (that is the main thought, see above, p. 1 3 1 f. ) cf sanaretur
et demonsiraretur homini quam longe a deo recesserat (to-day this conception of
Christ's work would be called rationalistic), cum per incarnatum deuin revocaretur et
exemplum obedientice per hominem-deuvi (this expression, "homo-deus" was not
used, so far as I know, before Augustine) contumaci homini frceberetur, et unigenito
suscipiente formam servi, quae nihil ante meruerat, fons gratis panderetur et carnis
etiam resurrectio redemptis promissa in ipso redemftore prcemonstraretur, et per
eandem naturam quam se decepisse Iffitabatur, diabolus vinceretur, nee tamen homo
gloriaretur, ne iterum superbia nasceretur, etc."
1 Enchir. 107 ;
" Gratia vero nisi gratis est, gratia non est."
2 See the writings De corrept. et gratia, De dono perseverantise, De prsedest.
sanctorum, as well as expositions in all the works of Augustine's last years ; for they
never fail to prove that he more and more recognised the doctrine of predestinating
grace to be the main one. Predestination, does not rest on the foreknowledge that
those particular men would follow grace, but it effects this result. The scriptural
proof is Rom. IX. (see De prsedest. 34).

"
2o6 HISTORY OF DOGMA. [CHAP. IV.
venient ;'^ for it must first create the good will (faith).^ (This
^
prevenient grace can be combined with " the call " (vocatio) ;
but we must even here remember that the call comes to some
who are not "called according to the purpose."* In the strict
sense the whole transactions of grace apply only to those who
are predestinated ^ in the wider sense, grace operates as far as
;
sanctification in a much greater circle, who, however, finally perish,

because they have not received its last work.)® Augustine has
inserted his whole religious experience in the confession of free
and prevenient grace. He nowhere speaks with greater convic-
tion, more simply and grandly, than where he praises the grace
that snatches man from his sinful condition. But grace (2)
works co-operatively? This work evolves itself in a series of
it is only possible slowly and gradually
stages, since naturally
whose attainment is desired, viz., the persever-
to reach the goal
ance and complete and actual regeneration of man * re-creation —
1 Enchir. 32 :
" Nolentem prasvenit ut velit, volentem subsequitur, ne frustra
velit." De gratia et lib. arb. 33 :

" prseparat voluntatem et cooperando perficit, quod
operando inficit. Quoniam ipse ut velimus operatur incipiens. " There are countless
other passages.
^ De spir et litt. 34: "Non credere potest quodlibet libero arbitrio, si nulla sit
suasio vel vocatio cui credat ;

profecto et ipsum velle credere deus operatur in homine
et in omnibus miseiicordia ejus prsevenit nos :consentire autem vocationi dei vel ab
ea dissentire propriaB voluntatis est." Augustine's favourite text was, " Quid habes,
quod non accepisti."
' See preceding note.
^ See Augustine's last writings, e.g„ De corr. 39 ; De prsed. 32. The means of
grace are uncertain ; the universal vocatio should be successful, but it is not.
' Here true that "deus ita suadet ut persuadeat."
it is De praedest, 34 " Electi :
sunt ante mundi constitutionem ea prsedestinatione, in qua deus sua futura facta prae-
scivit electi sunt autem de mundo ea vocatione, qua deus id, quod prsedestinavit,
;
implevit. Quos enim prsedestinavit, ipsos et vocavit, ilia scilicet vocatione secundum
propositum, non ergo alios sed quos prmdestinavit ipsos et vocavit, nee alios, sed quos
praadestinavit, vocavit justificavit, ipsos et glorificavit, illo utique fine, qui non habet
finem.
' Therefore it was possible forAugustine to conceive the means of grace as acting
in the case of heretics, because he felt their efficacy in general to be in the end un-
certain.
' See above, note l. The commonest term is " adjutorium," which the Pelagians
also used, but with a quite different meaning. They thought of a cratch, Augustine
of a necessary power.
8 That is, this regeneration, surpassing forgiveness of sin and faith, is always con-
sidered the goal. That is the moral phase of the religious movement. Renovatio =
into —
good men accordingly his being rendered capable of doing
good works of piety and possessing merit. The calling (vocatio)
first results in faith as God's gift.
This faith is itself subject to
growth, begins as unquestioning acceptance based on the
i.e., it
authority of the Church and Scripture it presents itself further ;
as obedience, then trust (fiducia) believing God, belief about

God, belief on God (credere deum, credere de deo, credere in
deum) and as such passes into love.^ Parallel with this goes
the effective (visible) action of grace in the Church,^ which
begins with the remission of sin.s.^ This is administered in bap-
tism, and since the latter removes the guilt of original sin,* and
blots out sins previously committed, it is the " bath of regenera-
tion." But
so only as an initiatory act
it is for the actual ;
which corresponds to co-operating grace, is not yet

justification,
gained, where sin is no longer imputed, but only where the irre-
ligious man has become just, where accordingly an actual renova-
tion has taken place. This is effected through the infusion of
love into the heart by the Holy Spirit, and this love substitutes
justification sanctificatio = sanctitas. Thus even regeneration is only perfect at the

close. Enchir. 31 :
" We become free when God fashions us
good men." into
^ On an advancing process of faith see Dorner, pp. 183-195. Originally,
faith as
faith is contrasted with knowledge it is the acceptance on authority of things we
;
cannot know, nay, of what is contrary to reason ; but it grows into assensus, fiducia,
and spiritual perception, and thus passes into love, or, according to Paul and James,
into the faith that works in love.
^ Yet, as follows from the above exposition, the whole process of grace is com-
pletely subjective, although the parallel of the rites of the Church is maintained.
^ Augustine was the first to make baptism a real act of initiation (Ench. 64 "a :
baptismate incipit renovatio "). The forgiveness of sins has an independent value
only for the baptised child if it dies ; otherwise it is an initiation. Here, and for this
reason, we have Luther's divergence in the notion of faith. De grat. et lib. arb. 27 :
" neque scientia divinse legis, neque natura neque sola remissio peccatorum esX. ilia
gratia per Christum, sed ipsa facit, ut lex impleatur."
* For Augustine's system it is a grave defect, sufficiently animadverted on also by
the Pelagians, that baptism only removes the guilt of inherited sin ; for with him
removal of guilt is really a slight matter, in any case not the chief concern. But in
the formulas the " non imputare," as well zs, fides, undoubtedly appears as the chief
thing. In reality, while the removal of guilt is the object oi fides historica, sin is
blotted out by gratia infusa. Where Augustine seeks to retain guilt as the supreme
conception, he always turns to its punishment. Man is emptied by sin. Thus sin
bears its punishment in itself. Man despoiled, howe.ver, is much too dependent, too
much of a cipher, to be able to possess guilt.
good for evil desire (concupiscence). That is, the man now not
only makes the joyful confession To me to cleave to God is
:
"
a good thing," and delights in God as the summum bonum,

instead of in perishable possessions (the humility of faith, love
and hope in place of pride of heart), but gains also the power to
do good works. This new frame of mind and capacity, which
grace begets through the gift of the Holy Spirit, is the experi-
ence of justification by faith (justificatio ex fide).^
Justification an act that takes place once for all, and is

is
completed sub and with reference to the fact

specie aternitatis,
that everything can be comprised in faith. As an empirical
experience, however, it is a process never completed in this
world, because the being replenished with faith, which through
love labours to effect the complete transformation of man, is
itself subject to limitation in our present life.^ This operation
1 The ioTcoiiSA justificatio ex fide is very frequent in Augustine. De spiritu et litt.

45 : " cum dicat gratis justificari hominem per fidem sine operibus legis, nihil aliud
volens intelligi in eo, quod dicit gratis, nisi quia justificationem opera non prsece-
dunt. . . Quid est aliud justificati quam justi facti ab illo scilicet qui justificat impium
ut ex impio fiat Justus." 15 :
" non quod sine voluntate nostra justificatio fiat, sed
voluntas nostra ostenditur infirma per legem, ut sanet gratia voluntatem et sanata
voluntas impleat legem." C. Jul. II. 23 : "justificatio inhac vita nobis secundum tria
ista confertur : prius lavacro regenerationis, quo remittuntur cuncta peccata, deinde
congressione cum vitiis, a quorum reatu absoluti sumus, tertio dum nostra exaudiatur
oratio, qua dicimus, Dimitte nobis debita nostra. " The whole process up to the
mentis and vita ceterna in De gratia et lib. arb. 20. Love alone decides salvation,
because it alone replenishes the man despoiled by sin. Man receives his final salva-
tion by being restored through the spirit of love to goodness, being, and God, and by
being united with him mystically yet really. The depreciation of faith follows neces-
sarily from the notions of God, the creature and sin, all three of which have the mark
of the acosmic. Since there is no independence beside God, the act of faith on the
part of a subject in the presence of God only obtains any value when it is transformed
into union with God —
the "being filled" by God. This union, however, is a pro-
duct of the freed will and gratia {cooperans).
2 This is argued very often by Augustine. The bon concupiscentia can, as experi- 1
ence shows, never wholly supplant on earth the mala. (De spiritu 6: "adjuvat
spiritus sanctus inspirans pro concupiscentia mala concupiscentiam bonam, hoc est
caritatem diffundens in cordibus nostris. " ) For this very reason diffusio caritatis
(gratia infusa, inspiratio dilectio —
Augustine has many synonyms for this power of
justification) is never perfected. Thus justification, which is identical with sanctifica-
tion, is never completed because " opera " also are essential to it. Augustine appealed
expressly to James. Gratia, however, is never imparted secundum merita bona
voluntatis, let alone bonorum operum ; it first calls them forth.
GHAP. IV.] DOCTRINE OF AUGUSTINE. 209
of the spirit of love has its parallel in the effective (visible)

dealings of grace in the Church, and that in the Lord's Supper
(the incorporation into the love and unity of Christ's body) as
well as in the Eucharistic sacrifice, penance, and Church works,
so far as these are capable of blotting out sin.^These works,
however, possess sti.l another value. Renunciation of worldly
pleasure is only completed in asceticism, and since at the
Judgment God will deal with us in accordance with our works,
the completion of justification can only consist in the sancti-
fication, in virtue of which particular possessions marriage, —
property, etc. —
are wholly abandoned. It is not, indeed,
absolutely necessary for everyone to fulfil the counsels of the
gospel (consilia evangelica) we can live in faith, hope, and love
;
without them. God's grace does not make everyone a saint,^

to be worshipped, and to be implored to intercede for us. But
everybody who is to be crowned must ultimately possess merits
in some degree ; for, at theJudgment, merits will alone be
crowned, these ever being, indeed, like all good, God's gifts.*
But the perseverance of the elect in love through the whole
course of their, life until the Judgment is (3) the highest and last
gift of grace, which now appears as irresistible. Perseverance
to the end is the good, without which all that went before is
nothing. Therefore, in a sense, it alone is grace ; for only those

are finally saved who have obtained this irresistible grace.
The called who do not possess it are lost. But why only a few
1 See above, We have to notice here also the juxtaposition of the two pro-
p. IJS-
cesses, the outerand inner. For the rest, the whole account of the process of salvation
is not yet reduced to a strict plan. Augustine still confuses the stages, and, fortu-
nately, has no fixed terminology. Scholasticism first changed all this.
* No one can wholly avoid sin ; but the saints can refrain from crimes (Enchir. 64).
^ The work " De fide etoperibus" is especially important at this point. Augustine
expressly denies, c. 40, that faith and knowledge of God suffice for final blessedness.
He holds by the saying: "Hereby we know him, if we keep his commandments."
Against reformers like Jovinian, and not only against them, he defended the consilia,
monachism, the higher morality, and the saints. De gratia et lib. arb. I " per :
gratiam dei bona merita comparamus quibus ad vitam perveniamus seternam." By

these merita, works thoroughly ascetic are to be understood ; see also the writings, De
'
sancta virgin. and De bono viduit., in which, for the rest, Augustine is still more
,
favourable to marriage than at a later date. His writings are at all times marked by
a lofty appreciation of almsgiving.
O
2IO HISTORY OF DOGMA, [CHAP. IV.
obtain this gift, though it is bestowed secundum merita, is God's

secret.! Eternal life and eternal damnation are decreed by one
and the same justice.^

2. The
doctrine of sin, the Fall, and the primitive state is
sketched from the standpoint of free and prevenient grace. It
follows from the doctrine of grace that sin characterises man-
kind as they now exist. Sin presents itself essentially as
being without God (carentia dei), the voluntary diminution of
strength of being.^ The failure to possess God (privatio boni),
the non inhcErere deo, constitutes sin, and, indeed, the two
—
thoughts the one metaphysical, that sin is defect of being, the
other ethical, that it is defect of goodness coincide as we reflect —
on them,* just as in the examination of grace the metaphysical
(the finding of being from not-being) and the ethico-religious
elements always accord. This sin is a state: the wretched
necessity of being unable to refrain from sinning (misera necess-
itas non posse non peccandi). Freedom in the sense of free
choice is not destroyed ^ but the freedom still existing always
;
leads to sin and this state is all the more dreadful, as there
;
exists a certain knowledge of the good, nay, even a powerless

desire for it, which invariably succumbs.* Positively, however,
the sinful state presents itself as the rule of the devil over men.
' That grace is gratis data only appears certain to Augustine from the contention
that it is irresistibilis, and embraces the domim perseverantim. The doctrine that the
election of grace is unconditioned thus appears most plainly at the close of the whole
line of thought ; see De corrept et grat. 34, and the writings De dono persev. and De
prsedest. sanct. But, according to Augustine, no one can be certain that he possesses
this grace. Therefore with all his horror of sin, Augustine had not experienced the
horror of uncertainty of salvation. For
reason Christ can take so secondary a
this
place in the working out of the process of grace. Christ is for him the Redeemer, and
is actively present in the Sacraments ; but he is not the pledge of the inner assurance
of salvation.
^ But Augustine assumes different degrees also in definitive salvation and perdition.
That is characteristic for his moral theory.
^ Dorner, p. 124 ff.
4 See above, p. 1 14 f.
s This was constantly admitted by Augustine.
* We find in Augustine the two positions, that sinful man does not will goodness,
and that he yet, under a blind impulse, pursues blessings, nay, even the good, but
without ever attaining them.
CHAP. IV.] DOCTRINE OF AUGUSTINE. 2X1
as pride'^ and concupiscence?' From that rule it follows that

man must be redeemed _/w/« without before he can be helped.^
Pride in relation to God and concupiscence show that man is
sinful in soul and body. Yet the emphasis falls on concupis-
cence ;
* it is the lower desire, sensuous lust, which shows itself
above all in the lust of the flesh. The motus genitalium, inde-
pendent even of the will, teaches us that nature is corrupt; it has
not become vice (vitium), but it is vitiated (natura vitiata).^ It
1 The inclination to nothing (not-being) is always at the same time a striving for
independence, which is false, and ends in being resultless.
2 Pride is the sin of the soul, concupiscence essentially that of the body which
masters the soul. The inner evolution of sin from privatio (defectus) boni to ignor-
aniia, concupiscentia, error, dolor, metus, deledatio morbida, see Enchir. 23. What
Augustine always regarded most in sin was the infirmity, the wound.
3 The work of the historical Christ is essentially redemption from the power of the
devil.
* Here enters the popular Catholic element,
still further accentuated, however, by
Augustine. Enchir. 117: "Regnat cainalis cupiditas, ubi non est dei caritas."
' The extremely disgusting disquisitions on marriage and lust in the polemical
writings against Julian (also De civ. dei XIV.) are, as the latter rightly perceived,
hardly independent of Augustine's Manichrasm : (Julian, indeed, traces Traducianism
to Manichseism ; see Op. imperf. HI. 172). (Manichreism, besides, already appears,
in the treatment of the " ex nihilo," as if it were an evil substance; Neoplatonism
alone does not, in my opinion, explain this conception ; yet the above dependence can-
not be strictly proved— see Loofs, D.-Gesch., 3 Ed., p. 215.) And the disquisitions
are by no means a mere outwork in Augustine's system ; they belong to its very
centre. The most remarkable feature in the sexual sphere was, in his view, the in-
voluntariness of the impulse. But instead of inferring that it could not therefore be
sinful —
and this should have been the inference in keeping with the principle " omne
—
peccatum ex voluntate " he rather concludes that there is a sin which belongs to
nature, namely, to natura vitiata, and not to the sphere of the will. He accordingly
perceives a sin rooted in natura, of course in the form which it has assumed, a sin
that propagates itself with our nature. It would be easy now to prove that in think-
ing of inherited sin, he always has chiefly in view this very sin, the lust of procreation;
but it is impracticable to quote his material here. It is clear that inherited sin is the
basis of all wickedness, and that it is in quite a different position from actual sins,
because in it nature, having become evil, infects the whole being. But it is obvious that
this was an unheard of novelty in the Church, and must be explained by reference to
Manicheeism. Of course Augustine did not intend to be a Manichsean. He dis-
tinguishes sharply between vitium and natura vitiata (De nupt. 36 ; Op. imp. HI.
188, etc., etc.,) ; he strives to introduce the " voluntarium " even into inherited sin
(Retract. I. 13, S) ; but dualism is not surmounted simply by supposing nature
to have become " mala," and yet to propagate itself as evil, and the voluntarium is a
mere assertion. The dualism lies in the proposition that children possess original
sin, because their parents have procreated them in lust —and by this proposition stands
therefore propagates sin. That it does so is attested by the

evidence of the senses, the sensuous, and therefore sinful pleasure
in the act of procreation, and by Holy Scripture (Rom. V. 12 f.).
Thus mankind is a massa perdltionis also in the sense that it
procreates sin in itself from a corrupt nature. But since the

soul in all probability is not procreated at the same time, it is
in each case created by God,^ so the body, begotten in the lust
of the flesh, is quite essentially the bearer of sin.^ That the
latter thus descends is decreed by God for sin is not always ;
merely sin, but also, or often only, the punishment of sin

{peccatum and malum combine in the sense of evil).^ The sin
which descends in the massa perditionis (peccatum originis,
tradux peccati) is at once sin and sin's punishment. This has
been ordained by him who decreed sins (the " ordinator pecca-
torum)." Every desire involves infatuation. It is the penalty
of sin that we do the evil we would not. Every sin carries
with it dissolution, the death of the sinner. It rends and
or falls the doctrine of original sin (De nupt. II. 15).

So also Christ has sinlessness
attributed to him, because he was not born of marriage (Ench. 41, 34), and Augustine
imagined paradisaical marriages in which children were begotten without lust, or, as
Julian says jestingly, were to be shaken from trees. All that he here maintains had
been long ago held by Marcion and the Gnostics. One would have, in fact, to be a
very rough being not to be able, and that without Manichjeism, to sympathise with
his feeling. But to yield to it so far as Augustine did, without rejecting marriage in
consequence, could only happen at a time when doctrines were as confused as in the
fifth century. Those, indeed, have increased the confusion still further, who have
believed that they could retain Augustine's doctrine of inherited sin while rejecting
his teaching as to concupiscence. But the history of dogma is the history of ever
increasing confusions, and of a growing indifference not only to the absurd, but also
10 contradictions, because the Church was only with difficulty capable of giving up
anything found in tradition. It cannot also be said that Augustine by his theory
simply gave expression to the monastic tendency (Jerome, indeed, has gone just as far
in his rejection of marriage —
see lib. adv. Jovin.) for this was a tendency and not
;
a theory. The legitimate point in Augustine's doctrine lies in the judgment passed
by the child of God on himself, viz., that without God he is wretched, and that this
wretchedness is guilt. But this paradox of the verdict of faith is no key to the
understanding of history.
1 See the correspondence with Jerome on this point which was never settled by
Augustine.
2 This destroys the beautiful proposition (pride and humility) out of which, of
course, no historical theories could be constructed.
3 On sin and sin's punishment (inherited sin is both), see Op. imp. I. 41-47, but
even in the Confessions often, and De pecc. mer. II. 36.
3
dismembers him, it empties him and exhausts him, until he no

longer exists. Thus death
reigns in its various forms, till it
reaches eternal death, in the massa perditionis. This humanity
which is subject to the dreary necessity of not being able to
refrain from sin (non posse non peccare) is therefore also and at
the same time subject to the dreadful necessity of not being
able to escape death (non posse non mori).'- No power of its
own can rescue it. Its best deeds are all stained from the
roots therefore they are nothing but splendid vices.
; Its
youngest offspring, even if they have done nothing sinful, must
necessarily be lost for since they possess original sin, i.e., are
;
destitute of God, and are burdened with concupiscence, they

pass justly into damnation.^ This is attested also by the Church
when it baptises newly-born children.^
—
How did this state arise a state which could not have been
due to God the creator ? Scripture and the Church answer :
through Adam's Fall. The magnitude of this Fall had already

been depicted in the Church; but from his standpoint Augustine
had rightly to say that Adam's sin, and therewith sin in general,
had not yet been duly perceived yet the Church, as its insti- —
tutions prove, had, it was alleged, appreciated it truly; writers,
however, had fallen short of this estimate. Adam's Fall was
1 Even inherited sin is quite enough for damnation, as Augustine has very often
—
maintained and rightly, if there is such a thing.
2 " Mitissima pcena " (Enchir. 103) —
thus the man permits himself to soften the
inscrutable lighteousness of God which he teaches elsewhere. He answered the
question why then should God continue to create men if they must almost all be lost,
by referring to baptism, and the peculiar power of Divine Omnipotence to make good
out of evil. Had God not been omnipotent, then he could not have permitted evil
(Enchir. 11); "melius judicavit, de malis bene facere, quam mala nulla esse per-
mittere " (c. 27, 100). But he himself was shaken by the problem presented by the
death, unbaptised, of Christian children (De corr. et gr. 18), All who are lost are
juste prasdestinati adpoenam (mortem) — see Enchir. 100 ; De civ. XXII. 24. Whether
God damns all, or pardons some — nulla iniquilas
est ; for all have deserved death
(Enchir, 27). " Tenebatur justa damnatione genus humanum et omnes erant irse
filii (c. 33). Here in the later writings arises the doctrine of God's twofold will
(judicium), the secret and the manifest. God does not will that all be blessed (Enchir.
103).
3 It was very incorrect to derive Augustine's whole conception of original sin from
the practice of infant baptism. It was, of course, very important to him as a means
of proof.
inconceivably great.' When, in the hope of becoming like God^

he transgressed God's command not to eat the apple, all con-
ceivable sins were compressed into his sin: the revolt to the devil,
pride of heart, envy, sensuous lust all in all —
self-love in place :
of love of God.^ And it was all the more dreadful, as it was

easy for Adam to refrain from sin.^ Therefore also came the
unspeakable misery, viz., the punishment of sin, with and in sin,
working itself out in death. Adam lost the possession of God.*
This was followed by complete deprivation (defectio boni),
which is represented as the death of the soul for the latter ;
without God is dead (spiritual death). ^ The dead soul is now

drawn downwards it seeks its blessings in the mutable and
;
perishable, and is no longer capable of commanding the body.

The latter then asserted itself with all its wanton impulses, and
thus corrupted the whole human nature^
The corruption is manifest in sexual lust, whose sinfulness is
evidenced by compulsion and shame, and it must be inherited
since the central seat of nature is disordered.'^ It indeed still
1 The description of the magnitude of Adam's Fall is in most of the anti-Pelagian

writings, but also elsewhere.
In "-" of Adam's Fall Augustine gives the greatest prominence to the sin of
ft""
the soui "in paradisoab animo coepit elatio" (c. Jul, V. 17). Wehave"amor sui"
:
as chief and radical sin in the Confessions ; Enchir. 45 gives a precise enumeration
of all the sins committed in one act by Adam.
^ That is, he was not only created good, but grace stood by him also as adjutorium
;
see under.
* The
grace supporting him (adjutorium).
5 Augustine always thinks first of this death. That the Pelagians accepted for
their own purposes, since they held natural death to be natural. Augustine nevei'
maintained that formal freedom had been lost by Adam's sin, nay, in C. duas epp.
Pelag. I. 5 he distinctly disputed this :
" libertas periit, sed ilia, quse in paradise fuit,
non liberum arbitrium." But Augustine has represented the
latter to be hopelessly
hampered. See also the writing De gratia et lib. arb. In it he says (c. 45) " deus :
induravit perjustum judicium, et ipse Pharao per liberum arbitrium. But (Enchir.
105) " Multo liberius erit arbitrium, quod omnino non poterit servire peccato."
:
^ Thus sensuousness appears as the main detriment.

7 Enchir. 26 " Hinc post peccatum exul effectus stirpem quoque suam, quam pec-
:
cando in se tamquam in radice vitiaverat, poena mortis et damnationis obstrinxit, ut

quidquid prolis ex illo et simul damnata per quam peccaverat conjuge per carnalem
concupiscentiam, in qua inobedientise poena similis [so far as the flesh here is not
obedient to the will, but acts of itself] retributa est, nasceretur, traheret originale
peccatum, quo traheretur per errores doloresque diversos ad illud extremum sup-
plicium."
CHAP. IV.] DOCTRINE OF AUGUSTINE. 21$
continues to be capable of redemption it does not become an evil —

—
substance but it is so corrupt that even grace can only blot out
the guilt (reatus) of original sin it cannot completely extirpate ;
concupiscence itself in the elect, as is proved by the survival of

the evil sexuallust. This inheriting of sin and of Adam's death
is,however, not merely a fact, but it is just, because Scripture
says that we have all sinned in Adam,' because all owe their
life to sinful lust,^ and because — God is just.
Adam's had
Fall presupposes that his previous constitution
been good. This is taught, too, by Scripture, and it follows like-
wise from the assurance that God is the creator, and the good
creator, of all things.Îf Adam was created good, then he pos-
sessed not only everything that a rational creature needs (body
and soul and their due relationship as servant and master,
reason and free will), but, above all, grace ever supporting and
preserving him, the adjutorium, that is the bond of union with
the living God for the virtuous man is not independent of
;
God only independent when completely dependent on

; he is
God. Adam, accordingly, not only had a free will, but this will
zvas influenced in the direction of God} For this very reason he
was free (in God) but he was also free (able) to will evil for
; ;
evil springs from freedom. If Adam had not possessed a free

will, he would have been unable to sin but in that case he ;
would not have been a rational creature. So he possessed the

1 Augustine's exposition of the i<l> (f in De pace. mer. I. II ; c. Jul. VI. 75 sq. ;
Op. imp. II. 48-55 (against mere imitation). The translation "in quo" was
received by Augustine from tradition, and in general his doctrine of original sin is at
this point closest to tradition. If he had contented himself with the mystical, i.e.,
the postulated, conception that all are sinners, because they somehow were all in
Adam, his theory would have been no novelty. But this " in quo " does not include,
but excludes, original sin in the strict sense all are sinners personally, because they
;
were all in Adam, or were Adam. The conception that Adam's sin passed to all
as actual sin, and affected them through contagion (by means of the parents who
infect their children, Enchir. 46 ; doubts as to the extent of descent by inheritance,
47), is the complete antithesis of that mystical conception.
2 See above, p. 210 f.
3 On the doctrine of the primitive state, see Dorner, p. 114 ff.

i Both formal freedom and the true freedom which established Adam's obedience
as the mater omnium virtuhim are very strongly emphasised by Augustine as belong-
ng ; De civ. XIV. 12
to the primitive state De bono conjug. 32. On the primi- ;
tive state, I.e. XI. -XIV. ; De corrept. 28-33.

2l6 HISTORY OF DOGMA. [CHAP. IV.
power not good (posse non peccare,

to sin, or die, or forsake the
^r— mori, —deserere
bonum), but this through the adjiitorium
(auxiliary grace) went so far in the direction of inability to sin
(non posse peccare) that it would have been easy for Adam to
attain it.^ Had he attained it by means of free will (iiberum
arbitrium), he would have received perfect blessedness in return
for the merit involved in his perseverance, he would have re-
mained, and escaped death, in Paradise, and would have begot-
ten children without sinful lust. We see that the primitive state
was meant to be portrayed in accordance with the state of grace
of the present ; but an important difference prevailed, since in
the former case, the adjutorium was only the condition, under
which Adam could use his free will lastingly in being and doing
1 This "ease" is strongly emphasised in De civ. XIV. 12-15. The whole

doctrine of the primitive state, like all teaching on this subject, is full of contradic-
tions ; for we have here a
grace that is meant to be actual, and is yet merely a con-
dition, by no means makes a man good, but only leaves scope to the will.
«'.«., it
Thereby the whole doctrine of grace is upset ; for if there is a grace at all which only
produces the/ow« non peccare, is not this the sole significance of all grace? and if
that is correct, were not the Pelagians right ? They, of course, maintained that
grace was only a condition. Augustine^s di)ctrine of grace in the primitive state [the
adjutorium) is Pelagian, and contradicts his doctrine of grace elsewhere. We have
here the clearest proof that it is impossible to construct a history from the standpoint
of predestinating grace. Augustine falls back on the assumption that God wished to
bestow on man a higher good than that he had received at first. Enchir. 25, 105 :
" Sic enim oportebat prius hominem fieri, ut et bene velle posset et male, nee gratis
si bene, nee impune, si male postea vero sic erit, ut male velle non possit, nee ideo
;
libero carebit arbitrio . ordo prsetermittendus non fuit, in quo deus ostendere
. .
voluit, quam bonum sit animal rationale quod etiam non peccare possit, quamvis sit
melius quod peccare non possit. " But how does that accord with irresistible grace ?
Therefore the question rightly arises (De corrept. et gratia) " Quomodo Ad.im non
:
perseverando peccavit, qui perseverantiam non accepit ?" Is not the whole doctrine
of grace upset if we have to read (Enchir. 106) "Minorem immortahtatem (i.e.^
:
posse non mori) natura humana perdidit per Iiberum arbitrium, majorem [i.e., non
posse mori) est acceptura per gratiam, quam fuerat, si non peccasset, acceptura per
meritum, quamvis sine gratia nee tunc ullum meritumesse potuisset?" Accordingly,
at the beginning and end (the primitive state and the Judgment) the moral view is set
above the religious. The whole doctrine of predestinating irresistible grace is set in
a frame incompatible with it. Thus Augustine is himself responsible if his Church in
after times, arguing from the primitive state and the Judgment (secundum merita),
has eliminaied practically his doctrine of gratia gratis data. He, indeed, said himself
(107) " ipsa vita aeterna merces est operum bonorum." That would have been the
:
case with Adam, and it is also ours. The infralapsarian doctrine of predestination,
as umlerstood by Augustine, is very different from Calvin's.
CHAP. IV.] CRITICISM OF THE SYSTEM. 21/
good, while in the latter, it is the power, that, being irresistible,

brings fallen man to perfection.
Contemporary criticism on this system may here be briefly

summed up. Augustine contradicted himself in maintaining
that all ability to attain goodness had been lost, and in yet ad-
—
mitting that freedom of choice the decisive thing remained.—
His notion of freedom was self-destructive, since he defined
freedom as lasting dependence on God. His conception of
original sin was self-contradictory, because he himself admitted
that sin always springs from the will. He was compelled to
teach Traducianism, which, however, is a heresy. And his
Scriptural exegesis was arbitrary. In particular, God provokes
sins, if he punishes sin with sin, and decrpes the reign of sin ;
he is unjust if he imputes to men the sins of others, while for-

giving them their own, and, further, if he accepts some, and not
others, just as he pleases. This contention leads to despair.
Above all, however, the doctrine of original sin leads to Mani-
chsean dualism, which Augustine never surmounted, and is
accordingly an impious and foolish dogma. For, turn as he
will, Augustine affirms an evil nature, and therewith a diabolic
creator of the world. His doctrine of concupiscence conduces to

the same view. Besides, he depreciates the glorious gift of
human freedom, nay, even divine grace in Christ, since he holds
that original sin is never entirely removed. Finally, his doc-
trines of the exclusive efficacy of grace and predestination put
an end not only to asceticism and the meritoriousness of good
works, but also to all human doings. It is useless to exhort,
intercede for, or blame sinners, etc. In the end, even the con-
nection with the Church, which Augustine insisted on so ener-
getically in the Donatist controversy, seemed to be superseded.
Truth and -error exist side by side in these observations.
Perhaps the following considerations will be more pertinent,
(l) The impossibility of determining the fate of the whole body
of mankind and of every separate individual from the stand-
point oi gratia gratis data, is shown in the thesis of the damna-
2l8 HISTORY OF DOGMA. [CHAP. IV.
tion of children who die unbaptised. Here Augustine impugns

the thought of God's righteousness. But this thought must
become worthless altogether if everything is overruled by pre-
destinating and irresistible grace. Thereby a grave injury is
inflictedon piety. (2) The carrying out of the conception of

predestinating grace, which should be no more than a senti-
ment, confined to himself, of the redeemed, leads to a determinism
that conflicts with the gospel and imperils the vigour of our
sense of freedom. Besides, the assumption of irresistible grace
rests above all experience, even above that of the believer, and
the doctrine of God's twofold will (see de grat. et lib. arb. 45)
makes everything afl"ecting faith uncertain. (3) Augustine did
not by any means hold so certainly that grace was grace through
Christ, as that it proceeded from the secret operation of Godi
The acosmic Neoplatonic element in the doctrine of predestina-
tion imperilled not only the efflcacy of the Word and Sacrament
(vocatio and justificatio), but also redemption through Christ in
general. (4) The religious tendency in the system, the belief
that the decisive point was cleaving or not cleaving to God, re-
ceived in the sequel a new version, and the moral attitude
—
became rather the crucial question the will, of course when
freed, was an efficient cause of righteousness. For this reason
the meaning of forgiveness, of the new fundamental relation to
God, and of the assurance of faith, was misunderstood. The
former became an act of initiation, the relation became tempo-
rary, and the assurance of faith, which even according to the
doctrine of predestination need not arise, was lost in the con-
ception of a process of sanctification never or almost never
completed in this world, a process to which various grades of
were various degrees of damnation, cor-
salvation, just as there
responded world beyond. What a proof of moralism ^
in the !
Between the thesis of the ancient (Greek) Church " Where the :
knowledge of God is, come also life and salvation," and Luther's
principle : Where we have forgiveness of sins, we have also

"
life and salvation," we find Augustine's " Where love is there

:
also follows a salvation corresponding to the measure of love."
1 Enchir. 93 : "Tanto quisque tokrabiliorem ibi habebit damnationem, quanta hic

minorem habuit iniquitatem " ! Also III.
CHAP. IV.] CRITICISM OF THE SYSTEM. 219
Augustine examined the equation remission of sins=grace

through Christ, and expressly rejected it. This turn he gave
his doctrine also explains the contention that God, in the end,
crowns our merits, a view that conflicts with predestinating
grace, and opens the door to a refined form of righteousness by
works.i (5) The Neoplatonic notion of God and the monastic
tendency demand that all love should at the same time present it-
self in the form of asceticism. Thereby love drifts still further
apart from faith (as fiducia), threatens the sovereignty of the
latter, and gives free scope for all sorts of popular Catholic concep-
tions. (6) The conception —
necessary in the system of Adam's —
Fall and original sin contains —
apart from the mythology which
—
here takes the place of history a bundle of inconsistencies and
extremely questionable ideas. The latter Augustine also per-
ceived, and he tried, but without success, to guard against them.
Absolutely Manichsean is the view that man sins because he
was created from nothing, " nothing " being here treated as an
evil principle. (The Neoplatonic doctrine also sees in this
" nothing " the ground of sin but to it sin is merely finitude.
;
Augustine took a more profound view of sin, but he had also to

conceive the nihil as " more evil " in proportion, i.e., to convert it
into the evil substance of Manichism.) Manichaean also is the

opinion that sexual desire is sinful, and that inherited sin is
explained simply from procreation as the propagation of a
vitiated nature (natura vitiata).^ Absolutely contradictory are
1 Augustine attempted, in opposition to Pelagianism, to exhibit the difference
between the law and faith " fides impetrat quod lex imperat." He also succeeded
:
as far as the difference can be evolved from the notion of grace as the exclusive opera-
tion of God. But since he had not obtained an insight into the strict and exclusive
cohesion of grace and faith, he did not succeed in thinking out and holding fast the
distinction between law and faith to the end. He had no assured experience that the
law prepared the way for wrath and despair. At this point Luther intervened.
It is perhaps the worst, it is at any rate the most odious, consequence of Augus-
tinianism, that the Christian religion in Catholicism is brought into particularly close
relations to the sphere of sex. The combination of grace and sin (in which the latter
takes above all the form of original sin identified with the sexual impulse and its
excesses) became the justification of that gruesome and disgusting raking up of
human filth, which, as is proved by the moral books of Catholicism, is a chief business
of the priest, the celibate priest and monk, in the confessional. The dogmatic
treatises of medieval and modern times give, under the heading "sin," a wholly
colourless idea of what is really considered "sin," of that which incessantly occupies
;:
the positions that all sin springs from freedom (the will), and
that children just born are in a state of sin. It is extremely
suspicious to find that, when sin is more minutely dealt with,
concupiscence is practically ranked above alienation from God
(deo non adh^rere), this also, indeed, resulting from uncertainty
as to Traducianism. It again raises our doubts when we see
original sin treated as if it were more serious than actual sin
for while the former can only be washed out by baptism, the
latter can be atoned for by penance. The whole doctrinal
conception at this point shows that the conviction of the
redeemed, that without God he is lost and unfit to do any good
work, is a verdict of the believer on himself, a verdict that
marks a limit, but can never become a principle by which to
consider the history of mankind. At this point, just because the
contradictions were so enormous, the development of dogmatic with
Augustine was on the verge of casting off the imtnense material in
which it had been entangled, and of withdrawing from the inter-
pretation of the world and history ; but as Augustine would
not abandon that material, so men will not, even at the
present day, let it go, because they suppose that the Bible
protects and because they will not learn the humility
it,
of faith, that shows itself in renunciation of the attempt

to decide on God's government of the world in history.^
the imagination of common Christians, priests, and, unfortunately, also many

"saints." We
have to study the mirrors of the confessional, the moral books and
legends of the saints, and to surprise the secret life, to perceive to what point in
Catholicism religious consolation is especially applied. Truly, the renowned educa-
tional wisdom of this Church makes a sad shipwreck on this rock ! It seeks here
also to oppose sin ; but instead of quieting the imagination, which is especially
interested in it, it goes on exciting it to its depths, drags the most secret things
shamelessly to the light in its dogmas of the virgin, etc. , and permits itself to speak
openly of matters of which no one else ventures to talk. Ancient naturalism is less
dangerous, at any rate for thousands less infectious, than this seraphic contemplation
of viiginity, and this continual attention to the sphere of sex. Here Augustine
transmitted the theory, and Jerome the music. But how far the beginnings reach
back ! TertuUian had already written the momentous words (De pudic. 17)
" Quid intelligimus carnis sensum et carnis vitam nisi quodcunque pudet pronuntiare " ?
Later writers were nevertheless not ashamed to utter broadly what the far from
prudish African only suggested.
1 We have at the same time to notice that no Church Father was so keenly con-
scious as he of the limitations of knowledge. In almost all his writings a bequest —
CHAP. IV.] CRITICISM OF THE SYSTEM. 221
(7) But apart from original sin, Augustine's notion of sin

raises doubts, because it is constructed at least as much on the
thought of God as the supreme and true being (summum and
verum esse) as on that of his goodness (bonum esse). Although
the stamp of guilt is not wholly misunderstood, yet it is the
thought of the misery produced by sin with its destructiveness
and hideousness that comes to the front. Hence we under-
stand why Augustine, passing over justifying faith, perceived
the highest good in " infused love" (caritas infusa). (8) Finally
the doctrine of the primitive state is beset by inconsistency,
because Augustine could not avoid giving grace another mean-
ing in that state from that it possessed in the process by which
the redeemed is justified. With him grace is ultimately
identical with irresistible grace —
anything else is a semblance
of but though Adam possessed grace, it was not irresistible.
it ;
But all these grave objections cannot obscure the greatness

of the perception that God works in us "to will and to accom-
plish," that we have nothing that we have not received, and
that dependence on God is good, and is our possession. It is
easy to show that in every single objectionable theory formu-
lated by Augustine, there
lurks a true phase of Christian self-
criticism, onlywhich
defective
is because it projects into history,
or is made the foundation on which to construct a " history."
Is not the doctrine of predestination an expression of the confes-
sion " He who would boast, let him boast in the Lord"?
: Is
not the doctrine of original sin based on the thought that
behind all separate sins there resides sin as want of love, joy,
and divine peace? Does it not express the just view that we
feel ourselves guilty of all evil, even where we are shown that
we have no guilt?
of the Academy and a result of his thought being directed to the main matter —he
exhorts his hearers to refrain from over-curiousness, a pretence of knowledge that
runs to seed. He set aside as insoluble very many problems that had been and were
afterwards often discussed, and he prepared the way for the concentration of the
doctrinal system on its own material.
4. Augustine's Interpretation of the Symbol (Enchiridion

ad Laurentium). The New System of Religion.
After the exposition given above p. 106 f., we shall best con-
clude our account of Augustine's role in the history of dogma,
by reviewing the expositions given in the Enchiridion of the
contents of the Catholic religion. Everything is combined in
this book to instruct us as to the nature of the revision (andon
the other hand of the confirmation) by Augustine of the popular
Catholic dogmatic doctrine that gave a new impress to the
Western Church. We shall proceed first to give a minute
analysis of the book, and then to set down systematically what
was new and at the same time lasting.
Augustine begins by saying that the wisdom of man is piety
{" hominis sapientia pietas est " or more accurately " Oeocreêta ")
(2). The answer to the question how God is to be worshipped,
is— by faith, hope, and love. We have accordingly to determine
what is meant by each of these three virtues (3). In them is
comprised the whole doctrine of religion. They cannot, how-
ever, be established by reason or perception, but must be
derived from Holy Scripture, and be implicitly believed in on
the testimony of the sacred writers (4). When the soul has
attained this faith, it will, if faith works in love, strive to reach
that vision by which holy and perfected souls perceive the
ineffable beauty, the complete contemplation of which is
supreme blessedness. " The beginning in faith, the completion
in sight, the foundation Christ." But Christ is the foundation
only of the Catholic faith, although heretics also call themselves
by his name. The evidence for this exclusive relationship
between Christ and the Catholic Church would carry us too far
here (5). We do not intend to enter into controversy, but to
expound (6). The Symbol and the Lords Prayer constitute the
contents of faith (symbol), and of hope and love (prayer) but ;
faith also prays (7). Faith applies also to things which we do

not hope for, but fear and further to our own affairs and those
;
of others. — —
So far as it like hope refers to invisible, future
blessings, it is itself hope. But without love it profits nothing,
!
CHAP. IV.] THE ENCHIRIDION. 223
because the devils also believe. Thus everything is compre-

hended m. faith, which works by love and possesses hope (8).
Augustine now passes to the Symbol (the ancient Apostolic
creed), in order to state the contents of faith. In §| 9-32, he
deals with the first article. The knowledge of nature and
—
physics does not belong to faith besides, scholars conjecture
rather than know in this matter (opinantes quam scientes).
It is enough for the Christian to believe that the goodness
of the creator is simply the first cause of all things, so that
there is no nature unless either it is he himself, or is of him.
Further, that this creator is the "Trinity, supremely and equally,
and unchangeably good " (trinitas summe et aequabiliter et
immutabiliter bona), and that while created things do not
possess this quality, they are good nay, everything collectively
;
is very good, and produces a wonderful beauty, in which evil,
set in its right place, only throws the good into relief (9, 10).
Augustine at once passes to the doctrine of evil. God permits
it only because he is so powerful that he can make good out of
evil, i.e., he can restore the defect of the good (privatio boni),
evil being represented as such defect (morbus [disease] vulnus

[wound]). In the notion of that which is not supremely good
(non sum mum bonum esse) we have the capacity for deteriora-
tion but the good, which is involved in the existence of any
;
substance, cannot be annihilated, unless the substance itself be

destroyed. But in that case corruption itself also ceases, since
itcan never exist save in what is good evil can only exist in
:
what is good (in a bonum). This is expounded at length (i 1-15).

The causes of good and evil must be known, in order to escape
the errors and infirmities (srumnse) of this life. On the other
hand, the causes of great movements in nature Augustine —
—
returns to § 9 -need not be known we do not even know the
;
conditions of our health, which yet lie nearest us (16)

But is not every error an evil, and what are we to think of
deception, lying? These questions are minutely discussed in
S8 17-22. Every case of ignorance is not an error, but only
supposed knowledge is, and every error is not hurtful there is ;
even a good error, one that is of use. But since it is unseemly

(deforme atque indecens) for the mind to hold the truth to be
— ;
false, and the uncertain certain, our life is for that very reason
wretched, because at times we need error that we may not lose
our life. Suchnot be that existence, "where truth itself
will
will be the life of our soul " (ubi ipsa Veritas vita animse nostrse
erit). But the lie is worst, so bad that even liars themselves
hate being lied to. But yet falsehood offers a difficult problem.
(The question of lying in an emergency, whether it can become
a duty for a righteous man, is elaborately discussed.) Here
again the most important point is to determine wherein one
errs "it is far more tolerable to lie in those things that are uncon-
:
nected with religion than to be deceived in those without belief in, or

knowledge which God cannot be worshipped" {i^)} Looked
of,
at accurately, every error is an evil, though often, certainly, a
small one. It is possible to doubt whether every error is also

sinful e.g., a confusion about twins, or holding sweet to be
bitter, etc. at all events, in such cases the sin is exceedingly

;
small and trivial (minimum et levissimum peccatum), since it

has nothing to do with the way that leads to God, i.e. with the
faith that works in love. Error is, indeed, rather an evil than a
sin, a sign of the misery of this life. In any case, however, we
may not, in order to avoid all error, seek to hold nothing to be
—
true like the Academicians for it is our duty to believe.
;
Besides the standpoint of absolute nescience is impracticable
for even he who knows

not must deduce his existence from this
consciousness of nescience (20). must, on the contrary, We
avoid the lie for even when we err in our thought, we must
;
always say what we think.^ Even the lie which benefits another
is sinful, although men who have lied for the general advantage
have contributed a great deal to prosperity (22). Augustine

returns to § 16: we must know the causes of good and evil.
The sole first cause of the good is the goodness of God; the
cause of evil is the revolt of the will from the unchangeable God
^ " Longe tolerabilius est in his quae a religione sunt sejuncta mentiri, quam in lis,
sine quorum fide vel notitia deus coli non potest, falli." E.g., to tell anyone falsely
that a dead man is still alive is a much less evil than to believe erroneously that
Christ will die once more.
2 C. 22. " Et utique verba propterea sunt instituta, non per quse se homines invicem
fallunt, sed per quse in alterius quisque notitiam cogitationes suas perferat."
(Compare Talleyrand).
on the part of a being, good but changeable, first, an angel, then

man (23). From this revolt follow all the other infirmities of
the soul [ignorance, concupiscence, etc.] (24). But the craving
for blessedness (appetitus beatitudinis) was not lost
We now have an exposition of Adam's endowment, the Fall,'
original sin, the scn;ence of death, the massa damnata, which

suffers along with the doomed angels, etc. God's goodness is
shown, however, in his grant of continued existence to the
wicked angels, for whom there is no conversion besides, and in
his preservation of men. Although it would have been only
justice to give them also over to eternal punishment, he resolved
to bring good out of evil (25-27). It was his merciful intention,
i.e., to supplement from mankind the number of the angels who
persevered in goodness, rendered incomplete by the fall of some,

in order that the heavenly Jerusalem might retain its full com-
plement, nay, should be increased by the " sons of our Holy
Mother " [filii sanctae matris] (28-29). But the men chosen owe
this not to the merits of their own works (to free will) for in ;
themselves they are dead like the rest (suicides), and are only
free to commit sin. Before they are made free, accordingly,
they are slaves they can only be redeemed by grace and faith.
;
Even faith is God's gift, and works will not fail to follow it. Thus
they only become free, when God fashions them anew (into the^
nova creaturd), producing the act of will as well as its accom-
plishment ("quamvis non possit credere, sperare, diligere homo
rationalis, nisi velit" —
although rational man cannot believe,,
hope, or love, unless he will).^ That is, God makes the will
itself good (misericordia prseveniens) and constantly assists it
[miseric. subsequens] (30-32).
The exposition of the second article follows in || 33-55-
Since all men are by nature children of wrath, and are burdened
by original sin and their own sins, a mediator (reconciliator) was
necessary, who should appease this wrath (justa vindicta) by
presenting a unique sacrifice. That this was done, and we from
being enemies became children, constitutes the grace of God
through Jesus Christ (33). We know that this mediator is the
" Word " that became flesh. The Word was not transformed,
^ C. 32 :
" Ex utrbque fit, id est, ex voluntate hominis et misericordia rlei."
P
,
but assumed our complete human nature from the virgin, being
conceived not by the libido matris, but by faith and therefore —
sinlessly.^ The mother remained a virgin in giving birth (in
partu) (34). We have now a short discussion on Christ as.
" God and man in unity of person, equal to God, and as man
less than God " (35). Christ, the man who was deemed
worthy to be assumed by God to form one person with him, is
the most splendid example of grace given gratis, and not
according to merits. The same grace that fell to the man
Christ and made him sinless falls to us in justification, from
sins. It also revealed itself in Christ's miraculous birth, in con-
nection with which, besides, the Holy Ghost did not act like a
natural father. It was rather the whole Trinity that created the
offspring of the virgin : the man Jesus, like the world, is the crea-
tion of the Trinity. But why precisely the Holy Ghost is named,
it is hard to say. In any case, the man Jesus was not the son
of the Spirit, but the probably named in order to point
latter is
to the grace that, existing without any preceding merits, had

become in the man Jesus an attribute which in some way was
natural (quodammodo naturalis) ; for the Holy Spirit is " so far
God that he may be called the gift of God" [sic deus, ut dica-
tur etiam dei donum] (36-40). This is followed again by a long
section (41 to 52) on sin and the relation of Christ to it. Christ
1 Augustine's whole conception of the sinfulness mingled with all procreation, and
his view that sexual desire is due not have
to nature as originally cieated, but to sin,
admittedly their roots in the earliest period. But they were expressed with Augus-
tine's thoroughness only by the Gnostics, Marcion and the author of the fragment —
De resurrectione ascribed to Justin. The by the latter (c. .3) is ex-
parallel offered
tremely striking. There not yet, naturally, any question of sin being propagated
is
through sexual union ;'

that union is held simply to be sinful ; /tijr/ias iarhi Mfr/eia
rb KviiTKeiv xal fioplov d,vSpi.Kov rb airepiialveiv &<rirep d4, el raSra fiiWet ive/iyeiv
raiiras riis ^vepyeias, oOtws ouk dvayKotov airdis iariv t6 t^v dpxw ivepyeiv {opu/iey
yoOv iroXXAs yvvaiKas p.')j KvurKoiaas, us Tki areipas, Kal /[i^rpcn l^'"'''''''); o^<^^ O'"^
e684ws Kal t6 ii-fjTpav ?xîv Kal Kvt&Kei.v ivayKdjêi.- dXXA Kal /n^j (TTeipai. nh i^ apxhs,
wap8eveiov(rai Si, Karifpyrfaav Kal t^v a-wavfflav, Srcpat Si Kal ivb xp^"""' âi rois
&piT€va$ Si Tobs fiiv dirdpxv^ Trapdeveiovras bpufiev, rods Si dirb xp^ôv, Ciiare Sl' air&v
KaroKieuBaL rby Si inSv/ilas ivoiiov ydiiov There are also beasts that refrain from
having connection, &<tt€ Kal St. dv6ptjiTr(x)v koI St dXiyywv KaTapyovfiivtjv <rvôvaiav trplv
ToO /t^XXocTos alSivos opa(r0ar Kal 6 Kiipios Si rnxdp 'l^qaovi Xpurrbs oi Si' fiXXo n iK
irapffdvov iyevv-fidi], dXV ha KarapyijiTri yivv-qaiv iin.6viji,las dvdfiov Kal Seifij Tif &pxovTi.
Kal Sixa trvvovfflas dvBpaiTlvris Swotijk eXvai, rip deip ttjc dvBpiliirov irKiaw
was free from original and actual sin, but was himself on —
—
account of similarity to sinful flesh absolutely called sin. That
is, he became a sacrifice for sin, representing our sin in the
flesh in which he was crucified, " that in some way he might die
to sin, in dying to the flesh," ^ and from the Resurrection
might seal our new life (41). That is bestowed on us in baptism.
—
Everyone dies to sin in baptism even the children, who die to
original sin —
and in this respect sin is to be understood collec-
tively ;for even in Adam's sin many forms of sin were con-
tained. But children are obviously infected not only by
Adam's sin, but also by those of their parents. For their birth
is corrupt, because by Adam's sin nature was perverted more- ;
over the actual sins of parents "although they cannot thus

change nature, impose guilt on the children " (etsi non ita pos-
sunt mutare naturam, reatu tamen obligant filios). But Augus-
tine refrains from deciding how far the sins of ancestors project
their influence in the chain of descent. It is all expiated by the
mediator, the man Jesus Christ, who was alone equipped with
such grace as not to need regeneration for he only accepted ;
baptism by John in order to give a grand example of humility,

just as he also submitted to death, not from compulsion, but in
order to let the devil receive his rights (42-49). Christ is thus
Adam's anti-type but the latter only introduced one sin into the
;
world, while Christ took away all that had since been com-
mitted. All were condemned in Adafti none escapes the con-
;
demnation without Christ. Baptism is to be solemnised as " the

grand mystery in the cross of Christ" (mysterium grande in
cruce Christi) according to Paul baptism is " nothing but
; for
the similitude of Christ's death but the death of Christ cruci-
;
fied is nothing but the similitude of the remission of sin, that as

in him a true death took place, 'so in us a true remission of
sins."^ This is elaborated in accordance with Rom. VI we are ;
dead to sin through baptism (50-52). The clauses of the Sym-

bol are now enumerated down to the "sitting at the right hand"
1 " Ut quodammodo peccato moreretur,.dura moritur carni."

2 " Nihil aliud nisi similitudo mortis Christi ; nihil autem aliud mortem Christi
crucifixi nisi remissionis peccati similitudinem, ut quemadmodum in illo vera mors

facta est, sic in nobis vera remissio peccatorum."
with the observation: " It was so carried out that in these matters
the Christian life which is borne here should be typified not only
mystically by words but also by deeds'.''^ That is established in
connection with each separate article. Thus the " sitting at the
right hand " means " set your affections on those things that
:
are above " (quse sursum sunt sapite). On the other hand, the
Return of Christ has no reference to our earthly life. It belongs
entirely to the future. The judgment of the living and dead
may also suggest to us the just and unjust (53-55).
To the third article §§ 56-113 are devoted; it is accordingly
most elaborately elucidated. §§ 56-63 treat of the Holy Ghost,
who completes the Trinity, and so is no part of creation,"
and also of the Holy Church. This is the temple and city of
the Trinity. But it is here regarded as a whole. That is, it
includes the section which exists in heaven and has never ex-
perienced a fall— the angels who aid the pilgrim part (pars
peregrinans) being already united with it by love (56). The
Church in heaven is void of evil and unchangeable. Augustine
admits that he does not know whether there are degrees of rank
among the angels, whether the stars belong to them, or what
the truth is as to their bodily form (57-59). It is more impor-
tant to determine when Satan invests himself in the form of an
angel of light (60). We shall only know the state of the
heavenly Church when we belong to it ourselves. The Church
of this world, for which Christ died, we do know for the angels ;
he did not die yet the result of his work also extends to them,
;
in so far as enmity to them is at an end, and their number is

once more complete. Thus by the one sacrifice the earthly
host is again united with the heavenly, and the peace is re-
—
stored that transcends all thought not that of angels, but of
men but even angels, and m?h who have entered the state of
;
felicity, will never comprehend the peace of God as God him-
self does (61-63).

Augustine now passes to the "remission of sins" (64-83):
" by this stands the Church on earth " (per banc stat ecclesia
quae in terris est). So far as our sins are forgiven, " the angels
1 " Ita gestum est, ut his rebus non mystice tantum dictis sed eliam gestis configu-
raretur vita Christiana quae hie geritur."
;
are even now in harmony with us" (concordant nobiscum

angeli etiam In addition to the "great indulgence,"
nunc).
there a continuous remission of sins, which even the most ad-
is
vanced of the righteous need, for they often descend to their

own level and sin. Certainly the life of the saints may be free
from transgressions, but not from sin (64). But even for grave
offences there is forgiveness in the Church after due penance
and the important point is not the time of penance,but the anguish
of the penitent. But since this emotion is concealed from our
fellow-men, and cannot be inspected, the bishops have rightly
instituted penitential seasons "that the Church may also be
satisfied," the Church beyond whose pale there is no forgive-
ness for it alone has received the pledge of the Holy Ghost
;
(65). Evils remain in this world in spite of the salutaria sacra-

menta, that we may see that the future state is their goal.
There are punitive evils for sins last on, and are punished in
;
this life or the next {66). We

must certainly not fancy that
faith by from future judgment (w? Sia yrvpoi), it
itself protects
is rather only the faith that works in love (faith and works).
By " wood and stubble " we are not to understand sins, but
desires after earthly things lawful in themselves {67, 68). It is
credible that a purifying fire exists for believers even after

—
death (6()) sinners can only be saved by a corresponding
penance combined with almsgiving. Almsgiving is now discussed
in detail (69-77). -^^ the Last Judgment the decision turns on
it (Mat. XXV. 34 ff.). Of course we are at the same time to

amend our lives " God is to be propitiated for past sins by
;
alms, not by any means to be bribed that we may always be

allowed to commit sins with impunity."^ God blots out sins
" if due satisfaction is not neglected " (si satisfactio congrua non
negligatur), without giving permission to sin (70). Daily

prayer furnishes satisfaction for small and light daily sins (71).^
The forgiveness, also, that we bestow on others is a kind of
alms. Speaking generally, everything good we give to others,
1 " Per eleemosynas de peccatis prseteritis est propitiandus deus, non ad hoc
emendus quodam modo, ut peccata semper liceat impune committere." Accordingly

some Catholics must even then have looked on alms as conferring a license.
2 " Delet omnino hsec oratio minima et quotidiana peccata."
— ;
advice, comfort, discipline, etc., is alms. By this we besides

help to gain forgiveness of our own sins (72). But the highest
stages of almsgiving are forgiveness of sins and love of our
enemies (73).^ Those virtues everyone must practise, that he
himself may be forgiven (74). But all these alms fail to benefit
us unless we amend ourselves ; that is, the alms we give to our-
selves are the most important. Of him alone who has mercy
on himself is the saying true " Give alms and all is right (pure)
:
with you." We must love ourselves with the love that God has
bestowed on us this the Pharisees, who only gave outward
;
alms, did not do, for they were the enemies of their own souls
(75-77). The divine judgment, however, can alone deter-
mine what sins are light or grave. Many things permitted by
the apostles— ^.^., matrimonial intercourse prompted by desire
— are yet sinful many sins which we consider wholly trifling
;
{e.g., reviling), are grave; and many e.g., unchastity which —

custom has brought us to look on lightly, are dreadful, even
though Church discipline itself has become lax in dealing with
them (78-80). All sin springs either from ignorance or weak-
ness. The latter is the more serious ; but divine grace alone
aids usovercome either (81). Unfortunately, from false
to
weakness and shame, public penance is frequently withheld.
Therefore God's mercy is not only necessary in the case of
men may resolve to show penitence.
penitence, but also that
But he who disbelieves in and despises the forgiveness of
sin in the Church commits the sin against the Holy Ghost
(82,83).
The resurrection of the body is dealt with in §§ 84-113.
First, the resurrection of abortions and monstrosities is dis-

cussed {^^-^7) ; then the relation of the new body to its old
—
material every particle of which need not pass into the former
and further, the corporeal difference, the stainlessness and
spirituality of bodies in the future state (88-91).We must not
concern ourselves with the constitution of the bodies of the lost
who also rise again, although we are here confronted by the
1 Augustine here says with great truth that love of our enemies is possible only to a
small minority (the perfect). But even those who do not attain it are heard if they
utter the fifth petition in faith.
1"
CHAP. IV.] . THE ENCHIRIDION. 23
great paradox that a corruptible body does not die nor an

incorruptible feel pain.^ (92). Those will have the mildest
punishment who have only original, but not actual, sin. Dam-
nation in general will be marked by degrees, depending in each
case' on the measure of sin (93). Augustine now comes to
speak of predestination in detail (94-108): "no one is saved
except by undeserved mercy, and no one is condemned except
by a deserved judgment."^ That is the theme. It will become
manifest in eternal life why of two children the one is accepted
out of mercy, and the other rejected in accordance with justice.
God's refusal of salvation is not unjust, though all might have
been saved if he had willed for nothing happens without his ;
will or permission (95). Even in permitting evil his action is

good, or the first article of the Symbol would no longer hold
true (96). But if God's will cannot be frustrated by any choice
of his creatures, how does the fact that all are not saved agree
with the assurance that " he wills that all should be saved
(i Tim. II. 4)? The usual answer, that men will not, is ob-
viously false ; for as he can
they cannot hinder God's will,
certainly turn even the bad into a good will. Accordingly, God
does not will that all be saved, but he justly sentences sinners
to death (Rom. IX.), that he who receives salvation may boast
in the Lord. God is free in his election to grace he would not ;
have been to be blamed if he had redeemed no one after Adam's

Fall so neither is he to be blamed if in his mercy he redeems
;
only a few, that none may boast of his own merits, but in the
Lord. will is expressed in the case of the lost as much
God's
as of the saved (" in the very deed by which they
in that
opposed his will, his will regarding them was done ").* • So great
are the works of the Lord that nothing that takes place against
his willhappens outside (praeter) of it. A good son wishes his
father to live, but God, whose will is good, decides that he
should die. Again, a bad son wishes his father to die, and God
1 111 hell "mors ipsa non moritur."

2 ' '
Nisi per indebitam misericordiam nemo liberator et nisi per debitum judicium
nemo damnatur."
3 "Hoc ipso quod contra voluntatem fecerunt ejus, de ipsis facta est voluntas
ejus."
also wills this. The former wills what God does not ; the latter
what he does. Yet the former stands nearer God ; for in the
case of men it is the final intention that counts, while God
accomplishes his good will even through the bad will of men.
He is always just and always omnipotent (97-102). Therefore
I Tim. II. 4 can only mean that God wills all classes of men to
be saved, or that all those whom he resolves to save will be

saved. In any case it is not to be imagined that he desires to
save all, but is prevented (103).
Had God foreknown that Adam, in keeping with his consti-
tution, would have retained forever the will to avoid sin, he
would have preserved him in his original state of salvation.
But he knew the opposite, and therefore shaped his own will to
effect good through him who did evil. For man must have
been so created originally as to be able to do good and evil.
Afterwards he will be changed, and will no longer be able to
will evil ;
" nor will he therefore be without free choice " (nee
ideo libero carebit arbitrio) for free will still exists, even if a
;
time comes when we cannot will evil, just as it even now exists,
although we can never will our own damnation. Only the
order of things had to be observed, first the " posse non," then
the " non posse." But grace is always necessary, and would
have been even if man had not sinned for he could only have
;
attained the " non posse " by the co-operation of grace. (Men
can indeed starve voluntarily, but mere appetite will not keep
them alive they require food.) But since sin entered, grace is
;
much greater, because the will had itself to be freed in order

that it might co-operate with grace (104-106.) Eternal life,
though a geward of good works, is also a gift of grace, because our
merits are God's gifts. God has made one vessel to honour and
another to dishonour, that none should boast. The mediator
who redeemed us required also to be God, " that the pride of
man might be censured by the humility of God " (ut supferbia
humana per humilitatem dei argueretur), and that man might
be shown how far he had departed from God, etc. (107, 108).
After this long excursus, Augustine returns to § 93, and deals
(109) with the intermediate state (in abditis receptaculis), and
the mitigation obtained by departed souls through the Mass,
and the alms of survivors in the Church for there are many-
;
souls not good enough to be able to dispense with this provi-

sion, and not bad enough not to be benefited by it. " Where-
fore here (on the earth) all merit is acquired by which anyone
can be relieved or burdened after this life."^ What the Church
does for the dead (pro defunctis commendandis) is not incon-
sistent with Rom. XIV. 10 II. Cor. V. 10.
; For those who are
wholly good it is a thanksgiving, for those not altogether bad
an atonement, for those entirely wicked it is resultless, but
gives comfort to the survivors nay, while it makes remission
;
complete (plena), it renders damnation more tolerable (no).

After the Judgment there are only two states, though there are
different grades in them. We must believe in the eternal
duration of the pains of hell, although we may perhaps suppose
that from time to time God lightens the punishment of the lost,
or permits some sort of mitigation. " Death will continue
without end, just as the collective eternal life of all saints will
continue" (111-113).^
Following his programme, Augustine ought now to have
discussed in detail hope and love (prayer) but he omits doing
;
so, because he has really touched on everything already. He

therefore confines himself to affirming that hope applies solely
to what we pray for in the Lord's Prayer, that three petitions
refer to eternal, four to temporal, benefits, and that Matthew
and Luke do not really differ in their versions of the Prayer
(i 14-1 16). As regards love, he points out that it is the greatest
of all. It, and not faith and hope, decides the measure of good-
ness possessed by a man. Faith and hope can exist without
love, but they are useless. The faith that works in love, i.e., the
Holy Spirit by whom love is infused into our hearts, is all-
important for where love is wanting, fleshly lust reigns (117).
;
There are four human conditions life among the deepest

:
shades of ignorance (altissimis ignorantiae tenebris), under the

law (which produces knowledge and conscious sin), under grace
or good hope, and under peace (in the world beyond). Such
1 Quocirca hie (in terra) omne meritum comparatur, quo possit post banc vitam
televari quispiam vel gravari.
^ Manebit sine fine mors, cicut manebit communiter omnium vita seterna sanctorum.
has also been the history of God's people but God has shown
;
his grace even at the first and second stages (ii8), and thus
even now man is laid hold of sometimes at the first, sometimes
at the second, stage, all his sins being forgiven in his regenera-
no longer harms him (120). All
tion (119), so that death itself
divine commands aim and no good, if done from fear of
at love,
punishment or any other motive than love, is done as it ought.
All precepts (mandata) and counsels (consilia) given by God
are comprised in the command to love God and our neighbour,
and they are only rightly performed when they spring, at
present in faith, in the future in immediate knowledge, from
love. In the world of sight each will know what he should love
in the other. Even now desire abates as love increases, until it
reaches the love that leads a man to give his life for another.
But how great will love be in the future state, when there no
longer exists any desire to be overcome !
No one can mistake the popular Catholic features of this

system of religion. It is based on the ancient Symbol. The
doctrines of the Trinity and the Two Natures are faithfully
avowed. The importance of the Catholic Church is strictly
guarded, and its relation to the heavenly Church, which is the
proper object of faith, is left as indefinite as the current view
required. Baptism is set in the foreground as the " grand
mystery of renovation," and is derived from Christ's death, in
which the devil has obtained his due. Faith is only regarded
as a preliminary condition eternal life is only imparted to
;
merits which are products of grace and freedom. They consist

of works of love, which are summed up in almsgiving. Alms-
giving is freely treated it constitutes penance.
; Within the
Church forgiveness is to be had for all sins after baptism, if only
a fitting satisfaction is furnished (satisfacere ecclesiae ; satisfactio
congrua). There is ar scale of sins, from crimes to quite trivial
daily offences. For this reason, wicked and good men are
graded ;but even the best (sancti, perfect!) can only be sinless
in the sense that they commit none but the lightest sins. The
CHAP. IV.] THE NEW RELIGIOUS SYSTEM. 235
saints are the perfect ascetics; asceticism is the culmination of

love ; but
do not need to practise it we must distinguish
all ;
between commands and counsels. In the future state both

felicity and perdition will also be graded. Departed souls, if at
death they have only left trivial sins unatoned for by penance,
will be benefited by the masses, alms, and prayers of survivors.
They are placed in a purgatory that cleanses them in the form
of a decreed punishment. ^ If here popular Catholic elements
are already strengthened, and the way prepared for their future
elaboration, that is equally true of the doctrines of the inter-
mediate temporary mitigation of the punishment of
state, the
the lost, the help afforded by holy angels to the Church of the
—
present world, the completion by means of redeemed mortals
— of the heavenly Church reduced in number through the Fall
of the wicked angels, the virginity of Mary even in partu,"^ and
the grace of Christ as being greater than Adam's sin. This
also applies to the opinion that the ignorant adherence to a
false religion is worse than the knowing utterance of a lie, and
to many other doctrines developed by Augustine in other
writings. Finally, the conception of salvation that holds it to
1 The Enchiridion is not the only work iu which Augustine has spoken of this ignis
purgatorius.
^ The growing Marian dogma (see Vol. IV., p. 314) was thus strengthened rather
than weakened by Augustine. He agreed entirely with Ambrose and Jerome
(against Jovinian). By a woman came death, by a woman came life ; Mary's faith
conceived the Saviour. Julian's remarkable objection to the doctrine of original sin,
that it made Mary be subject to the devil (nascendi conditione), Augustine met by
to
saying (Op. imp. IV. 122) "ipsa conditio nascendi solvitur gratia renascendi."
:
We may not maintain it to be certain (see Schwane II., p. 691 f. ) that Augustine thus
implicitly taught Mary's immaculate conception. On the other hand, he undoubt-
edly held her to be without active sin ; see De nat. et gr. 36 " Excepta itaque s.
:
virgine sMaria, de qua propter honorem domini nuUam prorsus, cum de peccatis
agitur, haberi volo qusestionem ; unde enim scimus, quid ei plus gratise coUatum
fuerit ad vincendum omni ex parte peccatum, quje concipere et parere meruit, quem
constat nullum habuisse peccatum ? hac ergo virgine excepta si omnes illos sanctos
et sanctas, cum hie viverent, congregare possimus et interrogare, utrum essent sine
peccato, quid fuisse responsuros putamus, utrum hoc quod ista dicit an quod Johannes
apostolus?" Gen. ad litt. X. 18-21. Augustine helped to give Mary a special posi-
tion between Christ and Christians, simply because he first emphasised strongly the
sinfulness of all men, even the saints, and then excepted Mary. Mary's passive
receptivity in relation to grace is emphasised with the same words as that of the man
Jesus.
! :
236 HISTORY OF DOGMA, [CHAP. IV,
consist in " vision " and " fruition " is at the root of and runs
through everything. Yet the most spiritual fact, the process of
sanctification, is attached to mysteriously operating forces.
But on the other hand,this system of religion is new. The
old Symbol —the
Apostles interpreted by the Nicene was —
supplemented by new material which could only be very loosely
combined with it, and which at the same time modified the
original elements. In all three articles the treatment of sin, for-
giveness, and perfecting in love is the
25-33 main matter (10-15 ; >
41-52; 64-83). Everything

presented as a spiritual process,
is
to which the briefly discussed old dogmatic material appears

subordinated. Therefore, also, the third article comes into the
foreground ; a half of the whole book is devoted to the few
words contained in it. Even in the outline, novelty is shown

religion is so much a matter of the inner life that faith, hope,
and love are all-important (3-8). No cosmology is given in the
first article ; indeed, physical teaching is expressly denied to
form part of dogmatics (9, 16 f ). Therefore any Logos doctrine
is also wanting. The by tradition as dogma, is
Trinity, taught
apprehended in the strictest unity it is the creator. It is
;
really one person the " persons," as Augustine teaches us

;
in other writings, are inner phases (moments) in the one God;

they have no cosmological import. Thus the whole Trinity
also created the man Christ in Mary's womb the Holy Ghost ;
is only named because ".spiritus " is also a term for "God's
gift" (donum dei). Everything in religion relates to God as

only source of all good, and to sin ; the latter is distinguished
from error. Hereby a breach is made with ancient intellectual-
ism, though a trace of it remains in the contention that errors
are very small sins. Wherever sin is thought of, so is free,
predestinating grace (gratia gratis data). The latter is con-
trasted with the sin inherited from Adam ; it first gives freedom
to the enslaved will. The exposition of the first article closes
with the reference to prevenient and subsequent mercy. How
different would have been the wording of this article if Augus-
tine had been able to give an independent version
The case is not different with the second article. The actual
contents of the Symbol are only briefly touched on —the
;
Second Advent is merely mentioned without a single Chiliastic

observation. On the other hand, the following points of view
come to the front. On the one side we have the unity of
Christ's personality as the man (homo) with whose soul the
Word united itself, the predestinating grace, that introduced
this man into personal unity with the Deity, although he
possessed no merits (hence the parallel with our' regeneration)
the close connection of Christ's death with redemption from the
devil, atonement, and baptism (forgiveness of sins). But on
the other side we find the view of Christ s appearance and history
as loftiness in humility, and as the pattern of the Christian life,
Christ's significance as redeemer is quite as strongly expressed
'^
for Augustine and in his example

in this humility in splendour,
of a Christian life Bernard and S. Francis), as in his
(see S.
death. He fluctuates between these two points of view. The
Incarnation wholly recedes, or is set in a light entirely un-
familiar to the Greeks. Thus the second article has been
completely changed.
The chief and novel point in the third article consists in the
freedom and assurance with which Augustine teaches that the
forgiveness of sins in the Church is inexhaustible. When we
consider the attitude of the ancient Church, Augustine, and
Luther, to the sins of baptised Christians, an external criticism
might lead us to say that men grow more and more lax, and
that the increasing prominence given to grace (the religious
factor) was merely a means of evading the strict demands made
—
by the gospel on morality the Christian life. And this view
is also correct, if we look at the great mass of those who
followed those guides. But in their own case their new ideas
were produced by a profounder consciousness of sin, and an
absorption in the magnitude of divine grace as taught by Paul.
Augustine stands midway between the ancient Church and
Luther. The question of personal assurance of salvation had
not yet come home to him but the question: "How shall I
;
get rid of my sins, and be filled with divine energy?" took the
1 Sin and original sin are again discussed in §§ 41-52, but they are now looked at
from the standpoint of their removal through the baptism that emanates from Christ's
death.
firstplace with him. Following the popular Catholic view, he

looked to good works (alms, prayer, asceticism); but he con-
ceived them to be the product of grace and the will subject to
grace further, he warned Christians against all external doing.
;
As he set aside all ritualistic mysticism, so he was thoroughly

aware that nothing was to be purchased by almsgiving pure
and simple, but that the issue depended on an inner transforma-
tion, a pure heart, and a new spirit. At the same time he was
sure that even after baptism the way of forgiveness was ever open
to the penitent, and that he committed the sin against the Holy
Ghost who did not believe in this remission of sins in the Church.
That is an entirely new interpretation of the Gospel saying.
The concluding section of the Symbol (resurrectio carnis) is
explained even more thoroughly than the forgiveness of sins in
its third treatment in the third article. But after a short dis-
cussion of the subject proper the doctrine —
of predestination'^
and a view which as doctrine is likewise virtually new, and
takes the place of Origen's theory of Apokatastasis the main —
theme is the supposition of an intermediate state, and of a
cleansing of souls in it, to which the offerings and prayers of
survivors can contribute.
Piety faith and love instead of fear and hope.
: Theory of
1 The doctrine of predestination — before Augustine almost unheard of in the

Catholic Church —constituted the power of as Chiliasm did that of
his religious life,
the post-apostolic, and mysticism that of the Greek Church. In Augustine,

in addition to its Biblical and Neoplatonic supports, the doctrine had indeed
—
a strong religious root free grace (gratia gratis data). But the latter by
itself does not explain the importance which the doctrine had gained in his
case. As everything that lives and works in nature is attached to something else,
and never found in an independent state, so, too, there is no distilled piety.
is
On the contrary, so long as we men are men, precisely the most vital piety
will be least isolated and free. None but the dogmatist can construct such a religion.
But history teaches that all great religious personalities have connected their saving
faith inextricably with convictions which to the reflecting mind appear to be irrelevant
additions. In the history of Christianity there are the three named — Chiliasm,
mysticism, and the doctrine of predestination. It is in the bark formed by these
that faith has grown, just as not in the middle of the stem, but at its circum-
it is
ference, where stem and bark meet, that the sap of the plant flows. Strip the tree,
and it will wither ! Therefore it is well-meant, but foolish, to suppose that Augus-
tine would have done better to have given forth his teaching without the doctrine of
predestination.
^
religion: something higher than aught we call doctrine, a new

life in the power of love. The doctrine of Scripture
the :
—
substance the gospel, faith, love and hope God. The Trinity — :
the one living God. Christology the one mediator, the man
:
Jesus into union with whose soul the Deity entered, without
that soul having deserved it. Redemption death for the benefit :
of enemies and humility in greatness. The Sacraments the :
Word by side with the Symbols. Salvation (felicity) the

side :
beata necessitas of \k\.& good. The good: blessedness in dependence

on God. History God works everything in accordance with His
:
good pleasure. With that compare the dogmatics of the

Greeks !
The extent and position of dogma were also modified by this

revolution. The old dogmas of the undivided Church, simply
because they passed into the background, and were no longer
expressive of piety itself, became more rigidthey more and ;
more received the character of a legal system. The new dogmas,

on the contrary, the doctrines of and grace
in which piety
sin
lived, did not yet receive in their positiveform the position and
value of the old, nor were they definitely stated in rounded
formulas.^ Thus, through the instrumentality of Augustine, the
extent and importance, in the history of dogma, of the doctrine
of the Church became more uncertain. On the one hand, that
doctrine was referred back to the gospel itself; on the other, it
was much less sharply marked off than before from theology,
since the new thoughts were not enclosed in fixed formulas.
There was formed round the old dogma, which held its ground
as an inflexible authority, a vast indefinite circle of doctrines, in
1 An excellent comparison between Origen and Augustine occurs in Bigg, The

Christian Platonists, pp. 284-290. He has sharply emphasised the inconsistencies in
Augustine's doctrine of the primitive state, original sin, and grace, but he has not
overlooked the advance made by Augustine on Origen. If we evolve Augustine's
doctrine from predestination, then Bigg is right when he says "Augustine's system is
:
in trath that of the Gnostics, the ancestors of the Manichees. For it inakes no real
difference whether our doom is stamped upon the nature given to us by our Creator,
or fixed by an arbitrary decree."
2 The resistance of the Pelagians and their associates was also a resistance to the
formation of new dogmas in general. Exactly like the Eusebians in the Arian con-
flict, they also fought against the new construction of dogmas by the North African
Church on formal grounds.

which the most important religious conceptions lived, and which

yet no one was capable of examining and weaving into a fixed
connection. That is the state of dogma in the Middle Ages.
Side by side with the growing inflexibility, the process of internal
dissolution had already begun.
During the storms of the tribal migrations, just before the
power of barbarianism broke in, God bestowed on the Church
a man who judged spiritual things spiritually, and taught
Christendom what constituted Christian piety. So far as we
can judge, the young Germano-Roman peoples, like the Slavs,
would have remained wholly incapable of ever appropriating
independently and thoroughly the contemporary Christian re-
ligion, the Church system transmitted to them as law and cultus
in fixed formulas, they would never have pierced through the
husk to the kernel, if along with that system they had not also
received Augustine. It was from him, or rather from the Gospel
and Paulinism under his guidance, that they derived the courage
to reform the Church and the strength to reform themselves.
CHAPTER V.
HISTORY OF DOGMA IN THE WEST DOWN TO THE BEGIN-

NING OF THE MIDDLE AGES (A.D. 430-604).
We have already described in Vol. III. of our present work, as

far as bore on the history of dogma, the part taken by the
it
West during this period in the Christological controversies of the

East, the great impetus given to the papacy by the successors
of Damasus, and further by Leo I. and his successors. We have
shown how the papal power was in the sixth century embroiled,
and (under Justinian) almost perished, in the East Gothic and
Byzantine turmoils how the fifth Council produced a schism
;
in the West, and shook the position of the papacy, and how on
the other hand the latter regained and strengthened its import-
ance through the instrumentality of Gregory I. ^ ^ We also
Gregory, certainly, had almost to abandon the fifth Council.
1
The papal power received its greatest accession of authority from the days of
2
Damasus to the end of the fifth century it was then settled that the primacy was to
:
be a permanent institution of the Catholic Church. This accession of strength was

partly due to the fact that in that century the Chair of St. Peter was occupied by a
number of peculiarly capable, clever, and energetic Bishops. But the advance was
caused to a, still greater extent by external conditions. The most important may be
mentioned here. (
l ) The dogmatic complications in the East gave the Popes an oppor-
tunity of acting as umpires, or of exhibiting in full light the doctrinal correctness
" characteristic of the Chair of St. Peter." (2) The Western Roman Empire leant
ultimately for support, in on the Roman Bishop (see the Ep, Valent. III.
its decline,
to Leo. I. ) when it perished the latter was its natural heir, since the central political
;
power in the West was gone, and the Byzantine Emperor had not the power, the
leader of the German hosts not the prestige, necessary to restore it. (3) The storms
of the tribal migration drove the Catholics of Western countries, which were seized by
Arians, into the arms of Rome ; even where this did not happen at once, the opposi-
tion ceased which had been previously offered to the claims of the Roman Bishop by
the provinces, especially North Africa.
, (4) The patriarchal constitution never got
established in the West, and the Metropolitan only succeeded in part ; thus the
development into the papal constitution was ensured for the future. (5) The tran-
sactions with the political power of Eastern Rome and the Imperial Bishop there now
241 Q
—
242 HISTORY or DOGMA. [CHAP. V.
reviewed the important work, in which Vincentius of Lerinum

standing on Augustine's shoulders, described the antiquitas
catholiccB fidei, i.e., the CathoHc conception of tradition.'^ The
whole West was agitated in our period by the storms of the
tribal migrations. The ancient world received its final blow,
and the Church itself, so far as it was composed of Romans,

seemed to run wild under the horror and pressure of the times.^
The young peoples which streamed in were Christian, but Arian.
In the kingdom of the Franks alone there arose a Catholic,
German nation, which began slowly to be fused with the ancient
Roman but the Church, with its cultus, law, and
population ;
language, remained Latin victus victori legem dat. The Franks

:
were at the outset in the Latin Church, as at the present day

the Mongolian tribes of Finland are in the Greek Church of
Russia. This Latin Church, which, however, had parted in
Franconia with the Roman Bishop, or was only connected with
him by respect for him, preserved its old interests in Gaul and
Spain, and continued its former life until the end of the sixth
century.^ Even up till that time the old civilisation had not
wholly perished in it, but it was almost stifled by the barbarian-
compelled the Roman Bishops, that they might not be at a disadvantage in dealing
with Constantinople, to deduce their peculiar position, which they owed to the capital
of the world, entirely from their spiritual (their apostolic or Petrine) dignity. But
this exclusive basing of the Roman Chair on Peter afforded the firmest foundation
3.1 a time when all political force tottered or collapsed, but the religious was respected.
Even the thought of political sovereignty, so far as such a thought could arise in the
Roman Empire at all, seems to have dawned on Leo's successors. In any case, the
position of the papacy was so secure at the close of the fifth century, that even the
frightful storms of the sixth century were unable to uproot it. That in the West
outside of Rome — the Bishop (following Matt. XVI .) came but
theory of the Roman
slowly to be recognised, and that the attempt was made to retain independence as far
as the exigencies of the case permitted, ought to be expressly noticed. Theologians
only admitted that the Roman Bishop represented ecclesiastical unity, and did not
assent to the papistical inference that it was the prerogative of Rome to govern the
Churches.
Vol. III., p. 230 ff.
Salvian. de gubern. III. 44 :

" Ipsa ecclesia, quae in omnibus esse debet placatrix
del, quid est aliud quam exacerbatrix dei ? aut prseter paucisslmos quosdam, qui
mala fugiunt, quid est aliud psene omnis coetus Christianorum quam sentina viti-
"
orum ?
» See Hatch, "The Organisation of the Early Christian Churches," Lecture viii.,
and "The Growth of Church Institutions," p. i f.

CHAP, v.] HISTORY OF DOGMA IN THE WEST, 243
ism, which resulted from fusion with the invading populace. In

North Africa, in spite of dreadful sufferings, Catholic Latin
ecclesiasticism heldits ground till on into the seventh century.
But the Church, once so independent in its relations with

Rome, found itself compelled more than once in this period to
turn for succour to Rome for its self-preservation. The posi-
tion of Italy, i.e., of the Roman Bishop, was wholly peculiar, for
the Church of Middle, and Lower Italy never played any part in
Church history. So far as a Catholic Church still existed in the
West in the German Empire, it represented the remnant of the
shattered Western Roman Empire, and therefore lay in the
sphere of power of the Roman Bishop, even if this relationship
might not take any definite shape for the moment. But this
Roman Bishop was himself fettered to the East, and political
and ecclesiastical ties compelled him to look more to the East
than the West. The fact that he nevertheless did not lose his
connection with the latter, he, in the sixth century, owed more to
his past, and his impregnable position in Rome, than to a deliber-
ate policy.^
Under the Catholic Bishops who had survived in Gaul and
North Africa as representatives of the Roman Empire, a not
altogether unimportant part of the history of dogma was
enacted in our period, viz., the fight for and against complete
Augustinianism. The Roman Bishop, though much more con-
cerned with the Christological and political questions of the
East, intervened also in this matter. At the close of our period,
when absolute darkness had settled on the West, the great
monachist Pope and " father of superstitions " introduced the
ecclesiastical world to the Middle Ages in the form required by
uncivilised peoples. In doing so, he had not to do violence to
his own convictions ; for the civilisation that was passing away
inclined to barbarianism.^
1 The recognition in Rome of the fifth Council had almost alienated Italy and
North Africa from the Pope.

2 Yet classical culture was never quite extinct in Italy (Rome). Its representatives
in the sixth century were Cassiodoras, the pious churchman, on the one hand, and
Boethius, the latitudinarian, on the other. The former laboured earnestly on behalf
of the Church and monachism of his time (compare also the exertions of Junilius) ;
the latter was the instructor of a later age (see above, p. 34).
244 .
HISTORY OF DOGMA. [CHAP. V.
We have only therefore to consider, in what follows, the con?-

flict waged round Augustinianism, and the position of Gregory
the Great in the history of dogma.^
1 On the history of the Apostolic Symbol in our period see my-article in Herzog's
R. E. 3 Ed. ; Caspari, Quellen I. -IV. Vols. ; v. Zezschwitz, System der Katechetik
II. I. Of the additions made to the ancient Roman Symbol, and afterwards univer-
sally accepted, the only one important dogmatically is the phrase " communio sanc-
torum." It can be proved from the second homily of Faustus of Rhegium (Caspari,
Kirchenhist. Anekdota, p. 338), and hisTractat de symbolo, which Ije- certainly did
not edit himself (Caspari, Quellen IV., p. 250 ff.), that South Gallican Churches had
the words " communio sanctorum " in the Apostollcum in the second half of the fifth
century. It is debatable whether they already stood in the Symbol of Nicetas, whom
I identify with Nicetas of Romaliana —
the friend of Paulinus of Nola ; they may also
have merely belonged to the exposition, which was strongly influenced by Cyril's
Catechisms (see Kattenbusch, Apost. Symbolum, 1894, Vol. I). If it were certain
that they were merefy meant in the Gallican Symbol to stand in exegetical apposition
to " sancta ecclesia," then we would have to suppose that that Symbol had been
influenced l)y the countless passages in which Augustine describes the Church as
communio Sanctorum, i.e., of the angels and all the elect, incliisive of the simple
jitsti (or with synonymous terms). But, firstly, one does not conceive how a mere
.exegetical apposition should have got into the Symbol, and why that should have
happened particularly in Gaul secondly, the explanation of the words hy Faustus
;
points .in another direction. We read in his second homily: " Credamus et sanc-
torum communionem, sed sanctos non tam pro dei parte, quam pro dei honore
veneremur. Non sunt sancti pars illius, sed ipse probatur pars esse sanctorum.
Quare ? quia, quod sunt, de illuminatione et de similitudine ejus accipiunt ; in Sanctis
autem non res dei, sed pars dei est. Quicquid enim de deo participant, divinse est
gratise, non naturae. Colamus in Sanctis timorem et amorem dei, non divinitatem dei,
colamus merita, non quse de proprio habent, sed quae accipere pro devolione
meruerunt. Digne itaque venerandi sunt, dum nobis dei Cultum et (uturse vitse
desiderium contemptu mortis insinuant." And still more deafly in the Tractate fp.
273 f.) ". : transeamus ad sanctorum communionem. lUos hie sententia ista
. .
confundit, quisanctorum et amicorum dei cineres non in honore debere esse blas-
phemant,' qui beatorum martyrum gloriosam memoriam sacrorum reverentia monu-
mentorum colendam esse non credunt. In symbolitm prsevaricati sunt, et Christo in
fbnte mentiti sunt." Faustus accordingly understands-, by the" sancti" not all the
justi, but— aS Augustine not infrequently does —
the specifically ' holy," and he con-
tends that the words aimed at the followers of Vigilantius who rejected the worship
of the saints. In that case "communio sanctorum," means communion of or with
the specifically " holy." It is still matter of dispute whether this is really ihe idea to
which the Apostolicum owes its questionable acquisition, or whether the 'latter is
only a very early artificial explanation. On the " filioque " in the Constantinopohtan.
Creed, see Vol. IV.', p. 126 f.
— "
CHAP, v.] SEMI-PELAGIANISM AND AUGUSTINIANISM. 24S
I. The Conflict between Semi-Pelagianism and Augustinianism.
Augustine and the North-African Church had succeeded in

getting Pelagianisna condemned
but this did not by any
;
means involve the acceptance of Augustinianism in the Church.

Augustine's authority, indeed, was very great everywhere, and
in many, circles he was enthusiastically venerated ;^ but his
doctrine of gratia irresistibilis (absolute predestination) met
with opposition, both because it was new and unheard of, ^ and
because it ran counter, not only to prevalent conceptions, but
also to clear passages of Holy Scripture. The fight against it
was not only a fight waged by the old conception of the Church
against a new one for Semi-Pelagianism was the ancient doctrine
—
of Tertullian, Ambrose, and Jerome but the old ôj/^/ was also
defended against novel teaching for Semi-Pelagianism was
;
also an evangelical protest, which grew up on Augustinian piety,

against a conception of the same A ugustine that was intolerable as
doctrine.^ Accordingly, it is not strange that " Semi-Pelagian-
"
ism raised its head in spite of the overthrow of Pelagianism ;
rather it is strange that it was ultimately compelled to submit to

Augustinianism. This submission was never indeed perfectly
honest. On the other hand, there lurked an element of " Semi-
Pelagiartism " in Augustinianism itself, viz., in the doctrines of
—
the primitive state, of righteousness as the product of grace
1 See the Ep. Prosperi ad Aug. [225]. Here Augustine is called " ineffabiliter
mirabilis, incoraparabiliter honorandns, prsestantissimus patronus, cblumna vetitatis
ubique gentium conspicua, specialis fidei patronus.
^ See Vincentius' Commonitorium.
' Semi-Pelagianism also rests undoubtedly on Augustinian conceptions. Loof S

designation of it as " popular Anti-Pelagian Catholicism" is perfectly just (see TheoU
Lit. Ztg. 1895, Col. 568, against KrUger, I.e. Col. 368). "Semi-Pelagianism" is a
malicious heretical term. The literary leaders of this doctrine were in no respect
influenced, so far as I see, by Pelagius, nor did they learn anything from him on ;
the contrary, they take their stand —the later the more plainly (but not more
Augustinian) — on doctrines of Augustine, and it is impossible to understand them
apart from his teaching. " Semi-Pelagianism" ispopular Catholicism made more
definite and profound by Augustine's doctrines. The Semi-Pelagians are accordingly
the Eusebians of the doctrine of grace. See also Sublet, Le Semi-P^lagianisme des
Origines. Namur, 1897.
246 . . HISTORY OF DOGMA. [CHAP. V,
and the will —and of merits. When Augustinianism triumphed,

these points necessarily came to the front. But a situation was
thus created that was wholly insecure, capable of various inter-
and untrue in itself.
pretations,
Augustine himself found by experience that his doctrine of
grace produced internal disturbances among the monks at
Hadrumetum. Free-will was done with men could fold their ;
hands good works were superfluous even at the Last Judg-

;
;
ment they were not taken into account. Augustine sought to

appease them by his treatise, De gratia et lib. arbitrio, and he
followed this with his work, De correptione et gratia, when he
heard that doubts had risen whether the erring and sinful
should still be reprimanded, or if their case was sufficiently met
by intercession. Augustine strove in these writings to remove
the misunderstandings of the monks, but he formulated his
doctrine of grace more sharply than ever, trying, however, to
retain free choice and the popular Catholic view. year or A
two afterwards (428-9) he was informed by his devoted friends,
Prosper, Tyro,^ and Hilary^ (Epp. 225, 226,), that at Marseilles
and other places in France there was an unwillingness to admit
the strict doctrine of predestination, and the view that the will
was completely impotent,^ because they paralysed Christian
preaching. Augustine replied, confirming his friends, but giv-
ing new offence to his opponents by his two writings, De prae-
destinatione sanctorum and De dono perseverantiae. He died
soon afterwards, bequeathing his mantle to disciples whose
fidelity and steadfastness had to atone for their want of inde-
pendence. The Gallican monks (" servi dei ") now advanced to
open opposition.* It is quite intelligible that monks, and
Greek-trained monks, should have first entered the lists.
Among them the most prominent were Johannes Cassianus,
1 On him and Hauck in the R. E.
see Wbrter's Progr., Freiburg, 1867,
2 Not confounded with Hilary of Aries, the Semi- Pelagian.
to be
2 The opposition was at first cautious.
* An accurate description of the controversy has been given by Wiggers in the 2nd
vol. of his " Pragmatische Darstellung des Augustinismus und Pelaîanismus
(1833) see also Luthardt, Die L. v. fr. Willen {1863).

; The later development
from Gregory I. to Gottschalk is described by Wiggers in the Ztsch. f. d. hist.
Theol, 1854-55-57-59.
— —
CHAP, v.] SEMI-PELAGIANISM AND AUGUSTINIANISM. 247
father of South Gallican monachism' and disciple of Chrysos-

tom and Vincentius of Lerinum.- The former has especially
formulated his standpoint in the 13th Conference of his " colla-
tiones patrum," which bears the title " De protectione dei."*
He takes objection above all to absolute predestination, the
particularism of grace, and the complete bondage of the will.
His teaching as to grace and liberty is as follows.
God's grace is the foundation of our salvation every begin- ;
ning is to be traced to it, in so far as it brings the chance of sal-

vation and the possibility of being saved. But that is external
grace inner grace is that which lays hold of a man, enlightens,
;
chastens, and sanctifies him, and penetrates his will as well as

his intelligence. Human virtue can neither grow nor be per-
fected without this grace —
therefore the virtues of the heathens
are very small.* But the beginnings of the good resolve, good
—
thoughts, and faith understood as the preparation for grace
can be due to ourselves. Hence grace is absolutely necessary
in order to reach final salvation (perfection), but not so much so
in order to make a start. It accompanies us at all stages of
our inner growth, and our exertions are of no avail without it
(libero arbitrio semper co-operatur) but it only supports and ;
accompanies him who really strives, "who reaches forward to

the mark." Yet at times God anticipates the decision of men,
and first renders them willing e.g., at the call of Matthew and
Paul — —
but even this rare action of grace is not irresistible.
;
Free-will never destroyed by God that we must hold, even

is —
if we admit the incomprehensibleness of divine grace. Simi-
larly, we must hold firmly to the conviction that God wills ear-
nestly the salvation of all, and that therefore Christ's redemption
applies not only to the small number of elect, but to all men.
1See De coenobiorum institutis 1. XII. Cf. Hoch, L.d. Johannes Cass. v. Natur
u. Gnade, 1895 (besides Kruger, Theol. Lit.-Ztg. 1895, Col. 368 ff).
2 The Commonitorium is directed exclusively against Augustine. The fact that it
has reached us only in a mutilated form is explained, indeed, by its opposition to him.
Apart from it, Prosper has preserved for us Vincentius' objections to Augustine.
3 He speaks still more frankly and therefore " more like a Pelagian " in the Insti-
tutions.
* Here Cassian has learned thoroughly Augustine's teaching, and we see that he
not only accommodated himself to it, but had been convinced by it.
248 HISTORY OF DOGMA. [CHAP. V.
The contrary doctrine involved " a huge blasphemy " (ingens

sacrilegium). Predestination can therefore be only grounded
—
on prescience and the proposition that it was foreknown what
anything would have been, if it had been at all, had at that time
arisen in connection with the question of thosedying in in-

But Cassian has hardly given an opinion on the relation
fancy.'
of prescience and predestination. Regarding the primitive
state, he taught that it was one of immortality, wisdom, and
perfect freedom. Adam and Eve's Fall had entailed corruption
and inevitable sinfulness on the whole race. But with a free,
though a weakened, will, there also remained a certain ability
to turn to the good.^
1 Some maintained, namely, that the fate of these children was decided by how
they would have acted if they had lived ; for that was known to God, '
2 Statements by Cassian. (Coll. XIII. 3) " non solum actuum, verum etiam cogi. :
tationum bonarum ex deo esse piincipium, qui nobis et initia sanctse voluntatis in-
spirat et virtutem atque opportunitatem eorum quse recte cupimus tiibuit peragtndi
. . . deus incipit quae bona sunt et exsequitur et consummat in nobis, nostrum vero
est, ut cotidie adtrahentem nos gratiam dei humiliter subsequamur." 5 : "gentiles
verse castitatis (andthatis the virtue Kar' iôx^v) virtutem non agnoverunt." 6: "temper
auxilio dei homines indigere nee aliquid humanam fragilitatem quod ad salutem pertinet
per se solam i. e. , sine adiutorio dei posse perficere. " 7 " propositum dei, quo non oh :
hoc hominem fecerat, ut periret, sed ut in perpetuum viveret, manet immobile, cuius
benignitas cum bonse voluntatis in nobis quantulamcunque scintillam emicuisse per-
spexerit vel quam ipse tamquam de dura silice nostri cordis excuderit, confovet eam
et exsuscitat et confurtat . . . qui enim ut pereat unus ex pusillis non habet volun-
tatem, quomodo sine ingenti sacrilegio putandus est non universaliler omnes, sed
quosdam salvos fieri velle pro omnibus ? ergo quicumque pereunt, contra illius pereunt
voluntatem deus mortem non fecit." 8: " tanta est erga creaturam suam
. . .
pietas creatoris, ut non solum comitetur eam, sed etiam prsecedit iugiter piovidenlia,
qui cum in nobis ortum qUendam bonae voluntatis inspexerit, inluminat eam confestim
atque confortat et incitat ad salutem, incrementum tribuens ei quam vel ipse plantavit-
vel nostro conatu viderit emersisse." 9: "non facile humana ratione discernitur
quemadmodum dominus petentibus tribuat, a quaerentibus inveniatur et rursus inveni-
atur a non quaerentibus se etpalam adpareat inter illos, qui eum non interrogabant."
10; " lihertatem scriptura divina nostri confirmat arbitrii sed et infirmitatem. " II :
ita sunt hsec quodammodo indiscrete permixta atque confusa, ut quid ex quo pendeat
'
'
inter multos magna quaestione volvatur, i.e., utrum quia initium bonse voluntatis
prsebuerimus misereatur nostri deus, an quia deus misereatur consequamur bonse vol-
untatis initium (in the former case Zacchseus, in the latter Paul and Matthew are
named as examples)." 12: "non enim talum deus hominem fecisse credendus est
qui nee velit umquam nee possit bonum . . . cavendum nobis est, ne ita ad domin-
ium omnia sanctorum meiita referamus, ut nihil nisi id quod malum atque perversum
est liumanaâdscribamus naturas . . . dubitari non potest, inesse quidem omni animse
;
It is usual to condemn " Semi-Pelagianism." But absolute

condemnation is unjust. If a universal theory is to be set up, in
the form of a doctrine, of the relation of God to mankind {as object
of his will to save), then it can only be stated in terms of"' Setni-
Pelagianism " or Cassianism. Cassian did not pledge himself to
explain everything he knew very well that " God's judgments
;
are incomprehensible and his ways inscrutable." Therefore he

rightly declined to enter into the question of predestination.
In refusing, however, to probe the mystery to the bottom, he
demanded that so far as we affirmed anything on the subject,
we should not prejudice the universality of grace and the ac-
countability of man, i.e., his free-will. That was an evangelical
and correct conception. But as Augustine erred in elevating the
necessary self-criticism of the advanced Christian into a doctrine,
which shouldform the sole standard by vuhich to judge the whole
sphere of Gods dealings with men, so Cassian erred in not sepa-
rating his legitimate theory from the ride by which the individual
Christian ought to regard his own religious state. He thus
opened the door to self-righteousness, because from fear of
fatalism he would not bluntly say to himself and those whose
spiritual guide he was, that the faith which does not know that
it is produced by God is still entangled in the life of self
^
Prosper, himself an ascetic and a frequenter of the famous

cloisters of Provence, had already attacked his friends as
Troubadour of Augustinianism during the lifetime of Augustine
(Carmen de ingratis, see also the Ep. ad Rufinum). Now, after
430, he wrote several works in which he defended Augustine,
and also himself, against charges that had been brought against
Augustinianism.^ He did not succeed in convincing the monks ;
naturaliter virtutum seraina beneficio cieatoris inseita, sed nisi haec opitulatione dei
fuerint excitata, ad incrementum perfectionis non potuerunt pervenire."
1 Semi-Pelagianism is no "half truth." It is wholly correct as a theory, if any'
theory be set up, but it is wholly false if taken to express our self-judgment in
is to
the presence orOod.

2 Pro Augustino responsiones ad capitula objectionuni Gallorum calumniantiuni
{against the Galilean monks) ; Responsiones pro Augustino ad excerpta quae de

Genuensi civitate sunt missa (against Semi-Pelagian priests who desired aufkldrung)
Responsiones pro Augustino ad capitula objectionum Vincentiarium (here we have the
most acute attacks by opponents). The "Galli" adhered to Cassian, tliough he
2SO HISTORY OF DOGMA. [CHAP. V.
for his admission that Augustine spoke too harshly (" durius ")
when he said that God did not will that all men should be
saved/ did not satisfy, and their scruples were not even removed
by his contention that there was only one predestination (to
salvation), that we must distinguish between this and prescience
(as regards the reprobati), and in doing so be certain that God's
action was not determined by caprice, but by justice and holi-
ness.2 He did, however, succeed in getting Pope Celestine
to send a letter to the Gallican monks, supporting Augustine
and blaming the opposition for presumption. The Pope was,
however, very reserved in dealing with the matter in question,
although he stated strongly the activity of grace as prevenient^
Prosper now wrote (432) his chief work against the 13th
Collatio of Cassian, in which he showed more controversial skill,
convicted his opponent of inconsistencies, and stated his own
standpoint in a more cautious form, but without any concession
in substance. He left Gaul, and took no further part in the dis-
pute, but showed in his " Sentences " and " Epigrams " that as a
theologian he continued to depend on Augustine alone.*
Another Augustinian, unknown to us, author of the work,
De vocatione omnium gentium,^ sought to do justice to the
hardly mentions original sin, while they taught it, and he does not speak so definitely
as they about predestination.
1 Sentent. sup. VIII. on the respons. ad capp. Gallorum.
'^
Even Augustine, in addition to expressing himself in a way that suggests the two-
fold doctrine of predestination, said (De dono persev. 14) :
" Hsec est prEedestinatio
sanctorum nihil aliud : prffiscientia scil. praeparatio beneficiorum dei quibus certissime
liberantur, quicunque liberantur." Prosper takes his stand on this language (see
resp. ad excerpt. Genuens. VIII.) " We confess with pious faith that God has fore-
:
known absolutely to whom he should grant faith, or what men he should give to his
Son, that he might lose none of them we confess that, foreknowing this, he also
;
foresaw the favours by which he vouchsafes to free us, and that predestination consists
in the foreknowledge and preparation of the [divine grace by which men are most
certainly redeemed." The reprobate accordingly are not embraced by predestination,
but they are damned, because God has foreseen their sins. In this, accordingly, pre-
science is alone at work, as also in the case of the regenerate, who fall away again.
But prescience compels no one to sin.
^ easiest, ep. 21. The appendix was added later, but it perhaps was by Prosper.
••
Gennadius relates (De script, eccl. 85) that Prosper dictated the famous letters of
Leo I. against Eutyches. But he gives this as a mere rumour.
" Included among the works of Prosper and Leo I.
opposition by undertaking to combine the doctrine of the

exclusive efficacy of divine grace with the other that God willed
that all men should be saved. His intention proves that even
among Augustine's admirers ofifence was taken at his principle
of the particularism of God's purpose to save. But the laudable
endeavour to combine the truth of Augustinianism with a uni-
versalist doctrine could not but fail. For all the author's dis-
tinctions between universal grace (creation and history) and
special (Christ), and between the sensual, animal, and spiritual
will (voluntas sensualis, animalis, spiritalis), as well as his asser-
tions that grace, while preparing the will, does not supersede it,
and that God desires the salvation of all, could not remove the real
causes of offence (the damnation of children who died unbap-
tised, and reprobation in general) since Augustinianism was to
be strictly upheld.'' The work was at all events written with
the honourable intention of removing doubts and establishing
peace. On the other hand, attempts had been made on the
Semi-Pelagian side from the first to make Augustinianism im-
possible, by an unsparing exposure of its real and supposed
consequences, and these efforts culminated (about 450 ?) in the
notorious " Prsedestinatus " first discovered in A.D. 1643. The
mystery that overhangs this work has not yet been fully solved ;
but it is probable that the writing of a predestinationist, intro-

duced into Book 11. qnd refuted, from the standpoint of Semi-
,
Pelagianism, in Book III., is a forgery. For Augustine's

teaching is unfolded in it entirely in paradoxical, pernicious, and
almost blasphemous propositions, such as no Augustinian ever
produced.^ (We have both kinds of predestination strictly
carried out " those whom God has once predestined will,
:
even if they neglect, sin, or refuse, be brought unwillingly to

life, while those whom he has predestined to death labour in
1 A minute analysis of the work is given byWiggers, II. p. 218 ff. and Thomasius,
I.pp. 563-570. It is to be admitted that the worlc marks an advance by its desire to
admit the universality of God's purpose of salvation. But the doctrine of the uni-
versitas specialis is only a play on words, if universitas does not here mean more than
with Augustine and Prosper, namely, that men of all nations and periods will be
saved.
2 See Wiggers, II., pp. 329-350-
25'2 HISTORY OF DOGMA. '
[CHAt. V.'
vain, even if they run or hasten)." And the contention that'

^
the of the predestinatiOnists "= covers itself with Augus-

" sect
tine's name, like the wolf in sheep's clothing, is a bold, contro-

versial trick of fence.
Of the effects produced by this venomous writing nothing is
known on the other hand, we do know that Semi-Pelagianism
;
continued to exist undisturbed in Southern Gaul, 3 and, indeed,'

found its most distinguished defender in Faustus of Rhegiuna
(died shortly before 500), formerly Abbot at Lerinum.* This
amiable and charitable Bishop, highly respected in spite of
many peculiar theories, took an active part in all the contro-
versies and literary labours of his time. He was the forerunner
of Gregory I. in establishing, from the Episcopal Chair, monas-
tic Christianity in the Galilean communities. He had entered
the lists against Pelagius (" pestifer "), and he now fought as:
decidedly against the tenet of the extinction of free-will and
the doctrine of predestination, which he declared to be errone-,
ous, blasphemous, heathen, fatalistic, and conducive to immo-
rality. The occasion was furnished by Lucidus, a Presbyter of
Augustinian views, who made an uncompromising statement of
the doctrine of predestination. He recanted formally after the
"error pra;destinationis " had been condemned at a Synod at
Aries (47s), with the assistance, if not on the instigation, of .
Faustus.* After this Synod, and a second at Lyons,- Faustus
1 " Quos deus semel preedestinavit ad vitam, etiamsi negligant, eliamsi peccent,
etiamsi nolint, ad vitam perducentur inviti, qilos autem prtedestinavit ad mortem,,
etiamsi currant, etiamsi festinent, sine causa laborant."
2 Of any such sect absolutely nothing is known. There is no original authority to
show that there actually existed " libertines of grace," i.e., AugustiniatlS
who, under'
cover of the doctritie of predestination, gave themselves up to unbridled sin. The
Semi-Pelagians' would not have suffered such." Augustinians " toescape thim in their
polemics. There may have arisen isolated ultra-Augustinians like Lucidus, but they
were not libertines.
3 North Africa was removed from theological disputes by the dreadful invasion of
the Vandals. The majority there were certainly Augustinians, yet doubts and op-
position were not wanting see Aug. Ep. 217 ad Vitalem.
;
* See Tillemont, Vol. XVI., and WiggSrs, II.

224-329 Koch, Der h. Faustus von
;
Riez, 1895 (further, Loofs, Theol. Lit.-Ztg. 1895, CoL 567 ff.).
^ See Mansi VII., where we have also (p. loio) Lucidus' recantation in a Libellus
ad episcopos. Even before the Synod Faustus had an interview with his friend, ahd
.CHAP. V.J SEMI-PELAGIANISM, AND AUGUSTINIANISM. 253
composed ' his work, De gratia dei et humanae mentis libero

arbitrio, lib. II., meant to explain the dogmatic attitude of the
Synods— against Pelagius and predestination.^ Grace and
freedom are parallel ; it is certain that man, since Adam's Fall,
is externally and internally corrupt, that original sin and death
as the result of sin reign over him, and that he is thus incapable
of attaining salvation by "his own strength but it is as certain
;
that rhan can still obey or resist grace. God wills the salvation
of all all need grace
; but grace reckons on the will which
;
remains, though itweakened

always co-operates with the
;
latter ; otherwise the eflFort of human obedience (labor humanae

obediehtiae)''' would be in vain. Original sin and free-will, in its
infirm, weakened state (infirmatum, attenuatum), are not
mutually exclusive. But those who ascribe everything to grace
fall into heathen and blasphemous follies.^ Our being saved is
God's gift; it does not rest, however, on an absolute predestina-
tion, laut God's predetermination depends on the use man makes
of the liberty stillleft him, and in virtue of which he can amend
himself (prescience). Faustus no longer shows himself to be so
strongly influenced by Augustine's thoughts as Cassian,* al-
though, as a theologian, he owes more to him than the latter
does, He is " more of a monk." Faith also is a work and a
he wrote: a doctrinal, letter to him (VII. 1007 sq.) which, however, was equally un-
successful. '
1 Further, the Professio fidei (to Leontius) contra eos, qui dum per solam dei
.voluntateni. alios dicunt ad vitam attrahi, alios in mortem deprimi, hinc fatum cum
gentilibus asserunt, inde liberum arbitrium cum M anichaeis negant.
2 " Obedientia" plays the chief part with Faustus next to castitas. In this the
mediaeval monk announces himself.
2 Faustus took good care not to contend against Augustine ; he only opposed
Augustinianism. This is true of the Catholic Churcli at the piesent day.
^ Yet he expressed himself very strongly as to original sin, and even taught
Traducianism.' As with Augustine,, pro-creatibnis the means of transmitting original
sin, which rises " per incentivum maledictae generationis ardorem et per inlecebro.-um
utriusqueparehtis amplexum;" Since Christ was alone free from this heriiable infec-
tion, because he was not born of sexual intercourse, we must acknowledge the
pleasure of intercourse and vice of sensuality to be the origin of the malum originale.
'We readily see that everything in Augustinianism met withiapplause that depreciated
marriage; And these monks crossed themselves at the thought of Manichseism !
human achievement;' ascetic performances are iii general

brought still more to the front by him, and the possibility of
grace preceding the movement of the will towards good is
understood to mean that salvation is first offered to a man
from without by means of preaching, law, and reproof. (In this
sense Faustus is even of opinion that the beginning is always
the work of grace.) The most questionable (Pelagian) feature,
however, consists in Faustus giving a very subordinate place to
internal grace —
the adjutorium essentially means for him ex-
ternal aid in the form of law and doctrine and that he clearly —
returns to the Pelagian conception of nature as the original
(universal) grace [gratia prima (universalis)]. It is manifest, on
the other hand, that he sought to lead precisely ascetics to
humility ; 6ven where they increase their own merits they are
toremember that " whatever we are is of God," (dei est omne
quod sumus), i.e., that perfect virtue is impossible without grace. ^
We see when we look closely that Faustus already distinctly
preached implicitly the later doctrine of ineritum de congruo et
de condigno.^ In faith as knowledge, and in the exertions of the

will to amend ourselves, we have a merit supported by the first
grace (gratia prima) to it is imparted redeeming grace, and
;
the latter now co-operates with the will in producing perfect

merits.
In his own time Faustus hardly met with an opponent, not to
5peak of one his equal.* But in Rome Augustine was held in
1 Faustus even supposes that fides remained as the knowledge of God after the
Fall.
See lib. II. 4. On the other hand, Abel, Enoch, etc., were saved by the first
.grace, the law of nature, II. 6, 7. Since Enoch preceded the rest, in that so early
age, by the merit of faith (fidei merito), he showed that faith had been transmitted to
him with the law of nature ; see also II. 8 {" et ex gentibus fuisse salvatos," 7).
' Wiggers calls attention (p. 328) to Faustus' principle, important for the sake of
later considerations in the Church :
" Christus plus dedit quam totus mundus vale-
bat " (De grat. et lib. arb. 16).
* The most
distinguished writers of the age held similar views, e.g., Arnobius the
younger, Gennadius of Marseilles, Ennodius of Ticinum. Augustine's own authority
was already wavering ; for Gennadius permitted himself to write of him (De sciipt.
eccl.39): "unde ex-multa eloquentia accidit, quod dixit per Salomonem spiritus
sanctus ex multiloquio non effugies peccatum" and "error tamen illius seimone
:
multo, ut dixi, contractus, lucta hostium exaggeratus necdum hseresis qusestionem

•CHAP, v.] SEMI-PELAGIANISM AND AUGUSTINIANISM. 255
high honour, without anyone, certainly, saying how far he was

prepared to go with him, and doctrines which directly contra-
dicted him were not tolerated. If we may ascribe the decree,
De libris recipiendis et non recipiendis, to Gelasius, then that
Pope, who is also proved by other facts to have been a strong
opponent of Pelagianism, declared Augustine and Prosper's
writings to be in harmony with the Church, but those of Cassian
and Faustus " apocryphal." But the course of affairs in Rome
at the beginning of the sixth century makes the ascription of
this decree to Gelasius —
in its present form improbable. That —
is, as Pelagianism had formerly amalgamated with Nestorianism,
to which it gravitated, and had thus sealed its doom, so Semi-

Pelagianism did not escape the fate of being dragged into the
Christological controversy, and of being assailed by the dislike
which orthodoxy influenced by Monophysitism cherished against
all " that was human." Those Scythian monks in Constanti-
nople, who wished to force Theopaschitism on the Church,'
handed to the Legate of Pope Hormisdas a Confession of faith,
in which they opposed the remains of Nestorianism as well as
the doctrine that grace did not effect the act of will and its
accomplishment (519).^ Dismissed by the Legate, they brought
their view in person before the Pope, and sent a report to the
banished North African Bishops, who were residing in Sardinia,
and among whom the most important was Fulgentius of Ruspe,
a practised disputant against Arianism, and a faithful adherent
of Augustine. The report of the Scythians, which discussed
Christology as well as the doctrine of grace, and quoted in sup-
—
port of the latter in its Augustinian form Eastern and West- —
ern authorities, closes with the words: "We hold it necessary
absolvit." Many MSS. have suppressed these passages ! We find it said of Prosper
(c.85) that in his work against Cassian he "quae ecclesia dei salutaria probat, in-
—
famat nociva." Cassian and Faustus are highly praised. As sources for Semi-Pela-
gianism there fall further to be considered the homilies, only in part by Faustus,
which are printed in the Max. Bibl. Lugd. T. VI., pp. 619-686 ; see on them Caspari,
Briefe, Abhandlungen u. Predigten (1890) p. 418 ff.
1 See Vol. IV., p. 231.
2 These " Scythians " were well versed in Western thought, their leader, Maxen-
lius, wrote in Latin, belonged himself to the West. In the Confession of faith
who
they treat of grace, " non qua creamur, sed qua recreamur et renovamur." Pelagius,
Cselestius, and Theodore of Mopsuestia are grouped together.
,2S6 HISTORY OF DOGMA. [CHAP. Y.
to add this ; not as if you did not know it, but we have con-
sidered it useful to insert our short paper, in order to refute

it in
the folly of those who reject it as containing tenets novel and

entirely unheard of in the churches. Instructed in the teaching
of all these holj' Fathers, we condemn Pelagius, Cselestius,
Julian,and those of a similar type of thought, especially the
books of Faustus of the cloister of Lerinum, which there is no
doubt were written against the doctrine of predestination. In
these he attacks the tradition not only of these holy Fathers, but
also of the Apostle himself, annexing the support of grace to
human and, while doing away with the whole grace of
effort,
Christ,avowing impiously that the ancient saints were not
saved, as the most holy Apostle Peter teaches, by the same
grace as we are, but by natural capacity."
The North Africans assented to this, and Fulgentius in reply
wrote his work, De incarnatione et gratia, in which, as in earlier
writings, he defended the Augustinian standpoint, and especially
derived original sin from the lust of sexual intercourse. Free-
will in the state of sin was wickedly free (male liberum), and
Christ's grace was to be sharply distinguished from grace in
creation (gratia creans) [c. 12]; the act of willing is not ours,
and assistance God's, business, but " it is the part of God's grace
to aid, that it may be mine to will, believe " (c. 16 gratise dei :
est adjuvare, ut sit meum velle credere). Rom. II. 14, is to be

applied to the Gentiles justified by faith (c. 25) ; and the par-
ticularism of grace is also maintained.' The Scythians left
Rome, leaving behind them an anathema on Nestorians, Pela-

gians, and all akin to them. The celebrated name of Faustus
appeared in a bad light, and Possessor, an exiled African
Bishop who lived in Constantinople, hastened to recommend
himself to the Pope by the submissive query, What view was
now to be taken of Faustus? assuring him at the same time that
distinguished State officials equally desired enlightenment.^
Hormisdas gave a reserved answer (Aug. 520). The Scythian
monks were branded as vile disturbers of orthodoxy Faustus ;
1 See Wiggers II., pp. 369-4 According to Fulgentius, even Mary's conception
g.
was stained, and therefore not from original sin, see c. 6.
free
2 All these transactions in .\lansi VIII.
;
was described as a man whose private views need disquiet

nobody, as the Church had not raised him to the post of a
teacher the doctrine of the Roman Church as regards sin and
;
grace could be seen from Augustine s writings, especially those to

Prosper and Hilary. The Scythians sent a vigorous reply,
sparing the Pope in so far as they questioned the authenticity
of his letter. If Augustine's teaching was that of the Catholic
Church, then Faustus was a heretic that is what the Pope
;
would have necessarily said. The heresy was perfectly clear

for Faustus only understood by prevenient grace, external grace
—the preaching of the gospel. At the same time, the monks
instigated Fulgentius now to write directly against Faustus,
which he did in the Seven Books c. Faustum (lost) and — on his
return to Africa A.D. 523 — in his work, De veritate praedestina-
tionis et gratise dei(1. III.) In this work Fulgentius expounds
out and out Augustinianism (particularism of the will to save),
but rejects the idea of a predestination to sin (nevertheless to
punishment).^ The Bishops remaining in Sardinia concurred
fully with their colleague in the Ep. Synodica addressed to the
Scythian monks grace is the light, the will the eye the eye
:
;
needs light in order to be able to see the light. Faustus' theses

are " inventions, contrary to the truth, entirely hostile to the
Catholic faith" (commenta, veritati contraria, catholicas fidei
penitus inimica).
These conflicts could not be without consequence for South-
ern Gaul. Still greater effect was produced by the reading of
Augustine's writings, especially his sermons. In an age that
thought solely in contrasts, the dilemma whether Augustine
was a holy doctor ox a heretic could only be decided ultimately
in favour of the incomparable teacher. Caesarius of Aries, the
most meritorious and famous Bishop at the beginning of the
sixth century, had, though trained in Lerinum and never wholly
belying his training, so steeped himself in Augustine's works,
that he would not abandon him, and his theology and sermons
became a mirror of the master's important thoughts and forms
of expression (though not of all or the most characteristic of
1 On the derivation of original sin, see I. 4
: "proinde de immunditia nuptiarum
mundus homo non nascitur, quia interveniente libidine serainatur."
R
;
2S8 HISTORY OF DOGMA. [CHAP. V.
them).! He fought against ( + 542) the writings and authority
of Faustus.^ In Southern Gaul he at first met with much oppo-

sition, but still more indifference —for how many Bishops were
there at the beginning of the century capable of under-
sixth
standing Augustinianism ? In Rome, on the contrary, he found
approval.^ This approval was not without effect in Gaul.* A
mixed Synod at Orange^ in A.D. 529 under the presidency of
Csesarius approved of twenty-five Canons, i. e., headings extracted
by Pope Felix IV. from Augustine and Prosper's writings, and
sent by him to the South Galileans as the doctrine of the
" ancient Fathers," in order to support Csesarius in his fight
against Semi-Pelagianism.®
These Canons'' are strongly anti-Semi- Pelagian 3: "The :
—
grace of God is not granted in response to prayer, but itself
causes the prayer to be offered for it." 4 " That we may be :
' See Arnold's interesting monograph, Casarius von Arelate und die gallische Kirche
s. Zeit, 1894. An edition of the Opp. Csesarii is forthcoming.
2 Avitus of Vienne is usually named along with him ; but after Arnold's authorita-
tive account of the former202 ff.), he must be disregarded. On the other hand,
(p.
Mamertus Claudianus is to be named as an opponent of Faustus (Arnold, p. 325)
he is an Augustinian and Neoplatonist, and thus an enemy of Semi-Pelagianism as a
metaphysician.
3 Csesarius' vifork, however, De gratia et libero arbitrio, and its approval by Felix
IV. belong to the realm of fiction (Arnold, p. 499). On the other hand, we have to
notice some indirect manifestationson the part of Rome
about A.D. 500 in favour of
Augustinianism and against Faustus. Yet Rome never took the trouble really to
comprehend Augustinianism.
* We only know of the Synod of Valencia, at which Csesarius was not present,
owing to illness, but where he was represented by a friendly Bishop, from the Vita
Cffis.irii by his disciple Cyprian (Mansi VIII., p. 723). Hefele has shown (Coiicilien-
gesch., II. 2 p. 738 tf.), that it is to be dated before the Synod of Orange. It seems
necessary to infer from the short account that the Bishops met to oppose Csesarius,
and publisned a decree condemning, or at least disapproving his teaching (see also
Arnold, p. 346 ff. ). At Orange Csesarius justified himself, or triumphantly defended
his doctrine from " Apostolic tradition," and Pope Boniface agreed with him, and
not with his Valencian opponents.
5 See_Arnold p. 350 ff.
6 We cannot now decide whether the 25 Canons are absolutely identical with
those transmitted heads, or whether the Synod (perhaps even the Pope ?) proposed
trifling modifications; see Chap. XIX. of the Treves Codex in Mansi VIII., p. 722.
However, it is very improbable that^the Bishops made important changes in these
heads (yet see Arnold, p. 352) since according to them they expounded their own
view in the Epilogue.
' See Hahn, § 103 ; Hefele, p. 726 f.
cleansed from sin, God does not wait upon, but prepares, our
will." 5 The :
"
beginning of faith is not due to us, but to the
—
grace of God that state of believing by which we believe in
him who justifies the impious, and attain the regeneration of
holy Baptism, is brought about through the gift of grace, i.e., the
inspiration of the Holy Spirit correcting our will from unbelief
to faith, and is not ours naturally." 6 : "It is the work of grace
that we believe, will, desire, attempt, knock, etc., and not vice-
versa." 7 :
" We
cannot without grace think or choose, by our
natural powers, anything good that pertains to salvation." 8 :
"It is untrue that some attain baptismal faith by mercy, others

by free-will." 9 " As often as we do good, God works in and
:
with us, that we may work." 10 :

" Even the regenerate and
holy always need the divine aid." We can only vow to 11:"
God what we ourselves have received from him." 12 "God :
loves us as we shall be by his gift, not as we are by our merit."

13:" Choice of will, weakened in the first man, cannot be re-
paired except 16 " Let no one
by the grace of Baptism." :
boast of what he seems to have as he did not receive it, or

if
think that he has received, because the letter appeared or was

sounded outwardly that it might be read or heard." 17 " On :
the love of God diffused in hearts by the Holy Spirit." 18:

"Undeserved grace precedes meritorious works." 19: "Even
if it had remained in the sound state in which it was created,
human nature would by no means preserve itself without the

aid of its creator." 21 "The law does not justify, and grace
:
is not nature ;
therefore Christ died not gratuitously, but that
the law might be fulfilled, and that nature, ruined by Adam,
might be repaired by him." 22 " No one has anything of his
:
own but falsehood and sin," and " The virtue of heathens is pro-
duced only by worldly desire, that of Christians springs not
from free will, but from the gift of the Holy Ghost."' 23: " In
(doing) evil men carry out their own will, but when they do
what they resolve in order to serve the divine will, although
their actions are willed by them, yet it is his will by which their
act of will is both prepared and commanded." 24 :
" The twig
1 This Canon caused the greatest distress to the Catholic Church in the sixteenth,
seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries (see Hefele, p. 733 f.).

' ,
260 HISTORY OF DOGMA. [CHAP. V
does not benefit the stem, but the stem the twig so also those ;
who have Christ in them and abide in him do not benefit Christ,
but themselves." 25 " To love God is the gift of God."
:
The definition given by the Bishops, after drawing up these

heads, is likewise strongly anti-Semi-Pelagian.' But no mention
is made of predestination,^ nor is the inner process of grace, on.
zvhich Augustine laid the chief stress, properly appreciated. The
former fact would have been no blemish in itself; but at that
time,when the question was whether the whole Augustine was
authoritative or not, silence was dangerous. Those who were
disposed to Semi-Pelagianism could appeal to the fact that
Augustine's doctrine of predestination was not approved, and
might then introduce into this unsanctioned tenet a great deal
that belonged to the doctrine of grace. This actually took
place. Accordingly the controversy only came apparently to an
end here. But the continued vitality of Semi-Pelagian ideas,
under cover of Augustinian formulas, was further promoted by
that external conception of grace as the sacrament of Baptism,
which lay at the root of the decree. " Love," it is true, was also
discussed but we see easily that the idea of the sacrament was.
;
all-predominant. " Even Augustine's adherents," it has been truly

remarked, " lost sight of the distinction between Augustinianism
and Semi-Pelagianism in relation to all who were baptised." It,
was Augustine himself, who, because he had not comprehended
the notion of faith, was to blame for the fact that, at the close
of the dispute, a conception was evolved as his doctrine which,
while explaining grace to be beginning and end, really held to
the magical miracle of Baptism, and to " faithful working with
the aid of Christ " (fideliter laborare auxiliante Christo).
1 Yet Augustine would hot have written the sentence :

" hoc etiam credimus, quod
accepta per baptismum gratia omnes baptizati Christo auxiliante et co-operante, quse
ad salutem animsE pertinent, possint et debeant, sifideliter laborare voluerint, adim-
plere." Besides, the words "quce ad salutem pertinent adimplere" and "fideliter,
laborare " are ambiguous.
2 The word only occurs in the epilogue, and there merely to re]tct pri^destinatio
ad
malum : '
' aliquos vero ad malum non solum non
divina potestate prtedestinatos esse
credimus, sed etiam, si sunt qui tantum malum credere velint, cum omni detestatione
illis anathema dicimus." The decree is also silent as to gratia irrcsistibilis, and the
particularism of God's will to bestow grace.
CHAP, v.] SEMI-PELAGIANISM AND AUGUSTINIANISM. 26I
The new II., approved of these decrees in a

Pope, Boniface
letter to Csesarius they have retained a great esteem in the
;
'
Catholic Church, and were very thoroughly considered by the

Council of Trent.'' Henceforth, the doctrine of prevenient
grace, on which the Pope also laid particular stress, is to be
regarded as Western dogma ; the Semi-Pelagians have to be
acknowledged heretics. But the controversy could begin anew
at any moment, as soon, namely, as any one appeared, who, for
the sake of prevenient grace, also required the recognition of
particular election to grace. If we consider which of Augustine's
doctrines met with acceptance, and which were passed over, if
further we recollect why the former were approved, we are
compelled to say that, next anxiety to secure to the
to
Sacrament of Baptism its irreplaceable importance, it was the
monastic view of the impurity of marriage that especially operated
here. All are sinful, and grace must come before our own
efforts, because all are born from the sinful lust of sexual
intercourse. The Catholic system of doctrine has risen from a
compromise between two equally monastic conceptions the :
meritoriousness of works and the impurity of marriage. Both

thoughts were August in ian in themselves and in their working
out; but the moving soul of Augustinianism was starved. It is
a fact that has not yet been sufficiently appreciated that Catholic
doctrine did not adhere to Semi-Pelagianism, because the former
declared sexual desire to be sinful.^
' Mansi VIII.,

p. 735 sq. The by laymen, a thing
lesolutions were also subscribed
almost unheard of in the dogmatic history of the ancient Church, but not so in Gaul
in the sixth century see Hatch, " The Growth of Church Institutions " chap. VIII.
;
2 The Roman Bishops evidently felt their attitude in the Semi-Pelagian controversy
prejudiced by the decisions of their predecessors against Pelagius. We look in vain
for an independent word coming from internal conviction (Gelasius is perhaps aii
exception), and yet it is quite essentially "thanks" to them that the Semi-Pelagian
dispute ended with the recognition of the Augustinian doctrine of prevenient grace
and with silence as to predestination.
* Seeberg(Dogmengesch. I., p. 326), has disputed this, because the representatives of
Semi-Pelagianism made the strongest assertions on this point (see especially Faustus),
and because the opposition between them and the Augustinians actually depended on
quite different issues. Both objections are quite correct, but they do not meet the
above statement ; the Semi-Pelagian doctrine of grace could not but react upon and
modify Augustine's doctrine of original sin, and therefore also the view of the evil of
sin as necessarily propagated by sexual intercourse, involving damnation, and de-
2. Gregory the Great.
The by Pope Gregory the Great

doctrine of grace taught
(590 to 604) shows how
Augustinianism was understood
Httle
in Rome, and how confused theological thought had become
in the course of the sixth century. A
more motley farrago of
Augustinian formulas and crude work-religion (ergismus)
could hardly be conceived. Gregory has nowhere uttered an
original thought he has rather at all points preserved, while
;
emasculating, the traditional system of doctrine, reduced the

spiritual to the level of a coarsely material intelligence, changed
dogmatic, so far as it suited, into technical directions for the
clergy, and associated it with popular religion of the second
rank. All his institutions were wise and well considered, and
yet they sprang from an almost naif monastic soul, which
laboured with faithful anxiety at the education of uncivilised
peoples, and the training of his clergy, ever adopting what was
calculated by turns to disquiet and soothe, and thus to rule the
lay world with the mechanism of religion.^ Because Gregory,
living in an age when the old was passing away and the new
presented itself in a form still rude and disjointed, looked only
to what was necessary and attainable, he sanctioned as religion
an external legality, as suited to train young nations, as it was
adapted to the Epigones of ancient civilisation, who had lost
fineness of feeling and thought, were sunk in superstition and
magic, and did homage to the stupid ideals of asceticism.'' It is
the accent that changes the melody, and the tone makes the
music. Gregory created the vulgar type of mediaeval Catholic-
ism by the way he accented the various traditional doctrines
and Church usages,^ and the tone to which he tuned Christian
structive of all goodness. As regards this it is quite indifferent how individual
Semi-Pelagian monks looked at sexual desire and marriage, as also whether this point
came at once to light in the controversy.
' After reading Gregory's abundant correspondence, we gain a high respect for the
wisdom, charity, tolerance, and energy of the Pope.
2 Yet side by side with this external legality there are not wanting traits of Gospel
liberty ; see the letters to Augustine.

3 So Lau. Gregor d. Grosse, p. 326: "Without perceiving, perhaps, the signific-
CHAP, v.] GREGORY THE GREAT. 265
souls is the key we hear echoed by Catholicism down to the
present day.' The voice is the voice of Gregory, and also of

Jerome, but the hands are Augustine's. Only in one respect
he was not Augustine's disciple. Akin to Cyprian and Leo I.
and well versed in jurisprudence, he laid stress on the legal
element in addition to the ritual and sacramental. Through
htm the amalgamation of doctrine and Church government made
a further advance in the IVest."
A few lines are sufficient to depict the emasculated
Augustinianism represented by Gregory. Reason, science, and
philosophy, are more strongly depreciated by him than by
Augustine (Evang. II. hom. 26); 3 miracle is the distinguishing
mark of the religious. Reason can, indeed, establish the
existence of God, but it is only "by faith that the way is
opened to the vision of God" (per aditum fidei aperitur

aditus visionis dei ; Ezech. II. hom. 5, following Augustine).
The doctrine of angels and the devil comes to the front, because
it suited popular and monastic piety. We can call Gregory the
" Doctor angelorum et diaboli." As regards the angels, he took
particular delight (see Evang. II. hom. 34) in working out their
ranks (under the influence of Greek mysticism), in glorifying
—
Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael the hero of miracle, the great
messenger and warrior against the spirits of the air, and the
—
medicine-man in the exact division of angelic tasks and the
idea of guardian spirits he held that angels watched over men,
;
as the latter did over cattle. He who thought so little of

Graeco- Roman culture sanctioned its most inferior parts in his
ance of what he did, he prepared the way for the development of later Catholicism by
imperceptibly altering the conception of the tradition received from a preceding age."
1 Gregory was most read of the Western Church Fathers, as the literature of the
Middle Ages and our libraries show. Even in the seventh century he was extolled
by tasteless and uncritical writers as wiser than Augustine, more eloquent than
Cyprian, more pious than Anthony ( " nihil illi simile demonstrat antiquitas " Ildefond.
de script, i).
2 Lau gives a detailed account of Gregoiy's teaching

; I.e. pp. 329-556. We see
here the extent of Gregoiy's dependence on Augustine. He especially lays as great
stress on Holy Scripture being the rule of life and doctrine. The most profound of
Augustine's thoughts are touched on, but they are all rendered superficial.
"Fides non habet meritum, cui humana ratio prsebet experimentum "
3 (§ I).
TertuUian, certainly, had already said that (Apolog. 21) once.

"
doctrine of the angels. His monkish fancy dealt still more

actively in conceptions about the devil and demons, and he
gave new life to ideas about Antichrist, who stood already at
the door, because the world was near its end. As the Logos
had assumed human nature, so the devil would be incarnate
at the end of the world (Moral. 31, 24; 13, 10). Before Christ
appeared, the devil possessed all men of right, and he still
possesses unbelievers. He raged through the latter; but as
regarded believers he was a powerless and cheated devil. The
doctrines of redemption, justification, grace, and sin show an
Augustinianism modified in the interests of miracle, sacred
rites and monachism. The God-man whose mother remained —
—
a virgin at and after the birth was sinless, because he did not
come into the world through fleshly lust. He is our redeemer
—
(redemptor) and mediator these titles being preferred and he —
especially propitiated the devil by purchasing men from him
with his death,' and he abolished the disunion between angels
and men. It is also remarked incidentally that Christ bore
our punishments and propitiated God's wrath. But, besides
redemption from the devil, the chief thing is deliverance from
sin itself. It was effected by Christ putting an end to the
punishment of original sin, and also destroying sin itself,
by giving us an example.'' This amounts to saying that
Christ's work was incomplete, i.e., that it must be supple-
mented by our penances, for it transformed the eternal punish-
ment of original sin into temporary penalties, which must be
atoned for, and it acts mainly by way of example.^ In fact, in
1 The deception theory is thus given by Gregory inits most revolting form. 'l"he
devil is the fish snapping at Christ's flesh, and swallowing the hidden hook, his
divinity ; see Moral. 33, 7, 9.
2 Moral. 13: "Incarnatus dominus in semetipso omne quod nobis inspiravit
I.
ostendit, ut quod prascepto diceret, exemplo suaderel." II. 24 " Venit inter homines
;
mediator dei et hominum, homo Christus Jesus, ad praebendutn exemplum vitse

hominibus simplex, ad non parcendum malignis spiritibus rectus ad debellandum
superbiam timens deum, ad detergendam vero in electis suis immunditiam recedens
a malo.
3 Lau. p. 434 " The chief stress is placed on instruction and example ; reconcilia-
:
tion with God, certainty of which is absolutely necessary to man's peace of mind, is
almost entirely passed over ; and deliverance from punishment is inadequately con-
ceived, as referring merely to original sin, or is regarded purely externally. . , . All
-CHAP, v.] GREGORY THE GREAT. 265
Gregory's teaching, Christ's death and penance appear side by-

side, astwo factors of equal value.'
We must remember this, or we may assign too high a value
to another line of thought Gregory regards Christ's death as
an offering (oblatio) for our purification : Christ presents it
constantly for us, ever showing God his (crucified) body." But
this apparently high pitched view after all means very little.
Ithas risen from the observance of the Lord's Supper. What
was constantly done by the priest has been transferred to Christ
himself But both oblations, related as they are to our " puri-
fication," possess their sole value in the mitigation of sin's
penalties. another consideration was at work in this case,
Still
one that, though relying on Biblical statements, sprang in reality
from wholly different sources. It is the conception of Christ's
continual intercession. But this intercession must be combined
with the whole apparatus of intercessions (of angels, saints,
alms and masses for the dead, which were conceived as personi-
fied forces), to see that we are here dealing with a heathen
conception, which, though it had indeed long been established
in the practice of the Church, was only now elevated into a
—
theory that of " aids in need." Gregory's candid avowal that
that Gregory can do to give man peace is to direct him to penance and his good
works. " He
speaks of even the holiest remaining in constant uncertainty as to their
reconciliation. He can make nothing of the thesis that our sins are forgiven for
Christ's sake. God rather punishes every sin not atoned for by penance, even if he
pardons it ; see Moral. IX. 34 :
" Bene dicit Hiob (IX. 2%) Sciens quod non parceris
:
delinquenti, quia delicta nostra sine per nos sive per semetipsum resecat, etiam cum
relaxat. Ab electis enim suis iniquitatum maculas studet temporali afflictione tergere,
quas in eis in perpetuum non vult videre." In his commentary on i Kings (1. IV. 4,
57), which was hardly transcribed indeed in its present form by Gregory himself, we
even read: "Non omnia nostra Christus explevit, per crucem quidem suam omnes
redemit, sed remansit, ut qui redimi et regnare cum eo nititur, crucifigatur. Hoc
profecto residuum viderat, qui dicebat si compatimur et conregnabimus.
: Quasi
dicat Quod explevit Christus, non valet nisi ei, qui id quod remansit adimplet."
:
1 Therefore we find over and over in the Moral, in reference to the expiation of
sins :
" sive per nos, sive per deum."
2 Moral, i. 24: "Sine intermissione pro nobis holocauslum redemptor immolat,
qui sine cessatione patri suam pro nobis incarnaiionem demonstrat ; ipsa quippe ejus
incarnatio nostrte emundationis oblatio est ; cumque se hominem ostendit, delicla
hominis interveniens diluit. Et humanitatis suae mysterio perenne sacrificium
immolat, quia et haec sunt sterna, quae mundat."
;
the death of Christ was not absolutely necessary, showed how

indefinite was played in this mediation.
his view of the part it
As God created us from nothing, he could also have delivered

us from misery without Christ's death. But he willed to show
us the greatness of his compassion by taking upon himself that
from which he desired to deliver us he willed to give us an ;
example, that we should not dread the misfortune and miseries

of the world, but should avoid its happiness; and he sought
to teach us to remember death.' Nor has Gregory yet sketched
—
a theory of Christ's merit after the analogy of the merits
which we can gain. That was reserved for the Middle Ages
but he has examined Christ's work from the point of view of
masses for the dead and the intercession of saints.
In the doctrines of the primitive state, original sin, sin, faith and
grace, the Augustinian formulas are repeated after the Canons —
of Orange, without irresistible grace and particular election.^
But a very real significance was attributed to free-will, which
Augustine had abstractly admitted. Here we have the fully
developed doctrines of free and prevenient grace, of the primi-
tive state and original sin (the carnal lust of parents is the
;
cause of our life, therefore the latter is sinful the " disobedi- ;
ence " or " disorderliness " of the genital organs is the proof of
original sin intercourse in marriage is never innocent). And
;
side by side with all this, we have a calm statement of the

doctrine of the will, which is merely weakened, and of free
choice (liberum arbitrium) which must follow grace, if the latter
is to become operative,3 —and yet grace is first to deterinine the
will to will. From
the first two powers co-operate in all good,
must accept what grace offers. It can therefore
since free-will
be said "that we redeem ourselves because we assent to the
Lord redeeming us."* Predestination is simply reduced in the
1 Moral. 20, 36; 2, 37. Ezek. 1. H. horn. I, 2. Here occur fine ideas: "Nos
minus amasset, vulnera nostra susciperet" (M. 20, 36).
nisi et
2 See the proof of positive points of agreement between Gregory and the Canons of
Oranges in Arnold, Csesariu?, p. 369 f. Yet Gregory never himself appealed to those
resolutions.
3 How could a bishop, who felt himself to be the pastor of all Christendom, have
then made pure August inianism the standard of all his counsels?
* Moral. 24, 10; see also 33, 21 ; "Bonum quod agimus et dei est et nostrum,
"
case of sinners and elect to prescience, while at the same time

it is maintained in other passages that it rests on God's free
power and grace. The latter assumption was necessary, because
Gregory also adhered to "a fixed and definite number of the
elect " — to supply the place of angels ; but ultimately all belong
to thatnumber whose perseverance in faith and good works
God knew beforehand.
After everything spiritual is reduced to the rites of the
all,
Church. As
in the East, these come to the front but they are ;
regarded in a different way. In the East more scope is given

to religious sentiment, which exalts itself and luxuriates in the
whole of the Cultus as a divino-human drama in the West, as ;
befitted the Roman character, everything is more prosaic and

calculating. Man
accomplishes and receives submissive obedi- ;
ence is the chief virtue;

merits are rewarded, but on the
humble a merit not his own is also bestowed that is grace. :
Baptism, the Lord's Supper, and penance are the central points
in the legal process of grace. We are baptised thereby in- :
herited guilt is expiated, and

committed before baptism
all sins,
are blotted out but original sin is not obliterated, and the
;
guilt of later sins remains.' It must be cancelled or atoned for.

For this there are numerous means, which are as necessary as
they are uncertain. A man must make himself righteous for ;
righteousness is the supreme virtue (radix virtutum). He is

instructed to pray, give alms, and mourn over life. But he
is further told " Those who trust in no work of their own run
:
to the protection of the holy martyrs, and throng to their sacred
dei per preevenientem gratiam, nostrum per obsequentem liberam voluntatem. . . .
.Si nostram non unde nobis retribui preemia speramus? Quia ergo non immerito
est,
gratias agimua, scimus, quod ejus munere pnevenimur et rursum quia non itnnierito
;
retributionem qiueriimis, scimus, quod obscqucnte libero arbitrio Iwna eli^mus, qua
ageremus." See Ep. III. 29: Christ will comfort us richly at the Judgment, when
he observes that we have punished our faults by ourselves.
1 Moral. IX. 34 " Salutis unda a culpa primi parentis absolvimur, sed tamen
:
reatum ejusdem culpse diluentes absoluti quoque adhuc carnaliter obimus." The
casuistical treatment of sins is by no means puritanical in Gregory. He displays in
this matter a lofty wisdom united with charity, and gives directions which were
certainly the best for the circumstances of the time. He says once (Ep. XI. 64) :
"It is characteristic of pious souls to imagine that they are guilty of faults when
there is absolutely none.
26S HISTORY OF DOGMA. [CHAP. V.
bodies with tears, entreat that they may merit pardon at the
intercession of the saints."?This practice of resorting to saints
and relics had existed for a long time, but Gregory has the
merit of systematising it, at the same time providing it with
abundant material by means of his " Dialogues," as well as his
other writings.^ A
cloud of " mediators " came between God
and the soul : angels, saints, and Christ and men began already
;
to compute cunningly what each could do for them, what each

was good for. Uncertainty about God, perverse, monkish
humility, and the dread entertained by the poor unreconciled
heart of sin's penalties, threw Christians into the arms of pagan
superstition, and introduced the " mediators " into dogmatics.
But in terrifying with its principle: "sin is in no case
absolved without punishment" (nullatenus peccatum sine vin-
dicta laxatur),* the Church not only referred men to intercessors,
alms, and the other forms of satisfaction, to " masses for the
dead," which obtained an ever-increasing importance, but it
even modified hell, placing purgatory in front of heaven it ;
thereby confused conscience and lessened the gravity of sin,

turning men's interest to sin's punishment. Gregory sanctioned
and developed broadly the doctrine of purgatory,* already sug-
gested by Augustine.^ The power of the Church, of prayers,
1 Moral. XVI. i;r : "Hi qui de nuUo suo opere confidunt, ad sanctorum martyrum
protectionem currunt atque ad sacra eorum corpora fletibus insistunt, promereri se

veniam iis intercedentibus deprecantur."
^ by Gregory were often narrated at an earlier
Similar things to those recorded
date but no Western writer before him had developed these superstitions to such an
;
—
extent and he was the most influential bishop. Miracles wrought by relics were to
him every-day events ; the miraculous power of some was so great that everyone who
touched them died. Everything that came in contact with them was rriagnetised.
What powerful intercessors and advocates must then the saints be, when even their
bodies did such deeds ! Gregory therefore sought to preserve the attachment of
influential people —
by sending relics and- slaves. On pictures, see Ep. IX. 52 ;
IX. 105 XI. 13.;
* Moral, IX. 34, or : "delinquenti dominus nequaquam parcit, quia delictum sine
ultione non deserit. Aut enim ipse homo in se peenitens punit, aut hoc deus cum
horaine vindicans percutit."
^ See Dial. IV. (25) and 39. After God has changed eternal punishments into
temporary, iê. justified must expiate these temporary penalties for sin in purgatory.
This is inferred indirectly from Matth. XII. 31, directly from I Cor. III. 12 f.
There are perfect men, however, who do not need purgatory.
* See above, p. 232.
gHAP. v.] GREGORY THE GREAT. 269
and intercessors extended, ;

however, to this purgatory of
his.'
The whole Hfe; even of the baptised being

still stained at
least by small sins, constant attitude must be one of

their
penitence, z'.^., they must practise penance, which culminates in
satisfactions and invocations to " Aids in need." Gregory
systematised the doctrine of penance in the exact form in which
it passed over into the' Middle Ages.= Penance included four
points, perception of sin and dread of God's judgments, regret
(contritio), confession of sin, and satisfaction (satisfactio). The
two could also be conceived as one (conversio mentis).^
first
The chief emphasis was still held to fall on " conversion," evea
penance was not yet attached to the institution of the Church
and the priest but " satisfaction "
was necessarily felt to be the
;
main thing. The word was not indeed yet said but
last ;
already the order of penance was taking the place due to faith ;
nay, it was called the "baptism of tears."* And the Lord's

Supper was also ultimately drawn into the mechanism of
penance. In this case, again, Gregory had only to accentuate
what had long been in use. The main point in the Lord's
Supper was that it was a sacrifice, which benefited living and
dead as a means of mitigation (laxatio). As a sacrifice it was
a repetition of Christ's hence Gregory's development of the —
1 Dial. IV. 57 :
" Credo, .quia hoc tam aperte cum viventibus ac nescientihus.
agitur, ut cunctis haec agentibus ac nescientibus ostehdatur, quia si insolubiles culpse
non ad absolutionem prodesse etiam mortuis victima sacrse oblationis possit.
fuerint,
.Sed sciendum est, quia illis sacrse victimse mortuis prosint, qui hie vivendo obtinuerunt,
ut eos etiam post mortem bona adjuvent, qu£E hie pro ipsis ab aliis fiunt."
2 On the older Western order of penance, see Preuschen, Tertullian's Schriften de
psenit. and de pudicit. 1890; KolfPs Das Indulgenzedict des riim. Bischofs Kallist
1893 (Texte und Unters. Vol. II, Part 3) ; Gotz, Die Busslehre Cyprian's 1895 Karl ;
MuUer, Die Bussinstitution in Karthago imter Cyprian (Zeitschr. f. K.-Gesch., Vol.

16 [1895-96] p. I ff., p. 187 ff.).
' I Reg. 1. VI. 2, 33 :

" tria in unoquoque consideranda sunt veraciter pjEnitente,
videlicet conversio mentis, confessio oris et vindicta peccati." Moral 13, 39 :
" convertuntur fide, veniunt opere, convertuntur deserendo mala, veniunt bona
faciendo." Voluntarily assumed pains constitute satisfactio.
i Evang. 1. I. hom. 10 :
" Peccata nostra pr^terita in baptismatis perceptione
laxata sunt, et tamen post baptisma multa commisimus, sed laxari iterum baptismatis
aqua non possumus. Quia ergo et post baptisma inquinavimus vitim, baptizemus
lacrimis conscientiam."
ceremonial ritual —and it is self-evident that this was conceived

altogether realistically. In this rite (eucharistia, missa, sacri-
iicium, oblatio, hostia, sacramentum passionis, communio), the
passion of Christ ;
' who " is entire in the single portions " (in
was repeated for our atonement.

singulis portionibus totus est),
Yet even here the last word was not yet uttered, transubstantia-
tion was not yet evolved. Indeed, we find, accompanying the
above, a view of the Lord's Supper, which lays stress on our
presenting ourselves to God as the victim (the host), in yielding
ourselves to him, practising love, rendering daily the sacrifice of
tears, despising the world, and —daily offering the host of the
body and blood of Christ.''
What has been left here of Augustinianism ? All the popular

Catholic elements which Augustine thrust aside and in part
remodelled have returned with doubled strength The moral !
and legal view has triumphed over the religious. What we see
aimed at in Cyprian's work, De opere et eleemosynis, now
dominates the whole religious conception, and the uncertainty
left by Augustine as to the notion of God, because his ideas
regarding God in Christ tvere only vague, has here become a
source of injury traversing the whole system of religion. For
what does Gregory know of God ? That, being omnipotent, he
has an inscrutable will;'^ being the requiter, he leaves no sin
unpunished ; and that because he is beneficent, he has created an
immense multitude of institutions for conveying grace, whose use
enables the free will to escape sin's penalties, and to exhibit inerits
to God the rewarder. That is Gregory's notion of God, and it is
1 Evang. 1. II. hom. 37, 7 :

" Singulariter ad absolutionem nostram oblata cum
lacrimis et benignitate mentis sacri altaris hostia suffragatur, quia is, qui in se
resurgens a mortuis jam non moritur, adhuc per banc in suo mysterio pro nobis
iterum patitur. Nam quoties ei hostiam suae passionis offerimus, toties nobis ad
absolutionem nostram passionem illius reparamus."
See Dial. IV. 58, 59. Gregory already laid great stress on the frequency of
^
masses. He also approved of their use to avert temporal sufferings. He tells

with approval of a woman having delivered her husband from prison by their means,
and he sees in them generally the remedy against all torments in this world and in
purgatory. Only to eternal blessedness the mass docs not apply.
3 That is the impression that was preserved of Augustine's doctrine of predestina-
tion.
":
the specific conception held by the Roman Catholic Church

Christ as a person is forgotten. He is a great name in dog-
matics, i.e., at the relative place; but the fundamental questions
of salvation are not answered by reference to him, and in life
the baptised has to depend on " means " which exist partly
alongside, partly independently of him, or merely bear his
badge. From this standpoint is explained the whole structure
of Gregory's theory of religion, which once more sets \y^fear^
and hope instead oifaith and love, and for the grace of God in
Christ substitutes not an improved, but merely a more compli-
cated doctrine of merit. And yet Augustine could not have
complained of displacement of his ideas for he had left
this ;
standing, nay, had himself admitted into his system, all the
main lines of this theory of religion. Even the manifest and
grave externalisation of sin, the direction that we must be ever
bathed in tears, while at the same time zealous and watchful to
escape the penalties of sin, the perversion of the notion of God
and sin, as if God's sole concern was to be satisfied, since he
—
was the requiter all these thoughts have their points of contact
in the range of Augustine's conceptions.'' The darkest spot in
mediaeval piety, the fact that it commanded constant contrition,
while at the same time it incited the penitent to make calcula-
tions which deadened the moral nerve and changed regret for
sin into dread of punishment —
this source of evil, which makes
religious morality worse than non-religious, was from this time
perpetuated in the Catholic Church of the West.3
1 " Deus teirores incutit " — often.
^ The term "tutius," and the via tutior already play a great part in Gregory's
writings; see e.g.. Dial. IV. 58: "Pensandum est, quod tutior sit via, ut bonum
quod quisque post mortem suam sperat agi per alios, agit ipse dum vivit per se.
Accordingly that is only tutius, and not a self-evident duty.
* Gregory also expressly forbids anyone to be certain of his salvation ; for this he
could, indeed, appeal to Augustine. His letter to the Empress Gregoria's lady of
the bed-chamber is most instructive (V. 25). This poor woman wished to have
assurance of her salvation, and had written the Pope that she would ply him with
letters until he should write that he knew by a special revelation that her sins were
forgiven. What an evangelical impulse in a.d. 596 The Pope replied, first, that
!
he was unworthy of a special revelation secondly, that she should not be certain of
;
forgivensss until, the last day of her life having come, she should no longer be in a
position to deplore her sins. Till then she must continue to fear ; for certainty is the
parent of indolence ; she must not strive to obtain it lest she go to sleep. " Let thy
2/2 HISTORY OF DOGMA. .
[CHAP. V.
But in the case of Gregory himself, this system of religion is
traversed by many other ideas gained from the Gospel and

Augustine. He could speak eloquently of the impression made
by the person of Christ, and describe the inner change pro-
duced by the Divine Word in such a way as to make us feel
'
that he is not reproducing a lesson he has learnt from others,

but is speaking from his own experience. " Through the
sacred oracles we are quickened by the gift of the Spirit, that
we may reject works that bring death; the Spirit enters, when God
touches the mind of the reader in different ways and orders."
The Spirit of God works on the inner nature through the
Word. Thus, many of Augustine's best thoughts are repro-
duced in Gregory's writings.^ Again, in his Dogmatics he was
not a sacerdotalist. If, as is undeniable, he gave an impetus to
the further identification of the empirical Church with i/ie

Church, teaching as to the imputed merit of saints,
if all his
oblations, masses, penance, purgatory, etc., could not but benefit

the sacerdotal Church, and favour the complete subjection of
poor souls to its power, if, finally, his ecclesiastical policy was
adapted to raise the Church, with the Pope at its head, to a
supremacy that limited and gave its blessing and sanction to
every other power, yet his dogmatic was by no means mere
ecclesiasticism. We wonder, rather, that he has nowhere drawn
the last, and apparently so obvious consequences,* in other
soul tremble for a little while just now, that it may afterwards enjoy unending
delight."
1 Divinus sermo. The phrase " verbum ficlei " is also very common.
2 Ezech. I., " Per sacra eloquia dono spiritus vivificamur, ut mortifera a
h. 7.
nobis opera repellamus spiritus vadit, cum legentis animum diversis modis et
;
ordinibus tangit deus."

^ Gregory's veracity, indeed, is not altogether above suspicion.
His miraculous
tales are often not ingenuous, but calculated; readEp. IV. 30. His propa-
e.^.,
ganda for the Church did not shrink from doubtful means. The Jews on papal
properties were to be influenced to accept Christianity by the remission of taxes.
Even if their own conversion was not sincere, their children would be good Catholics
(Ep. V. S). Yet Gregory has expressed himself very distinctly against forcible con-
versions (Ep. I. 47).
^ Besides, he by no means sought to introduce the usages of the Roman Church
by tyrannical force, but rather directed Augustine, the missionary, to
adopt what
good he found Churches see Ep. XI. 64. On the other hand, the
in other national ;
bewildering identification of Peter and the Pope made a further advance in the
" '
words, that he did not rigidly concentrate the whole immense

apparatus in the hand of the priest, and give the latter the
guidance of every single soul. Already this had been frequently
done in practice but the thought still predominated that every
;
baptised person was alone responsible for himself, and had to

go his own way in the sight of God and within the Church, by
aid of penance and forgiveness. It was reserved for the
mediaeval development first to set up dogmatically the demand
that the penitent, i.e., every Christian from baptism to death,
should depend wholly on the guidance of the priest.'
hands of Gregory. He means the Pope when he says :

" s. ecclesia in apostolorum
principis soliditate firmata est." And he 12): " de Constantmc-
declares (Ep. IX.
politana ecclesia quod dicunt, quis earn dubitet sedi apostolicse esse subjectam ;
see also the fine passage Ep. IX. 59: "si qua culpa in episcopis invenitur, nescic
quis Petri successori subjectus non sit ; cum vero culpa non exigit, omnes secundum
rationem humilitatis aequales sunt."
' Gregory's extensive correspondence shows how far even at this time strictl}
theological questions had come to be eclipsed by practical ones as to pastoral super-
vision and education by means of the cultus and church order. On Gregory's
importance in connection with the cultus, see Duchesne's excellent work, Orig, du
culte chreLien (1888), esp. p. 153 sq.
;
CHAPTER VI.
HISTORY OF DOGMA IN THE PERIOD OF THE CRALOVINGIAN

RENAISSANCE.
Among the young uncivilised peoples, all ecclesiastical institu-

tions occupied a more prominent place than had been given
still
them even by the development of the Church in the Roman

Empire. The philosophical and theological capital of antiquity,
already handed down in part in compendia, was propagated in
new abridgements (Isidore of Seville, Bede, Rabanus, etc.).
John Scotus the unique excepted,' no one was now able to probe
that intellectual world to its ultimate ideas and perceptions,
1 Johannes Scotus Erigena's system (chief work : De divisione naturae, see Migne
CXXII. ; Christlieb i860, Huber 1861, see Ritter and Baur), does not belong to the
history of dogma in the West, for it is an entirely free, independent reproduction of
the Neoplatonic (pantheistic) type of thouoht, as represented by the Areopagite and
especially "the divine philosopher Maximus Confessor," whom Scotus had read.
Augustine also undoubtedly influenced him ; but he has not brought his speculation
any nearer Christianity. The most learned and perhaps also the wisest man of his
age, he maintained the complete identity of religio vera and and phihsophia vera,
thus restored to its central place the fundamental thought of ancient philosophy.
But
to him, only nominally conceding a place to authority beside reason. Hex. phihsophia
vera was that monism of view in which the knowledge of nature and that of God
coincide, thought and being in that case also coinciding. (Everything is nature,
and finally indeed, "nature which does not create and is not created," and the
notion of being existing in the human mind is the substance of being itself : '
' intel-
lectusrerum veraciter ipsEe res sunt.") Acosmic idealism is carried by Scotus (as by
Stephan bar Sudaili) to the point at which even deity disappears in the intellect of
man. All agreements with Church doctrines rest with Scotus on accommodation
they do not spring, however, from perplexity, but from the clear insight that
wrappings must exist. In reality, even the living movement of nature itself is only
an appearance. Without influence, indeed regarded with suspicion in his own time,
he did not afterwards become the instructor of the West, though Western mystics
have learnt much from him. He was too much of a Greek. In love and power of
systematic construction he was phenomenal, and speculative philosophers rightly
revere him as a master.
274
;
CHAP. VI.] THE CARLOVINGIAN RENAISSANCE. 275
and make it part of their own spiritual experience.' To the

historian of civilisation^ everything in the epoch is interesting
in the Carlovingian age, the foundations were laid for the
developments of the Middle Ages but to the historian of ;
dogma, if we are to consider not the appropriation of familiar

material, but the advance of evolution, that period does not
offer much.
The Carlovingian epoch was a great, and in many respects
an unsuccessful, essay at a renaissance of antiquity. It was
not the product of the slow natural evolution of the Germano-
Roman peoples, but Charlemagne and his circle sought to gain
by storm a higher culture for the Prankish Empire, by a fre-
quently forced return to antiquity, or by the establishment in
their midst of Byzantine culture. Antiquity was still a living
thing in Constantinople. Springer has shown, in dealing with
the history of art, that the Carlovingian school is to be regarded
as the after-bloom of ancient, and not as the beginning of
mediaeval, art ; and this applies also to theological and philo-
sophical efforts. The Carlovingian period marks the epoch-making
beginnings in the history of institutions ; ^ in the history of spiritual
life it is an appendix to that of the ancient world. Therefore
the history of dogma in the Middle Ages begins, strictly speak-
ing, with the age of Clugny.s It is also useless to discuss, in
connection with this branch of study, the so-called popular
forms of German Christianity found in poetical and prose
fragments. For, firstly, their popular character is very limited ;
secondly, popular Christianity has hardly exercised any influ-
1 It is, on the other hand, wonderful with what strength of memory and intellect
men Alcuin and Paulinus of Aquileia familiarised themselves with the separate
like
lines of Augustine's thought. Alcuin also lived a life of Augustinian piety.
2 See Hatch : An introductory lecture on the study of ecclesiastical history, 1885.
3 On the history of dogma in the Carlovingian age, see Schwane, Dogmengesch.

der mittleren Zeit. Bach, Dogmengesch. des Mittelalters I. Th. 1873,
1882 ;
Thomasius-Seeberg, Dogmengesch. II. I, 1888 Renter, Gesch. der relig. Aufkla-

:
rung im Mittelalter, 1875, 1, pp. 1-64. The last book discusses the efforts to promote
culture. Cf. also Gobi, Gesch. der Katechese im Abendland 1880, and Spiess, Gesch.
des Unterrichtswesens in Deutschland von den altesten Zeiten bis zur Mitte des 13
Jahrhunderts, 1885. Further the histories of the German Church by Rettberg and
Hauek. On "popular theology" among Anglo-Saxons, Saxons, and Franks, see
Bach, I.e. I., p. 81 ff.
276 HISTORY OF DOGMA. [CHAP. VI;
ence at all on institutions, not to speak of dogma. He who

wished to reach a higher theological culture, read Augustine
and Gregory, Gregory and Augustine, and he felt himself to be
merely a disciple in relation to these and the other Latin
Fathers, having still to learn the lessons delivered to him.'
At that time many of the clergy were undoubtedly keenly
desirous of culture to see this we have only to look at the
;
manuscripts preserved from the eighth and ninth centuries.'^

Nor must we overlook the fact that a small number of scholars
went further than those belonging to the period A.D. 450-650,
that they advanced beyond Isidore and Gregory to Augustine
himself, saw through the emasculation of religion and its
perversion into a ceremonial service and belief in miracle, and
returned to the spiritual teaching of Augustine.3 But the lofty
figure of the African Bishop set bounds to any further advance.
The best looked up to him, but none saw past him, not even
Alcuin and Agobard, though the latter has also studied Ter-
tullian.* It is very attractive to study, in connection with
Church history, the energetic efforts of the Cairlovingian Augus-
1 John Scotus forms an exception, and so also does, in some sense, Fredegis of
Tours, so far as the latter took an independent view of the ominous "nihil" pre-
sented by Augustinian metaphysics. Ahner has, however, shown in his Dissertation
on Fredegis and his letter "De nihilo et tenebris" (1878) that this work has been
over-estimated by earlier scholars.
* Our gratitude is due to Schrbrs for having given in his monograph on Hinkmar
(1884), pp. 166-174, an account of the ancient works read or quoted by the great
Bishop. What an amount of learning and reading is evident from this comparison,
and yet Hinkmar was by no means the greatest scholar. It is also interesting to
notice that Hinkmar held strictly to the edict of Gelasius.
8 A greater interest in Dialectics was also shown by many teachers of the Car-
lovingian period than by earlier theologians. Compare Alcuin's work, De fide
trinitatis, which also displays a valiant effort to reach systematic unity in theological
thought. Fredegis, Alcuin's discipulus dukissimus, was also reprovedby Agobard
as a "philosopher" for his preference for dialectics, the syllogism, and vexed ques-
tions. ("Invenietis nobilitatem divini eloquii non secundum vestram assertionem
more philosophorum in tumore et pompa esse verborum " Agobardi lib. c. object.
Fredegisi abb.) Yet his teaching as to auctoritas and ratio was not different from
Augustine's but distrust was caused by the earnest attempt, on the basis of authority,
;
to use reason in dealing with dogma. In the dispute between Agobard and Fredegis
many controversial questions emerged which would have become important if the
opponents had really developed them.
* On Alcuin, see Werner's monograph (1881). Radbert had also read TertuUian.
"
CHAP. VI.] THE CARLOVINGIAN RENAISSANCE. 277
tinians,to observe their attempts, following but surpassing

the great Emperor, to purify the traditional form of religion,
and to narrow the range of a stupid awe of the mysteries and
of a half-heathen superstition. But it would merely lead to
confusion in the history of dogma if we were to try to examine
these attempts.'
The transactions and determining events important to the
history of dogma in our epoch divide into the following groups.
I. Controversies as to Byzantine and Roman Christology con-
trasted with that of Augustine and the West, and between the
Gregorian system of doctrine and Augustine's theory of pre-
destination.° 2. Disputes shared in by Rome against the East
regarding the filioqiie, and against Rome and the East about
1 The conditions which heralded the Carlovingian Renaissance consisted in the

political position of the Prankish Empire, the flourishing of theological studies
among the Anglo-Saxons (Bade), the ecclesiastical activity of Boniface on the
Continent, and the partly new, partly revived, relations of the Empire toRome and
Constantinople. The from England, Rome, Lombardy,
fact that elements of culture
and finally also the East converged at Charlemagne's Court, and found so energetic
a Maecenas in the king, made possible the renaissance, which then continued to exist
under Louis the Pious, and at the Court of Charles the Bald. We cannot over-
estimate the contribution made by Constantinople. We need only recall the works
of the Pseudo-Dionysius, Maximus, and John of Damascus, which at that time had
reached the Prankish Kingdom. Not only John Scotus, but e.g. Hinkmar, read or ,
quoted the Pseudo-Dionysius. Some knowledge of Greek was possessed by a few

Anglo-Saxons from the days of Archbishop Theodore of Tarsus in Canterbury but ;
they were to a much greater extent teachers of Augustinianism yet not in the ;
Christological question (see under). It was in Augustine along with the Areopagite
that the mediaeval mysticism of the West — and also Scotus — found its source ; for it
is very one-sided to make the latter alone responsible for mysticism. The Franks'
love of culture received its greatest strength from the acquisition of the Crown of
Imperial Rome, What had formerly been a voluntary aspiration now
a.d. 8oo.
assumed the appearance of a duty and obligation for the king-emperor of the Franks
;
and Romans was the successor of Augustine and Constantine. But how rapidly all
this blossom withered Walafrid writes truly in the prologue to Einhard's Life of
!
Kaiser Karl " When King Karl assembled wise men, he filled with light, kindled
:
by God, the mist-shrouded, and so to speak almost entirely dark, expanse of the
kingdom entrusted to him by God, by the new radiance of all science such as till
then had been in part wholly unknown to these barbarians. But now, since these
studies once more relapse into their opposite, the light of wisdom, which finds few
who love it, becomes ever rarer.
2 In these conflicts the controversy as to Augustine is represented. See also the
dispute as to the Lord's Supper.
2/8 HISTORY OF DOGMA. [CHAP. VI.
images.^ 3. The development of the practice and theory of the

Mass and of penance.^
§ I. («.) The Adoptian Controversy?
After the Western Christological formula of the two natures

had been forced on the East at the fourth Council, the latter
had at the fifth Council given the formula a Cyrillian inter-
pretation, which it confirmed by condemning the Three
Chapters. Since the Roman Bishop had to accede to the new
definition, which was regarded in the West as a revolt from that
of Chalcedon, a schism took place in Upper Italy, which was
only got over with extending into the seventh century,
difficulty,
and damaging the Pope's prestige in the West. The Monothe-
lite controversies brought the schism to an end,* and the sixth
Council restored the formula of Chalcedon in the new version

—
of the problem the question as to the will in Christ. But men
were far from drawing the consequences of the formula in the
East, or in Rome itself. Mysticism, which taught the complete
and inseparable union of the divine and human, and celebrated
its triumph in all the ritual institutions of the Church, had long
overgrown the intractable dogmatic formula and stifled its

influence. But the case was different with many Western
Bishops, so long as they had not yet been reached by Greek
mysticism, and still were under the influence of the ancient
Western tradition, especially Augustine. They held the Christo-
logical theory that the Holy Trinity had effected the Incarna-
tion by the second Person of the Godhead, the Son, selecting a
—
man (homo) in virtue of eternal election without antecedent
1 These controversies are of universal interest in Church history.
"^
In this development the dogmatic interest of the Carlovingians was alone really
acute, leading to new definitions, if not at once expressed in strictly dogmatic forms.
To this subject also belongs the doctrine of the saints (Mary), relics, and indulgences.
3 See Bach, I.e. Walch, Ketzerhistorie, Vol. IX. ; Hefele, Concil. Gesch. III.,^
p.
642 (628 ff.)
fi'. ;Ilelfferrich, D. westgothische Arianismus u. die spanische Ketzer-
geschichte i860; Gams, Kirchengesch. Spaniens, Vol. II.; Dorner, Entwickel.
Gesch. Vol. II. ; Hauck, K. -Gesch. Deutschlands, Vol. II., p. 256 ; Opp. Alcuini
ed. Froben ; Mansi, T. XII., XIII. ; Migne, T. XCVI.— CI.
^ Yet not yet everywhere.
—
CHAP. VI.] THE ADOPTIAN CONTROVERSY. 279
—
merits on the part of the man by uniting with him to form a
personal unity, and by thus adopting him to perfect sonship.'^
This scheme is distinguished toto coelo from the Greek one
(received in Rome) of the fifth Council, even if— as happened
the whole of human nature was also understood by the homo.
For, according to the prevailing Greek conception, the God-
Logos, in the moment of the Incarnation, so assumed human
nature and received it into the unity of his being (IStoTroieiv),
that it participated completely in the dignity, and accordingly
in the sonship, of the Son, the incarnate Logos thus being in
every respect as much the one real Son of God as the pre-
existent. To hold Jesus Christ as Son of Man to be merely the
adopted Son of God destroyed, according to Greek ideas, the
whole mystery of the Incarnation, and took the Church back to
the abyss of Nestorianism. Conversely, it was possible for one
who took his stand on Augustinian Christology to feel that the
contention that the Son of Man was as essentially Son of God
as the Logos, was a relapse into Docetism or even Pantheism —
the fusion of divine and human. The great claim of Cyril's
conception consisted in its maintenance of the perfect unity of
the Redeemer's personality,^ the justification of the other in its
adherence to Christ's real humanity. This humanity was to the
opposite party in truth only a theorem, whose avowal permitted
them to deify in concreto everything human in Christ,3 while the
Adoptians were only able to postulate the unity of the Son of
God and Son of Man.4
1 See Augustine's Christology above, p. 127 ff. The idea of the adoptio of the man
Jesus, or human nature, also occurs in TertuUian, Novatian, Marius Victorinus, and
Hilary."
2 So far as the retention of this is the condition of understanding Jesus Christ, the
Greek conception is superior to the Adoptian.

" The defenders of the anti- Adoptian Christology (Alcuin's) have not latered their
tactics at the present day. Thus Bach says (I.e. I., p. 109 ff.) " The Adoptians had
:
no presentiment of which the (Greek) Fathers call the pnemnatic quality of

that
Christ's flesh. Christ's body is to them that of common human nature in every
respect. In this kenotic (!!) we have the basis of Adoptian dualism. . Felix, like . .
Elipandus, does not understand the pneumatic human nature in Christ." If these
words suggest any meaning at all, they show that the modern historian of dogma is as
honest a Docetic as the orthodox after Justinian's heart.
•
The ca'se is precisely the same as in Christological conflicts generally from the
280 HISTORY OF DOGMA. [CHAP. VI.
It is the old antagonism of Monophysitism and Nestorianism,-

toned down, indeed, in phraseology, but not lessened in sub-
—
stance how could it be lessened ? It is not wonderful that it
broke out once more after the sixth Council, and that in,
connection with the term " adoptio." It is only surprising
that it arose at the outskirts of Christendom and that the ;
controversy occasioned by it in the Church was so rapidly

and thoroughly quieted. If we reflect that Augustine had
unhesitatingly taught that Christ, on his human side, was
the adopted Son of God and the supreme example of
prevenient free grace (gratia gratis data praeveniens), that he
was read everywhere, that many passages in the Western
Fathers gave evidence of Adoptianism,^ and that even Isidore
of Seville had written without being questioned :
" he is called
sole-begotten from the excellence of his divinity, because he is
without brothers, first-begotten on account of the assumption of a

man, in which act he has deigned to have brothers by the adoption
of grace, with regard to whom he should be the first-begotten,"
^
we are seized with astonishment at the secret, energetic counter-

action of the Christological mysticism of Cyril and the
Areopagite. It captivated thoughtful and superstitious
Christians in Rome, and thence in England, Upper Italy, and
France. It succeeded in doing so, because it was allied both
with the philosophical speculation of the time and the super-
stitious Craving for mysteries. Plato and Aristotle, as they
were understood, were its evangelists, and, again, every celebra-i
tion of the Lord's Supper, yea, every relic, was a silent missionary
for it. In this men experienced the identity of the heavenly and
earthly ; accordingly, that identity had to be recognised above all
in Christ himself. Thus the Western and Augustinian Christ-
days of Apollinaris. There is right and wrong on both sides, but after all on neither,
because the conception of a divine nature in Christ leads either to Docetism or the
double personality. AU speculations that seek to escape these consequences can
display at most their good intentions.
1 This was bluntly asserted by Marius Victorinus (adv. Arium I. ) to whom is
entirely
due the Augustinian view of Christology sub specie praidestinationis.
2 Migne, CI., p. 1322 sq. :
" Unigenitus vocatur secundum divinitatis excellentiam,
quia sine fratribus, primogenitus secundum susceptionem hominis, in qua per adop-
tionem gratiae fratres habere dignatus est, de quibus esset primogenitus."
— —1
ology, with its last, and yet so significant, remnant of a historical

view of Christ his subjection to divine grace was effaced, not —
by a conflict, but much more certainly by a silent revolution.'
But Augustinian Christology was advocated in Arabian Spain
about A.D. 780 by Elipandus, Metropolitan of Toledo, and soon
afterwards in Prankish Spain by Felix, Bishop of Urgel it ;
being also supported by the Mozarabian liturgy.^ They strongly

emphasised the view that Christ was adopted as man, and the
redeemed were accordingly, in the fullest sense, brothers of the
man Jesus. There has been a good deal of argument as to how
the two bishops, who, for the rest, had the approval of the
majority of their colleagues in Spain, were influenced thus to
emphasise the adoptio. After what we have observed above we
ought rather to ask why the other Western Bishops did not do
the same. In any case, the hypothesis that this Adoptianism
is to be explained from Ancient West Gothic Arianism 3 is still
less tenable than its derivation from Arab influences* Nor do

we obtain much enlightenment from the reference to the con-
troversy which Elipandus had previously waged with a heretic
named Migetius.s since the doctrines ascribed to him do not
seem to have been the reverse of Adoptianism. while the whole
figure is obscure.^ All that is clear is that at that date the
1 Western Augustinian Christology, like Nestorianism, deserved its fall ; for since
it taught that the God-Logos existed behind the man Jesus who was supported hy
divine grace, the relation of the work of redemption to that homo was extremely
uncertain. The was a duplicity of view which could only produce confusion,
result
and which had to come to an end, until the conception of faith should be thoroughly
accepted, unhampered by pernicious speculations as to the two natures, that God
himself was in the man Jesus.
^ Seethe seven, though not equally valuable passages in Hefele, I.e., p. 650 f. :
—
"adoptivi hominis passio" -"adoptivi hominis non horruisti vestimentum"
" salvator per adoptionem carnis sedem repetiit deitatis," etc.
3 So Helfferich, I.e. ; also Hauck, R.-Encyklop P., p. 185, leaves it open.
* Gfrbrer, K.-Gesch. III., p. 644 ff. Graf. Baudissin, Eulogius unci Alvar 1872,
p. 61 f. The traces cited of a connection lietween Elipandus and Felix with the
Saracens are very slight ; besides, the objections felt by the latter to the doctrine of the
Trinity are not lessened by Adoptianism. Elipandus defended the doctrine with
peculiar emphasis.
5 Hefele, Op. cit., p. 628 ff.
8 Besides his enthusiasm for Rome, Migetius' main heresy seems to have been that
ha conceived God strictly as a single person, and maintained that he had revealed
Spanish Church possessed no connection with Rome, that it

by Hadrian I., and, while relatively
rejected the alliance sought
uninfluenced by the Roman and Byzantine Church tradition,'
was in a state of great confusion internally.'' It is further
evident that EHpandus gladly seized the opportunity to extend
the sphere of his metropolitan power to Asturia under the sure
protection of the unbelievers. A
dogmatic Spanish formula was
himself in three persons, namely, David (Father ?), Jesus, and Paul (the Holy Ghost?).
"'
Besides this " Sabellianism," one might be tempted to discover " Priscillian
errors in him. But the slight information we possess (see Hadrian and Elipandus'
letters) do not warrant a confident decision.
' This- explains the uninterrupted prestige of Augustinian theology. Isidore of
Seville, e.g., felt it so strongly, that he even taught twofold predestination (Sentent.
II. 6) :
" gemina predestinatio sive reproborum ad mortem,"
. . .
2 The comparatively slight influence exerted by the great main current of Church
development is also shown by the fact that the opposition of the Spaniard Vigilantius to
saintsand relics continued to influence Spain, as is evidenced, eg. , by the attack made
upon him by Faustus of Rhegium (see above, p. 244, note I ). Paradoxical as it soundSv
the veneration of these objects lay in the van of Church evolution, in so far as it was-
most closely connected with the development of Christology. Those who resisted
this worship soon ceased to do so on evangelical grounds, but because ecclesiastically
they were " laggards." The dislike to relics and pictures, however, is as closely con-
nected with the Adoptian theory, as their worship and the materialistic dogma of the
Lord's Supper are with the Christology of Cyril, Justinian, and Alcuin (see under).
But even after Reccared passed over to Catholicism, the Spanish Church showed its
disorderly state, not only in the persistent mingling of Pagan and Christian morals,
and (in some circles) the continuance of certain Arian leanings, but still more in
numerous heretical intrigues. To this class belong Priscillianism, degenerated into
dualism, Migetius, that Marcus who rejuvenated Basilidianism, and above all the sect
—
of Bonosians that held its ground in Spain phenomena that were profoundly opposed
to Catholicism, and prove how hard it was for the rising Roman Catholic Church in
Spain to adopt the sentiments of Roman Catholicism. No other Western Church
had at this date still to strive so keenly witli powerful heresies as the Spanish. Hence
is explained the growth in this Church, especially after contact with Islam, of the
cold, determined fanaticism of its orthodoxy and persecution of heretics. Wherever
it arises, this is a sign that men have forced themselves after severe sacrifices to sub-
mit to the sacred cause, and that they now seek to compensate themselves by making
others do the same. As regards the sect of Bonosians in particular, their founder,
Bonosus, Bishop of Sardica, advanced from a denial of Mary's perpetual virginity to
the doctrine of Photinus (see the Synod of Capua, a.d. 391 ; Ambrose's letters,
Siricius,and Innocent I., and Marius Meicator). Strange to say, he found adherents
in South Gaul, and especially in Spain, up till into the eighth century in Spain, as it ;
appears, they were numerous see the 2 Synod of Aries (443?) c. 17, Synod of Clichy
;
(626) c. 5, Synod of Orleans (S38) c. 31, Gpnnad. de vir. inl. 14, Avitus Vienn.,
Isidore de script, eccl. 20, de hser. 53. In the sixth century Justinian of Valentia
opposed them in Spain, and in the seventh the Synod of Toledo (675), leferred-in
welcome to him as a means of doing this. It is probable, finally,

that Latin translations of Nestorian writings (i.e., of Theodore
of Mopsuestia) were read in Spain. This cannot, indeed, be
proved but there can be no doubt that Felix of Urgel gave a
;
Nestorian {Theodorian) development to Augustine's Christology,

and thus went beyond Augustine, and it is on the other hand
certain that from the sixth century Za/m translations of works
by Nestorian (and Syrian) writers were current in the West.^
Elipandus was a loyal adherent to the Augustinian and
Chalcedonian Christology this attested by his epistles see
; i_s ;
also the two books written against him by Beatus and Eterius of
Asturia, as well as Alcuin's writings. He meant to maintain
the unity of person throughout ; but this unity did not, in his
view, do away with the strict distinction of natures. The human
nature remained human, being thence raised to the dignity of
divinity, and for this reason he held the term " adoptio " to be
peculiarly fitting :
" the son adoptive in his humanity but not in
the Symbol to the doctrine of the Bonosians that Christ had only existed after Mary
bore him, and was merely ^, filius adoptivus, by confessing; "hie etiam filius dei
natura est filius, non adoptione." Naturally Elipandus and Felix were conjoined by
their opponents with the Bonosians, but with the greatest injustice ; they were rather
their most implacable enemies, since they never denied that Christ as Son of God was
filius dei naturalis. They even tried to hurl back the charge of Bonosianism at their
enemies (Beatus and Eterius), an attempt, indeed, that could not succeed. It was at
any rate prejudicial, seeing that men cling to catchwords, to place in the Toledan
Symbol of 675 the words non filius adoptione," although by them the Photinian
'
'
error, which Elipandus himself "condemned to hell," was exclusively meant. We

may, indeed, say of Bonosianism, but not of Elipandus' teaching, that its circulation
in Spain s explained by the Arian leanings of the Western Goths ; (or not only in
the Arianism of scholarly theologians, but still more in its popular form, there lurked
an element of the doctrine of Paul of Samosata and Photinus.
1 Since the Three Chapter controversy. We have to remember, further, that Theo-
dore's commentary on Paul's Epistles still exists in a Latin translation, and that the work
of Junilius comes from a Syrian copy ; see Neander's Dogmengesch. II., p. 25 f., and
Jacobi's note there, p. 26 f. Mbller(Art. Adoptianism in Herzog's R.-E.,2ndEd.) has
stated, on the basis of Gam's discoveries, a conjecture that is worth noting :
" Perhaps
we ought to regard the orthodox brethren in Cordova extolled by Elipandus (Ep. ad
Felic. in Alcuin's letteis, ep. 123), who provided him with scholarly material, and to
whom Alcuin (ep. ad Leidrad. 141) supposes the evil originally to have been due,
as Eastern Christians of Nestorian culture who had come in the train of the Arabs,
and who, if they did not produce, supported the Adoptian tendency." It is further
important that Elipandus has not mentioned Nestorianism among the ancient heresies
1 ejected by him.
" " ;
284 HISTORY OF DOGMA. [CHAP. VI,
his divinity " (filius adoptivus

humanitate nequaquam divinitate)*
Everyone in the West (even Alcuin)
still spoke at that time of
the assumtio hominis, and not merely of the assumtio humaiKZ

naturcB (assumption of a man not of human nature). It was a
correct inference that assumtio hominis = adoptio hominis. If the
word " adoptio " was not exactly common in the more ancient
literature,' the matter designated by
was correctly expressed
it
in Augustine's sense.^ The sonship of Christ was therefore

twofold as God he was son by race and nature (genere et
;
natura), as man by adoption and grace. Elipandus quoted

texts in support of this, and inferred quite correctly that he
who disputed the Redeemer's adoptio had to deny the reality
of his human nature, and consequently to suppose that Christ
derived his humanity, which would be unlike ours, from the
substance of the Father. Elipandus therefore designates his
opponents Docetics or Eutychians.
If we find that even he was interested really in Christ's com-
plete humanity /or /^M work's sake, the same fact shows much more
clearly in the important case of Felix (see the writings directed
against him by Faulinus and Alcuin). He has also left the
God-Logos resting in the background but his theory of religion
;
deals with the second Adam in a way that had not been heard
of in the Church since the days of Theodore. Since the Son of
Man was actually a man, the whole stages of his humiliation
were not voluntarily undertaken, but were necessary. It was
only the resolve of the Son of God to adopt a man that was
freely made. After this resolve was realised the Son of Man had
to be a servant, had to be subject to the Father in everything,
had to fulfil his will and not his own. Like all men he was only
good so far as, and because, he was subject to the Father's grace
he was not omniscient and omnipotent, but his wisdom and
power were bounded by the limits imposed on humanity. He
derived his life from the Father, and to him he also prayed for
1 Alcuin says too much when he exclaim? (adv. Elip. IV. 2): "Ubi latuit, ubi
dormivithocnomen adoptionis vel nuncupationisde Christo?" orEp. iio: " Novitas
vocum in adoptione, nuncupatione, omnino fidelibus omnibus detestanda est.
' Compare how also Facundus of Hermiane (pro defens. trium capp. ed.
p. 708,
Paris, 1616, II.) acknowledges that Christ accepted the " Sacrament of Adoption.
CHAP. VI.] THE ADOPTIAN CONTROVERSY. 28$
himself.^ Felix'.s final interest consisted in the fact that only

thus can we be certain of our adoption. He insisted very strongly
on raising to the central place in the conception of redemption
the thought that the adoption of believers is only certain if
Christ adopted a man like other men, or humanity : we are only

redeemed if Christ is our oldest brother. The assurance of the
redemption of humanity rests, as with Augustine, on the sole-
begotten (in the divine sphere) having united with himself the
first-begotten (in the human) [" adoptivi cum adoptive, servi cum
servo, Christi cum Christo, deus inter deos " ]. Christ, who as
man was was the head of humanity, not by
sacrificed for sakes,
his divinity, but by For this very reason the
his humanity.
members are only certain of their adoption if the head is
adopted. = If we are not dealing in Christ's case with an
adoption as in our own, the then Incarnation was enacted
outside of our sphere, and is of no benefit to us. But Felix
went a step farther. He did not, like Augustine, satisfy himself
with stopping at the simple contention that the man (homo)
Christ was adopted in virtue of the prevenient grace of pre-
destination, and with combining, by a mere assertion, this con-
tention with the thesis of personal unity. On the contrary he
rigidly separated the natures, and sought to form a clear idea of
the way in which the adoption was accomplished (see the
Antiochenes.)
As regards the first point, he applied the phrase " true and
peculiar son" (verus et proprius filius) to the God-Logos alone^
and did not shrink from the proposition " the son is believed one
in two forms " (duobus modis unus creditur filius) he dis- ;
tinguished between " the one " and " the other " {alter and alter),
" this one " and " that " {ille and ille\ nay, he called the Son of
Man " God by adoption " {nuncupativus deus : meaning that he

"
became God). He speaks, like the Antiochenes, of a " dwelling
of God in man, of the man who is united (conjunctus appli- ;
catus) with deity, or bears deity. He has, indeed, compared the

union of the two natures in Christ with the relation of soul and
body but the figure is still more inapt from his standpoint than
;
1 See passages cited by Bach, 0pp. cit., p. no ff.
- The clearest passages —Felix's own words— occur in Agobard, lib. adv. Fel. 27-37.
—
from Augustine's for the community of attributes is to him

;
not real, but nominal, and "we must by no means believe that
the omnipotent divine Father, who is a spirit, begets the body
from himself" (nullo modo credendum est, ut omnipotens deus
pater, qui spiritus est, de semetipso carnem generet). The man
Christ has two fathers, one natural (David), and the other by his
adoption.
With reference to the second point, Felix taught that the
Son of Man underwent two births he was born of the virgin :
that was his natural birth, and of grace or adoption in baptism —

his spiritual birth. Christ, accordingly, like all Christians, ex-
perienced a twofold birth. His spiritual birth, as indispensable
for him as for the rest, was accomplished, as in every other case,
in baptism but in this instance also baptism was only the
;
'beginning. It was not completed till the Resurrection.' As

the Son of Man, therefore, was subject to the different stages of
divine grace arising from his election, he was also originally,
though sinless,^ the " old man " (vetus homo), and passed
through the process of regeneration until he reached complete

—
adoption undergoing everything that and as we do. But we
follow the Head, and it is only because he experienced this that
he can be our redeemer and intercessor. For the rest, it is
.besides to be held that the Son of God also accepted human
birth for himself, as in that case he is further to be conceived as
rsharing in all the acts of the Son of Man.3
Elipandus had given currency to his teaching in letters. His
1 II. 1 6 (Felix says):

Alcuin adv. Felic. "Christus qui est secundus Adam,
:accepit hasgeminas generationes, primam vid. quae secundum carnem est, secundam
vero spiritualem, qu£e per adoptionem fit, idem redemptor noster secundum hominem
complexus in semetipso continet primam vid. quam suscepit ex virgine nascendo,
:
secundam vero quam initiavit in lavacro a mortuis resurgendo."

2 Alcuin indeed does not believe that Felix was sincere in professing to hold
the
sinlessness of Christ, for, if he had been, he would not have spoken of a regeneration
of Christ (I.e., c. l8).
3 Felix's words in Agobard 33 " Propter singularitatem personEC, in qua divinitas
:
filii dei cum humanitate sua communes habeat actiones, qua ex causa aliquando ea qus
divina sunt referuntur ad humana, et ea quae humana fiunt interdum adscribuntur ad
•divina, et hoc ordine aliquando dei filius in hominis filio filius hominis appellari dig-
natur et hominis filius in dei filio filius dei nuncupatur. " The Nestorians, too, main-
.tained such a double personality.
1
firstopponents were the Abbot Beatus and the youthful Bishop

Eterius. Their opposition inflamed the anger of the ageing
Metropolitan, jealous of his orthodoxy. All who refused to see
in the two natures more than one filius proprius he called
"servants of Antichrist" (a.d. 785). Those he attacked, how-
ever, did not keep silent, but exposed the heretical character of
Adoptianism in an elaborate document they also noted the ;
fact that the controversy had already excited the Bishops of all
Spain, and had extended into France.' Hadrian I. entered into
the dispute at this time. He could not but welcome the chance
of proving to the Spanish Metropolitan, whose independence
rendered him obnoxious, that he had fallen into the heresy of
Nestorius, and that the Spanish Bishops were therefore bound
to adhere to the teaching of Rome and the Fathers.^
Soon afterwards Felix of Urgel energetically championed the
thesis laid down by Elipandus. Thereby the question at issue
became important for the kingdom of the Franks. The Synod
of Regensburg (792), whose transactions are unfortunately lost,
was convened to deal with Adoptianism. Felix himself required
to appear. He defended himself before Charlemagne,3 but is
1 See the analysis of this writing in Bach, p. 116 ff. It follows Cyril. The old
charge formerly made against the Nestorians is also urged against the Adoptians, that
by making the Son of Man independent they expanded the Trinity into a Quaternity.
A few Western reminiscences are, however, not wanting, although the human nature is
II. 68, where the filius se-
substantially conceived to be the impersonal caro ; see e.g. ,
cundum carnem is named as mediator (" reconciliati

sumus per solum filium secundum
carnem, sed non soli filio secundum divinitatem ") ; also II. 40 " dominus ac :
redemptor noster cum sancta ecclesia, quam redemit secundum carnem, una substantia
est."
2Ep. 97 in the Cod. Carol, in Migne, T. CII., see analysis in Hefele III., p. 66
ff. which is also to be compared with what follows.
,
3 In the controversy the King proved that he felt fully his responsibility as a
Christian ruler, and was at the same time thoroughly anxious to be just. He was
really convinced by the propositions of his theologians. They extolled him highly as
protector of the faith, as a David and a Solomon. Alcuin says of the King (adv.
Elipand. I. 16) " Catholicus in fide, rex in potestate, pontifex in prsedicatione, judex
:
in squitate, philosophus in liberalibus studiis, inclytus in moribus

(?) et omni honestate
pr^cipuus." Ep. 100 ad dominum regem "hoc mirabile et speciale in te pietatis

:
dei donum praedicamus, quod tanta devotione ecclesias Christi a perfidorum doctrinis
intrinsecus purgare tuerique niteris, quanta forinsecus a vastatione paganorum clefen-
dere vel propagare conaris. His duobus gladiis vestram venerandam excellentiam
dextra laevaque divina armavit potestas."
said to have ultimately recanted, since all the Bishops declared

his teaching to be erroneous. The recantation is, indeed, sup-
ported by several witnesses, but is not placed beyond doubt, for
we hear was sent to Rome, and was kept in prison
that Felix
by the Pope he yielded to swear to an orthodox confession.
until
He now returned to Spain (to his bishopric ?) but soon renounced
his forced recantation, and withdrew to Toledo in Saracen
territory, in order to escape the censorship of the Franks.
Alcuin's attempt to recover for the Church its highly prized
bishop by means of a very friendly letter that breathed Augus-

tine's spirit (A.D. 793) perhaps crossed the effort made by the
heads of the Adoptianists to maintain their teaching in the
Church by an encyclical to the Bishops of the Frankish kingdom,
and a letter to Charlemagne, which took the form of a remon-
strance, and contained a petition for a new investigation.
Elipandus always regarded the " sleek " Beatus as the chief
enemy, who had instilled his poison into the Church and seduced
the Bishops. He adjures the King to judge justly to reinstate
;
Felix, and be warned by Constantine's revolt to Arianism.

The heresy that through Beatus now threatened the whole
Church was nothing less than the denial that Christ received
his body from the Virgin. At the brilliant Synod of Frankfurt,
Charlemagne, after reporting to the Pope, set on foot a new
investigation (794). Learned bishops and theologians were
summoned from all quarters. The assembly rejected Adop-
—
tianism in two Synodal deeds the Italian Bishops under
Paulinus of Aquileia voted separately. The same course was
followed by a Synod assembled contemporaneously at Rome.
All these resolutions were transmitted, along with a letter of his
own, by Charlemagne to Elipandus.
We are not interested in following the controversy further,
for new phases did not appear. But we have the impression
that Adoptianism made advances in Saracen Spain and the
neighbouring province until about A.D. 799. Even the personal
influence of famous doctors (Benedict of Aniane, Leidrad of
Lyons) met at first with little success. But Frankish Spain
could not resist the influence of the whole empire, and Felix
himself was ultimately induced once more to recant at the
Synod of Aachen (799). At this date, besides Paulinus.i Alcuin

was indefatigable in producing works, some of them extensive,
against the heresy (Libell. adv. Felic. hair., IV. lib. adv. Elip-
andum, VII. lib. adv. Felic). It is interesting to notice how
this Anglo-Saxon, the was entirely dependent
disciple of Bede,
in his Christology on the Greeks, and had abandoned the
Augustinian tradition. Augustine as well as Graeco-Roman
speculative theology had become domesticated in England
through the Romanising of that country. But in those questions
on which the Greeks had pronounced their views, they were ever
regarded as the more honourable, reliable, and learned. They
were the representatives of the sublime theology of the mystery
of the Incarnation.^ The Latins were only after all to be
considered in so far as they agreed with the Greeks. How
great is the imposing prestige and power of an ancient culture,
and how cogent is every " advance" that it experiences, even if
that advance passes imperceptibly into a refinement which
produces a new barbarianism Alcuin's arguments might have
!
occurred just as well in the works of Cyril, Leontius, or John of

Damascus, and they are sometimes actually to be found there
word for word :
—
Christ is the personal God-Logos who assumed
impersonal human nature, and fused it into the complete unity
.of his being. Accordingly, even apart from sin, Christ's human-
ity was by no means like ours in all points, but was very
different. Since it acquired all the attributes of deity, all
human limitations shown were voluntarily

in the life of Jesus
accepted, in other words were due to accommodation, were
pedagogic or illusory. Alcuin dissipates the records of the
gospels as thoroughly as the Monophysite and Crypto-Mono-
physite Greeks. This form of piety had ceased to regard Christ
in any sense as a human person nay, it felt itself gravely hurt
;
if it was told that it ought to suppose a really human conscious-

ness in Christ. Not only was the dismemberment of the one
Christ disowned as blasphemous, but still more the application
to him of categories that were held to describe believers.^ In
iSee on his polemics, Bach, p. 121 £

* This is true above all of Cyril.
^ See the analysis of Alcuin's Christology in Bach, p. 128 ff. Alcuin seeks to show
T
fact, we are correct in saying that faith in Christ as Redeemer

had no interest in expounding broadly wherein Christ is like us.^
But the Adoptians had, consistently with this likeness, which
they asserted, characterised him as head of the community,
and demonstrated a way in which the man Christ could be
apprehended as redeemer and intercessor.^ But then, as now,
{l) that all the statements of Scripture and the Fathers regarding Christ have for their
subject the concrete person in two natures ; (2) that the notion of adoption occurs
neither in Scripture nor the Fathers, and is thus novel and false ; and (3) that the
Adoptianist theory is and upsets the basis of faith. He tries to show that
inconsistent,
adoptio, if taken to mean anything different from assumptio, leads to heresy. Assump-
tion is held to express the natural relation in which humanity is connected with
deity by the Incarnation, and which is annulled by the adoptio that designates a
relation due to grace. Alcuin indeed also speaks (following Augustine) of grace
having been in Christ, for it does not, like adoptio, exclude the natural relation of
sonship. But his strongest argument consists in his explanation that passive adoption
was impossible, because the Son of Man did not exist at all before he was actual Son
of God. Neither he nor Paulinus supposes that the man Christ was a person before
the God-man. He certainly possessed his personality from the first in the Son of
God, Accordingly, if we think abstractly, we may not conceive of a man (homo)
Christ who existed before the Incarnation, but of human nature, which only became
personal by its assumption, and was at once made an essential constituent of the
person of the God-man. Therefore this nature, even apart from sin, was infinitely
superior to and unlike ours. Therefore the doctritie of the Agnoetes, who had be-
ades been already strongly assailed by Gregory I. in his letters, was to be condemned;
and the servile form of the Son of God was in every respect worthy of adoration,
because it was not necessary to his nature, but was at every point freely undertaken.
Accordingly Christ required neither baptism nor adoption, and even as man was no
ordinary creature, but always the God-m.nn. " In spite of the assumption of human
nature, the God -man retained sole property in the person of the Son."
Humanity
was merely added like something impersonal to this unity of person of the Son of
God, " and there remained the same property in two natures in the name of the Son
that formerly existed in one substance." But Alcuin adds very inaptly (c. Felic. II.
12) :
" a deo persona perit hominis, non natura ; " for he
in adsumtione carnis
certainly did not assume that a " persona hominis " had existed previously. We can
only explain this lapse by supposing that Alcuin had not yet let Cyril's Christology
€xpunge from his mind every reminiscence of Augustine's. Bach rightly remarks
(p. 136 f. against Dorner) " that no opponent of the Adoptians imagined that per-
:
sonality was essential to the completeness of the human nature (like Bach himself)
;
they taught exactly the opposite." Bach's own explanation of the above passage,
which is only inteUigible as a lapse, is, for the rest, wholly incorrect. "By persona he
would understand "the person of man as such, of humanitas, and not of tlie man
Christ."
lEpist. ad Carol. M. "Quid enim prodest ecclesiae dei Christum appellare
:
adoptivum filium vel deum nuncupativum ? "

The explanations given by Felix as to the man Christ as sacerdos, sacrifidum.
"^
CHAP. VI.] THE ADOPTIAN CONTROVERSY. 2gi
no one who had once been initiated into the mysteries was
influenced by this. He who has once but sipped the intoxicating
cup of that mysticism, which promises to transform every worth-
less stone into gold, sees everywhere the mystery of deification,
and then it is not easy for the watchman to recall the dreamer
to life.' For this is the last motive of this speculation from the :
transformation of the impersonal human substance into the divine

(in the case of Christ) to derive the divino-kuman means of
enjoyment in this world. Even in the instance of Beatus, the
realistic conception of the Lord's Supper turns out to be a
decisive motive against Adoptianism,^ and this motive can also
be demonstrated in Alcuin's works.^ Thus the Christological
controversy is closely connected with the magical conceptions
of the Lord's Supper as the centre of Church doctrine and
practice. It is all the more instructive that, as we shall see,
images were not yet thought of, while the East had long had
them in view, as well as the Lord's Supper, in connection with
Crypto-Monophysite Christology. In this matter the Anglo-
its
Saxon and Prankish Church still " lagged " behind its guide.
caput ecclesice are Augustinian, and in pait more precise than they occur in Augustine.
The part played in the controversy by the thought of Christ as head of the Church is
worthy of note. We
are not prepared for it, if we start from the more ancient
tradition. The greater emphasis laid on Christ as priest and sacrifice was already
determined by the all-prevailing reference to the Mass.
' Adoptianism, like Nestorianism, necessarily remained a half thing, because it did
not correct this pseudo-Christian motive. This is the ultimate cause of its speedy
death. Adoptianism and the Eucharistic Christ do not suit each other.
2 See Bach, p. 1 19 f. Beatus has pointed out, like Cyril, that the concrete unity of
Christ's person is shown most clearly in the fact that in the Lord's Supper the whole
Christ is adored, and that his flesh is the principle of eternal life. Bach (p. 120) has
eloquently evolved as his own view the cause for which the opponents of the
Adoptians ultimately contended. " Beatus and Eterius, in opposition to the exter-
nality of Elipandus, pointed with a profoundly realistic glance to the central signifi-
cance of Christ in the collective ethical and sacramental constitution of Christianity,
and the morally free life of humanity. The organic and physical relation of Christ
in its inner relation to human freedom, which
to humanity, and i\it physiology oi grace
has its living roots in the concrete God-man, are
hereby indicated. A divided Christ
life to mankind. " This materialistic ghost
cannot be a new physical ethical ferment of
Protestant Christianity.
unfortunately also announces its presence in
3 With him and Paulinus, only indeed in unimportant hints, wherefore Bach calls
Paulinus " less profound and thorough" than Beatus. How the speculation reached
the latter is not known.
Felix secluded himself with Leidrad in Lyons. The re-

conversion of the Prankish Adoptians now made great strides,
and Felix himself had to exhort abandon
his congregation to
the error which he had formerly taught them. But he was by
no means thoroughly convinced at heart, as is shown by papers
found, after the death of the unfortunate Bishop, by Leidrad'5
successor, Agobard. Agobard held it necessary to refute the
dead Felix. If aggressive Adoptianism soon expired in the
Prankish kingdom, it was revived by the daring dialectic of the
eleventh and twelfth centuries as a doctrine of the schools,^ and
it afterwards continued during all centuries of the Middle Ages,
though without rousing more than a theological dispute. Little

is known of how the " heresy " gradually died out in Saracen
Spain. Even in the time of Elipandus it did not escape censure.
It still had power to attract about A.D. 850 = but then there came
;
times when it was necessarily worth more to Christian Spaniards
to feel that they were in agreement with the whole Church than
to defend the legitimacy of a distinctive position.
The decisive result of the whole controversy was that the
West set aside its own earlier Christological system, —
and for
the sake of the Lord's Supper and the imposing tradition of the
—
Greeks thought like the latter within the sphere of dogma.
Christ's unity was maintained but this unity absorbed his
;
humanity, and removed far off the dread incarnate Son of God
(dei filius incarnatus tremendus). Strict dogmatic only per-
mitted him to be approached in the Lord's Supper. But that
did not prevent the vision of the lowly Man of Sorrows con-
tinuing, still secretly at first, to make its way side by side with
dogmatic theory, that vision that had dawned upon Augustine,
and was in ever-increasing vividness to form the strength of
piety in the future.
I I. (3). The Controversy as to Predestination.^
The revival of theological science in the ninth century led
1 See Bach, II. p. 390 ff.

,
2 See the letters of Alvar, Bandissin, I.e. Bach I., p. 146 ff.
3 Sources, collected by the Jansenist Maugin, Veterum auct. qui IX. saec.de
;
CHAP. VI.] THE PREDESTINATION CONTROVERSY. 293
to a thorough study of Augustine. But the theology of

Gregory I. had already accustomed men to combine the
formulas of Augustinianism with the Pelagianism required by
the system of the cultus. Hence a renewal of the controversy
would hardly have taken place had not the monk Gottschalk
of Orbais asserted the doctrine of predestination with as much
energy as Augustine had done in his latest writings, and had
he not been opposed by Hinkmar, whom his jealous colleagues
would gladly have charged with heresy. It was not his use of
Augustinian formulas that lifted Gottschalk out of the mass of
theologians, and gave a startling effect to his confession. It
was the fact that the doctrine of predestination had become the
strength and support of his being after a misspent life. Here
again it is palpable that words are not everything, that they
remain a tinkling cymbal as long as they are not the expression
of experience. Many joined and followed Gottschalk in speak-
ing as he did at the time but he alone was persecuted as a
;
heretical teacher, because the opposition felt that he alone was

dangerous to their Church system.
Gottschalk's teaching regarding predestination was not
different, either in matter or form, from that of Augustine,
. Fulgentius, and Isidore ;i but it must also be said that he taught
nothing but predestination. With the devotion, at first of
resignation, and afterwards of fanaticism, he committed himself
to the hands of God who does all things according to his good
pleasure, and does nothing without having determined it irre-
vocably from the beginning. Predestination is the content of
prsedest. et gratia scripsenint, Paris 1650 ; see the works of Carlovingian theologians
in the time of Charles the Bald, Mansi, T. XIV. and XV. ; Gfrorer, Gesch. der Karol.
Vol. and K. -Gesch., Vol. III. 2 Diimmler, Gesch. des ostfrank. Reichs, Vol. I,
I., ;
Ilauck, K. -Gesch. Deutschlands, Vol. II. Wiggers in the Ztschr. f. d. hist. Theol.
:
1859 Weizsacker in the Jahrbb. f. deutsche Theol. 1859 ; Hefele, Concil.-Gesch,

;
IV2., p. 130 if. ; Bach, Op. cit. I., p. 219 ff; Reuter I.e. I., p. 43 ff ; Borrasch, Der
Monch Gottschalk, 1868; Monograplis on Hinkmar by v. Noorden and Schrors;
Freystedt, Der wissensch. Kampf im Pradest.-Streit des'9jahrh. ; also, Der synodale
Kampf im Pradest. -Streit des 9 Jahrh. (Ztschr. f. wissensch. Theol. Vol. 36, pp.
315-368 ; New Series, Vol.. I., pp. 447-478), and Studien zu Gottschalk (Ztschr. f. K.
Gesch., Vol XVIII., p. iff.).
1 Gottschalk is especially dependent on Fulgentius. On Isidore's doctrine of
predestination, see Wiggers, Ztschr. f. d. hist. Theol. 1855 ; on Bede's, I.e. 1857.
the Gospel, is the object of faith. It is the truth —that twofold

predestination to and death, according to which eternal
life
life is decreed for the good, and death for the sinner, in which,
therefore, some are appointed to life, and the rest to death.

Nothing is to be set aside that the Church elsewhere teaches,
or that it does but it is a revolt from the Gospel to obscure in
;
the hearts of men the certainty of this eternal unchangeable

—
dispensation of divine grace for justice and punishment are
also good. Until his death Gottschalk defended inflexibly this
faith of his, in the living and original language of the convinced
advocate.'
But what did the historical Christ, or the Christ of the sacra-
mentally ordered Church, mean here? If the hidden God with
his hidden will was a comfort to Gottschalk, then that comfort
God had also predestinated
consisted in the assurance that this
some toand the assurance flowed from the economy which
life,
culminated in Christ. For from what other source was it

known that eternal predestination also embraced \}a& pardon oi
a section of mankind ? The assurance of the individual gained
nothing by this but among the opposition also no one would
;
have anything to do with certainty of salvation the individual ;
did not count for much to himself or others. Individualism

was not yet developed. Christ accordingly was not in question.
Even the resolute defender of predestination looked to him
when he thought of election to life. But the system of the
Sacraments, legal demands and works, which constituted the
Church itself, tottered, as it must always totter, wherever
religion is recalled from externality to the inner life. This
recall was accomplished in a much more abstract way in the
present instance than by Augustine. The most profound of
the African's expositions on liberating grace and the blessed
necessity of goodness (beata necessitas boni), which form the
1 On Gottschalk's life till the outbreak of the dispute, see Hefele, I.e. The
Augustinian "spirit, and 'Augustine's language in the Confessio prolixior (Migne, CXXI.,
p. 349) : "Tui profecto sic semper indigent omnes electi tui, quo videhcet tibi de te
solo semper valeant placere. Quemadmodum palmites indigent vite, quo fructum
queant ferre, vel aer aut oculi luce, quo vel ille lucidus esse vel illi possint videre. . . .
te igitur supplex invoco . . . ut largiaris indigentissimo raihi per gratmtiz gratiiz taa
invictissimam virtutem, etc."
background of the doctrine of predestination, do not tell

strongly upon Gottschalk. Nor had the Prankish monk been
able to appropriate the Neopiatonic speculation, that had been
toned down or transferred to a wholly different sphere of ideas
by Augustine's teaching. And, again, he did not know the
dialectic of the notion of time, which is inseparable from
Augustine's conception. Yet he was not unfamiliar with
dialectics ; indeed, if we may trust the accounts given us,
he
at first took pleasure in the problem on dialectical grounds but ;
the fire he played with afterwards mastered him. The subject

matter itself became precious to him. It corresponded to his
own mood, ever growing gloomier, and he championed it with
the zeal of the missionary. It was not original sin, or sin that
he regarded as the chief subject, but the unchangeableness and
wisdom of God. He was a theologian in the narrowest sense
of the term.
Gottschalk was first opposed by Rabanus in his letters to
Noting and Eberard —shortly before He was accused
A.D. 848.'
of teaching that right faith and good works were of no avail to
him who was not appointed to salvation, and that God forced
men to sin and perdition (invitum hominem facit peccare).^
Other opponents soon arose, and it was declared that he taught
a predestination to sin. At the Council of Mainz (848) Rabanus
got him condemned,3 and handed over, by command of King
Lewis, to Hinkmar to whose province as monk he belonged.* Inhis
letter to Hinkmar, Rabanus declares a predestination as regards
wickedness to be simply erroneous, and he is able to tell already
of people, who, seduced by Gottschalk, gave up pious practices
1 See Opp. Raban. in Migne, CXII., p. 1530 sq., Kunstmann, Rabanus Magnentius
Maurus 1 84 1.
2 The view of Rabanus himself, that great, pure, truly pious and unpolitical prince
of the Church, was Semi-Pelagian.

a Fragment of a confession of Gottschalk laid before the Synod in Hinkmar, De
prsedest. 5, Migne, CXXV., p. 89 sq. (Hefele, p. 138) : "gemina prasdestinatio . . .
similiter omnino omnes reprobos, qui damnabuntur propter ipsorum mala merits, in-
commutabilis deus per justum judicium suum incommutabiliter prsdestinavit ad
mortem merito sempiternam."
4 Migne, CXII., p. 1574.
?96 - HISTORY OF DOGMA. [CHAP. VI.
because, forsooth, they were wholly useless.' Hinkmar got the

judgment against the "miserable monk" repeated at an imperial
synodal diet at Chiersey (849). He was deposed from his office,
scourged, and rendered harmless in prison.^ Neither Rabanus
nor Hinkmar seems at first to have formed as yet any idea of
the difficulty of the whole question caused by the authority of —
Augustine and other Fathers. Hinkmar contented himself with
referring God's prescience to good or evil, but predestination to
goodness alone.3 But the position of the case soon changed.
Gottschalk composed two confessions, in which he stated his
teaching, supporting it from Scripture and the Fathers,* and he
also wrote essays in which he emphasised the particularism of
Christ's saving work,^ subordinating the latter strictly to the
premundane decree of God. He also, in a letter to Amolo, gave
' Op. cit.
2 Hincm. De prsedest. 2; Migne, CXXV., p. 85 ; cf. Migne, CXXI, p. 1027.
3 Hinkmar's large works on the question in dispute were not written till several years
later ; (yet see the writing Ad reclusos et simplices, A.D. 849-50'; Gundlach in the
Ztschr. fiir K.-Gesch., Vbl. X., p. 258 ff.; Freystedt, I.e. p. 320 ff., 358 ff.). Thefirst
in three books {856 and 857) was so extensive, that it was not transcribed, and so has
perished (see Schrors, p. 136 f. ) . The second, De prcedestinatione dei et libero arbitrib,'
was also prolix enough and very meaningless (written 859 to S60, Schrors, p. 141 ff.).
In the introduction to this work, the history of the sect of predestinationists, which is
said to have risen even in St. Augustine's lifetime, is described in a very unhistorical
fashion. The sect has now revived, and
newer members adhere to Fulgentius, who
its
never enjoyed a lofty prestige in the Church(c. 3, 8, 13). Hinkmar's main proposition
is that predestination to punishment embraces compulsion to commit sin. " Prsescivit
deus hominem ad pcenam." Accordingly there is only a predestination of, not to,
punishment.
4 Migne, CXXI., pp. 347-349: "Confiteor, deum omnipotentem et incommutabilem
prsescisse et praedestinasse angelos sanctos et homines electos ad vitam gratis feternam,

et ipsum diabolura cum ipsis quoque hominibus reprobis
. . . propter prasscita . . .
certissime ipsorum propria futura mala merita praedestinasse pariter per justissimum
judicium suum in mortem merito sempiternam. " " Credo siquidem atque confiteor
prsescisse teante saecula quaecunque erant futuia, sive bona sive mala, praedestinasse vero
tantummodo bona. Bona autem a te prsedestinata bifariam sunt tuis a fidelibus in-
dagata . . . i.e. in gratise beneficia et justiti^ simul judicia . . . Frustra eleciis
pr^destinasses vitam, nisi et illos prsedestinasses ad ipsam. Sic etiam
omnibus . . .
quoque reprobis hominibus perennem merito prEedestinasti poenam, et eosdem similiter

prfedestinasti ad earn, quia nimirum sine causa et ipsis prae'destinasses mortis perpetUEe
pcenam, nisi et ipsos prsedestinasses ad eam non enim irent, nisi destinati, neque
:
profecto destinarentur, nisi essent priedestinati. " From Gottschalk's standpoint both
confessions are conciliatory.
^ Gottschalk frequently maintained that Christ did not die for the reprobi, though
"
expression to the particularly objectionable principle "that

baptism and the other sacraments were given in vain to those
who perished after receiving them " for " those of the number ;
of the faithful who perish were never incorporated in Christ and

the Church." ' But it was perceived in the more cultured South,
apart from Mainz and Rheims, that it was not Gottschalk but
his opponents who diverged from Augustine's teaching. The
best theologians ranged themselves on the side of the Confessor
Prudentius of Troyes, Ratramnus of Corbie, then also the
e.g.,
learned and acute Lupus of Ferrieres,^ the priest Servatus

Lupus and Remigius of Lyons, for the most part disciples of
Alcuin.3
There now began a lively theological controversy (849-50),
which was not, however, violent enough to involve the rest of the
Church and the Pope, and which was unspeakably unsatisfactory,
because staunch Augustinians neither could nor would abandon
the ruling ecclesiastical system, and had therefore to seek for com-
promises where Gottschalk's results endangered it, and because
the Prankish Semi-Pelagians soon saw that they would have to
appYOx\maXs their />kraseolo£y to Augustinianism. Among the
writings in defence of Gottschalk there were accordingly many
shades of opinion, but so were there also on the other side.*
Florus Magister, e.g., advocated the twofold (gemina) prede-
stination, but yet opposed Gottschalk, since he rejected the
thought of the irresistibleness of grace.^ Amolo of Lyons
treated him in a friendly spirit but no one else showed ;
so emphatically that Gottschalk's teaching did away with the

historical redemption, the fruits of Christ's death, and sacra-
he taught a certain general redemption of all the baptised ; see Hincm. De prsed.
29, 34. 3S ; Migne, CXXV., p. 289 sq., 349 sq., 369 sq.
1 Hefele, p. 169 " baptistum et alia sacramenta frustatorie eis dari, qui post eorum
:
perceptionem pereunt ;
" for " qui ex numero fidelium pereunt, Christo et ecclesise
nunquam fuerunt incorporati.
2 See Freystedt, I.e., p. 329 ff.
3 Bach (I., p. 232 ff.) has analysed and discussed the various writings of these men.
* Men at that time disputed about predestination, just as " positive " theologians
to-day quarrel among themselves about the right of historical criticism. Some defend
this right, others would restrict or abolish it ; but even the former don't really believe
in it, since they take care not to carry out its conclusions.
5 Bach, I., p. 240.
mental grace.'' The only one who took up a consistent stand-

point, and from opposed the monk, was John Scotus. His
it
teaching did not rest on Augustine's doctrine of predestination

but on the Neoplatonic and Augustinian ontology, which
he developed boldly. According to this, evil and death were
nothing. Unchangeable being had only one unchangeable
will, namely itself, and it evolved itself alone. Everything else
consisted in negation, was nothing actual, and bore this very
not-being in itself as a punishment. Applying this to the ques-
tion of predestination, it followed that those were right who
would only admit one predestination.^ But friend and foe felt,
without seeing through the pantheism of Scotus, that this was a
case of casting out the devil by the aid of Beelzebub (" com-
mentum diaboli "). There was only one way out of the
difficulty besides that given by Scotus. This was to give up
altogether putting the question in the form of the predestination
problem, to hold to the historical Christ, and to do justice to
Augustine's doctrine of grace by reducing the Church system
to the experience of the new birth and faith. But no one dis-
covered this expedient,3 and so the whole controversy neces-
sarily became a maze of insincerity, partly objective, partly
conscious. Augustine's authority, however, was so power-
ful that the result, if we may speak of such a thing, came
nearer Gottschalk's teaching in -words than to the original utter-
ances of Rabanus and his comrades (of whom Pardulus also
was one). The latter sought to carry their distinction between
prescience and predestination (as regards evil and punishment),
and would therefore have nothing said of persons being predes-
tined to punishment. When God foresaw evil, he predestined
punishment for those who should not deserve to be redeemed
by grace room, accordingly, is left indirectly to free-will, al-
;
though, so far as words go, the saved are saved solely in virtue
of election. The artificial distinction here made (predestination
1 Bach, I., p. 241 ft.
" De divina prsedest. Migne, CXXII., p. 355 sq. The Synods at Valencia and
Langres (859) condemned the work, after Prudentius and Florus Magister had written
against it.
3 Amolo came nearest it.

of life and of the good, prescience of the wicked, predestination
of punishment) is apparently defensible, even on an Augustinian

basis, since Hinkmar now spoke of a complete loss of freedom
through Adam's Fall. But the distinction was in truth meant
to open a door for the entrance of Semi-Pelagianism. This
doctrine was adopted at a new Synod of Chiersey (853) under
Hinkmar's leadership.'
But what took place here was not authoritative in the Arch-
bishopric of Sens= and the Empire of Lothar. Remigius of
Lyons sharply attacked the four chapters of Chiersey as running
counter to Scripture and the Fathers.^ At the great Synod
held at Valencia of the provinces of Lyons, Vienne and Aries
(855), canons were adopted which adhered much more closely
to Augustine, and contained the teaching of Remigius. Dislike
to the powerful Hinkmar also played a part in their composi-
tion. The Synod rejected the four chapters they had been :
1 The four chapters of Chiersey yielded more to Augustinianism than was consistent
with truthfulness : I. " Deus hominem sine peccato rectum cum libero arbitrio con-
didit et in paradiso posuit, quem in permanere voluit. Homo
sanctitate justitise
libero arbitrio male utens peccavit et cecidit, et factus est massa perditionis totius
humani generis. Deus autem bonus et Justus elegit ex eadem massa perditionis
secundum prsescientiam suam, quos per gratiam prsedestinavit ad vitam, et vitam illis
prsedestinavit jeternam.
' Ceteros autem, quos justitise judicio in massa perditionis
reliquit, perituros prsescivit, sed non ut perirent preedestinavit, pcenam autem illis,
quia Justus est, prsedestinavit EEternam. Ac per hoc unam dei pr^destinationem
tantummodo dicimus, quae aut ad donum pertinet gratise, aut ad retributionem
justitias." II. "Libertatem arbitrii in primo homine /«?-rfzrfmaj, quam per Christum
dominum nostrum recepimus. Et habemus liberum arbitrium ad bonum, praeventum
et adjutum gratia. Et habemus liberum arbitrium ad malum, desertum gratia.
Liberum autem habemus arbitrium quia gratia liberatum et gratia, de corrupto
sanatum." III. "Deus omnes homines sine exceptione vult salvos fieri, licet non
omnes salventur. Quod autem quid em salvantur, salvantis est donum quod autem ;
quidem pereunt, pereuntium est meritum." The fourth chapter says that Christ
adopted the nature of each man, and accordingly died for each, though all are not re-
deemed. The cause of this fact is that those not redeemed are infideles or are defi-
cient in the faith that works by love; "poculum humanse salutis, quod confectum
est infirmitate nostra et virtute divina. habet quidem in se, ut omnibus prosit, sed si
non bibitur non medetur." Mansi, XIV., p. 919.
See on Prudentius and the Synod of Sens, Hefele, p. 188 f. The four chapters
"^
of this Synod, which teach the gemina prcBdestinatio, are by Prudentius ; see Migne,
CXXV., p. 64.
3 Migne, CXXI., p. 1083 " Libellus de tenenda immobiliter
: scripturse veritate"
as an official paper of the Church of Lyons.

entered on with too little prudence (" minus prospecte sus-
cepta.") taught the double predestination, applied the latter

It
to persons also, and maintained that Christ shed his blood for
believers. The question whether God willed to save all men
was carefully evaded. If the Synod disowned a predestination
to sin, it did not thereby abandon strictly Augustinian ground.
On the contrary, the contention that condemnation was based
on prescience, and that in the Church's Sacraments " nothing
was futile or delusive " (nihil sit cassum, nihil ludificatorium)
shows the anxiety felt not to give up what was held valid by
the Church.' If we compare the resolutions of the two Synods
word word, the differences are extremely subtle, and yet the
for
little addition (plus) of the alien co-efficient attached to Augus-
tinianism in the Chiersey decrees is highly signiiicant.

Rabanus, Hinkmar, and Charles's Synod take their stand on
ecclesiastical empiricism, and try, because they must, to come
to terms with Augustinianism, therein yielding more than can
have been agreeable to them. Remigius, Prudentius, and
J>othar'sSynod take their stand on Augustinianism, and yet
would not give up this ecclesiastical empiricism. But in neither
case did anyone permit the suggestion of a doubt as to whether
thisempiricism and Augustinianism were compatible.
prevented the threatened breach from being
Political affairs
consummated. The matter was taken up again in the reign of
King Charles, Lothar's son. A
few slight modifications of the
chapters of Valencia were decided on at Langres (859) in order
to enable Charles the Bald, who had subscribed those of
Chiersey, to approve of them.^ The great Synod of Savonieres
(859), at which there were present bishops from three kingdoms,
as well as the sovereigns themselves, Charles the Bald, Charles
of Provence, and Lothar of Lothringen, adopted the modified
chapters of Valencia, and also, as it appears, those passed at
Chiersey ; the members did not condemn one another on
account of disbelief or belief in twofold predestination (gemina
predestinatio), and this meant the greatest advance towards
1 It is superfluous to give the canons here — they are very prolix ; see Mansi, XV.,
p. 3 ; Hefele, IV., p. 193 ff. ; Schrois, p. 133 ff. '
2 Mansi, XV., p. 537 ; Hefele, p. 205. .

CHAP. VI.] THE PREDESTINATION CONTROVERSY. 30I
peace.' Hinkmar, indeed, did not doubt that tliere had been
and was a predestinationist heresy, which it was necessary to
oppose, and whose adherents appealed unjustifiably to
Augustine. He composed at the time his prolix work, De
praedestinatione (against Remigius and others), under the
auspices of his theological king. But the kings' need of peace
was stronger than the zeal of bishops fighting in the dark. At
the great Synod of the three realms at Toucy (860), the case
postponed at Savonieres was brought to an end in a comprehen-
sive synodal edict, which dealt indefinitely with the real kernel
of the question, and was destitute of meaning and badly
arranged. Controversial points were left alone, and those were
confessed on which all were agreed. Hinkmar composed this
document. Besides predestination to life, which was set forth
in good Augustinian language, it was declared that God willed
to save all, that Christ died for all, and that while free-will
required to be redeemed and healed after the Fall, it had never
been wholly lost. = If the worth of a confession depends on its
really expressing the existing belief, then the triumph of
Hinkmar's formula was really more valuable than would have
been that of the contrary doctrine. The avowal of twofold
predestination, in itself even more the expression of a theological
speculation than of Christian faith in God the Father, would
have meant than nothing coupled with the retention of
less
ecclesiastical empiricism. Of course the formula of Hinkmar,
which no artifice could reconcile with that of Orange, did not
mean much either for, in spite af words, Augustine remained
;
deposed. I.'s system of doctrine held the field.

Gregory Men
thought of the sacramental Christ, as they rejected, along with
Adoptianism, the Augustinian Christology, and it was still this
Christ and the good works of believers to which they looked,
when, along with twofold predestination, they in fact set aside
Augustine's doctrine of grace.
Gottschalk died in prison, irreconcilable and unreconciled (869),
clinging to the predestifiaiio ad mortem, which he understood in
iMansi, XV., p. 529; Hefele, p. 206.

2 The prolix Ep. synodali.= in Mansi, XV., p. 563 ; Hefele, p. 217 ff. Prcedestin
atio ad mortem is not mentioned.

'
SO " that he did not abandon it as Remigius

erroneous a sense "
seems to have done. He had prophesied in vain the unmasking

and fall of his mortal enemy Hinkmar as Antichrist, that great
exemplar of predestination to death.
2. The Controversy regarding the Filioque and Pictures.
By the position it had taken up in the Adoptianist as well as

in the predestination controversy, the Church of the Prankish
kingdom identified itself, abandoning tendencies to higher
characteristics of its own,= with the popular Church ideas as
represented by Constantinople and Rome. The theology it had
inherited from Augustine was transformed into an ecclesiastical
system such as had long prevailed in those chief Churches.
But the West at that time still held tenaciously to its own
-characteristic position as compared with the East in two
doctrines; it supported the ^/«'^^«^ and rejected images. Both
these subjects have been already discussed in Vol. IV., pp. 133,
317, therefore only a little falls to be added.
Even if we had not known it already, vire see very clearly in
the controversy regarding the filioque clause that the doctrine
of the Trinity and Christology constituted dogma and the legal
basis of the Church /car eôxvv even for the West see the —
1 The ill-usage he had suffered seems to have rendered Gottschalk at times irre-
sponsible for his actions in the last years of his life. His dispute with Hinkmar about
the phrase " trina deltas " is noteworthy. The latter would not permit it on the ground
that was Arian ; Gottschalk and Ratramnus defended it by accusing Hinkmar of
it
'Sabellianism. Both phrases " una deltas"' and " trina deitas" can be defended from the
Augustinian standpoint see Hinkmar's writing, De una et non trina deitate (Migne,
;
CXXV., p. 473 ; Schrors, Hinkmar, p. 150 ff.), in which Boethius' notion of person-
ality (" rationabilis naturse individua subsistentia ") plays a part. The number of
theological problems discussed at the date of this renaissance of theology was very
great ; see Schrors, Hinkmar, p. 88 ff. But the questions were almost all exceedingly
minute and subtle, like those suggested by clever children. Nor was the culture of
the period possessed of the scholastic technique required for their treatment.
2 Of course only tendencies— the confusion that still prevailed at the close of the
eighth century as regards Augustinianism is best shown by the fact that the Syinbol
admitted into the Libri Carolini (symbolum Hieronymi, sermo Augustini) was Pelagius'
Confession of Faith ad Innocentimii-. But it was also, as late as a.d. 1521, produced
.by the Sorbonne against Luther as Augustine's confession.
;
CHAP. VI.] FILIOQUE AND PICTURES. 303
Athanasian Creed.' The filioque, which originated in Augus-

came to the Prankish kingdom from Spain, but
tinian theology,
we know nothing more precisely as to how it did. It was held
to be certain that it belonged to the Symbol, and this conviction
1 have dealt with the origin and authority of the Athanasian Symbol in Vol. IV.,
1
p. 134. Since then Loofs (K. Encykl., Vol. 11.^, pp. 177-194) has published an in-
vestigation regarding it, distinguished by a comprehensive knowledge of sources and
literature. We are agreed as to the following points, (i) The Symbol, whether we
may think it to have risen out of two originally independent documents or not, belongs
to Roman Southern Gaul. {2) Its first, longer, Trinitarian half, as well as the second,
shorter, Ciiristological portion belongs to the period c. 450— (at latest) 600. In the
pre-Carlovingian age the Symbol had only a partial authority— the Canon of Autun
proves that it was accepted there c. 670. Not till the Carlovingian period was the
way prepared for its universal acceptance. Thus only two important points are in
dispute, (i) Did the Symbol originate in a sermo de symbolo, or was it directly
conceived as a formulary of the faith ? (2) Does it consist of two portions originally
independent, or was it framed from the first in its present extent ? I may here leave
the first question alone. As regards the second, I had supported tlie original inde-
pendence of the Trinitarian first half, and supposed that the Christological section
was only added a considerable time later, perhaps not till the Carlovingian epoch.
Loofs (p. 185 ff. ) has convinced me, by his evidence as to the Cod. Paris, 3836, that
this datehas been put too late. But I never based my opinion of an original inde-
pendence of the two parts on this external testimony invalidated by Loofs, but on the
internal matter of the S3Tnbol. The latter Loofs has practically left alone. The
following facts fall be considered, (i) In the opening of the Symbol, §§ 1-3, the
to
doctrine of the Trinity is alone announced as " catholica fides " (compare the edict
of Theodosius I. of A. D. 380) ; there is nothing to suggest that the author means also
to deal with Christology. (2) In § 26 we find, consistently with this, the solemn con-
clusion reverting to the beginning; "Qui vult ergo salvus esse, ita de trinitale
sentiat." This whole first half is accordingly a rule of faith complete in itself and
entire, elaborated by the aid of Augustine and Vincentius, and anti-Arian. Nothing
essential is to be found in it which could not have been written by Augustine, if of
course the sentences may have been only gradually polished afterwards. (3) The
following section, not hitherto introduced, is, indeed, bracketed whh the preceding
one by §§ 27 and 48 ; but these brackets testify plainly enough that an original organic
unity is not to be supposed. For (a) § 40 is a replica of § 26, yet (b) the language is
somewhat different (in the second section we have " fideliter credere," " fides recta,
ut credamus et confiteamur," " fideliter et firmiterque credere " ; in the first section :
" catholicam fidem tenere," or " integram inviolatamque fidem servare "). (4) Look-
ing to the contents, the Christological section, §§ 28-39, shows, first, the Antinestorian
(32) and Antimonophysite attitude (34, 35) completely balanced secondly, the
;
Gallican rescension of the Apostle's Creed (" passus," " descendit ad inferos," " sedet
—
ad dexteram dei patris omnipotentis these could only be attributed to Spain)
thirdly, the influence of the Nicene Constantinopolitan Creed ("passus estpro nostra
salute"), so that we can hardly ascend beyond the beginning of the sixth century for
this part. (5) Weight is to be given to the fact that the author, who has adhered
strictly in §§ 36, 37 to the curt form of the Symbol, has considered it necessary in
304 HISTORY OF DOGMA. • [CHAP. VI.
was already expressed at the Synod of Gentilly (767). ^ Charles's

learned theologians confirmed it, as is proved by Alcuin's work
De processione spiritus sancti, and the Libri Carolini. ^ Official

action was provoked by Western monks having had to submit
to grave injustice in Jerusalem, because in the Liturgy they
added, " sicut erat in principio" to the "Gloria patri," and " tu
solus altissimus " to the " Gloria in excelsis," and in the Symbol
" filioque " to "
a patre." They complained to the Pope, who
turned to the Eftiperor. The latter commissioned Theodulf of
Orleans to compose a work, " De spiritu sancto," and got it
decreed at the Synod of Aachen (809) that the filioque be-
longed to the Symbol. 3 The Pope, however, who had to
approve of this decision, still took the East into consideration,
and did not permit the admission of the word, though he
assented to the doctrine. Even the remonstrance of the Franks
that ^t filioque was necessary to salvation did not move him.*
The matter continued thus till the great controversy under
Photius, until the filioque became the Symbolic watchword in
the whole of the West. ^ The most worthless formula of
§§ 38, 39 to make a wordy addition, that at Christ's coming all men " reddituri sunt de
iaz'as, propriis rationem, et qui bona egerunt ibunt in vitam astemam, qui vero mala in
ignem seternum." Is this addition not to be understood as in the interests of Semi-
Pelagianism The two portions may have been combined as early as the sixth century.
?
If we could date the Sermo Trevir. we would know more accurately about this.
1 See Hefele, III., p. 432.
Hefele, III., p. 704 ; see Libr. Carol. III. 3 (Migne, Vol. 98), where Tarasius is
^
blamed for teaching that the Holy Spirit proceeds ex patre perfilium instead of ex
filio.
3 Hefele, III., 750-755.
*See Mansi, XIV., p. 18 sq. It is very important that the Pope objected to the
last-mentioned argument of the Franks, saying that other things were also necessary
for salvation, and were yet not received into the Symbol, since it could admit of no
change at all. This meant (as opposed to the Eastern view) thut the Symbol did not
embrace everything that belonged to salvation. The Pope says (p. 20) " Verumtamen,:
quEeso, responde mihi num universa hujusmodi fidei mystica sacramenta, quae symbolo
:
non continentur, sine quibus quisque, qui ad hoc pertingere potest, catholicus esse
non potest, symbolis inserenda et propter compendium minus intellegentium, ut
cuique libuerit, addenda sunt?" The Pope, besides, asserted, in a very remarkable
way, in the interview with the Prankish missi, he thought that all stages of culture
could not take up the same attitude to dogma, hat accordingly what was important
to some was not to others.
^ The papal legates in Constantinople (a.d, 880) still subscribed the Symbol withont
Augustinianism, once recommended by its opposition to

Arianism, was thus preserved in the West.
If in this controversy between the West and East the former
at first received only a lukewarm support from Rome, which
was still half Byzantine, the Pope ranged himself entirely on
the side of the pious Eastern theologians in the Oriental contro-
versy about images, and therewith his relations became strained
with Prankish theology or the efforts made by Charles I. to
promote civilisation. The attitude of that theology in the great
conflict extremely characteristic of the transition time in
is
which it found itself The spiritual {inner) element introduced

into it by Augustine no longer reacted in Christology, and in the
conception of the Mass, against mystical superstition and magic
sacramentalism. It had been swallowed up by the more
powerful Byzantine Roman current. But the Franks could not
yet force themselves to adopt the Oriental worship of images. '
A halt was made at the Host. A spiritual, Augustinian element

reacted against image-worship, but, paradoxical as it sounds,
the lower state of dogmatic culture had also its effect here. It
would indeed seem, on a superficial view, that he who rejects the
veneration of images is always the more cultured. But that
only holds in circumstances that did not then exist. Where
men had once entered, as was the case in the Prankish kingdom,
the magic circle of the Byzantine mysticism that enveloped
Christ and the cultus, it was simply the sign of a religious faith
not yet fully developed on this basis to halt at the Host, and to
disdain the riches offered by images to theological thought and
pious fancy. The East and Rome made their Christology living
for themselves in pictures, and so saw the past mystery in the
abiding present. How could a faith dispense with them that al-
ready aimed at the sensuous enjoyment of heavenly things and
revelled in the worship of relics ? But dogmatic culture was
still backward in the West, the theosophy of images had not yet
filioque. On John VIII., see Hefele IV., p. 482. The Prankish kingdom took
the liveliest interest in the controversy in that period ; but the grounds on which it
It is not known how and when the
rested its own view were always the same.
" filioque
" was admitted in Rome into the Symbol; and we know just as little about
how and when Rome accepted the Galilean Apostles' Creed and the Athanasian.
1 This is true of the cultured, and at that time governing, portion of the clergy.
—
been learnt, and what was most important but few pictures —
were possessed.
It has been maintained,' but it is not absolutely certain, that
the Synod of Gentilly {j6']') emitted a declaration as to image-

worship satisfactory to the Pope. The Synod of Frankfort (794)
unanimously condemned the decision of the seventh CEcumeni-
cal Council, which required " service and adoration " (servitium,
adoratio) to be rendered to images. The decisions of the
Council were undoubtedly extant only in a very bad translation.^
" Certain chapters " had been previously sent to Rome against
the worship of images, these being an extract (85 ch.) from the
Libri Carolini, which Alcuin had composed shortly before, at the
Emperor's command, in conjunction with other theological
Court officials they were written against the Oriental Councils
;
of 754 and 787.3 In these iconoclasm, but still more strongly

image-worship, are forbidden as foolish and mischievous. It was
right to have pictures for decoration and recollection, but not to
adore them (Gregory I., Ep. VII. ill "therefore the picture is
:
used in Churches that those who are ignorant of letters may at

least read by seeing upon the walls what they cannot read in
books," and, further, Libri Carol, praef " having images in the
:
ornaments of our churches and in memory of past events, and

worshipping God alone, and exhibiting fit veneration to his
saints, we are neither iconoclasts with the one party nor
worshippers with the other"). Image-worship is then refuted
at greater length, and the addition of the seventh to the six
CEcumenical Councils is condemned the two Synods (of 754
;
and 787) are "infamous" and "most foolish" (infames, in-

eptissimae). Some would see in these books a proof of the
Carlovingian " illumination " ;5* but the enlightenment, which is
unmistakable in other respects, only went the length of ignorance
of the theosophy of images, failure to understand the subtle
distinctions between Xarpeia (worship) and TrpotTKuvrjo-n (venera-
and the king's effort to advance civilisation. What the
tion),
books really show is the self-reliance and sense of power of the
1 Hefele, III., p.
433 Hauck, K.-Gesch.
; II., p. 278 f.
^Mansi, XIII., p. 909.

3 Migne, CII., p. 999 sq.
^Reuter, I.e. I., p. 10 f.

Frankish Church, which break out with youthful audacity, con-

victing with mischievous glee the olderand wiser sister of error,
and actually summoning, and requiring the Pope formally
to prosecute, the Byzantine Emperor and the Empress-Regent.
These books already show that the Roman West and the East
could no longer go together, because the former sought to take
command. They also reveal a trace of Augustinian spiritual
teaching, but knowing what we do of the sort of thing held
sacred at that time in the Frankish kingdom, they cannot be
taken as proving that men were more enlightened in the
Western than in the Eastern Church. ' Pope Hadrian refuted
the chapters,^ but took care not to exaggerate the difference.
Under Louis the Pious, a Synod convoked at Paris on account
of an embassy from Michael the Stammerer (825) pronounced
itself decidedly against the image-worshipping Pope, and held
strictly to the line laid down in the Libri Carolini : pictures
might be set up " in memory of pious love " (pro amoris pii
memoria), as ornaments, and, above all, for the sake of the un-
educated but they were not to be adored, and their erection
;
might therefore be dispensed with.s Louis adopted more

stringent measures against image-worship than Charles.* Pope
Eugene II. wrapped himself in silence nay, even in A.D. 863 a
;
Lateran Synod, while it recognised image-worship in guarded
language, said nothing about the seventh GEcumenical Council.*

Image-worship and the seventh Synod of "jZj were gradually
accepted only after the time of the eighth general Synod (869).^
1 The most vigorous defenders of Augustinian spiritual teaching were Claudius of
Turin and Agohard ; see Reuter, I., p. 16 If. We are reasonably astonished that
Claudius did not fare worse than he did. The study of Augustine had opened his as
well as Agobard's eyes to the contrast between the external, superstitious Christianity
of their time and the ideal type of Catholicism that had taken shape to itself in the
work of the great African.
2Mansi, XIII., p. 759-
3 Mansi, XIV., p.415 sq. Hefele, IV., 38 ff.
i See Claudius' mission in Upper Italy, where iconociasm broke out, and the worship
was described as idolatry.
Mansi, XV.,p. 178, 244; XIV., p. 106.
Hefele, IV., p. 272.
5
« But the dispute between Rome and Byzantium had already become acute, the
in the great renaissance of
gap impassable, so that the West was unable to take part
the sciences experienced by Byzantium
from the time of Photius until the beginning
of the tenth century.
Yet the Carlovingian theologians were still hostile to image-

worship at the close of the period. Hinkmar, who wrote a
work, no longer preserved, "on the worship of pictures of
the Redeemer and the Saints," ' would only admit them as
means of instruction (or for ornament) and Agobard,= Jonas of
;
Orleans,^ Walafrid Strabo,* and ./Eneas of Paris * held the same

view. Hinkmar also calls the Council of 787 a Pseudo-Synod,
and all Prankish authorities known to us, of the ninth century,
reckon only six Councils. Even the (eighth) Council of 869
was at first not recognised by Hinkmar. It was only when the
Prankish German Church again came to the light after the dark
ages that it also saw the seventh and eighth Councils. Yet the
difference with the Pope regarding the pictures hardly did any
harm to his prestige in the ninth century. His authority, that
is, had not been carried so high or become so sensitive that such
shocks could bring about its fall. ^ Image-worship was never

able to domesticate itself thoroughly where antiquity was not
the ruling spirit. Even at the present day Italy is still the
classic land of image-worship in the West. While, however,
in the East that worship expresses the religious faith and the
philosophy of religion themselves, because it is evolved from the
Christology, in the West pictures form part of the system of
intercessors and helpers in need. In practice, indeed, the differ-
ence is pretty well obliterated.
§ 3. The Development of the Practice and Theory of t/ie Mass

{the Dogma of the Lord's Supper^ and of Penance.
Three factors co-operated to promote a development of the

theory of the Lord's Supper in the West in the Carlovingian
1 See Schrors, Lc, p. 163.
2 Contra eorum superstitionem, qui picturis et imaginibus sanctorum adorationis
obsequium deferendum putant. Migne, CIV., p. 199.
3 De cultu imaginum, 1. III. Migne, CVI., p. 305.
^ De eccles. rerutn exordiis. Migne, CXI V. p. 927.
,
6 Lib. adv. Graec. Migne, CXXI., p. 685 sq.

'On the authority of Peter's Chair itself in Hinkmar's view, see Schrors, I.e., p.
165 f. But vifhen men spoke of the Pope, they did not always think of the primacy
(which, besides, included no administrative power in other dioceses), but also of the
Roman Church. She is the " nurse and teacher " of all churches (Hinkmar).
CHAP. VI.] THE MASS AND PENANCE. 309
age. Firstly, the influence of Byzantium, where the con-

troversy about images had led their worshippers to discon-
nect the symbolical conception from the consecrated elements, in
order to avoid the necessity of identifying the Sacrament with
the images, and of thus robbing the great mystery of its unique
character.' Secondly, the practice of the Western Church. The
divine service of theMass was the central point of all Christi-
anity, to which everything referred, and from which every
saving influence flowed for the baptized Christian. But if the
ordinary life of the Christian was connected with miraculous
powers and mysteries, if miracles were in the present, and still
more in the accounts of the past, every-day events,^ then the

sacred act effected in the Lord's Supper had to be developed
into the wonder of wonders, lest its significance should be
impaired by comparison with hundreds of miracles of a common
stamp.3 Thirdly, theology and Christology come before us in
this connection. The greater the prominence given in the
notion of God to the idea that God, because omnipotent, was a
mysterious arbitrary power, and the more vague became the
perception of God in Christ and the knowledge measured by
moral holiness, the more firmly did men cling to the institutions
•of the Church as the alone manifest, and seek in them, i.e., in
mystery and miracle, to apprehend the hidden God. Further,
^ On the development of the mysteries and Lord's Supper in the Greek Church,
see Vol. IV. p. 268. John of Damascus (De fide orth. IV. 13), declared expressly:
o^K ô"Tt T&jros 6 &f>Tos roO crJjfJ.aTos dXX' aiiri rb cai/Aa toD Kvpiov TeBeojfihov. After the
Synod of 754 (Mansi, XIII., p. 261 sq.), had called the consecrated elements types
and images, the second Nicene Synod of 787 (I.e. p. 265) expressly declared that
they were not that, since neither the Apostles nor Fathers had so named them by ;
•consecration they rather became aird a&ixa Kal axirb atfm. Yet Transubstantiation,
taken strictly in the Western sense, was admittedly never taught by the Greeks.
2See Reuter, I., pp. 24 ff. 41 ff.
* In order to perceive that the Lord's Supper needed a special prominence to be
:given to it, notice the view taken by Hinkmar of ordeals, on which Augustine, indeed,
had already laid great stress (Schrors, p. 190 ff. ); he regarded them, namely, as
•sacraments instituted in Scripture, and placed them on a level with the baptismal
<;eremonies. Hinkmar was not alone in the value he attached to the oath of purgation
and divine judgments (see Roziere, Recueil general des formules, Paris, 1859, n.
DLXXXI. -DCXXV. ; on p. 70, the ceremony is described as ckristiance rehgionis
jrfficium), but Agobard, who opposed them, stood almost alone; see Reuter, I., p.
32 ff.
3 to HISTORY OF DOGMA. [CHAP. VI.
the more the historical Christ was lost in light which no man
can approach, and the more resolutely religious speculation, in
order to be truly pious, only saw in him the God, who had
added human nature to his fulness (see the Adoptian contro-
versy), the more clearly did men feel themselves constrained tO'
seek Christ not in the historical picture or the Word, but where the
mystery of his Incarnation and death was present and palpable.'
1 The controversies de partu virginis (Bach, I., p. 152 ff. ; see Ratramnus, Liber
de eo, quod Christus ex virgine natus est ; Radbertus, Opusculum de partu virginis,
d'Achery, Spicil. I. p. 52, 44), show still better than the Adoptian controversy, the
kind of Christology that v?as honoured by the religion of the community and monks.
Ratramnus described as the poison of the old serpent the fact that some Germans
denied that Christ had issued from Mary's womb in the natural way, for thus the
reality of Christ's birth was destroyed, although he also acknowledged Marf s perpetual
virginity and taught the partus clauso utero : " clausa patuit dominanti." Radbert
...on the other hand, without answering Ratramnus, consoled some nuns, who had
been unsettled by the alleged denial of Mary's virginity, by saying that the Church
held firmly to the " clauso utero " ; for if Christ had come to the light in the natural
way, he would have been like an ordinary man ; everything connected with the
incarnation, however, was miraculous. He who did not admit Christ to have
been born clauso utiro, set him under the common law of nature, i.e. sinful nature,
and in that case Christ was not free of sin. The difference between the two scholars
thus consisted solely in ihe fact that while Ratramnus maintained the natural process
of birth to have taken place miraculously clauso utero, Radbert taught that the birth
was a supernatural process, and that Christ had left his mother in a diffeient v\ay from
other children. Radbert here also is the more consistent Ratramnus seeks to unite
;
natural and supernatural. Radbert, at least, in imparting his curious instruction to

the virgins of the cloister, does not display the pruriency of Jerome, who is the father
of these gynaecological fancies, and the nuns may have taken this question very
seriously, as seriously as Marcion and Augustine, because they recognised all that
was sexual To later scholasticism is due the credit of having,
to be the hearth of sin.
explained the partus clauso utero scientifically from the ubiquity of Christ's body.
Such miraculous conceptions having been diffused as to the body of the historical
Christ, it being held, in a word, to be a.hea.dy pneumatic in itself, it was by that very
reason sacramental (mysterious). But, in that case, it was impossible not to take
the next step, and finally and completely identify the real with that sacramental
(mysterious) body that was offered in the Lord's Supper. The lines drawn from the
incarnation dogma and the Lord's Supper necessarily converged in the end. That
this did not happen earlier was due, apart from the material hindrance presented by
Augustine with his sober conceptions of the historical Christ as a real homo, to formal
difficulties caused by the traditional idiom (the sacramental body is figura corporis
Christi). These had to be removed. Bach remarks very justly (1. p. 156): "The
cause of present day misunderstandings of the ancient controversies regarding the
Lord's Supper, consists in mistaking the law that governs the formation of language,
and that also applies to theological idiom. We refer here to the gradual change of
meaning of theological words, even when they have become, as regards their outward
!
The active influence of these combined factors undoubtedly

received an extremely significant check in the case of Bede,
and in the first decades of the Carlovingian age, from the rise
of the study of Augustine, whose teaching on the Lord's Supper
had been predominantly spiritual. Charles's theologians, or
Charles himself, frequently used quite Augustinian language,
in speaking of the Lord's Supper. But even in their case
variations occur,'and towards the end of the period of Louis
the Pious, Paschasius Radbertus was able to assert as doctrine,
what had long been felt by the majority, that the real f historical)
body of Christ was sacrificed in the Mass, and partaken of in
the Lord's Supper.^
verbalform, fixed categories, i.e. termini technici." The admission here frankly made
by the Catholic historian of dogma is, we know, not always granted by Lutheran
theologians. We have indeed had to listen, in the controversy of our own days, to
the wonderful cry that we ought to restore to words their original meaxdng. As if
any one still possessed the old die
^ Bede's teaching was thoroughly Augustinian. (" In redemptionis memoriam,"
"corporis sanguinisque sacramentum," "ad corpus Christi mystice refertur,"
—
" spiritualiter intellegite," " non hoc corpus, quod videtis Christus inquit mandu- —
caturi estis, sacramentum aliquod vobis commendavi, spiritualiter intellectum vivifica-
bit vos," "lavat nos a peccatis nostris quotidie in sanguine suo, cum beatse passionis
ad altare memoria replicatur, cum panis et vini creatura in sacramentum carnis et
sanguinis' ejus ineffabili spiritus sanctificatione transfertur ") ;
passages in Miinter
(D.-Gesch. [1834] p. 223 f.).
II., I But we then see how the conception changed
step by step until the middle of the ninth century. Alcuin repeats his teacher's
principles but both his opposition to the Council of a.d. 754 (De impio imag. cultu
;
IV. 14: "non sanguinis et corporis dominici mysterium i7nago jam nunc dicendum
est, sed Veritas, non umbra, sed corpus "), and in part his study of Greek Christology
and adoption of sentiments expressed in the Church practice led him to make state-
ments like the following (Ep. 36) "prefer nomen amici tui eo, tempore opportuno,
:
quo panem et vinum in substantiam corporis et sanguinis Christi consecraveris."

Miinter justly remarks (I.e. ) that this is not yet synonymous with "in substantiam
corporis convertere ; " but it approaches it. The general notion of the Sacrament is
completely identical in the cases of Isidore, Rabanus Maurus, Ratramnus, and
Paschasius Radbertus, and so entirely follows Augustine in its construction that we
are not prepared by it for the strictly realistic version in the doctrine of the Lord's
Supper.
^ See Radberti Lib. de corp. et sang, domini (831), new edition, with an Ep. ad
Carolum, thirteen years later (Migne, CXX., p. 1267). Steitz in the R.-Encykl. XII.,
p. 474. Riickert in Hilgenfeld's Ztschr. 1858. Bach. I., p. 156 ff. Reuter, I., p.
41 ff. Choisy, Paschase Radbert, Geneve, 1888. Hausher, Der hi. Paschasius, 1862.
Ernst, Die Lehre d. h. P. Radbert v. d. Eucharistie, 1896. Geschiclite der Abenil-
mahlsfeier by Dieckhoff, p. 13 ff., Ebrard, Kahnis, etc. Ebert, Gesch. d. Lit. des
—
Paschasius Radbertus was perhaps the most learned and able

theologian, after Alcuin, as well versed in Greek theology as he
was familiar with Augustinianism, a comprehensive genius, who
felt the liveliest desire to harmonise theory and practice, and at the
same time to give due weight to everything that had been taught
till then by Church tradition regarding the Lord's Supper.' His
great work on the Lord's Supper was the first Church monograph
on the subject? It is a one-sided description of its contents to
sum them up in the phrase " Paschasius taught transubstantia-
:
tion." 3 The importance of the book lies rather in the fact that
the Lord's Supper exhaustively discussed from all possible
is
points of view, and that a certain unity is nevertheless attained.

Paschasius did for this dogma what Origen did for the whole of
dogmatics; he is the Origen of the Catholic doctrine of the
Lord's Supper, which was placed by him as a theory in the
central position that it had long held in practice. We can only
appreciate Paschasius' teaching if we keep it in mind that
Greek Christological mysticism, Augustinian spiritualism, and
—
unconsciously to the author himself the practice of the Prankish
Church, had an equal share in it. But we must also remember
that the notion of God as inscrutable omnipotence, i.e., arbitrary
power, was dominant. Without this conception of deity the
doctrine of transubstantiation would never have been reached.*
Mittelalters, II. Mabillon, in the second and third parts of the Benedictine Annals.
Ratramnus' work (De corpore et sanguine domini ad Carolum) in Migne CXXI., p.
125. Kohler, Rabanus' Strait mit Paschasius, in Hilgenfeld's Zeitschr. 1879, P- 'l^
ff. A detailed account of the doctrine of the Lord's Supper from Pascha'îus to
Berengar is given by Schnitzer, Berengar von Tours (1890), pp. 127-245.
^ Radbert's work, De fide, is also important, because it shows
spe et caritate
greater power whole than we expect at this date.
to grasp religious doctrine as a
" So far as I know, no inquiry has yet been undertaken as to the homily, De corpore
et sanguine Christi, which is found in Jerome's works (Migne, T. XXX., Col. 271 fF.),
being ascribed by tradition to Eusebius of Emesa, and of which a copy is also given
among the works of Faustus of Riez. In it occurs the sentence " Visibilis sacerdos
:
visibiles creaturas in substantiam corporis et saneuinis sui verbo suo secreta potestate
convertit." The homily belongs to a whole group, on which consult Caspari, Briefe,
Abhandlungen und Predigten (1890), p. 418 ff. (see above, p. 254).
3 Choisy seeks to sliow that Paschasius was the father of the Catholic dogma even to
the manducatio infideliiim, and that the spiritual form of the dogma of the Lord's
Supper is in his case only apparent, since ultimately everything is dominated by
crass realism.
* Compare Radbert's extremely characteristic introduction to his treatise : he
CHAP. VI.] THE MASS AND PENANCE. 3 13
To begin with, Paschasius has given most vigorous expression

to Augustinian doctrine not assomething foreign to him, but as if
he had thoroughly assimilated it.' The sacrament is a spiritual
food for faith to eat Christ's flesh means to be and remain
;
in Christ. The faith, and faith is to be roused

rite is given to
by it. always related to the invisible and
Faith, however, is ;
thus the sacrament in its deepest sense can only be received by

the faith that has withdrawn into the invisible world. Christ,
the soul, faith, heaven, and the sacrament are most intimately
—
connected the bodily eye must always look beyond the sen-
suous to the heavenly behind it. Therefore the meal is a
meal for the holy, the elect. Only he who belongs to Christ
and is a member in his body enjoys the food worthily, nay,
he alone enjoys the food of faith actually. Unbelievers receive
the sacrament, but not its virtue (virtus sacramenti). But even
Augustine had so distinguished between these two notions that
virtus sacramenti sometimes describes its saving efficacy alone,
sometimes the miraculous nature of the holy food itself, so that
in the former case the sacrament itself signifies the totality of
the rite without its corresponding effect, and in the latter merely
something objective incapable of further definition. Radbert, like
Augustine, prefers the latter version. The believer alone receives
the virtus sacramenti as food of faith and incorporation into
Christ's body —
there was no eating on the part of unbelievers
(manducatio infidelium) Christ's flesh as contained in the
;
sacrament did not exist apart from faith. The unbeliever, indeed,
receives the sacrament —
what that is is indefinable but he does —
discusses the almighty will of God as ground of all natural events. God's arbitrary-
power is the ultimate cause ; therefore his actions can be described as contrary to nature
as well as natural (the latter, because even the regular course of things is subject to
divine absolutism). The new dogma is explicitly based on this conception of God.
Notoriously everything can be deduced from it, predestination, accommodation, tran-
substantiation, etc. Radbert holds the Lord's Supper to be the miracle of miracles,
towards which ali others point ; see I, S-
1 Radbert expressly attacks the Capernaite coarse conception of participation in

the Lord's Supper he declines to adopt the ciudely sensuous ideas diffused in the
;
widest circles (Bach, I. 167 ff.) ; see De corp. etsang. 8, 2. Expos, in Mat. 1. XH., 26.
Reality in its common sense is natura " in Radbert's view but he never says that the
'
' ;
«lements are naturaliter transformed. Therefore also Christ's body is not digested.
SO to his condemnation for without the virtus sacramenti the

;
sacrament exists adjudicium damnationis.^

In addition to this Augustinianism, a Greek element is very
strongly marked in the description of the effects of the holy
food ; for besides incorporation in Christ and forgiveness of
venial sins, the chief emphasis is laid on our soul and body being
nourished by this food for immortality. The combination
contained in the statement that this is effected by baptism, the
Lords Supper, and Holy Scripture (c. i, 4), is Western ; but the
intention to which prominence given in connection with the
is
Lord's Supper alone, vis. " that even our flesh may be renewed
by immortality and incorruption," ^ is Greek. Indeed
it to
Radbert even says conversely " the flesh of Christ spiritually
:
digested is transformed into our flesh." 3 But he now went still

further with the Greeks —
Cyril and John of Damascus. He had
learned from them that although the rite existed for faith only,
yet the reality of Christ's body was present* This assumption
was rendered nay imperative, to the Greeks by their view
easy,
that Christ's body was itself pneumatic from the
historical
moment of the Incarnation. Although they then (John of
Damascus) completed the identification, and assumed a real
presence of Christ's body in the Sacrament, they still hesitated
secretly, because they did not get over the difficulty caused by
the fact that the body once received into heaven did not return.
1 See esp. ch. VIII. , but also 5-7> Hi 21. This spiritual conception, on which Steitz.
(I.e.) has rightly laid great stress, runs through the whole book. But when Radbert
positively calls the body present in the Lord's Supper a corpus spiritah, he does not
mean this in contrast with the natural, but the lower bodily nature (caro humana)
confined to space. C. 21, 5: " Non nisi electorum cibus est." 6, 2: "Quid est,
quod manducant homines ? Ecce omnes indifferenter quam ssepe sacramenta altaris
percipiunt. Percipiunt plane, sed alius carnem Christi spiritaliter manducat at
sanguinem bibit, alius vero non, quamvis buccellam de manu sacerdotis videatur
percipere. Et quid accipit, cum una sit consecraiio, si corpus et sang. Chr. non
accipit? Vere, quia reus indigne accipit, judicium sibi manducat."
" Ut etiam caro nostra per hoc ad immortalitatem et incorruptionem reparetur."
^
" Carni nostrse caro Christi spiritaliter conviscerata transformatur." See c. II

3
and 19, I " Non sicut quidam volunt anima sola hoc mysterio pascitur, quia non sola
:
redimitur morte Christi et salvatur, verum etiam et caro nostra, etc. etc. ; " nos per hoc
in incorruptionem transformamur " (therefore as in Justin) ; the same thought already
in I. 4, 6.
* " Spiritale" and "verum" are thus not mutually exclusive.

"
Therefore they assigned the form of the miracle (sacramental

transformation and assumption) to the "mystery." Radbert took
up the matter here, at the same time influenced by the popular
conception and his certainty that the practice of the Church was
justified. For the first time in the Church he declares without
hesitancy that the sacramental body is that whichhad been born of
Mary, and that this due to a transformation which only leaves the
is
sensuous appearance unchanged. This is a miracle against nature
(or quasi contra naturam : for nature always depends on the will
of God) but it is to be believed for that very reason, for we
;
only think worthily of God, who can do anything, when we

acknowledge him to be the power that works miracles. What he
does here is a miraculous creative act, effected, as always,
through the word, in this case the word of institution, and this is
spoken not by the priest, but on each occasion by God through
the eternal Word (Christ), so that the priest only issues the appeal
to God. This constantly repeated creation by God is exactly
parallel to the Incarnation Christ's word corresponds to the—
Holy Spirit, the elements to the virgin's womb the effect is the ;
same. The sacramental is the historical body, of course also

historically transfigured for from Cyril's standpoint the trans-
;
figuration of the body in the Resurrection is only the manifesta-

tion of the properties which it always possessed.' In order to
^ C. 1,2: " NuUus moveatur de hoc corpore Christi et sanguine, quod in niysterio
vera sit caro et verus sit sanguis, dum sic voluit ille qui creavit : omnia enim
quaecumque voluit fecit in cselo et in terra, et quia voluit, licet in figura panis et
vini, liEec sic esse, omnino nihil aliud quam caro Christi et sanguis post consecrationem
credenda sunt. Unde ipsa Veritas ad discipulos Hjec, inquit, caro mea est pro :
mundi ut mirabilius loquar, non alia plane quam quje nata est de Maria et
vita, et
passa in cruce et resurrexit de sepulcro." Further 7, 2 "corpus quod natum est de :
Maria virgine resurrexit a mortuis, penetravit coelos et nunc pontifex foetus in

. . .
atemum quotidie interpellat pro nobis." 12, i "ubi calholica fide hoc mysterium
:
a bono majus nihilque a malo minus percipi sacerdote, nihilque aliud

celebratur, nihil
quam caro Christi et sanguis dum catholice consecratur, quia non in merito con-
secrantis sed in verba efficitur creatoris et virtute spiritus s. , ut caro Chr. et sanguis,
non alia quam quae de spiritu s. creata est, vera fide credatur et spiritali intellegentia
degustetur . . . hanc suam «^«V carnem." Cf. 15, I: "non
C/^^-zjif/est quiper s. s.
sestimandum est, quod quod uUius alterius meritis, quod potestate

alterius verbis,
alicujus ista fiunt, sed verbo creatoris, quo cuncta creata sunt." 8, 2: "substantia
panis et vini in Christi camera et sanguinem efficaciter interius cotnmutatur." 2, 2 :
" sensibilis res intellegibiliter virtute dei per verbum Christi in camera ipsius divinitus
transfertur.
" "
3l6 HISTORY OF DOGMA. [CHAP. VI.
explain the startling fact that the results of the transformation

were not capable of being perceived by the senses, Radbert had
a number of reasons ready it was unnecessary and repulsive,' :
and besides it would happen often.^ The most important of

—
these was that it was necessary the rite should remain a mys-
tery given to faith alone. We are as far as possible from
being prepared for this idea, and yet it was very important to
Radbert. The Lord's Supper always presupposes faith and is
meant to rouse faith, where it exists, to advance to the undisguised
Christ who is not daily sacrificed. Hence the sacrament cannot
be a manifest, but is always a disguised, miracle. Hence, more-
over, the elements, in so far as they are not perceptibly trans-
formed (colour, taste, and smell remaining), must be regarded as
symbols of Christ's body, from which faith penetrates to the
mysterious but really created source of salvation. The sensuous
appearance of the consecrated elements is the symbol of Christ's
body, their essence is the true historical body itself.'^
We readily perceive that in this phase the bridge to the

Augustinian conception has been recovered. Paschasius in-
tended to unite and did unite two positions in his doctrine of
1 See c. 10 and 13, and esp. 4, I "quia Christum vorari fas dentibus non est,
:
voluit in mysterio hunc panem at vinum vere carnem suam et sanguinem consecratione
spiritus s. potentialiter (z'.e. efficaciter) creari, creando vero quotidie pro mundi vita
mystice immolari.
2 See c. 14 ; besides Bach I., p. 168 ff. A lamb, or real blood, or the Christ-child
appeared.
s On this point Radbert speaks like Ratramnus ; see I, 5 :
" visu corporeo et gustu
propterea non demutantur, quatenus fides exerceatur ad justitiam." 13, i, 2, "quod
colorem aut saporem carnis minime prsebet, virtus tamen fidei et intellegentiae, quse
nihil de Christo dubitat, totum illud spiritaliter sapit et degustat . . . Sic debuit hoc
mysterium temperari, ut et arcana secretorum celarentur infidis et meritum cresceret
de virtute fidei et nihil deesset interius vere credentibus promisse veritatis." Nay the
disguise incites to loftier aspiration (as with the Greeks) "insuper et quod majus est:
per hsec secretius praestita ad illam tenderent speciem satietatis uhijam non pro peccatis
nostris quotidie Christus immolabitur, sed satietate manifestationis ejus sine uUa
corruptione omnes sine fine fruemur." (One imagines that he is listening to Origen
or Gregory of Nyssa. ) On figura and Veritas, see 4, I ". ut sicut de virgine : . .
per spiritum vera caro sine coitu creatur, ita per eundem- ex substantia panis ac vini
mystice idem Christi corpics et sanguis consecretur . . . figura videtur esse cum
frangitur, dum quam quod visu carnis et gustu sentitur.
in specie visibili aliud intelligitur'
Veritas appellatur, dum corpus Christi et sanguis virtute spiritus in verbo ipsius ex
panis vinique substantia efficitur.
the Lord's Supper: the Augustinian, that the sacraments are

given to faith and everything in them is spiritually handled, and
the Greek, which also seemed to him commended by the letter
of Scripture, the Fathers, and a few miracles, that we are con-
fronted by a reality existent prior to all faith, since only the
true body and the blood actually shed can redeem us, and since
we need the corporeal indwelling of Christ. Both considerations
seemed to be served by the view, that in the elements we are
dealing with a miraculous creation of Christ's -body, which is,
however, effected in such a zvay that faith alone can rise from tlee
still existent semblance of the mere bodily figure (figura corporis)
apprehension of the heavenly reality.

to the
The voluminous books, afterwards written by Catholics and

Lutherans on the Lord's Supper, prove that Radbert's theory
opened up a perspective to hundreds of questions, which he did
not solve, and, indeed, did not even put. His treatment of the
part played by the priest at the sacrament seemed unsatisfactory.
His brief expositions as to the creation of the body failed to
make certain the identity of the heavenly and the sacramental
Christ. There was still no definition of the relation of the
unconverted to the converted object of sense-perception. When
men began to attempt this definition, nothing short of the whole
of philosophy necessarily passed before the mind of the cultured
theologian. The claim of the symbolical view had to be
determined, and thereby the sacrament, symbol, virtue, reality
(res) and, again, the graded and yet identical bodies of Christ
(the historical on earth, the transfigured in heaven, the sacra-
mental on earth, the body as Church in heaven and on earth)
had to be defined, as it were geologically, as intersecting
boulders. " One deep called to the others " and the fact that ;
in after times the most intelligent men leant an ear to this

clamour, and yet remained sane in other respects, proved that
the most absurd speculations in the sphere of religion do not
necessarily make the whole reason sick.'
1 The doctrine of the real conversion of the elements in the West is to be regarded
as an importation from the East, and is closely connected with the anti-Adoptian
version of Christology. But it was first in the West that the legal mind and dialectics
cast themselves on this subject, and produced a complicated and never to be com-
pleted doctrine of endless extent.
3l8 HISTORY OF DOGMA. [CHAP. VI.
But the most remarkable feature in Radbert's fundamental

theory is that he did not refer primarily to the Mass, or indeed
to Christ's death on the Cross in other words, he did not draw

;
all the consequences which resulted from it. Radbert is not the
theologian of the Catholic Mass. The Incarnation and Lord's
Supper were for him more intimately connected, as it seems,
than Christ's sacrificial death and the dogma of the Lord's
Supper. From this we see that Radbert was a disciple of the
Greeks, that he was really a theologian, and his interest did not
centre primarily on the Church institution of penance, and the
divine service of the Mass connected with it'
Rabanus = and Ratramnus alone opposed him. The opposi-
tion is as obscure, logically, as in the controversy about the
virgin birth. As Ratramnus had then taught that the natural
had come to pass by a miracle, while Radbert held that the
event was contrary to nature so here again Rabanus and,
;
above all, Ratramnus taught that, while the external miracle

(contra naturam) —
the communication in the Lord's Supper of
the body that was born, that died and rose again —
did not take
place, the true body was potentialiter (effectively) created, yet in
mysterio, by the consecration of the Holy Spirit.3 Ratramnus
examines elaborately the problem that the king had set him,
whether that which is received into his mouth by the believer,
is in mystery or reality Christ's body. From the king's
question he himself formulates other two whether participation,
:
in the cultus, in the body of Christ was an act in mysterio or in

veritate, and whether the sacramental body was identical with
the historical which now sits at the right hand of the Father.*
To the second question he replies that that which lies consecrated
1 Not primarily ; for undoubtedly he more than once in his work thinks of the
Mass, and draws the inference of the daily sacrifice of Christ's body ^r« peccatis ; see
13, 2; 4, I, etc.
2 Ep. ad Eigil. Migne, CXII., p. 1510.
^ Ratramnus and Rabanus are nearer each other than is currently supposed ; but
Bach (1. p. 191 ff.) is wrong, when, after the precedent of other Catholics, he tries by
an interpretation of Ratramnus' use of language to make him a genuine Catholic.
Ratramnus also holds that a miracle takes place, but not the miracle that magically
produces the body worn by Christ as a person.
* See the opening of the work.
—
on the altar is by no means the historical body, but only the

mystery of the body, as also the mystery of the Church. As
regards the historical body the consecrated elements are thus
only a figure means of reminiscence for our present
(figura),
earthly life, since we cannot yet see what we believe.' But
nevertheless believers receive Christ's body and blood in this
rite ;
for faith does not receive what
but what it believes,
it sees,
Accordingly in the Lords Supper Christ's body exists in an in-
1 Following on a reference to Ambrose, he writes (c. 75 sq.) :

" De carne Christi
quae crucifixa et sepulta est, 'Vera utique caro Christi est.' At de illo quod
ait,
sumitur in Sacramento dicit, Verse carnis illius sacramentum est,' distinguens sacra-
'
mentum carnis a veritate carnis. Veritas carnis quam sumpsit de virgine ; quod vero
nunc agitur in ecclesia mysterium, verae illius carnis sacramentum . .non est
. . . .
specie caro, sed sacramentum, siquidem in specie panis est, in Sacramento vero verum
Christi corpus . (elementa) secundum quod spiritualiter vitae substantiam submini-
. .
strant corpus et sanguis Christi sunt. Illud vero corpus, in quo semel passus est
Christus, non aliam speciem prseferebat quam in qua consistebat ; hoc enim erat vere
quod esse videbatm ; ... at nunc sanguis Christi quem credentes ebibunt et corpus
quod comedunt, aliud sunt in specie et aliud in significatione, aliud quod pascunt cor-
pus esca corporea et aliud quod saginant mentes aeternje vitae substantia aliud . . .
igitur est, quod exterius geritur, aliud item quod per fidem capitur ; ad sensum corporis
quod pertinet, corruptible (Radbert also said this) est, quod fides vero capit incor-
ruptible. Exterius igitur quod apparet non est res sed imago rei, mente vero quod
sentitur et intelligitur, Veritas rei." Even to the last sentence a Radbertian meaning
can be given ; but this ceases to be possible where Ratramnus as often happens —
designates the whole rite (and it is the rite with which he is generally concerned) as
"figura," in " figuram sive memoriam dominicae mortis," " repraesentatio memoriae
dominicae passionis," and, fiirther, as " pignus " (see c. 10, II, 16 " figurate facta " ; :
c. 88 : "corpus et sanguis quod ab illo corpora et sanguine

in ecclesia geritur, differt
quod in Christi corpore jam glorificatum cognoscitur ; et hoc corpus pignus est et
species, illud vero ipsa Veritas. Hoc enim geretur, donee ad illud perveniatur ; ubi vero
,
ad illud perventum fuerit hoc removebitur." Reconciliation with Radbert is absolutely

impossible where Ratramnus strictly disowns the " permutatio corporalis," and reduces
everything to a memorial meal c. 12 "et quomodo jam Christi corpus dicilur, in
; :
quo nulla permutatio facta cognoscitur ? " c. 1$: " dicant, secundum quod permutata
sunt; corporaliter namque nihil in eis cernitur esse permutatum." Catholics excuse
him here by saying that he meant to deny "conversion " into a crassly realistic body.
" Fatebuntur igitur necesse est aut mutata esse secundum aliud quam secundum corpus,
ac per hoc non esse hoc quod in veritate videntur, sed aliud quod non esse secundum
propriam essentiam cernuntur. Aut si hoc profiteri noluerint, negare corpus esse san-
guinem Christi, quod nefas est non solum dicere verum etiam cogitare." c. loo :
" panis et sanguis qui super altare ponuntur, in figuram sive memoriam dominicae
isle
mortis ponuntur, et quod gestum est in prjeterito, praesenti revocet (dominus) memoriae,
ut illius passionis memores effecti, per eam efficiamur divini muneris consortes."
visible reality for faith as real food of the soul.^ The extremely
obscure and at least seemingly contradictory statements of
Ratramnus make it hard to hit on his meaning correctly. In
any case he taught no mere figurative conception. We shall
perhaps be most certain to do him justice if we observe what
above all and what he did not, intend. He meant above
he did,
all and verify the absolute necessity of faith
to emphasise
throughout the rite the sacrament belonged to faith, existed
;
for it alone, etc.^ In this he coincides entirely with Radbert,

who shared the same interest equally strongly. But in what he
would not allow he is distinguished to his advantage from
Radbert since everything is given to faith he would not recognise
;
the common reality, because in view of the latter faith and

disbelief are indifferent. To Ratramnus reality (veritas) is
concrete being as it presents itself to the senses ; for this very

reason " sub figura " and " in veritate "
he looks on as mutually
exclusive opposites. Faith has its own realities, which are real,
but only disclose themselves to faith Ratramnus designates ;
— —
them mistakenly as " sub figura," because they are copied by
sensuous realities, or, better, rest behind the latter. Radbert, on the
other hand, believed himself compelled, precisely as an Augustin-
ian, to conceive Veritas as reality in general hence to him " sub ;
figura " and in veritate are not opposites, since heavenly realities
when they appeared as earthly had in his view to manifest them-
selves sub figura. But Ratramnus was superior to Radbert as a
Clfisttan, in that he did not conceive the presence of the heavenly
in the earthly to be a miracle against nature, i.e., he followed a
different notion of God from the latter.s The mysteries of
faith are not brought to pass by a continual interruption of the
1 C. loi :
" Fides non quod oculus videt sed quod credit accipit, quoniam spiritualis
est esca et spiritualis potus, spiritualiter animam pascens et setern^ satietatis vitam
tribuens, sicut ipse salvator mysterium hoc commendans loquitur spiritus est qui vivi-
:
ficat." C. 49 : " Christ's tiue body is distributed in the Lord's Supper according to
its invisibilis substantia, and that because the invisibilis substantia is like the potentia
dimni verbi. Many similar passages elsewhere."
2 C. II : "Nam si secundum quosdam figurate hie nihil accipitur, sed totum in
veritate conspicitur, nihil hie fides operatur, quoniam nihil spiritale gerilur . . . nee
jam mysterium erit, in quo nihil secreti, nihil abditi eontinebitur."
3 Ratramnus always thinks of the God who excites and nourishes faith.
1
natural order, but they rest as a world administered by the

Holy Spirit behind the phenomenal world, and what takes place
in the Lord's Supper is not a departure, by means of a special
miracle, from operations such as are carried out, e.g., in Baptism
{c. 17, In a word, Ratramnus would have the mystery
25, 26.)
of the Lord's Supper recognised as in harmony with the method
by which God bestows salvation through Baptism and the Word,
because as an Augustinian and Christian he shrank from the
brutal miracle (the idea of God is here involved), and because
he was afraid that otherwise nothing would be left to faith.
It is in this that the importance of Ratramnus consists. But
it isquestionable whether the learned king for whom he wrote
was any the wiser for his book for not only is Ratramnus con-
;
fused in his terminology, but also in his matter,' because he would

not give up the idea that the efficacy of the sacrament was objective,
whence it always follows that the miraculous efficacy depends
not on the recipients, but on the means. Hence we find numer-
ous expositions in which he talks like Radbert by the ministry :
of the priest the bread becomes Christ's body, nay, it is trans-

formed.° He does not venture to pursue consistently the
parallel he seeks to establish with baptismal water for the ;
words " body and blood of Christ " are too strong for him. It
is sinful to deny that the consecrated elements are Christ's
body.3 Thus the difference between Radbert and Ratramnus

can be reduced to the following formula. The former openly
and deliberately transferred the spiritual teaching of Augustini-
anism into the realistic conception, and gave clear expression to
the belief of the Church. The latter attempted to maintain
complete spiritualism in the interests of a loftier notion of God
and of faith, but he was not in a position to carry this out
absolutely, because he himself was far too much under the
influence of the formula. Therefore he only speaks clearly
1 The difference between Paschasius and Ratramnus is really very subtle if we con-
fine our attention to the question of the reality of Christ's body (and the transforma-
tion); but it is not quite so subtle as is represented by Schnitzer (I.e., 167-174). It
was, besides, long before Ratramnus' work was held to be heretical.

2 C. 16, a commuiatio is taught, " sed non corporaliter sed spiritualiter facta est . . .
spiritualiter sub velamento corporei panis . . . corpus et sanguis Christi existunt."

= See C. 15-
X
322 HISTORY OF DOGMA. : [CHAP. VI.
where he is disowning the miracle." The future belonged to

Radbert ;= nay, Ratramnus' book, it would seem, did not even
excite attention, but afterwards met with the most curious
history down to the present day.s
The by Radbert, a Pandora's casket of
doctrine expressed
problems to future scholars, was extremely intelligible to the
simple. Nothing can guarantee the success of a dogma more
fully than the possession of these two qualities. It received its
application, above all, in the Mass. The thought of the repeated
sacrificial death of Christ, long since conceived, was now as
firmly, established as that of the repeated assumption of the
flesh. What could now approach the Mass ? There was no
need to alter the ancient wording of missal prayers, which still,
when they dealt with the sacrifice, emphasised the sacrifice of
praise for who attended to words ? The Mass as a sacrificial
;
rite, in which the holiest thing conceivable was presented to
God, had, however, ceased long ago to end in participation, but

found its climax in the act that expiated sin and removed evil.
It was received into the great institution that conferred atone--
ment. On this a few further remarks are necessary, although
no dogmatic conflicts arose.
The frequent repetition of the Mass (in one and the same
Church), and its simple celebration (without communion), show
that this rite was not intended so much for the congregation as for
God: God was to be appeased. The ancient element of commem-
oration on the part of the celebrants had, especially since the day§
of Gregory been made an independent service, and the com-
I.,
munion had been, as it were, changed into a second celebration.*

The practice, according to which the laity looked on while the
priests partook, the laity taking merely a passive part the rite —
being consummated on their behalf while the priests performed —
1 Ratramnus has the elements of Zwingli and Calvin's doctrines. Besides, in rela-
tion to the invisible substance, he assumes the identity of the eucharistic and historical
body, or, at any rate, will not give it up.

^ In connection with Matt. XXVI. 26, he defended himself skilfully against Rat-
ramnus, whom, for the rest, he does not name.
s Bach, I.,
p. 191 ff.
* Walafried Strabo was the first to j.ustify expressly the celebration of the Lord's
Supper without communicants, and therefore Masses (Migne, T. 114, col. 943 ff).
CHAP. VI.] THE MASS AND PENANCE, 323
the ceremony, corresponded to the prevailing view, especially

among German peoples, that laymen were second-class Chris-
tians, and that partaking in the Lord's Supper was for them
associated with grave dangers. The holy rite belonged to the
laity, so far as represented a form of the Church's intercession
it
peculiarly effective for the mitigation of sin's penalties.

The' Mass was thereby included in the Church's atoning insti-
tute but for laymen the Church had long been essentially a
;
baptismal institution, and an establishment for the reconciliation

necessary after baptism. In order to understand this, and the
immense extent and value acquired by the practice of Confes-
sion in the West, we have to observe the following points.
I. The prevailing notion of God was that ol omnipotent absolu-
tism, requital and remission. It was in these conceptions that

God was a present and really living God, and they directed the
thought and practice of trained theologians and laymen. The
hidden God was manifest in the fact that he suffered no sin to
be unatoned but he was merciful because he granted remissions
;
(through the mediation of heavenly persons and the Church) a fact

which, indeed, did not contravene the general rule that every-
thing must be expiated or punished. This notion of God was
already complete when the Church entered into the national life of
Germany. It is accordingly not to be regarded as a German
modification, but as a conception in harmony with and rising
from the unrefined religious consciousness, and especially the
Latin spirit. Cyprian and Gregory I. attest this! But as this
conception of God could easily combine with German ideas of
justice, it was also well adapted to train uncivilised peoples.
It had long been settled on purely Latin soil that no sin com-
mitted after Baptism could be simply forgiven, but that due
penitence (pyenitentia legitima), or fitting satisfaction (satisfactio
.congrua) formed the necessary condition of remission. In
keeping with the strict regard for law and sense of duty,
which distinguished the Latin Church more than the Greek,
ecclesiastical methods paid more heed to the sins of Church
members in general. And in accordance with the conviction
that sins represented breaches of contract or outrages, of greater

or less gravity, the Church had been working at the codification
oi pmnitentia legitima, or the definition of the measure of satis-

faction, since thesecond half of the third century. All this took
place without German influence.
2. This system had originally been elaborated with a view-
to public penance, in presence of the congregation, for the sake
of reconciliation, and thus referred to open and gross sins, for
which as a rule only a single act of penance was possible. It
therefore suffered a severe blow when all society became
Christian, and magistrates, being themselves Christians, pun-
ished these gross offences of different kinds, even such as the
State had not formerly dealt with. The whole ancient institu-
tion of penance collapsed in the East. It came almost entirely
to an end in the West also in its old form, in so far as the list
of public sins, punished by the

Church alone, was always
growing smaller.' But in the German kingdoms, where the
Church had not sunk to the level of an institution for worship in
the State, and had not entirely abandoned higher religion to the
monks, where, on the contrary, it long went hand in hand with
the State as a Latin institution with its old Roman law, and
trained the nations as a universal power, it did not renounce
its penance regulations, which besides suited the German spirit.
But a change was necessary in this case also, a change in which
German dislike to public humiliations had perhaps as great a
share as fear of purgatory and the tendency of the Church to
establish throughout the regulations of its monkish castes, in
other words, to monachise the secular clergy, and finally also
the laity. From this there sprang a deepening of the notion of
sin, since new sins, namely, the " roots of sin " themselves were
put in the place of thfe old mortal sins,^ but there also resulted
an externalising of the notion, as " satisfactions," which are
more tolerable in the case of great overt offences, were now
also applied to these " roots " (intemperance, fornication, greed,
anger, ill-temper, secret fear and dislike, presumption and
pride).
But, above all, this was followed by the intrusion of the
1 When the State punished, e.g., in cases of murder and theft, the ecclesiastical
consequences followed without further trial.
2 This was also effected in the Greek Church through the action of the monks.
— ;
Church into of private life. What had been the rule

all affairs
in primitive times, namely, the subjection of the private life of

the individual to the control of the Church, returned in an
entirely new form. But then it was a congregation of brethren
which lived together like a family, and in which each was the
conscience of the other now one institution and one class ruled
;
the irresponsible community and while the latter was restrained,

;
indeed, from extremes, yet, since no one was really capable of

properly controlling the life of the individual, consciences were
sophisticated by incentives and sedatives, by a frequently over-
refined morality (legislation as to fasting and marriage), and by
extremely external directions as to satisfaction. The transition
to the new practice resulted in the laity themselves demanding
the intercession of the Church, the reading of the Mass, invoca-
tions of the saints, etc., to an increasing extent, since preachers
had always been telling them that they were a sinful people,
incapable of coming near God,' that the priests held the keys,
and that the Church's intercession was the most effective. But
the" gradual settlement of monachist practice in the world-
Church alone explains the facts that actual confession of all
sins to the priest, and the imposition of all sorts of satisfactions,^
for the hundred and one offences in life and conduct, in a word,
ikidX private penance in the presence of the priest, became the rule.
This state of matters began in the Iro-Scottish Church, which was

in an eminent degree monachist. There penitential regulations
—
meaning private penance were, so far as we know, first drawn up
for the laity, who were directed to confess their sins to the priest,
as the monks had long been enjoined to do in their cloisters.
From Ireland, books dealing with penance came to the Anglo-
Saxons (Theodore of Canterbury), to the Franks and Rome
they did not establish this footing without opposition, and after
they had become a settled institution, they very soon gave
offence again, since their directions became more and more
1 See the view taken of the laity in the forged fragments of the pseudo-Isidorian
decretals.
2 Among these, pilgrimages of a year's duration played a great part, a fact that
shows the monks' contempt of family life and civic occupations ; for these were
severely affected by pilgrimages.
326 HISTORY OF DOGMA, [CHAP, VI.
external and questionable.- To the practice of private penance

which thus arose is to be ascribed the new conception of j?;2,
and the new attitude to it, which now became the ruling one
in the West, namely, the facile and deadening readiness with
which every one confessed himself to be a mortal sinner. What
was more tolerable in the ranks of the monks, nay, was in many
cases the expression of a really sensitive conscience I mean —
the readiness at once to confess oneself a sinner, and to make
a less and less distinction between sins and sins threatened —
when transferred to the masses to become a worthless practice,
because one that blunted the moral sense. Men sinned, and
coolly confessed wholesale to a host of sins, lest they might
miss the miraculous help of the Church, for some one or other
actually committed. If the men of those days had not been so
simple system
this would even then have made them thorough
But as it was, it worked more like an external
hypocrites.
system of law a —
police institution, which punished wantonness
and barbarianism, outbreaks of wild energy and passion. This

was not the intention, but it was its actual import, so far as a
certain salutary effect cannot
be denied it.
The institution was already certain in its operations, and
1,
made great strides especially in the later Carlovingian period,

since the complete separation of the clergy and laity, which
had been obliterated in the Merovingian age, was only then
made once more complete, and measures began at the same
time to be taken to make monks of the former. Nevertheless
entirely awanting. It was not
the dogmatic theory was still
settled that the priest alone could forgive sins — it was still
conceded be expiated without the priest,

that trifling sins could
by means of prayer and alms. Nor were the value and result
of priestly forgiveness fixed was it declaratory
: or deprecatory?
stated to be absolutely necessary to confess
Nor had it been
all sins to the priest.' And finally no fixed definitions had
of Karl Muller's arguments in his treatise

1 adhere to these statements, in spite
I
" Der Umschwung in der I.ehre von fler Busse wahrend des 12 Jahrh." (Abhandl.
fiir Weizsacker, 1892, p. 2S7 ff.)- KI am not mistaken, MuUer has been misled by
st^te of, penance and confession, at the close of ancient
Morinu-i, and has looked at the
too much from the standpoint of the
and the beginning of mediteval Church history,
been deduced from the matter itself of mortal and venial sins,
or of the treatment of public and private offences. It was only-
long afterwards that all these points were decided. We see
clearly here that ecclesiastical practice does not wait for
dogmatic, indeed, that it does not really need it, as long as it
goes with the great stream. The Church possessed a sacrament
of penance with all its subtleties for many centuries, during
which dogmatic knew of no such thing, but span a finer thread.
4. This is not the place to give the interesting history of the
growth of satisfactions. Let us, however, notice four points,
(i) The old, more or less arbitrary, definitions dealing with the
selection alms, lamentations, temporary exclusion),
(prayers,
and duration of compensatory punishments were supplemented
to an increasing extent by new ones (pilgrimages), as well as by
definitions taken from the Old Testament law and Germ.an legal
ordinances. Charlemagne took a great stride in advance with
reference to dependence on the Old Testament. But this led to
the computation of compensatory penalties being itself looked at in
the light of a divine dispensation, and definitions not taken from
the Old Testament were also regarded from the same stand-
point. (2) The performance of penance was a means of com-
—
pensation, so far as if no sin had preceded it it would have —
established merit in the sight of God, or would have bestowed
something upon him. (It was accordingly not merely a sub-
stitution for punishment, but also a positive property in the
sight of God, and therefore a compensation for injury.) Ac-
cordingly the whole institution was included under the concep-
tion of merit, from of old connected with works and alms
(operibus et eleemosynis). But if the performance of penance
was after all the presentation of something valuable (sacrifice)
to God, something which gave him pleasure, and that/^r its
own sake, it became more effective if as many and as good
modern Roman conception he has at least pre-supposed too great a uniformity of
;
theoretical ideas — if may

speak of such.
one I cannot accept the blunt assertion on
p. 202, that down to the twelfth

century the priest's absolution was always regarded
as simply identical with divine forgiveness, and therefore as indispensable. There
was no doctrine proper on this question for centuries, but almost only a practice.
As soon as the doctrine is again introduced, doubts also arise, to be once more
gradually allayed.
persons as possible took part in it. If a saint helped by his

intercession, then God could not really resist for there was ;
nothing to be made good by the saint, and therefore his offering

was a pure present to God. This dreadful idea that the mighty
Judge in Heaven could demand nothing more of the saints,
while they were able to bestow much upon him, makes it
evident that the system of intercessions necessarily played the
most important role in the system of penance. The conception
of Christ taken by faith, that he represents men in the Father's
presence, was perverted in the saddest way, and he was dragged
into this system and since nothing was too lofty or precious
;
to be included as investments in this petty calculation, the

repeated sacrificial death of Christ was itself the most important
instalment. Masses were the surest protection against sins'
penalties in purgatory, because in them Christ himself was
presented to the Father, and the infinite value of his Passion '
was anew brought before him, in other words, the merit of that
Passion was multiplied. Hence the accumulation of a treasury
of masses was the best " palliative " against the fire, or the most
reliable means of abridging it.
(3) Since performances of penance

= —
the penitent disposition
was always presupposed in theory had an objective value to —
God, and were at the same time in part equivalents, they could
be bartered. Not only, however, could like be bartered for like,
but a less valuable act could be taken as full payment, if circum-
stances rendered a complete discharge difficult, or if it was
supplemented by the intercession of others, or if the slighter
performance sufficiently displayed the penitent mood. It had
been the custom in earlier times to shorten the duration and
diminish the number of penances imposed by the Church after
the penitent had proved his sincerity. This was appropriate
enough, for the purpose was to effect reconciliation with the
community but it was now applied to the penitent's relation to
;
' In the fourth ch. of the Synod of Chiersey, 853, it is called " pretii copiositas
mysterii passionis ;
" that is also an anticipation of Anselm's theoiy of satisfaction.
2 The peregrinaliones also belong to them. That indulgences rest quite essentially
on the custom of pilgrimages and their commutation is shown by Gotz, Ztschr. f. K. -
Gesch., voUXV., p. 329 ff.
! —
God. It was at the same time remembered that the strict Judge
was also merciful, indulgent. Thus arose the system of
i.e.,
remissions, i.e., oi commutations and redemptions, or oi substitutions.

The latter originated in German conceptions, but they had a
latent root even in ancient times. Commutations and redemp-
tions are first met with in any number in the eighth and ninth
centuries. " Weregeld " or blood-money is found sanctioned
then but they already follow from the ancient system, and had
;
certainly been practised in the cloisters long before the

Carlovingian age. Therewith,.; however, indulgences were
created, as soon, namely, as the possibility of commutation was
admitted and legally fixed, independently of the special circum-
stances, of the individual case. These commutations, which
were only established against opposition, completely externalised
the whole system. Above all, they interested the Church
financially, and made it, already the great landed proprietor,
into a banking establishment. How poor was the Greek
Church, with its scanty trade in relics, pictures, and lights,
compared with her rich sister, who drew bills on every soul
(4) The whole system of merits and satisfactions had really
no reference to sins, but only to their punishment. But since
everything ultimately served this system, men were trained to
evade sins' penalties as well, securely, and cheaply as possible.
The element which seemingly mitigated the dangers of this
—
whole view namely, that sin itself was left out of sight, since it
must be forgiven by God who [excites penitence and faith
necessarily resulted in the case of the multitude in their paying
little or no attention to sin, and in their thinking only of
punishment. Even if they finally entered the cloister, or gave

their goods to the poor, they did so, not because they loved God,
but because they wished to escape his punishments. Punish-
ment ruled the world and the consciences for whose possession
good and evil angels contend.
It would not have been necessary to discuss this practice
within the limits of the history of dogma if it had not had a very
active influence on dogma in the succeeding period. It had
wound itself round Augustinianism from the beginning, and had

prevented it from obtaining complete sway in the Church ; it
33° HISTORY OF DOGMA. [CHAP. Vi;
influenced Christology even in the time of Gregory I., and then

in the classic period of the Middle Ages it acted decisively upon
and remodelled all the dogmas that had come down from
antiquity.'
1 On the history of penance, see Steitz, Das romische Busssacrament, 1854 ; Was-
serschleben, Bussordnungen d. Abendl. Klirche, 1851 ; v. Zezschwitz Beichte, in Her-
zog's R.-E. II., p. 220 ff., System der Katechetik I., p. 483 ff., II. i, p. 208. ff. j
Gobi, Gesch. der Katachese in Abendland, 1880. Further, on the history of the ordi-
nances of penance, Wasserschleben, Die irische Kanonensammlung, 2 ed., 1855 and ;
Schmitz, Die Bussbiicher und die Bussdisciplin der Kirche, 1883. On the latter's
attempt to refer the regulations of penance to Rome, see Theol. Lit.-Ztg., 1883, col.
614 ff. On the development of the separation of clergy and laity in the 9th century,
and the beginning of tlie monachising of the clergy, see Hatch, " Growth of Chris-
tian Institutions," Chap. IX.

On divine service and discipline in the Carlovingian age, see Gieseler II., i (1846)
pp. 152-170; on the constitution of German law-courts, feuds, and penance, outlawry
and death of the victim, sge Brunner, Deutsche Rechtsgesch. I., pp. 143 ff., 156 ff.,
1 66 ff; ; on the principle of personality and the amount of blood-money and penances.
I.e., p. 261 ff.; on the personal' rights of the clergy, p. 269 f.; and on the rise of
written law, p. 282 ff. If we review the state of the development of German law in
the age of the Merovingians, and compare with the ecclesiastical discipline of pen-
it
ance, as it was independently evolved on Latin ground until Gregory I., we are
astonished at the ease with which these systems could be and actually were dovetailed
into each other. The Roman law received by the Church underwent great modifica-
tions within its Communio of the Church mili-
pale caused by the conceptions of the
tant with the saints, of satisfactions, merits, and the claim of the Church to remit
sins. Above all, the Church's right to punish, which had originally accepted the
Homan thought of the public character of crimes, and had treated them accordingly,
became more and more a private right. That is, transgressions against God were
—
regarded as injuries done to God not the violation of public order and the holy,
inviolable divine law and accordingly the idea arose, and got more and more scope,
;
that they were to be treated, as it were, like private complaints. In such cases the
alternative, either punishment or satisfaction (compensation), was appropriate. But
as regards satisfactions, all the liberties were necessarily introduced that are inherent
in that conception, namely, that the injured party himself, or the Church as his repre-
sentative, could indulgently lessen their amount, or could commute or transfer them,
etc. It is obvious how easily this view could fuse with the German one. One or two
examples are sufficient. German law held the principle either outlawry or penance. :
This corresponds to the Church principle either excommunication or the performance

:
of satisfactory acts of penance. According to German law, vengeance did not require
to be executed on the evil-doer himself, but might be on a member of his clan ; nay,
it was held in Norway to be a more severe vengeance to strike the best man of the
clan instead of the murderer. The Church looked on Christians as forming a " clan "
with the saints in heaven, and the performance of penance could to a certain extent,
or entirely, be passed on to the latter Christ had, above all, borne beforehand by his
;,
death God's vengeance on the ill-doing race of his brethren. German law held,
similarly, that the compensation, the payment of the fine, could be divided. Accord-
ing to the practice of the Church, the saints interceded if prayed to, and presented
their merits to God, taking from the sinner a part of the penance imposed upon him.
Afterwards the Church positively adopted the German inslitulion, and let earthly
comrades, members of the family, and bondmen share in the performance of
friends,
penance in order to lighten the task. In one respect, however, the action of the
Church had a softening and beneficial effect. It restricted to an extraordinary extent
the capital punishments closely connected with outlawry. They were objectionable
in themselves, and doubly so where they were regarded, on the ground of a primitive
priestly law of punishment, as a human sacrifice offered to the gods (Brunner, pp.
I73-I77)- Even in the Roman period the Church in Gaul exerted itself to soften the
Roman administration of justice where the latter admitted capital punishment. It
continued its efforts with success in the Merovingian age, so that arrangements were
more and more frequently made in substitution for the death penalty. The chief
argument urged by the Church was doubtless that God did not will the death of
the sinner, and that Christ died an atoning and sacrificial death for all. Thus
Christ's death obtained an extraordinaiy importance. It became the grand achieve-
ment, whose value even softened the earthly right of punishment.
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BOUGHT WITH THK INCOME

CORNELL UNIVEHSITY UBBABV

3 1924 092 343 916

The original of this book is in

the Cornell University Library.

There are no known copyright restrictions in

Edited by the Rev. T. K. CHEYNE, M.A., D.D., Oriel Professor

Professor of Apologetics and New Testament Exegesis, Free

HARNACK'S HISTORY OF DOGMA. VOL. V.

Dr. ADOLPH HARNACK

TRANSLATED FROM THE THIRD GERMAN

translated. This volume deals with the epoch-making service of

There does not yet exist a recognised method for presenting

the experiment has always been successful.

History of Dogma Kaftan has given a sketch of the study in

his work on the Truth of the Christian Religion Moller and

Koffmane have devoted special attention to the sections dealing

the Reformation with a thorough knowledge of ecclesiastical

PREFACE TO THIRD EDITION.

I also proposed to make other additions and corrections on the

original form of the book, without finding myself compelled to

He has examined the reformed conceptions in connections in

It has been said that in this account the development of Dogma

the proclamation of the actual state of things and of thoughts,

Dogma shows an advance and a rise in all its main features

and philosophical formulas. Just as little could it occur to me

notion of a church which prevailed for 1 300 years, are no churches.

my account a verdict recently passed by a younger fellow-

DEVELOPMENT OF ECCLESIASTICAL DOGMA.

Augustine the standard autliority till the period of the Re-

Augustine as teacher of the Church - - - - 4

CHAPTER II.~Western Christianity and Western Theologians

Revolution under Constantine : Origen's theology and

Grjecised Western Theology and the Old Latin type enter

Unity of the Church - - - -

Ordination ------- i6i

As a heavenly communion -----

in their degree of con-

formity to tradition - . . . jng

CHAPTER v.— History of Dogma in the West down to the

Decree de libris recipiendis - - -

CHAPTER VI.— History of Dogma in the period

of Dogma and of the Church ....

Elipandus, Felix and Beatus is Augustinian 281

Frankish Church. Synod of Frankfurt - - - 306

a The notion of God at its root - - -

DEVELOPMENT OF ECCLESIASTICAL DOGMA.

Expansion and Remodelling of Dogma into a Doctrine of Sin,

Grace and means of Grace on the basis of the Church.

" Domini mors potentior erat quam vita . , .

Lex Cliristianorum crux est sancta Christi."

The history of piety and of dogmas in the West was so

this whole time as forming-one period. It is indeed possible to

it is necessary first (Chap. II.) to describe the distinctive

4 HISTORY OF DOGMA. [CHAP. I.

anterior to his appearance. It will then appear that while the

of Christian piety, altering much that belonged to vulgar

cultus, and demonstrated and cherished it in the domain of the

finally, that in his religious tendencies, as generally, he remained