Augustine, the Medieval Theologians, and the Reformation
Saturday, November 11th, 2006
Reformed theologian B.B. Warfield (1851-1921) famously said, �The Reformation, inwardly considered, was just the ultimate triumph of Augustine�s doctrine of grace over Augustine�s doctrine of the church.� Paul Rorem, ironically the Benjamin B. Warfield Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Princeton, disagrees and develops an argument that both sides of Warfield�s dictum need serious corrective input from Medieval studies: �Warfield�s own perspective needs to be reassessed or even reversed regarding the Reformation as an Augustinian debate, not to mention his Protestant leap over all of the medieval theologians in appealing directly to St. Augustine.�[1]
The following is a brief summary of Rorem�s article, which contains much food for thought.
First, Warfield�s view of Augustine�s view of �the Church� needs to be qualified by the recognition that Augustine did not separate ecclesiology from sacramentology. But then, neither did his Medieval expositors who were the creators of the (perhaps surprisingly to many Reformed theologians) multifacted phenomenon of �Augustinianism.� From the Donatist controversy (4th century) to the disputes between Radbertus and Ratramnus (9th century) to the battle of Berengar of Tours with Lanfranc (11th century), widely divergent theologians who could in entirely legitimate senses all call themselves �Augustinians,� the nature of the Church was always related to the sacraments. Both Church and sacraments were considered objective realities and were objectively related to each other, whereas this was not true for the type of theology Warfield represented. Warfield�s anachronism consists in first assuming that Augustine�s idea of �the Church� was limited to Cyprian�s identification of it with the empirical-episcopal institution, and second, that it is possible to speak accurately of �Augustinianism� while simply jumping from Augustine to the Reformers.[2]
Second, Warfield�s view of Augustine�s view of �grace� needs similar qualification from Medieval sources. Gottschalk of Orbais and Hincmar of Rheims, who fought over predestination in the 8th century, were both mistaken about Augustine�s own understanding of �foreknowledge.� As well, a key source for understanding �Semi-Pelagianism,� the decrees of the Second Council of Orange in 529, were unknown to most Western theologians until the time of Thomas Aquinas. Further controversies, involving such worthies as Wycliffe, Bradwardine, Gregory of Rimini, and Gabriel Biel, made it extremely difficult to know exactly what �Augustinian��let alone �Pelagian��meant. A measure of the difficulty in working one�s way through the maze of Medieval �Augustinianism� and trying to distinguish it from Augustine himself may be seen in the fact that both the Protestant Luther and his Catholic opponent Cardinal Seripando believed the great Saint fully supported their own contradictory causes.[3] As Rorem puts it, �Despite Warfield�s implication, Augustine�s doctrine of grace was not so easily identified and was certainly not so captive to a Protestant monop0ly.�[4]
Rorem concludes with two points. First, he revisits Gottschalk VS. Hincmar on predestination in order to demonstrate that Gottschalk�s view of Augustinian teachings on the subject completely ignored Augustine�s understanding of mediated grace. Second, Rorem again notes that Warfield�s dichotomous understanding of grace and the Church simply is not present in Augustine, and thus, on its most basic level, even without descending into the deep waters of Medieval divergences within �Augustinianism,� Warfield�s dichotomy is false. The Reformation, rather than �setting Augustine�s (Protestant) doctrine of grace over against his (institutional) doctrine of the church,� might be better called a failure than a success�namely, �the failure to keep a Protestant or low-Augustinian doctrine of the Church together with the Tridentine-Augustinian doctrine of a healing or transforming grace.� Rorem thinks this reversal would be just as flawed as Warfield�s initial reductionism, but the point of raising it is to observe that �In both oversimplified caricatures, however, the linkage of grace and the means of grace, of election and the sacraments, is lost.� Warfield�s dictum tends to unravel the multifaceted nature of Augustine�s views. For this reason it must come under the careful scrutiny that can only be afforded by a more detailed examination of the development of �Augustinianism��and this means a more detailed look at the Middle Ages.
Linknotes:
1. �Augustine, the Medieval Theologians, and the Reformation,� in The Medieval Theologians: An Introduction to Theology in the Medieval Period, ed. G.R. Evans [Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2001], pp. 365-372. This quote is from pg. 365. ↩
2. Ibid., pp. 368-369. ↩
3. Ibid., pp. 370-371. ↩
4. Ibid., pg. 371. ↩
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