Medieval philosophy a new history of western philosophy volume 2 ( PDFDrive ) 301

GOD

Human freedom operated unhindered before the Fall: that is one reason
for the gravity of Adam’s sin. But when Adam fell, his sin brought with it
not only liability to death, disease, and pain, but in addition massive moral
debilitation. We children of Adam inherit not only mortality but also
sinfulness. Corrupt humans tainted with original sin have no freedom to
live well without help: each temptation, as it comes, we may be free to resist,
but our resistance cannot be prolonged from day to day. We need God’s
grace not only to gain heaven but to avoid a life of continual sin (DCG 7).
The grace that enables human beings to avoid sin is allotted to some
people rather than others not on the basis of any merit of theirs, whether
actual or foreseen. It is awarded simply by the inscrutable good pleasure of
God. No one can be saved without being predestined. The choice of those
who are to be saved, and implicitly also of those who are to be damned, was
made by God long before they had come into existence or done any deeds
good or bad.
The relation between divine predestination and human virtue and vice
was a topic that occupied Augustine’s last years. A British ascetic named
Pelagius, who came Wrst to Rome, and then after its sack to Africa,
preached a view of human freedom quite in conXict with Augustine’s.
The sin of Adam, he taught, had not damaged his heirs except by setting
them a bad example; human beings, throughout their history, retained full
freedom of the will. Death was not a punishment for sin but a natural
necessity, and even pagans who had lived virtuously enjoyed a happy
afterlife. Christians had received the special grace of baptism, which entitled them to the superior happiness of heaven. Such special graces were
allotted by God to those he foresaw would deserve them.
Augustine secured the condemnation of Pelagius at a council at Carthage in 418 (DB 101–8) but that was not the end of the matter. Devout
ascetics in monasteries in Africa and France complained that if Augustine’s
account of freedom was correct, then exhortation and rebuke were vain
and the whole monastic discipline was pointless. Why should an abbot

rebuke an erring monk? If the monk was predestined to be better, then
God would make him so; if not, the monk would continue in sin no
matter what the abbot said. In response, Augustine insisted that not only
the initial call to Christianity, the Wrst stirring of faith, was a matter of sheer
grace; so too was the perseverance in virtue of the most devout Christian
approaching death (DCG 7; DDP).
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