THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
ultimate cause of everything that happens in the universe and of human fortunes. Duns Scotus gave the first impulse to the undisguised " Pelagianism " of the late Middle Ages with his doctrines of " merit of the fit " and " act of love," which would tend to shift all back to foreknowledge. By his emphasis on the absolute freedom of the divine will he furnished weapons for the uncompromising opponents of this entire development. During the centuries immediately preceding the Reformation the status of the doctrine of grace was but superficial, except where the profounder view was guarded by the Augustinian friars. Early in the fourteenth century, the Thomist Thomas Bradwardine (q.v.) assailed Pelagianism, and was followed by John YVyclif (q.v.), an Augustinian of the most deterministic type, who identified the " true Church " with the " number of the predestined " {De ecclesia, i.) and denied that the pope could be the head of such a body since " without special revelation " he could not even know whether he was a member of it,
The teaching of the Roman Catholic Church on
predestination was unchanged by the Reformation.
In its doctrine of grace the Council of Trent returned
to the position of earlier scholasticism (vi. 5, 16),
but as regards predestination contented
6. Later itself with warding off deductions
Roman perilous to the Church (vi. 9 sqq.).
Catholic The doctrine itself remained funda- View. mentally undecided, so that toward the end of the sixteenth century a controversy could break out between the Thomistic Dominicans and the Semipelagian Jesuits. A Congregatio de auxiliis gratia? sat for nine years without being able to condemn either party as heretical. When, however, in the following century Jansenism renewed the unabridged teachings of Augustine, the papal condemnations of Jansen (see Jan-sex, Cornelius, Jansenism) and Pasquier Quesnel (q.v.) not only rejected the doctrine of possible salvation independent of the Church, but also a series of genuine Augustinian concepts, such as irresistible grace. In recent years there has been an unmistakable tendency toward the Semipelagian Jesuit position. It is held, with tacit recommendation of the theory of foreknowledge, that " the Church never wishes to resolve that controversy ; each one, therefore, may without impairing the faith hold that opinion which appears more probable and seems to aid the better in resolving the difficulties of unbelievers and heretics " (G. Perrone, Pralectiones theologicoe, 47th ed., Turin, 1896.)
In the early days of Protestantism, predestination, as the expression of the power of grace from personal experience, opposed individual certainty of salvation to the claims of the Church, and formed the one central dogma common to all the Reformers. Before beginning his career as a 7. The Re- Reformer, Luther had expressed an
formers. Augustinianism which theoretically
opposed the rigid deductions of the
system; but later he passed far beyond the position
of Augustine to an actual supralapsarianism which
regarded even the fall of Adam as divinely decreed.
He included in the nature of man, or the enabling grace of Augustine, not only possible but actual union with God. For the theoretic maintenance of this position there was at hand the doctrine of the absoluteness of the divine will, as posited not only by Duns Scotus and the nominalists who followed him, but also by Laurentius Valla and (for Zwingli) by the mystic pantheist Pico della Mirandola (sec Pico della Mirandola, Giovanni). The argument was, accordingly, carried not only from the empirical servitude of the sinful will to the allefficient grace of God, but also from the all-comprehending activity of God to the inconceivability of free will. All the Reformers proceeded from the assumption that this doctrine alone was in harmony with a truly living faith. Luther was led to make a systematic presentation of his doctrine of predestination by the De libero arbitrio of Erasmus (Basel, 1524), to which he replied in his De servo arbitrio (Wittenberg, 1525). Without these predecessors, Zwingli would scarcely have advanced extreme views 'in his Anarnnema de providenlia Dei (1530). Starting from the postulates that God, as the unchangeable good and infinite power, reigns by his providence throughout all that transpires in the universe, he affirmed that man is not different from nature by having an undetermined will, but by a capability of knowing God and entering into fellowship with him. Such knowledge is realized in the irrevocable law which is the expression of the divine will. The law, however, can not overcome the conflict of spirit and flesh, because of which man had to fall, but only discloses it. It follows that the fall was necessary to the complete divine revelation. God did not merely foresee but caused it. This act was not revolting to God's ethical being; for he is above law. God's goodness manifested itself first in the fall but especially in salvation. Should election be based on foreknowledge (which is excluded) God would be degraded into man. Luther's later views display the fact that the newly acquired faith did not explain the qualities of the regenerate by the almighty working of divine grace but realized the grace of God, through the preaching of the words of promise. As a matter of fact, however, Luther's type of faith, based on the Scriptures and the sacraments, often emphasized the objective efficiency of the means of grace in such a way as would ultimately undermine the dogma of predestination. Zwingli, on the other hand, derived the assurance of salvation not merely through the preaching of the Word, but also through the efficacious Word; that is, through the personal life of faith awakened by God. Though he was thus led to depreciate the means of grace, the doctrine of predestination with him and his successors remained more permanently associated with the consciousness of faith. The divergent estimate attached to the external means of grace, moreover, caused Zwingli to weaken the bounds of the Church, so that he could teach the salvation of certain heathen and of unbaptized children dying in infancy; while the identification of the " invisible Church " with the elect, only occasionally made by Luther, formed an important element of his theology. Luther's doctrine of predestination underlies