Introduction
In 529 AD, in the small, but active community of Orange, located in southern Gaul, a council was held. It was not the first council held here. In 441, the first Council of Orange was held. It was presided over then, as it was in the second, by a Bishop of Arles. At that time, the bishop was Hilary, and the great determinations of this council were two: that the dying might receive the sacrament of the Eucharist “without the reconciliatory imposition of the hand,” and that the sacrament of Penance “is not to be denied to clerks who ask for it.”[1] The second council weighed far heavier matters, matters which had a much closer relation to the text of Scripture itself, and whose consequences were far more important. The Second Council of Orange had the duty of defending the doctrines of Augustinianism against those of semi-Pelagianism. The council generated a series of canons which were favorable to the Augustinian doctrines of grace and the role of the Holy Spirit, however it is clear that there is some synthesis of Pelagianism; further, it must be noted that if this council is to be taken as a victory for Augustinianism, it was only a battle won, not the war.
Augustinian and Pelagian Soteriology
The early Medieval Era was lively with debate over the soteriological doctrines amongst followers of Pelagius, and those of Augustine of Hippo. Augustine wrote widely about numerous doctrines of the Christian faith. His writings on soteriology, however, were perhaps more deeply considered than to which some were accustomed. Augustine saw that man, in the Fall of Adam, had been completely corrupted, and was, therefore, unable to exercise himself to saving faith. Because of the corruption of his entire person, man is then dependent upon the grace of God to fully enable him to exercise saving faith. In Augustine’s view, man is completely incapable of participating in his own salvation, whether beginning it, or seeing it through. “He was completely convinced that he had no power to change his moral nature or to make himself holy; that whatever liberty he possessed, however free he was in sinning, or (after regeneration) in holy acting, he had not the liberty of ability which Pelagians claimed as an essential prerogative of humanity.”[2]
Out of Augustine’s doctrine of the moral inability of man flowed two additional doctrines: grace, and predestination. Since man is unable to even incline himself to any moral good, then they cannot be saved by their own merit. Thus “if men are saved it cannot be by their own merit, but solely through the undeserved love of God,” and “the regeneration of the soul must be the exclusive and supernatural work of the Holy Ghost; that the sinner could neither effect the work nor cooperate in its production. In other words, that grace is certainly efficacious or irresistible.”[3] Understanding, then, that men are regenerate by the work of the Holy Spirit alone, and that a great number of men do not exhibit the evidence of this work, the grace of regeneration must be bestowed by God’s sovereign election, by which some men are segregated to eternal life while others are assigned to torment. That is, “election to eternal life must be founded on the sovereign pleasure of God, and not on the foresight of good works.”[4]
Pelagious’ view of the role of grace cannot be defined as the logical opposite of Augustine’s, for he still saw that grace was necessary in salvation, and that predestination played a role, but he defined these items entirely differently, heretically in the view of the Church.[5] Pelagius held that men, in the Fall, were affected, but were not rendered unable to pursue God in faith. His comment on Romans 8:29, “For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brethren,”(Romans 8:29)[6] makes his synthesis of these doctrines clear.
Those who according to his purpose were called as saints. For those he foreknew. According to which he planned to save by faith alone those he had foreknown were going to believe, and whom he called gratuitously to salvation; how much more greatly will he glorify those who work for salvation. And predestined them to be conformed to the image of the glory of his son. To predestine is the same as to foreknow. Therefore he foresaw those who were going to conform in life, and willed that they be conformed in glory, because ‘he will transform our lowly body, conforming it to his glorious body. ‘In order that he be the firstborn of many brethren. ‘The firstborn from the dead’ in glory.[7]
On grace and predestination, this comment enables one to see that Pelagius held to a view of salvation that was dependent upon the work of man, without need of grace. In addition to this, Pelagius redefines predestination as foreknowledge. Instead of an act of God whereby he segregates the righteous from the damned, “to predestine is the same as to foreknow.”[8] On the surface, many orthodox would not entirely disagree with this statement. For Pelagius, however, predestination is on the basis of foreknowledge, not the other way around.
Basic Pelagianism was ultimately condemned, and he was excommunicated by Pope Innocent II, and Pope Zosimus, though Pope Zosimus would have restored him, again, but could not due to pressure from the African churches.”[9] This reticence on the part of Zosimus hints at the environment of that day. Not all were convinced of the error of Pelagius, and although Augustine was not producing his theological work in the area of soteriology in view of Pelagius’ teaching, “the Pelagian controversy gave those issues polemical sharpness and urgency.”[10]
There were those who viewed Augustine’s soteriology with skepticism, if not outright animosity. This was particularly the case in the south of France where “they looked upon several of Augustine’s theories, if not as manifest errors, at least as dangerous exaggerations.”[11] It is at this point that a brief look at the men who led the causes of Augustinianism and Pelagianism will help to bring the Second Council of Orange into sharp view.
Of Cassian, Faustus, Prosper, Fulgentius, and Caesarius
John Cassian who served as abbot of St. Victor of Marseilles, was first to express a more subtle “semi-Pelagianism” in his writings.[12] Cassian, a disciple of Chrysostom, struggled with the synthesis of grace and merit, which distinguished him from the adopted doctrine of Pelagius which excluded grace in the origination and accomplishment of faith. Ultimately, it was his view that “the last word in the problem of salvation ultimately depended on free-will.”[13]
Augustine’s disciple, Prosper, was a layman who continued the defense of Augustinian doctrine after the bishop’s death. He, with Hilary, Bishop of Arles up to that point in 429, summarized the semi-Pelagian doctrine of the monasteries in Southern Gaul in three points[14]:
- Man is able, without grace, to desire and will, but not to perform, supernaturally good deeds; he can begin to believe, but he can not impart to himself complete faith.
- God wills all men to be saved and offers to all the grace of salvation. All can cooperate with His grace and persevere in it, if they will.
- There is not absolute predestination; predestination and reprobation, considered in God, are consequent upon His foreknowledge of the merits and demerits of each individual; considered in man, they are merely the consequences of his conduct.
God’s desire for all men to be saved, and the understanding that Augustine’s soteriology required God to have a role in sin, were particular sticking points for the semi-Pelagians. Again in the region of southern Gaul, after the death of Augustine, the attack became sterner. Prosper softened Augustine’s view of the absolute predestination of the elect and reprobates, but “admit that God’s salvific will is only realized in the predestined, whose number is unalterably predetermined.”[15]
Importantly, Prosper sought the support of the papacy against the heresy of semi-Pelagianism. To some degree he received it, but not in a full degree. To the dismay of the semi-Pelagians, Rome “formally condemn(ed) the error..as regards man’s ability of conceiving good desires and holy thoughts without grace, of beginning the work of his conversion and salvation, and cooperating with God’s grace and call by his own strength.”[16] To Prosper’s dismay, “nothing is said of grace efficacious by itself, of predestination and God’s will to save either all or a certain number of men; nay, these questions are formally set aside.”[17] This action settled the atmosphere of contentious debate for a short while, at least enough time for new contenders to arise.
Out of the monastery at Lerins, in roughly 452, came an abbot by the name of Faustus, who took up the semi-Pelagian mantle. In taking up this mantle, however, he took the doctrine strides farther in reducing “all graces to mere external helps.”[18] It took some time before Faustus’ views created a stir, and they did so at Constantinople where the Scythian monks went into an uproar. Appealing to Pope Hormisdas, at that time of 519, he replied to give them succor, advising them not to take Faustus’ work as authoritative, and to appeal to Augustine to discern the teaching of the Church.[19] Hormisdas’ reply, however, did not succor the Scythians, and they instead appealed to Fulgentius, an African bishop. He along with twelve other African bishops formed a synod to respond to Faustus. It is clear from their response that Augustinianism was very much alive and strong in that region. Fulgentius was even willing to hold the line on Augustine’s double-predestination doctrine, stating, “God’s will is omnipotent; it is always fulfilled; hence, if not all men are saved, it is because God does not will it; and the proof that God does not will it, is that He does not give to all the grace of faith and charity.”[20]
It is into this re-kindled fray that Caesarius came. Having succeeded Hilary as Bishop of Arles, he sought to calm the dispute between the Augustinians and the semi-Pelagians. “Although he did not accept the extreme assertions of Augustinianism, Caesarius did accept its spirit and main teachings.”[21] Furthermore, it was Caesarius who championed the Second Council at Orange.
The Second Council of Orange, an Augustinian Victory?
Caesarius, though now serving as Bishop of Arles, was trained at Lerins which now “leaned toward the Pelagian views, especially Faustus, once its abbot, not Bishop of Riez…and Caesarius himself had fallen under suspicion in the minds of Bishops of the See of Vienne, that rival of Arles, when they gathered for debate in 528 in Valence”[22] The following year, 529, Caesarius presided over the Council of Orange.
The Council itself seems to have been nothing extraordinary. In fact, the fourteen other bishops presiding were in town, not for the council itself, but had come for the consecration of a basilica.[23] Prior to the council Caesarius had worked with Felix IV, then Pope of Rome, to produce a document which represented the authorized teaching of the Church. Using the work of Augustine, Caesarius assembled a series of tracts, nineteen of them, and sent them to Felix. Felix subsequently, “subtracted part, retained part, added seventeen sentences from the work of Prosper, and sent the amended document back for the assent of the Bishops, who signed it at Orange.”[24] Felix subtracted that part of Caesarius work which dealt with two of the most hotly contested issues, those issues to which adherence qualified a theologian as a dyed-in-the-wool Augustinian, predestination and reprobation. To this adjustment by Felix, Caesarius included one more sentence, “drew up a conclusion in the shape of a profession of faith, and submitted the whole thing to the bishops gathered at Orange.”[25] The final twenty five canons received final approval from Pope Boniface II in 531, and are, in sum, as follows[26]:
- That the consequence of Adam’s sin is not confined to the body, or to the lower faculties of the soul, but involves the loss of ability to spiritual good.
- The sin derived from Adam is spiritual death.
- Grace is granted not because men seek it, but the disposition to seek is a work of grace and the gift of God.
- The beginning of faith and the disposition to believe is not from the human will, but from the grace of God.
- Believing, willing, desiring, seeking, asking, knocking at the door of mercy, are all to be referred to the work of the Spirit and not to the good which belongs to the nature of fallen man.
Broadly speaking, this council represented a compelling deference to the Augustinian view of the moral inability of man, and of grace. The important doctrine of predestination was, however, as before, left untreated.
The Second Council of Orange is touted by one as “the death-blow of the ‘semi-Pelagian doctrine which had raged so vehemently in southern Gaul.”[27] By another, “no doubt, at the end of those protracted controversies, which had lasted more than a century, St. Augustine was the victor.” The problem with making this claim is four-fold: 1. the decision made by the council was largely left unpublished, 2. the canons of the council failed to carry out the logic of Augustinianism to its final measure, namely predestination, 3. the semi-Pelagians regained a foothold and persecuted Augustinians within roughly 200 years, and 4. what the Roman Church ended up with, and confirmed at the Council of Trent, is a convolution of Augustinian and Pelagian ideas that are incompatible.
On the first point, medieval churchmen relied on compiled excerpts of canon law. The canons of Orange, however, “w[ere] not included in many of the major compilations of canon law. Even when one could find the acts of [the council] in such a compilation, the historical context that was necessary to make them intelligible was not apparent.”[28] To the extent that “the acts of [the council] were not generally available until their publication just before the Council of Trent…950 years later!
Second, the Church continued to sweep under the rug the necessary consequence of original sin, the Fall of Adam, and, in him, all his posterity, and the need of the grace of regeneration. This necessary consequence being predestination. Failure to include this in the canons must be regarded as a severe failure. Not just of logic, but of desire to hold a consistently biblical soteriology. In addition to this, the canons hold to the infusion of grace at the sacrament of Baptism. In canon thirteen is noted, “The freedom of will that was destroyed in the first man can be restored only by the grace of baptism, for what is lost can be returned only by the one who was able to give it.”[29] Further, in the statement of faith which Caesarius drew up to conclude the canons he wrote, “According to the catholic faith we also believe that after grace has been received through baptism, all baptized persons have the ability and responsibility…”[30] The inclusion of the infusion of baptismal grace into this canon is incompatible with the rest of its doctrinal assertions, for this makes the action of man precede the reception of grace, and the means of that reception.
Third, although there was a brief pause in the controversy, the “semi-Pelagians party still continued numerous and active, and so far gained the ascendency, that in the ninth century Gottschalk was condemned for teaching the doctrine of predestination in the sense of Augustine.”[31]
Fourth, the Council of Trent re-affirmed the commitment of the Church to original sin and the moral inability of man. We read, however, that the incompatible doctrines of moral inability and prevenient grace are still set together in contradiction to a consistent biblical soteriology. Canon three anathematized anyone who states, “that without prevenient inspiration of the Holy Spirit and his aid a man can believe, hope, and love, or can repent, as he should, so that on him the grace of justification may be conferred.”[32]
Conclusion
Though some tout the Council of Orange as a victory for Augustine, and the death-blow of semi-Pelagianism, it was not. These four evidences, that the church seemed to hold the canons at a distance and keep them largely unpublished, that the council failed to follow the doctrines to their logical conclusion, that persecution of Augustinians arose not 200 years after the council, and finally that the Council of Trent retained the contradicting doctrines of original sin and prevenient grace, demonstrate the Council of Orange failed to meet its match. The doctrines of semi-Pelagianism are alive and well today, and prevail in many evangelical churches.
These doctrines will continue to prevail as long as proud men remain on the earth. This is because these somewhat modified doctrines of Pelagius match well with what men wish to think about themselves. It does not come naturally to a man to think that something could be fatally wrong with him. The evidence since the Fall, is that the intrinsic desire of the flesh is that man be a god unto himself. Hence, in Genesis 11, we encounter the city of Nimrod, where men gathered to heaven to exalt themselves to heaven rather than depend upon the condescension of Yahweh.
It is therefore, just as Augustine argued so long ago, that it is the work of the Holy Ghost to overcome the idol of man’s heart, and turn him toward the Lord his Maker. For, as John Calvin has indicated, the heart is an idol factory. Only a supernatural work, not of prevenient grace, but of regeneration, delivering men from death to life, is able to shut down this factory and cause men to turn “to God from idols to serve the living and true God, and to wait for His Son from heaven, whom He raised from the dead” (1 Thessalonians 1:9-10).y
[1] Oscar D. Watkins, A History of Penance Being a Study of the Authorities, vol. 1, The Whole Church to A.D. 450, 2 vols. (New York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1920)., 457-458.
[2] Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology, vol. 2, Anthropology, 3 vols. (Peabody, Mass: Hendrickson, 2003)., 160.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid.,160-161.
[5] David W. Johnson, “The Myth of the Augustinian Synthesis,” Lutheran Quarterly 5, no. 2 (1991): 158.
[6] Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture quotations are from the NASB.
[7] Johnson, “The Myth of the Augustinian Synthesis,” 161.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Ibid., 158.
[10] Ibid.
[11] Joseph Tixeront, History of Dogmas, vol. 3, The End of the Patristic Age (430–800) (St. Louis, MO: B. Herder, 1916), 265.
[12] Ibid., 265-266
[13] Ibid., 268.
[14] Ibid., 271.
[15] Ibid., 277-278.
[16] Ibid., 280
[17] Ibid., 281.
[18] Ibid., 285
[19] Ibid., 287
[20] Ibid., 291
[21] Ibid., 293.
[22] Eleanor Shipley Duckett, The Gateway to the Middle Ages Monasticism, 3rd print., Ann Arbor paperbacks (Ann Arbor, Mich: Univ. of Michigan Press, 1971), 41.
[23] Tixeront, History of Dogmas, 295.
[24] Duckett, The Gateway to the Middle Ages Monasticism.
[25] Tixeront, History of Dogmas, 295.
[26] Hodge, Systematic Theology, 168.
[27] Duckett, The Gateway to the Middle Ages Monasticism.
[28] Johnson, “The Myth of the Augustinian Synthesis,” 158-159
[29] “About the Council of Orange,” Center for Reformed Theology and Apologetics, accessed May 6, 2016, http://www.reformed.org/documents/index.html?mainframe=http://www.reformed.org/documents/canons_of_orange.html.
[30] Ibid.
[31] Hodge, Systematic Theology, 168.
[32] Henry Bettenson, Documents of the Christian Church, 2nd Edition. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1963), 263.
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