Give a summary of the issues at stake in the Pelagian controversy.

To understand the Pelagian controversy is an attempt to understand the doctrine of grace or what exactly God did in Jesus Christ. While the issues are complex, dealing with notions of free will, and original and fallen human nature, the basic question is one regarding Christ's work on the cross. It is helpful to begin any discussion on the controversy with the simple statement that what was at stake, for Augustine, was the basic contention that the forgiveness of sins revealed on the cross must be universal and radical. The universal forgiveness offered refers to the fact that all of humanity can be and is included in the work of God in Christ. There is none excluded from God's promise (an important motif in Augustine). Conversely, this also means that there is none who is not sinful, denying that essential relation towards God that makes humanity the imago dei (pp 440-443). Its radicality refers to the fact that there is nothing which the human person can contribute to that unique work of God's grace, no place from which human merit can obligate God. This brings together the two major occupations of Augustine; namely, God alone grants salvation and cannot be compelled to act outside of the divine will itself and that humans do merit condemnation for their own individual sins or denial of that initial claim of God on each person. More precisely there are four areas of controversy that illustrate the two points of human responsibility and divine sovereignty stressed by Augustine based on his understanding of the needs of the message of the cross. They center on the nature of free will, an understanding of sin, an understanding of grace and finally what constitutes justification.

Scholars hotly contend Augustine's understanding of free will. Most agree that what Augustine was at pains to avoid was a double charge against God. The first charge, the so-called Manichaeist position, was that because humans were material beings, and matter was intrinsically impure, human will could not help but be skewed towards evil. This dualism of spirit-matter owed much to Greek Platonism and amounted to a form of fatalism or determinism in regard to human actions. Humans, by very nature of their creation, are fated to do evil. The grave difficulty in this is that it casts aspersion on the Creator and tends to alleviate or acquit human agents from responsibility. Pelagius, perhaps unfairly, epitomizes the other end of the spectrum which Augustine needed to guard against. For Pelagius, the human will must be perfectly free, else God's condemnation against sin seems to be unjust as human agents are merely following their nature. What arises from 'nature' cannot be held as responsible or free. Pelagius thought that on creation, God gave to humanity this gift of an initially pure or free will which became corrupted over time and warranted condemnation as a result. The difficulty in this position, for Augustine, is that it seemed in theory possible that a person, however unlikely, could avoid sinning and therefore warrant or force God to grant salvation. God's freedom - that God is not under any obligation by creaturely beings - is threatened, as God must grant what the human agent has warranted. For Augustine this makes salvation not an operation of divine grace but akin to a work of human agents.

Augustine's solution was to recast the stoical notion of free will in light of Christology and in light of the Genesis account. It is the latter, especially with his account of the transmission of sin as traducianism (carried in the father's sperm) that tends to be rejected by modern theologies. The Christological demand that sin is universal and radical just as the work of Christ is universal and radical is maintained in most theological systems. Augustine understood the Genesis text as presenting two 'humanities', one in a state of perfection with God to which Christ restores us, and the other 'fallen' humanity which we now universally share. Even in the former perfect state Augustine thought the presence of God necessary to keep human wills concentrated towards the good, grace needed even then. However, it is important to note that even here human choice is only to concur with God, or freedom of the will is circumscribed and assisted by God. Human person are free only in the sense that it is the will that moves the agent, not free in the range of options (humans can never of themselves choose God) available even in the pristine state. After the fall, humanity's will, retains its essential freedom; it is the will not nature that moves the agent, but this agency is hopelessly colored by the propensity towards evil or sin created in the absence of God's goodness. It should be clear that what is problematic in Augustine is the simple and indirect equation of will to action (usually moral) as opposed to will as related to concurrence with God. This tends to drive sin to become an understanding of moral choice rather than the much broader biblical basis of sin as a failed relationship towards God. In addition, there is the theological difficulty of whether the juxtaposition of pre-fall and fallen creation is the proper manner by which to understand God's relation to the world, or, alternatively, whether a Christological understanding is better meaning that Christ explains 'Adam'. In the first case, the stress is on creation and anthropology and drives the doctrine of sin away from a Christological understanding despite Augustine's intent to make sense of the demands of the cross.

It follows that Augustine's understanding of sin, as understood from the cross and the demand of divine freedom, is such that it is impossible for the human creature to think and to act without the influence of sin. Sin, in his understanding, is universal and radical. The supremacy of the revelation of Christ demands this. It is universal in that all humans share in its influence (Christ died for all), and it is radical in that its scope within human nature is such that it determines human action and attitude (only Christ could redeem). Put into other terms, sinfulness determines individual acts of sin. Augustine employed three images to explain sin, all under the rubric of original sin. First, sin is like a hereditary disease passed (literally) from father to child. Second, sin is a power which holds persons captive and from which no one can escape. Finally, we are all guilty, even before manifestation of a single sinful act, of being sinful. Therefore sin and guilt are both original. Various theories of imputation and federal headship - Adam as the original perfect example of humanity who fell meaning that each subsequent person would have as well as perfect Adam did, or that we are share in Adam's humanity - have tried to explain Augustine's postulation of original guilt. The difficulty in Augustine's position is that it tends to charge God on creation and in creation as being unjust or absent. In the former case, why shouldn't have God enabled humans to have enough sense to avoid sinning and in the latter where is God in the midst of our sin at present? Philosophical answers, and perhaps this is where the issue lies, usually articulate the value of free choice as a semi-divine reflection and gift of God towards humanity. Nonetheless, if there are problems with Augustine's understanding of sin they pale to the problems encountered in Pelagius on sin.

Pelagius believed sin as a state of humanity to be the manifestation of an act of sin. This means the human will is intrinsically unmarred by sin until one actually 'falls', usually called the 'first fall' theology of sin. Alongside this is the claim that one could, as God is just, avoid sin if one were only able to heed the resources (and he is unspecific here) that God makes available - presumably for Pelagius these are found in the fellowship and life of the Church. Conversely, God would not and could not punish what could not be truly achieved by humans. An astute reader will recognize this as part of the post-Enlightenment and specially Kantian critique of Christian theology and the move towards liberal Protestantism. So where does the theological, or more precisely Christological, problem arise in Pelagius? The answer is the very nature of the doctrine of sin.

Pelagius' understanding of sin means, and he did assert that some Old Testament saints did, that some human beings could avoid sin, or the first fall and thereby warranted salvation on their own grounds. This position has two understandings. In the first, one can understand Pelagius as arguing that on its own, human nature is self-sufficient and therefore God's agency in the fallen world is redundant. Akin to the latter deist position, God is really only involved in the creation and perhaps later in judgment of the world. The interim is left to humans acting according to natures. This is the more modern-influenced reading of Pelagius. The second reading is that Pelagius understands a concurrence between God and human agency. God gives aid to human agents, particularly in terms of revelation and the church, and thereby is 'interested' but the stress falls on what human agents do with that aid. Surprisingly, Augustine (and the Synod of Arles) is sympathetic to the latter understanding (p 449). It must be, then, that another issue is the contention. This is the Christological foundation of the entire project hinted in our introduction.

If Christ died for all sinners on the cross then this work must in itself be the sole justification for God's gracious dealings with sinners. The universality and radicality of sin demanded by the Christian claim in the work of Jesus Christ means that there can be no other way by which humans find redemption. Pelagius' point that some may and did merit salvation on the basis of their response to God either in original gifting or in concurrence renders that entire claim moot. The cross itself was not sufficient to win salvation but needed human action as well to make perfect that sacrifice of God. More simply, Christ did not die for all people but only for those who merited salvation already. The theological contradiction is manifest - why then the cross? The only suitable answer, and once more we see a theological decision is made away from traditional Christology, is that the cross is an example of a person yielded to God not the place of God's action of redemption. Subsequently, Trinitarian theology and the whole host of Christian doctrines that deal with the unique ontological nature of Jesus Christ need to be reconfigured. Augustine's qualm, then, is not only on the nature of free will (itself problematic as it seems a non-biblical theme) but concerns the very nature of Christian revelation as the revelation of the Triune God. The Pelagian controversy is a microcosm for very basic theological problems and its importance lay in that stress. Much contemporary theology has concerned itself with dealing with some of the questions raised, not by Pelagius, but by Augustine's answers, especially concerning free will, traducianism and original guilt. The solution is towards a Christological foundation for those terms, rather than a creation-based (from the Genesis account) account favoured by Augustine. In this, particularly Protestant and Catholic theology has found itself returning to the Greek fathers as resources (p 442).

Why did Augustine believe in original sin?

This has been dealt with in the response to question 1, to which the reader is referred.

Imagine that you are explaining the idea of 'grace' to a non-theologian with a limited attention span. What could you say about the idea in 200 words or less?

Grace, in all its theological expansion as prevenient, operative and so forth, is simply God's determined effort to maintain relationship with humanity (and creation) despite human attempts to thwart or deny that essential and constitutive relation. As properly God's effort it is given to humanity on the basis of God's self-decision (see Barth pp 470-471) to allow humanity to participate in the Triune life and fellowship derived from God's action in and towards Christ. In regard to humanity, grace is the fulfilment of, for the first time, truly free human 'beingness', and participation in the selfless love of God reflected towards ourselves and thereby towards other beings. To live in grace is to live as our closest selves and in proper stewardship of creation in expectation of the hope given in Christ.

Martin Luther is associated with the doctrine of 'justification by faith alone.' What did he mean by this? And what were the alternatives he rejected?

There are many ways of understanding Luther's theological 'breakthrough' which are needed in order to explain both Luther in context and western theological stress over eastern stresses. The first and most often-presented way of understanding Luther's 'justification by faith alone' stress is by placing Luther against the medieval Catholic world, and in particular against a scholastic mis-stress associated with theologians such as Gabriel Biel and Pierre d'Ailly representing the via moderna school. Other more known figures such as Luther's Catholic arch-opponent, John Eck, have given the impression that the theological problems of the via moderna were the only and definitive statement of Roman Catholic theology. Recent scholarship has challenged this bias and assumption, showing a vibrant theological tradition akin to Luther's 'breakthrough' in medieval Catholicism, if only in the schola Augustiniana moderna. A better way forward in understanding Luther is to see the change of stress in his language from the medieval preoccupation with 'salvation by grace' to the early modern humanist-influenced preoccupation with the individual's preoccupation with one's own 'justification by faith'. In this instance what is new is the introduction of the key concept of 'individual' in a stress on grace that has always been part of the Christian tradition.

However, before turning to Luther, an understanding of 'salvation by grace' must be attempted if the thesis that the change is one of emphasis is to be carried. To facilitate this, a distinction between the early and late scholastic period is helpful as concentrated on two theologians in Aquinas and Ockham. Aquinas' understanding of salvation by grace extends Augustine's work (p 450) by introducing a distinction between actual and habitual grace. Actual grace, for him, concerns direct and immediate actions on the human person by God, whereas habitual grace concerns the longevity of those actions by attempting to understand how a series of singular events can create in the human person a lasting disposition towards God. To use an analogy, how can grace continue its work in the human agent? To explain this Aquinas tended to understand salvation and grace in ontological or substantial terms, meaning some substance introduced or altered by the initial act of grace within the human soul. The introduction of grace thereby effects a permanent change in the human person. The question then follows whether that initial change requires any additional assistance to move the human person along the path of holiness. Aquinas' answer was a decided 'yes'; the human person needs to be continually caught up in grace, via the sacraments in particular, in order to know fully the depth of God's grace although one is becoming continually 'Christ-like'. The person, started on the way to holiness in salvation, needs intermediaries of grace in order habitually (habitus) to become more like the object of faith. Another option, favoured by Ockham, is that one does not need any further intermediaries for the action of grace and that one action of grace is sufficient. To be 'in grace' is the recognition of the divine attitude towards the person rather than the Thomist pre-occupation with substance.

The shift of emphasis towards attitude over substance or state is important to note. In the latter, to know grace involves God's coming to or alteration of the situation in which humans find themselves. In the former, our initial disposition or how we prepare ourselves before God's action is an important consideration. The medievals used the terms 'condign merit' to summarize the former relation while 'congruous merit' expressed the latter term. Of course, this raises another question to consider: 'Whether God is obliged to act in response to human actions?' Ockham's contention with Aquinas' intellectualism is that it makes God ultimately dependent on human response, even if only in a feedback. Instead, he argued that God must have the freedom, lest one loses divine sovereignty, to act as God desires, regardless of human response. Ockham's position is known as voluntarism. The only determinant on God is that which God imposes. It then becomes a question of how one is aligning oneself (quod in se est) to what God has ordained (the covenantal pactum of creation), the shift of merit to preparation despite Ockham's intention to mitigate merit as understood as a response of habitual grace in Aquinas.

Luther then is closer to Aquinas than to the egress of Ockham's criticism of the redundancy of habitus-theology with his insistence that the human person can do nothing initially to merit grace. However, the shift from Aquinas and Ockham is a shift to consider not the entire schema of salvation in a larger divine plan of covenant (pactum) but how this one person finds grace. In a sense, Luther in his initial theology cuts across the entire issue of the wider drama of salvation. It is interesting, at least to me, that Luther does not remain individualist in his understanding of justification as the Reformation develops. One can make a strong case that his persecution of the Anabaptist traditions especially in regard to infant baptism and variance with the Zwinglian Eucharistic understanding show him to be in greater continuity with the medieval tradition and its notion of a salvific pactum than with the radicals and Christian humanists.

Luther's 'breakthrough' was a return to the strong Augustinian position that the human person could contribute nothing to their status of justified before God. In reading the New Testament, Luther understood 'God's righteousness' as a punishing aspect of the divine person on wayward sinners. However, in Christ this righteousness or holiness was satiated and instead given to the sinner. God met the precondition of righteousness by giving in the Son what humans required to be justified. God does not give according to our merit but gives according to the justice and love of God in Christ. The access to this is faith.

Faith, or 'justifying faith', for Luther, was not knowledge (therefore not intellectualist) but personal. Luther doesn't use the terms of personalism (although many think him to be a key point in the history of the idea) but moves to the same effect in his own description of Christ given 'for us'. This action of God calls for our trust (fiducia) - our trust that all God promised is given on our behalf in the sufficiency and efficacy of the cross and acting in light of that promise. Finally, and as the bedrock, faith joins the believer to Christ, nearly returning to the ontological or factual language of Aquinas and the high scholastics. The justification of the sinner is based on the grace of God and is received through faith. It is important to note a further two expansions of 'justifying faith'.

The first expansion, and an often charged point, is that Luther is not an advocate of 'faith in faith' or pisteology. This would mean that faith itself is a precondition of salvation; something a person must do in order to find God. Luther is clear that faith is given as a gift itself. The human person cannot find or create faith, all that can be done is to give assent to what God has done as God has already met the precondition for justification in Christ. This brings the second thought to the fore, the notion of 'forensic justification'.

Unlike Augustine, Luther (and Melanchthon) thought the location of righteousness to be outside the human person, being only in Christ properly, and imputed to the Christian. Augustine, on the other hand, thought righteousness to be something internal to the Christian, imparted to the Christian. Augustine is clearly close to the ontological stresses of Aquinas. Luther's understanding of imputation is that the Christian enjoys an 'alien' or 'foreign' righteousness that belongs properly only to Christ but is given as if the Christian were Christ. This signals an important shift in theology. In the Augustinian notion of impartation the acts of being declared and becoming made righteous are the found in the same event of justification (habitus style theology). Something quasi-ontological within the human person is responsive to grace and the means of grace. Luther's understanding breaks the two events into two different movements, at least theoretically. The act of being declared justified is justification while the becoming righteous, even in light of persistent sin, is the process of regeneration. Regeneration, however, is still on account of Christ and not due to some ontological or even relational change in the human person. This permitted Luther to understand the persistent presence of sin within the believer (simul iustus et peccator).

'If you aren't predestined, then go and get yourself predestined.' How does this attitude relate to Weber's thesis concerning the origins of capitalism?

Max Weber's thesis on the relationship between capitalism and Protestantism remains a major cultural interpretation of the modern Christian West. At its core is the Calvinist theological concern, in Puritan and Reformed terms, with evidences or assurances of election by God. Weber's particular genius was to equate the rise of capitalism and its relationship to risk (meaning a capitalist is one who 'risks' money in order to make more money) with the sense that if one is successful in that risk then one can see a providential hand and thereby proof of special relationship to God. In classic Calvinist terms, the making of money is proof of the syllogismus practicus. The practical syllogism of predestination was as follows:

All who are elected exhibit evidences of that election
I exhibit those evidences
Therefore I am elect.

Weber understood capitalists as understanding the making of wealth as a form of divine blessing or calling. This is bred in the bone of 'generic Protestantism' but Calvinism gave a deepening to the thesis.

Calvinists, Weber thought, straddled two opposite ideas in their theology and subsequent business or labour. The first was an absolute security in personal salvation due to the fact that salvation was God's own purview rooted in the doctrine of election (pp 466-469). Weber was particularly keen on the hyper-Calvinist position of absolute election as seen in the Synod of Dort (p 469). This, at least in a very odd manner, lifts the Calvinist out of the ethical world (and Weber thought capitalism flawed) in their labours, permitting a causal ethical attitude towards the making of money or one's work at least in terms of eternal destiny. Crudely put, what one did was irrelevant to one's destiny. Secondly, and more centrally, the Calvinist could fulfil their 'calling'; see proofs of election, in the making of money from seed capital or the blessing of their labours. The more money made, the better evidence of God's obvious pleasure. This double 'psychological' matrix of call-fulfilment and call-assurance meant that the Calvinist capitalist, for Weber, could risk with ethical impunity and limited sense of consequence and look to the success of that action as evidence of God's favour in the first instance. There is circularity to the process: making money showed the correctness of the risk. Of course, for Weber, the concept of 'risk' is imperative and derives from his belief that the Calvinist is not at all concerned with 'this' world except as a necessary hurdle to the next. This is a flawed caricature of Christianity.

Other critiques have pulled Weber's thesis apart on numerous grounds (too many to articulate) that other more positive and concrete factors such as thrift, stewardship and community could explain business acumen and that other groups apart from Calvinist originating Protestants were equally adept capitalists, including the Roman Catholic merchants of the Renaissance. What does remain attractive, however, in Weber's thesis is the nexus between an abstract theological thought and its manifestation in the cultural and practical life of people influenced by it. In this case, the rather abstract doctrine of predestination and worry of election is tied to the dominant economic factor of the last 400 years. Nonetheless, at least in North American circles, the doctrine of 'prosperity' still haunts Christian denominations on the relationship between blessing and status of one's relationship to God.