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Original Sin, Free Will and Grace in The 1 ORIGINAL SIN, FREE WILL AND GRACE IN THE WORKS OF JEREMY TAYLOR by ANDREW HARVEY A thesis submitted to The University of Birmingham for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Department of Theology and Religion School of Philosophy and Theology The University of Birmingham December 2010 University of Birmingham Research Archive e-theses repository This unpublished thesis/dissertation is copyright of the author and/or third parties. The intellectual property rights of the author or third parties in respect of this work are as defined by The Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 or as modified by any successor legislation. Any use made of information contained in this thesis/dissertation must be in accordance with that legislation and must be properly acknowledged. Further distribution or reproduction in any format is prohibited without the permission of the copyright holder. 2 Abstract Taylor is an early example of a divine who wanted to find a way of remaining an orthodox Christian while rejecting the Augustinian doctrine of original sin. Taylor could not see how the term ‘sin’ could be correctly applied to anything but an individual’s freely-chosen acts. However, he recognised that the reduction of the Christian concept of sin to particular sins constituted the Pelagian heresy. He attempted to avoid it by placing the insight behind the traditional doctrine in the challenge posed to the will by a naturalised version of the Augustinian fallen state, which was nonetheless morally indifferent in itself. The insights and confusions in Taylor’s treatment of original sin and his anthropology, notably regarding the human will and its freedom, provide a fruitful basis for a more general consideration of the question of ‘orthodoxy’ concerning original sin and the classical Christian doctrine of man. 3 Table of Contents Introduction p6. Chapter 1: Secularising the fallen state, and upholding free choice: Taylor in context. p9. 1.1 Epicureanism, scepticism, Platonism, and naturalising the fallen state p15 Chapter 2: Taylor’s Augustinian anthropology without the Fall. p42 Chapter 3: Will, free will and the nature of 'original sin': Augustine, Taylor and Coleridge's Kantian critique. p71 A. Augustine and Taylor on the will and original sin p71 3.1 Augustine on the will and sin p71 3.2 Pelagius p85 3.3 Taylor’s anthropology and the nature and freedom of the will p92 B. Taylor’s attempt to reconcile an ‘Augustinian’ anthropology with libertarian freedom, and Coleridge’s Kantian critique p116 3.4 Metanoia p123 3.5 Natural propensities and the freedom of the will p126 3.6 Taylor, Coleridge and Kant on the propensity to sin p130 Chapter 4: Taylor on Nature and Grace. p136 4.1 Taylor on Nature and Grace p136 4.2 Taylor's use of the Fathers in his ‘non-lapsarian’ account of nature and grace p147 4 4.3 Taylor's revised Augustinianism on the goodness of the flesh: the example of sex and marriage p169 4.4 Flesh and sinful flesh p178 4.5 Taylor’s understanding of the ‘first Adam’ as human nature in itself p185 4.6 Conclusion to ch.4 p194 Appendix: Newman and Taylor on nature and grace and faith and reason. p198 Chapter 5: Taylor and natural law. p208 5.1 Taylor's idea of nature in the context of questions of natural right and natural law p209 5.2 Taylor’s rejection of natural law and its implications p215 Conclusion p250 Bibliography p259 Note on references and abbreviations: I have used the editorial divisions and numbering (including Roman numerals, or not etc.) of the editions I refer to. If referring to a single text for several pages, or giving a glancing reference, I have at times included the references in the text, rather than footnotes. I give a full reference for secondary literature in the first note for each work, and in the bibliography; then use the author's name and date of publication elsewhere. I have given the volume number and page reference for citations from Taylor's works, and full bibliographical information in the bibliography. In the first note for each, I preface the reference with the title of the book they come from, and thereafter generally 5 abbreviate this to the initials of the title: thus, Unum Necessarium: UN; Ductor Dubitantium: DD; Great Exemplar: GE. I refer to sermons by title, volume and page number. Taylor's developed views concerning my subject are chiefly found in UN, published during the Interregnum (1657) and his great casuistical work, DD, published in the earliest years of the Restoration (1660-2); as well as several important sermons; the Great Exemplar, contains an earlier version. I have either given the titles of Augustine's works in full in English (according to the translation I have used) or Latin, or used the Latin initials; the most common by far being: Conf.: Confessiones: Confessions; De Trin.: De Trinitate: On the Trinity; CD: De Civitate Dei: The City of God; DLA: De Libero Arbitrio Voluntatis: On Free Choice of the Will; DNC: De Nuptiis et Concupiscentia: On Marriage and Concupiscence; DNG: De Natura et Gratia: On Nature and Grace. For simplicity, the abbreviation of Against Two Letters of the Pelagians appears as ATLP. 6 Introduction Jeremy Taylor (1613 - 1667) was a celebrated figure for many generations of Anglicans, especially among those for whom the term “Anglican” acquired a certain positive ideological content. Ultimately Taylor’s reputation came to rest more on his literary talent, pastoral ideals and devotional writing, than his theology: the great Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who arguably became one of the Church of England’s greatest theological writers, called him “our Christian Mercury”, and “this most eloquent of Divines: Had I said, of Men, Cicero would forgive me, and Demosthenes nod assent!”1 Taylor’s Holy Living and Holy Dying became ubiquitous manuals of piety among those who came to be known as ‘high churchmen’; they were also influential for the Wesleys and the Methodist movement, and even in Evangelical circles.2 However, Taylor ought not to be neglected as a theologian. He is highly eclectic, and not always consistent: one of the characters in Newman’s novel Loss and Gain says that “Bishop Taylor differed from himself”.3 But he made a significant contribution to the development of a distinctively ‘Anglican’ identity, which began in earnest with the Laudian divines of the seventeenth century.4 Above all, perhaps, Taylor displays a remarkable subtlety and sensitivity in 1 Aids to Reflection, Routledge edition, p189. 2 Hughes, H. Trevor. "Jeremy Taylor and John Wesley." London Quarterly and Holborn Review 174 (1949): 296-304. 3 Oxford World’s Classics edition, p 61-2. Taylor was a benchmark ‘Anglican’ divine for the Tractarians as well as the older high church tradition. Theirs was far from an uncritical appreciation, however; Taylor was regarded by Newman as one of the fathers of Latitudinarianism and was later excluded from the Library of Anglo-Catholic Theology. 4 Of particular interest in this respect is the bibliography Taylor that attaches to a letter to one Mr Graham, of Trinity College, Dublin, included in Heber’s Life, in his complete edition of Taylor’s works, vol 1 p lxxxviii: “Hee that would improve in the understanding of the doctrine of the church of England, so as to bee able to teach others, must bee careful to understand and bee very perfect in every part of, [the following works].” There follows a very extensive and interesting list, with Taylor’s comments. It includes the Dutch Arminian “Episcopius, whose whole works are excellent, and containe the whole body of orthodox religion”; the reader, Heber comments, “will see from this where [Taylor] may have learned his doctrines respecting Original Sin.” Taylor’s attempts to minimise the traditional doctrine owe something to Episcopius; but his account contains many original aspects, which we shall consider in the following chapters. 7 relating the patristic learning and classical Christian orthodoxy in which he was steeped, with the startling new theories in politics and law, science and epistemology, which were making such an impact in his day, and in which Taylor had a voracious interest.5 In particular, he draws on them to remarkable effect in his writings on the unlikely subject of original sin, and in his related account of the relationship between nature and grace. I shall argue that Taylor tries to substitute for the traditional doctrine of original sin an account of human nature which answers to Augustinian anthropology, but which treats what were generally regarded as the effects of original sin, as natural. However, human nature is not thereby intrinsically corrupt, for Taylor: what St Augustine called ‘ignorance’, ‘difficulty’ and ‘concupiscence’, are both the conditions for human sin and failure, and, ironically, necessary for human freedom and moral responsibility, according to Taylor. The passions, which the Augustinian tradition held to be in a disordered state resulting from original sin, are seen by Taylor as natural, and good when engaged in the right context and degree. Taylor apparently thinks that he can avoid the heresy of Pelagianism by allowing that although sin is not irresistible, it is inevitable: inevitable, for every individual, but not in any given instance, we might say. However, he tends to reduce ‘original sin’ to what Augustine thought of as its effects, in Adam’s descendants; whereas Augustine actually thought that the evil will which led to the first sin, was replicated in Adam’s descendants, not that their wills were simply tempted or overpowered by ‘external’ influences - a view, which, on Augustine’s account, would reduce to ‘Pelagianism’ or ‘Manicheanism’, depending on whether the influence in question was resistible or not.
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