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Augustine's De Natura Et Gratia and Contemporary Receptions Of Concordia Seminary - Saint Louis Scholarly Resources from Concordia Seminary Master of Sacred Theology Thesis Concordia Seminary Scholarship 5-1-2017 Extra Nos but not Extraneous: Augustine’s De Natura Et Gratia and Contemporary Receptions of Augustine Thomas Pietsch Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholar.csl.edu/stm Part of the Christianity Commons, and the History of Christianity Commons Recommended Citation Pietsch, Thomas, "Extra Nos but not Extraneous: Augustine’s De Natura Et Gratia and Contemporary Receptions of Augustine" (2017). Master of Sacred Theology Thesis. 19. https://scholar.csl.edu/stm/19 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Concordia Seminary Scholarship at Scholarly Resources from Concordia Seminary. It has been accepted for inclusion in Master of Sacred Theology Thesis by an authorized administrator of Scholarly Resources from Concordia Seminary. For more information, please contact [email protected]. EXTRA NOS BUT NOT EXTRANEOUS: AUGUSTINE’S DE NATURA ET GRATIA AND CONTEMPORARY RECEPTIONS OF AUGUSTINE A Thesis Presented to the Faculty of Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, Department of History in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Sacred Theology By Thomas Pietsch May, 2017 Approved by Dr. Erik Herrmann Advisor Dr. Joel Elowsky Reader Dr. David Maxwell Reader © 2017 by Thomas David Pietsch. All rights reserved. For Chelsea If man is not made for God, why is he only happy with God? If man is made for God, why is he so hostile to God? Pascal, Pensees As one cannot deny that this is a gift of God, so one must understand that there are other gifts of God for the children of that free Jerusalem which is above, our mother. Augustine, De Patientia, on the courageous and noble death of a heretic. CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ......................................................................................................... vii COPYRIGHT ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ................................................................................ viii ABBREVIATIONS ...................................................................................................................... ix ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................................... x CHAPTER ONE ............................................................................................................................ 1 RECENT AUGUSTINIAN ACCOUNTS OF NATURE AND GRACE ............................ 1 HENRI DE LUBAC ON NATURE AND GRACE ............................................................. 6 RADICAL ORTHODOXY ................................................................................................ 13 The Suspended Middle ............................................................................................... 17 Augustine and Modernity ........................................................................................... 19 CHAPTER TWO ......................................................................................................................... 31 AUGUSTINE’S DE NATURA ET GRATIA ....................................................................... 31 THE CONTEXT OF DE NATURA ET GRATIA ................................................................ 34 The Donatist Controversy .......................................................................................... 35 The Sack of Rome and the Genealogy of Controversy ............................................. 39 The Writing of De Natura et Gratia .......................................................................... 45 DE NATURA ET GRATIA EXAMINED ............................................................................ 47 1.1–6.6 Summary of Controversy .............................................................................. 47 7.7–18.20 Sinlessness and Grace ............................................................................... 49 19.21–32.36 Original Sin and Participation .............................................................. 56 33.37–60.70 Faith and the Particularity of Grace ...................................................... 63 61.71–68.82 Catalogue of Testimonies ..................................................................... 75 CHAPTER THREE ..................................................................................................................... 78 EXTRA NOS BUT NOT EXTRANEOUS .......................................................................... 78 PARTICIPATION .............................................................................................................. 79 OBSERVING BOUNDARIES ........................................................................................... 87 IS NATURE AND GRACE A ZERO-SUM GAME?........................................................ 95 BIBLIOGRAPHY ...................................................................................................................... 102 VITA .......................................................................................................................................... 108 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I came to study for this degree by means of a generous scholarship from the Lutheran Church of Australia. My thanks go to those at the National Office and the Australian Lutheran College who issued me this scholarship, and then helped to facilitate our international move. Also in the LCA, my special thanks go to John Kleinig and Fraser Pearce for their continued counsel and encouragement in the patrimony of incarnational Lutheran theology. I count their friendship as one of my life’s great joys. Our time at Concordia Seminary has been very rich, made richer by the kindness and attentiveness of the Graduate School. My thanks go to my supervisor Erik Herrmann, my readers Joel Elowsky and David Maxwell, and also to the rest of the history and systematic faculties for their acumen and generosity of time. Gerhard Bode and Beth Hoeltke deserve special mention for their care for our family beyond what we had any right to expect. My final thanks go to my wife Chelsea, who is the dedicatee of this work, for her conversation, self-sacrifice, encouragement, and love. vii COPYRIGHT ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS For Augustine’s works, I have used the translations from the New City Press editions throughout, only augmenting them when needed to further clarify my argument. Biblical translations come from the English Standard Version unless they are quotations from Augustine, where I have followed the New City Press translations. Translations of the Formula of Concord I have taken from the Theodore Tappert edition of the Book of Concord. viii ABBREVIATIONS Because of the variations in translating the titles of Augustine’s works, I have referred to them by means of their Latin titles with only one exception, following standard practice, in order to avoid the affectation of Confessiones. In the footnotes, I have used the following abbreviations for Augustine’s works: civ. Dei. De civitate Dei conf. Confessiones ep. Epistulae nat. et gr. De natura et gratia pecc. mer. De peccatorum meritis et remissione et de baptism parvulorum retr. Retractationes s. Sermones (* denotes the recently discovered “Dolbeau” sermons) spir. et litt. De spiritu et littera Trin. De Trinitate ix ABSTRACT Pietsch, Thomas, D. “Extra Nos but not Extraneous: Augustine’s De Natura et Gratia and Contemporary Receptions of Augustine.” STM thesis, Concordia Seminary, 2017. 116 pp. The relationship of nature to grace has become one of significant importance for contemporary theology. Following the turbulent debates surrounding Henri de Lubac in the twentieth century, theologians associated with Radical Orthodoxy have revived the importance of the relationship in more recent years. Whether acknowledged or not, all discussions of nature and grace owe much to Augustine, who was the first person to present a systematic discussion of the matter in his 415 anti-Pelagian treatise, De Natura et Gratia. But readings of Augustine have differed vastly, and have fueled debates not just around nature and grace, but also around what it means to be Augustinian. In this thesis, I review the relationship of nature to grace in the thought of Henri de Lubac, John Milbank, Michael Hanby, and others, as well as their readings of Augustine. Following this, I undertake an historical, exegetical, and theological survey of De Natura et Gratia and its context in the Pelagian debate. Rather than pit the exegetical against the ontological, or the historical against the systematic, I show how a faithful reading of Augustine has to pay close attention to the text while also engaging with his broader theological vision. This enables a richer appropriation of Augustine’s theology of nature and grace for today. I find that for Augustine the distinction between nature and grace must always be held strongly, and yet the two must never be ultimately played off against each other in a competitive, zero-sum game, for our corrupted nature only finds its fulfilment in the reception of external grace. x CHAPTER ONE RECENT AUGUSTINIAN ACCOUNTS OF NATURE AND GRACE The primary issue that animates this thesis is that of the relationship between nature and grace. All people, the just and unjust alike, receive the gift of human nature from God. But grace is that which comes on account of the death and resurrection of Christ, received through faith. Christians
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