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CONCORDIA . THEOLOGICAL MONTHLY "JJ ___ m m c~ -I <)SERVE Vol. XL Special Issue No.6 & 7 The Gospel In the Med ·~va. Ch'Jfch CARL A. VOLZ ;\ curious phenomenon of Protestant sinful, alienated from God, egocentric, and .1l.. and Lutheran historiography since under Satan's tyranny. Christ was the the 17th century has been a studied neglect bearer of forgiveness, reconciliation, and of the millenniwn labeled by Renaissance victory. In short, they were optimistic scholars as the "Middle Ages." One reason about God, pessimistic about natural man, for this indifference lies in the popular and optimistic about the new man in notion that the Reformation was preceded Christ. 'Whatever varied definitions medie­ by a thousand years of sub-Christian super­ val theologians may have given to grace, stition during which the strong Pauline they were agreed that without God's gra­ accent of justification by grace through tuitous gift of salvation because of Christ faith on account of Christ was almost ail men would be condemned. totally ignored. By coloring these centuries The modest purpose of this essay is to dark, the reformers tend to stand in bolder suggest three areas of investigation which relief as heroic men of God who appeared may reveal gospel motifs at work in the to correct long-standing abuses in the church during these centuries. As such it church. The more sharply the contrast is represents a program of proposed research drawn, the more heroic the reformers rather than the fruits of such study, and appear. the conclusions offered here are tentative A current trend in historical theology suggestions that a few surface nuggets may seeks to rehabilitate the Middle Ages - to point to rich are still buried in the medie­ return to the medieval sources of Western val church. These general areas are institu­ Christianity and to see whether the Ref­ tions, theologians, and movements. ormation of the 16th century may not have been a culmination of Pauline theol­ INSTITUTIONS ogy as well as the beginning of a new era. Gospel accents are apparent in the con­ There is in this process the danger of try­ ciliar victories of Augustinian theology ing to make medieval men say what they over that of the school of Lerins, which is did not say by forcing them into a Lutheran often labelled Semi-Pelagian. The theology mold. Few articulated their understanding of the Middle Ages was largely shaped by of the gospel in such forceful or precise St, Augustine. No single individual (ex­ terms as Luther. The conclusion does not cept St. Paul) exerted a more profound follow that their understanding of Christ's influence on Western Christianity. One saving activity was necessarily deficient or of Augustine's most significant emphases, inadequate for their needs. Medieval theo­ developed in opposition to Pelagius, had logians acknowledged that mankind was been his insistence on the sinful nature of man and his corresponding need for God's Carl A. Volz is assistant professor of his­ torical theology at Concordia Seminary, St. grace. During the fifth and sixth centuries Louis. a Semi-Pelagian school of thought arose (73) 394 THE GOSPEL IN THE MEDIEY AL CHURCH in opposition to Augustine's basically pes­ of predestination to damnation, thereby simistic view of man. The leaders of this correcting what was considered an Augus­ movement, who for the most part came tinian aberration. from southern Gaul, objected to the idea A second reforming council of early me­ that man by himself was incapable of dieval times was also associated with an Christian faith and good works. John Cas­ Augustinian controversy. This time it was sian ( d.43 5 ), a monk from Marseilles, over the doctrine of predestination, which, agreed that man was by nature inclined to­ if held in a strictly double sense, would ward sin, but this proclivity did not involve deny the availability of forgiveness to all guilt, and enough good will remained in and limit it only to the predestined. Gott­ fallen man to cooperate with God's grace. schalk of Orbais apparently insisted: In the last half of the fifth century another Just as the immutable God before the monk, Faustus of Riez, went beyond Cas­ foundation of the world through His sian to assert that man was saved by good gratuitous grace immutably predestined works and that grace was the reward of all His elect to eternal life, so in like merit. This Semi-Pelagian position was manner all the reprobate who will in the staunchly opposed by Caesarius of Arles day of judgement be condemned on ac­ count of their evil deserts has this same (d. 542), who insisted on the total de­ immutable God through His righteous pravity of natural man and on the necessity judgement immutably predestined to of God's grace as a prior condition for good death justly everlasting.2 works. The Augustinian position won a notable victory at the Council of Orange Hincmar of Rheims, one of the most in­ fluential theologians of the ninth century, (A. D. 529) which declared: strenuously opposed liuch a dilution of 1. Adam's fall cast all men into physical God's grace. At the Council of Kiersey death as well as the death of the soul. A. D. 853 he secured a reaffirmation of the 2. Grace is necessary for the beginning Augustinian doctrine of grace. The four of faith, and all of man's efforts to­ ward believing, seeking, knocking, and chapters of the council can be summarized asking are the result of God's grace. as follows: 3. It is false to say that man is saved 1. Through Adam's fall the race became by the exercise of his free will. a massa perditionis. "A good and just 4. Man of himself has nothing but evil God elected from this same mass of and sin. perdition according to His foreknowl­ edge those whom He through grace 5. Without us or with us, God produces predestined to life, and He predestined all the good which man accomplishes.1 eternal life to them. He foreknew that The confession of faith which was ap­ the others, whom by the judgement of pended to these decrees rejected the idea righteousness He left in the mass of perdition, would perish. But He did 1 Council of Orange A. D. 529 in Sacrorum Conciliorttm Nova et Amplissima Collectio, ed. 2 Hincmar of Rheims, De Praedestinatione Giovanni Mansi (Florence: Antonii Zatta Ye­ 5, in Patroiogiae Cursus Comptetus, Series La­ neri, 1762), "Concilium Arausicanum," II, 711 tina, ed. Jacques P. Migne, 125 (Paris: Garnier to 724. Hereafter this work will be referred to Brothers, 1879), cols.89-90. Hereafter Migne :as Mansi. will be refer red to as PL. (74) THE GOSPEL IN THE MEDlEV AL CHURCH 395 not predestine that they should perish, sick one. But let him exercise the great­ but because He is just, He predestined est precaution lest he in any degree, by to them eternal punishment. Hence word, sign, or any other manner make they [council fathers} acknowledge known the sinner.4 but one predestination." Doctrinal controversies involving grace 2. Grace has made our will free, "by were most often resolved in local synods or grace set free and by grace healed diocesan councils, and it is here one might from the corrupt state." profitably search for a medieval under­ 3. Grace wishes all men to be saved. standing of the gospel. For instance, the "That some perish is the desert (me1"i­ Third Council of Toledo in 589 is espe­ tum) of those who perish." cially known for its adoption of the filio­ 4. Christ died for all. That His death in opposition to the Spanish Arians, does not set all free "is the fault of que those who are unbelieving, or who do who in denying the deity of Christ also not believe with the faith that works vitiated His saving work. The Christolog­ by love." 3 ical controversy continued into the era of Charlemagne, whef! Alcuin of York suc­ The canons of the great ecumenical ceeded in condemning Felix of Urge!'s councils of the Middle Ages are notably adoptionism at the Council of Frankfurt devoid of gospel accents, perhaps in part in 794. Another significant controversy because they were called to deal with polit­ which touched on the doctrine of grace ical and administrative affairs. Some dis­ wa~ ciplinary canons, however, were certainly that between Paschasius Radbertus and prompted by evangelical concerns. The Ratramnus over the nature of the Christ Fourth Lateran Council (1215) decreed: received in the Eucharist. If Jesus Christ was not truly present in the sacrament, All the faithful of both sexes shall after they have reached the age of discretion there could be no true forgiveness, and if faithfully confess all their sins at least He was not true God, man was still in his once a year to their own parish priest and sins. Although Radbertus has often been perform to the best of their ability the labeled an early advocate of transubstantia­ penance imposed, receiving reverently at tion, his primary concern seems to have least at Easter the sacrament of the Eucha­ been an emphasis on faith. He indicates rist.... Let the priest be discreet and cau­ the effect one's theology of the Eucharist tious that he may pour wine and oil into has on other doctrines: the wounds of one injured after the man­ ner of a skillful physician, carefully in­ For this reason, therefore, this mystery is far different from all those miracles which quiring into the circllrD.:; ~a;"":~S of the ;iu ~ ner and the sin, from the nature of which have occurred in this life, because they all occurred so that this one may be believed, he may understand what kind of advice to give and what remedy to apply, making that Christ is truth, yet truth is God, use of different experiments to heal the and if God is truth, whatever Christ has promised in this mystery is the same way 3 Council of Kiersey A.
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