Peter Martyr Vermigli and Thomas Aquinas on Predestination
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CONFLUENCE AND INFLUENCE: PETER MARTYR VERMIGLI AND THOMAS AQUINAS ON PREDESTINATION Frank A. James III Introduction In his Paradiso, Dante Alighieri describes predestination as a mystery whose “root lies hidden from the intellect.”1 By its very inscrutability, the idea of predestination has fascinated theologians from Augustine to Pannenberg.2 It also has been a central dogma, as it were, for Richard A. Muller’s ground-breaking research. When he published his doctoral dis- sertation over twenty-five years ago, Christ and the Decree, few could have anticipated that his approach to the development of post-Reformational theology would have lasting value. His was after all a rather obscure area of research, which hitherto had been largely the domain of dead-white- European-males with hard to pronounce names. From the outset of his career, Muller recognized the historiographical significance of Peter Martyr Vermigli and the doctrine of predestination. In Christ and the Decree, Muller made what many considered a rather star- tling academic judgment: We must divide the laurels between Calvin and Vermigli in judging the influence of their respective doctrines of predestination. Whereas Calvin’s basic structure and definition, which designates election and reprobation as almost coordinate halves of the decree, had more impact…[it was Vermigli’s conception of predestination that] would eventually be enunciated as the confessional norm of Reformed theology.3 1 Divine Comedy, Paradisio, Canto XX: “O Predestination! How remote and dim, Thy root lies hidden from the intellect which only glimpses the First Cause Supreme! And you, ye mortals, keep your judgment checked, since we, who see God, have not therefore skill To know yet all the number of the elect, And such defective sight is sweet for us, Because our good is refined by this good, That which God wills we also will.” 2 Wolfhart Pannenberg’s dissertation: Die prädestinationslehre des Duns Skotus in Zusammenhang der scholastischen Lehrntwicklung (Göttingen: V&R, 1954). 3 Muller, Decree, 70–71. Cf. Charles Schmidt, Peter Martyr Vermigli, Leben und aus- gewählte Schriften nach handschriftlichen und gleichzeitigen Quellen (Elberfeld: R.L. Friderichs, 1858), 106: “Da Martyr, neben Calvin, am meisten zur Feststellung dieser Lehre beigetragen hat, so ist wichtig, seiner Entwicklung derselben nachzugehen.” <UN> <UN> 166 frank a. james iii This essay will focus on this important dead-white-European-male “codi- fier” of Reformed theology Peter Martyr Vermigli and his doctrine of predestination. Among Vermigli scholars, one of the central historiographical issues centers on the question of Thomistic influence.4 It has been argued that Vermigli embraced essential aspects of Thomistic theology, under whose influence Vermigli became a harbinger of Reformed scholasticism. It was Brian Armstrong who set in motion what has become the dominant interpretation of Vermigli. He promoted the thesis that “the prime source of this new trend toward Aristotle and eventually Protestant scholasticism was the Italian Aristotelians.”5 Armstrong identified the “villainous trium- virate” of Peter Martyr Vermigli, Theodore Beza, and Girolamo Zanchi as “the three early reformers who most evidently inclined toward the budding Protestant scholasticism.”6 Of these three, Vermigli and Zanchi provided the Italian connection, and of the two Italians, it was Vermigli who prepared the way for Zanchi to follow.7 Thus, if one follows Arm- strong’s analysis, Vermigli emerges from the scholastic troika as the inau- gurator of Reformed scholasticism. Subsequently, and with more caution, both John Patrick Donnelly8 and J.C. McLelland9 noted “echoes” of Thomas in Vermigli’s theological outlook. This essay proposes to address this historiographical question of Thomistic influence by comparing Vermigli and Aquinas with respect to the mysterious doctrine of predestination. Encountering the Doctor Angelicus Josiah Simler, Vermigli’s contemporary and earliest biographer in his Oratio, specifically identifies Thomas as a theological influence: “he [Vermigli] had hitherto devoted himself chiefly to Thomas and [Gregory 4 Cf. J.C. McLelland, ed., Peter Martyr Vermigli and Italian Reform (Waterloo: Wilfred Laurier, 1980); J.P. Donnelly, Calvinism and Scholasticism in Vermigli’s Doctrine of Man and Grace (Leiden: Brill, 1976); and Muller, Decree. 5 Brian G. Armstrong, Calvinism and the Amyraut Heresy: Protestant Scholasticism and Humanism in Seventeenth-Century France (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1969), 38. 6 Armstrong, Calvinism, 87. 7 Armstrong, Calvinism, 131. 8 Donnelly, Calvinism, 207. 9 J.C. McLelland, “Scholastic or Humanist?” in Peter Martyr Vermigli and Italian Reform, 141–151. He states that Vermigli made “full use of Aristotelian-Thomistic form and content” 148. <UN> <UN>.