Predestination Download Dual Audio
Inez Brisker
He spent his life in the Spanish Low Countries. He was born in Brecht in 1554, and he died in Leuven, not far from where I worked for three years, in 1623. And he taught philosophy in Douai, and then theology in Leuven at the Jesuit College,2 and this is very important. In the Jesuit College, he taught a theology of salvation, which was very, very open to the role of free will and human agency face to face with the idea of the divine predestination of humankind. And for such a bold teaching, he was very severely criticized, and even charged with heresy by the theologians of the University of Leuven, who were strict Augustinian theologians. And you know, Leuven, the University of Leuven, at that time was one of the major pillars of Catholic theological production in the early modern age. So, it was kind of a big deal to be attacked as a heretic by those theologians.
SHADLE: Yeah, I thought that was one of the most interesting points you raised in your articles, that there's this . . . there's often this misperception that . . . The faculty members at Leuven were just Augustinians and Thomists who have a pretty strong view of predestination, but they were often portrayed as followers of Baius.5 But you're also saying that Lessius, whether knowingly or not, you know, thought that they were all being led by Baius, or were followers of Baius, and that he used that as part of his appeal to Bellarmine, that he was being attacked by these followers of Baius. So, sorry to interrupt you there.
I want to go back to something that I wanted to mention, that we didn't talk about before, but something that was interesting that you wrote about, was that, going back to the controversy at Leuven, the dispute there. One of the arguments that the faculty made against Lessius is that his . . . What made it interesting was that it wasn't just a theological argument. It was almost more like a practical argument, that his theology is not going to help us bring back Protestants, whereas our theology that emphasizes God's sovereignty and predestination is going to be more attractive to Protestants. So, I thought that was kind of an interesting point they made.
SHADLE: Yeah. And that's fascinating, because I'm just thinking, big picture, of Max Weber's theory of how Calvinists were at the root of the Protestant, or of the capitalist ethic. And yet, here we see the . . . not that that's totally wrong. But here we see, also, the opposite, that someone who's very anti-Calvinist, anti-predestination, is also laying the groundwork for modern capitalism. So, the origins, they are very complex, and probably you don't want to, unlike Weber, you don't want to lay it at one specific cause here, right?
This week the newsletter features an interview with Dr. Eleonora Rai, an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Turin (Italy). We talked about Dr. Rai\u2019s research on sixteenth and seventeenth-century Jesuit theologian Leonard Lessius, a pivotal figure from that period who is nevertheless not well known. We talked about Lessius\u2019s views on free will and predestination and his role in two major theological controversies of the time. We also discussed Dr. Rai\u2019s more recent research on Lessius\u2019s economic views, as well as Lessius\u2019s cause for canonization. The interview is engaging from beginning to end, so give it a listen or read.
You can listen to the interview by clicking on the audio file below. The interview is about the length of a typical podcast, and you should be able to listen on your computer or phone. A full transcript of the interview is also published below for your reading convenience, along with some links and notes not available in the audio. (The transcript may be cut off in your email, but you should be able to click where it says \u201CView entire message\u201D to see the rest of the transcript.)
What was the problem? Well, the problem was that in Leuven, at the university, Baius had propounded a very pessimistic, anthropologically speaking, doctrine on human nature, according to which, after the Fall, after the original sin of Adam and Eve, human nature had been corrupted and remained unable to use free will in a positive way, to do the good.3 So, seventy-nine propositions taken from Baius\u2019s teachings were condemned by the pope, by Pius V, with the bull Ex Omnibus Afflictionibus in 1567, so twenty years before the Leuven dispute, although Baius was not mentioned in the bull, only his teachings. So, the Leuven controversies revolved around the very question: What does save a human being\u2019s soul? So how can, to quote Bob Dylan, as I do in the title of my book you mentioned earlier, how can human beings knock on Heaven's door and get St. Peter to open the gate? So, what does save a human being\u2019s soul, taking into account all the theological elements that create what I usually call the cocktail of salvation, that is to say, God's predestination, God\u2019s grace, God\u2019s foreknowledge of human good deeds and human merit, and human free will, which is a gift from God?
So, Lessius, in the Jesuit College, taught a doctrine which seemed to deprive God of His power, of His sovereign authority. Even the fact that our Jesuit claimed that God predestined those to be certainly saved based on His foreknowledge of how human beings would react to his offering of grace, that is to say, on how human beings would use their free will and consequently, accumulate merit, or not. On the other hand, the theologians of the university propounded the doctrine based on the so-called \u201Csecond Augustine\u201D,4 that is to say, the doctrine taught by St. Augustine after the dispute on grace and free will with the monk Pelagius. And the professors of the faculty charged Lessius basically with being a Pelagian, that is to say, to attribute to free will a huge power in the economy of salvation, face to face to God\u2019s predestination and grace. So, in other words, they accused him to put too much power in humans\u2019 hands. And, by the way, Lessius accused them of being crypto-Calvinists, of course.
RAI: And indeed, some Jesuits\u2014because Lessius was highly criticized also within the Society of Jesus\u2014some Jesuits, for example, Robert Bellarmine, explicitly wrote him, \u201CThis is not predestination. This is foreknowledge, and it's something different.\u201D Predestination is the way through which God proves His power over humankind. When Lessius says that God basically bends over what he foresees, he deprives Him of some power.
Why? Well, because Molina's doctrine reminded of Lessius\u2019s doctrine, and Ba\u00F1ez\u2019s doctrine reminded of the theology thought by the professors of the University of Leuven. Molina stressed the value of free will and God\u2019s foreknowledge, Ba\u00F1ez that of predestination and grace. And Lessius himself identified his very criticized teaching with that of Molina, as it was described in Molina\u2019s masterpiece, the Concordia. Although I do believe that Lessius simply attempted to defend himself, identifying his own doctrine with that of Molina. It's like he tried to say, \u201CHey, you know, the pope did not condemn Molina during the controversy de auxiliis, so why should my doctrine be considered heterodox?\u201D
SHADLE: Yeah, because there were some similarities . . . that they both used, they both talked about predestination in terms of foreknowledge, right? And you mentioned in an article that, even in later historiography, Lessius has been associated as a Molinist, but you\u2019re saying that\u2019s not really accurate.
RAI: And then, only then, only after God sees all possible future scenarios, He decides to actualize one of these futures. So, God then knows and foresees all the counterfactual possibilities, especially the circumstances in which human beings can accept divine grace. And he then decides which future contingent to actualize and offers His grace, in a congruist way,8 so that, in those circumstances, that grace is irresistible. So, that is to say, human beings cannot deny His grace, cannot say \u201CNo.\u201D And I think this is how Molina saved himself. You know, Jesuit General Acquaviva, Claudio Acquaviva, complained that Lessius was more undefendable than Molina. And this is precisely because, for Lessius, grace can be resisted, and even does not work at all without free consent. So, you can see the difference in these two theological systems.
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