The beginning of the seventeenth century witnessed a pivotal turn to modernity. In this context fierce debates about predestination and grace took place among Catholics and Protestants. This interesting volume highlights cross-confessional connections on soteriology in the early modern era. The main thesis is that the clashes between Dominicans and Jesuits and between Contra-Remonstrants and Arminians – typified in the title by the references to the Congregatio de auxiliis (1597–1607) and the Synod of Dordt (1618–19) – should be studied as similar debates over the shared Augustinian inheritance. The volume intends to contribute to a new understanding of the development of the theology of Western Christianity in the early modern period by bringing together specialists ‘in the field of Reformed scholasticism … and in the still ffledgling (sic) field of Roman Catholic scholastic theology in the early modern period’ (p. 15).
The chapters of the book cover a broader period – from John Calvin's reception of Thomas Aquinas, who appears to be less important for him than sometimes suggested (Charles Raith ii) to the evaluation of Reformed Protestantism by Jean Baptiste Gonet (1615–81) in the final chapter titled ‘Calvin against the Calvinists in early modern Thomism’ (Matthew T. Gaetano). Most of the chapters, however, focus on the discussion partners in the controversies mentioned in the title. Stephan Gaetano, for instance, shows that Domingo Bañez (1528–1604) criticised his confrère Tommaso de Vio or Cajetan (1469–1534) for not accepting that the efficaciousness of God's providence perfects human freedom instead of destroying it (p. 46).
Thomas M. Osborne's discussion of the basis of the authority of Scripture does not fit perfectly into the focus on soteriology, although it is interesting to read that for Catholics ‘the certitude of Christian belief ultimately rests on the fact that God moves the believer through the light of faith’ (p. 77). In his presentation of the Protestant position, however, he overlooks the importance of the testimony of the Spirit. In fact, Catholics and Protestants both stressed the necessity of interior grace for faith, but they differed with respect to the object of faith: the Church's witness regarding Scripture or the self-convincing content of Scripture.
Several chapters deal with the scientia media – God's (middle) knowledge of things that might have been going to happen – introduced by Luis de Molina (1535–1600). Robert Trent Pomplun discusses its application to Christology. Richard A. Muller analyses the reception of de Molina's ideas by Jacob Arminius (1559–1609) in his ‘Friendly Conference’ with Franciscus Junius (1545–1602). This detailed chapter unravels the dating of the confidential correspondence that was initiated by questions about the contingency or necessity of the Fall. The similarity with de Molina's concept lies in the fact that, according to Arminius, God knows from eternity how he will react to human acts and on this basis ‘it is possible to understand how God can eternally foreknow something that is dependent on the human will’ (p. 123). Arminius remained distinctly Protestant in his application of this foreknowledge to faith instead of merit. Jordan Ballor's contribution on the same source text focuses on Junius, who held the opinion that both Calvin and Aquinas were fundamentally in agreement with Augustine's doctrine of grace. This chapter is followed by Keith D. Stanglin's more general analysis of the Arminian reception of Molinism. He concludes that both Arminius and Conrad Vorstius (1569–1622) found ‘a potential ally in the struggle against absolute predestination and physical premotion’ (p. 167) in the concept of scientia media.
After chapters on two of the British delegates to the synod of Dordt (John Davenant [1576–1641] by David S. Sytsma, and Samuel Ward [1572–1643] by Stephen Hampton), the volume includes a helpful chapter on ‘Divine causality and human freedom’ in which Reginald M. Lynch explains the Thomistic approach to grace from the Aristotelian distinction between act and potency. ‘God is named cause in a much deeper sense than any created agent … divine causality forms the metaphysical context in which created act and potency function’ (pp. 226-7). Divine primary and human secondary causality do not conflict because God and creatures are of different orders.
The chapter on Jansenism shows that, notwithstanding formal similarities, Cornelius Jansen (1585–1638) distanced himself from Calvin and the Calvinists. Eric J. DeMeuse concludes that the Jansenists remained faithful to the Council of Trent and – just like Thomists and Molinists – tried to reconcile tensions in its teachings. Aza Goudriaan, on the other hand, shows that Reformed theologians like Melchior Leydecker (1642–1721) appreciated the Jansenist view of grace, although he did not agree with all its details.
This volume shows that those who were accused of heresy within their own confessional context were less willing to acknowledge interconfessional similarities than their opponents. While the Jesuits charged the Dominicans with Calvinism, Báñez fiercely defended the difference between his theology and ‘the impious opinion of Calvin who denies the liberty of our will’ (p. 10) and while Arminius denied that he recommended Jesuit works to his students, Franciscus Gomarus (1563–1641) argued that Arminius agreed with their doctrines.
This book meets a need, because the mutual relations have hardly been explored in ‘recent literature on either the Synod of Dordt or Thomist soteriology’ (p. 1 n. 1). The chapters form a series of case studies that focus on interconfessional similarities, reciprocal references and theological parallels between Protestants and Catholics. But the volume does not place these historical debates in the broader context of intellectual history by relating them to the early modern rise of individualism, the epistemological turn to the human subject or the identification of God and nature in one closed system. That growing identification in early modernity might explain why the discussions about grace and predestination are often intertwined with the (mis)understanding of divine providence as a deterministic system and theological debates about God as the (im)possible author of evil.
The strength of the volume also makes it a bit vulnerable, because the chapters are written by experts in the field, but generally focus on one of both sides of the parallel discussions on soteriology. The contributions are too detailed to offer an overall picture, but the great advantage of this volume lies in bringing both perspectives together as a first step in an interconfessional approach to the history of theology.
