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Subsections
Reformed vs. Aquinas
Scholastic Theology
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Order of Contents
Article 1
Summary Quotes 2
Original Sin 1
Latin 2
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Article
1600’s
Turretin, Francis – 9. ‘Was man created in puris naturalibus, or could he have been so created? We deny against the Pelagians and Scholastics.’ in Institutes of Elenctic Theology, tr. George M. Giger, ed. James Dennison Jr. (1679–1685; P&R, 1992), vol. 1, 5th Topic, pp. 462-64
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Summary Quotes
Order of
Beza & Faius
Riissen
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1500’s
Theodore Beza & Anthony Faius
Propositions & Principles of Divinity Propounded & Disputed in the University of Geneva by Certain Students of Divinity there, under Mr. Theodore Beza & Mr. Anthony Faius… (Edinburgh: Waldegrave, 1591)
15. ‘Of the Faculties of the Soul of Man’, p. 33
“1. God alone is a most simple, and a most mere being. And therefore, although the essence of the soul be a spiritual and no bodily substance, yet it is endued with faculties agreeable unto the nature of it, which, by their own spiritual manner are inherent in the essence thereof, as in their subject.
We do not therefore allow the opinion of the Peripatetics, who taught that the faculties of the soul do not differ from the essence of it in deed, but after a sort.
2. And although the very essence and substance of the soul, does by the grace of God, continue without all change and alteration: yet the powers thereof were created of a changeable nature.”
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22. ‘Faith’, p. 48
“2. This faith, we do first of all distinguish from that mere agreement of the understanding, whereby it comes to pass that we believe all these things to be true which are contained in the holy Scriptures: the which agreement or assent, we affirm that it may arise from the light of nature also, and the arguments that may be compassed by human reason, without any peculier lightening of the Holy Spirit, seeing the very unclean spirits themselves do believe this.
3. We also distinguish this faith from the assent, whereby some have peculiarly applied some peculiar promises made unto themselves, that were diverse from the promises of eternal life, who notwithstanding were never made partakers thereof.
4. The faith therefore whereof we now speak, we do define to be that assurance whereby, beyond the former assent, the godly are carried unto Christ, and so particularly apply unto themselves the promise of salvation offered in Him.
We do condemn therefore all such sophistry as does confound these two sorts of faith, and especially those who taking faith for the obedience that is yielded unto God’s commandments, do by that means mingle the one of them with the other.”
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23. ‘The Causes & Effects of Faith’, p. 51
“9. Now that true and lively faith, whereof we speak, is no less made known, by the perpetual and necessary effects thereof, than is the life of the body, by motion and sense.
10. But these effects do not give being unto faith, or
inform the same, as the Sophisters do most absurdly dream, but they are the undoubted and sure signs of it.”
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26. ‘The Justification of Sinful Man in the Presence of God’, p. 57
“8. The righteousness of Christ profits us nothing, unless it be made ours.
9. Now it becomes ours, not by any infusion, either essential, as Osiander dreamed, or qualitative, as the jangling Sophisters do avouch; but by a spiritual apprehension or applying of Christ, effected in our minds; after the which, follows the free imputation of that threefold righteousness, which is inherent in the man Christ only, as in the subject.”
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58. ‘Baptism, being the First Sacrament of the New Sacrament of the New Testament’, p. 177
“20. Seeing regeneration, wherof baptism is the pledge, is only begun in the saints, the jangling Sophisters do grievously err, who think that original sin, which is the corruption of nature, is altogether taken away by baptism, and that by the work wrought; that is, by the very action of baptism, and that it is abollished from the very same moment that baptism is received; neither will they have that fire of concupiscence, which remains in those that are baptized, to be accounted a sin.”
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1600’s
Leonard Riissen
A Complete Summary of Elenctic Theology & of as Much Didactic Theology as is Necessary trans. J. Wesley White MTh thesis (Bern, 1676; GPTS, 2009), ch. 11, ‘Christ’, pp. 84-85, 112-13, 121-22
“Controversy – Is God able not only to deprive an innocent creature of life but also to condemn them to the eternal tortures of hell? We deny against certain Scholastics.
Arguments
1. All the ways of God should be mercy and truth to those who keep covenant (Ps. 25:10).
2. Anyone approaching God should believe that He will reward their obedience with a reward not condemn them (Heb. 11:6).
3. In an innocent creature there can be no consciousness of guilt or the just judgment of God, which is the meaning of punishment.
4. No glory to God could arise from this but rather the dishonor of a tyrannical lord.
5. The righteousness of God demands that He acquit the holy, but it does not permit him to condemn someone who has not merited it (Ps. 18:26-27, Gen. 18:25, Ps. 7:11).
Objections
1. He can reduce the innocent to nothing. Reply. Then he only takes away what He gave, but punishment would be to do injury to someone while existing.
2. He acts this way with Christ. Reply. He was our surety, who took our debts on Himself.
3. God can impute to us the sin of Adam. Reply. That is imputed to be ours which is truly ours just as the children of slaves are slaves and the sons of citizens are citizens and are reputed to be such.
4. We are permitted to kill innocent creatures. Reply. 1. Not rational ones. 2. Irrational ones (bruta) for our use (2 Pet. 2:12). 3. It is one thing to kill, another to give to the living the highest punishment according to one’s pleasure.
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Controversy 3 – Would Jesus Christ have been made m-an and come into the world if men had not sinned? We deny against the Socinians and Scholastics.
Arguments:
1. He was only promised after the fall (Gen. 3:15), and He could not have been born of a virgin except in virtue of the promise.
2. Those who are well have no need of a physician (Mt. 9:13). He only came to save sinners (2 Tim. 1:15).
3. He has been sent on the basis of the love of God toward fallen man (Jn. 3:16), which could not exist in that case. [That is, He would not have had compassion on fallen man, if man had not fallen. This compassion and love for fallen man is given as the reason for the Father sending the Son.]
4. It would not have been necessary for God to be man; therefore, He would have come in vain.
5. Nor would humanity have had any obligation (obligatio) to Him as incarnate.
Objections:
1. Christ is the firstborn of all creatures (Col. 1:15). Reply. ‘Firstborn’ means generated from eternity before all creatures.
2. In all things, He is preeminent (primus) (v. 19). Reply. In dignity and position.
3. All things have been created in Him (meaning “on account of Him”). Reply. All things have been created on account of Him as God not as man.
4. Then we have not been made on account of Christ, but He was made on account of us. Reply. Yes, as man. Objection. Then we should be given thanks since it is on account of us. Reply. That’s ridiculous.”
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Controversy 3 – Was Christ on account of the personal union so holy that He was not able to sin? We affirm against the scholastics and Arminians.
Arguments
1. The devil could not do anything against Him (Jn. 14:30).
2. Everything He does, He does by the person (hypstasi) of the divine nature, although the actions are of the natures (suppositorum)
(Acts 20:28), but that person cannot sin.
3. Then the union could be dissolved, since God has no communion with sin (Is. 59:2, 2 Cor. 6:14).
4. Christ, as a sinner, could be damned (Gal. 3:10).
5. Then God could lie in promises and predictions contrary to Heb. 6:17.
6. Then Christ could be cut off from the mediatorial office, and thus the foundation of salvation could be overturned contrary to Acts 2:25.
Objection
1. He was free; therefore He was able to sin. Reply. So God and the angels in heaven are free, and will we be free after the judgment.”
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Errors on Original Sin
Quote
1500’s
William Whitaker
A Treatise on Original Sin… against the three first books of Thomas Stapleton on the Whole Doctrine of Justification presently controverted (d. 1595; Legat, 1600), bk. 1, ch. 1 trans. AI Latin
p. 1
“How wrongly most of the Scholastic authors have thought concerning original sin can be obscure to no one who is moderately versed in their books. Nor have they recently imbibed this error of opinion, but they have retained it as drawn from ancient times and masters.
For Lombard, who has held the first place in the school for now five hundred years, testifies that certain theologians before him taught that original sin is nothing but the guilt of punishment for the sin of the first man, by which his posterity are liable and subject to temporal and eternal punishment for the actual sin of Adam, so that it is neither a fault nor a punishment (Lombard, dist. 30, ch. 5). And although he not obscurely signifies that so insane an opinion is displeasing to him, he was nevertheless unable to persuade his disciples from being devolved into the same or a greater absurdity of opinion.
For Scotus did not fear to affirm that after any sin whatsoever has been committed, nothing remains in us except the guilt of punishment (Scotus, in 2, d. 34, q. 1, art. 2). And Biel, a blind man, follows this blind man (Biel in 2, d. 30, q. 1). But if nothing inhered in Adam after the fall except the guilt of punishment, certainly not a fault, but a bare guilt, passed to his posterity by propagation. Durandus also makes original sin nothing other than mere guilt, when he disputes that Adam’s will is considered ours in no other way than because Adam, by sinning voluntarily, brought destruction and the privation of original justice upon us all; wherefore he denies that this sin ought to be called a fault (Durandus, in 2, d. 30, q. 2). William, Bishop of Paris, also taught this, when he proceeded so far as to defend that this natural vice is worthy of no punishment (Wilhelmus Paris, De vitiis et peccat.).
Ockham professes that he would have gone into that opinion which posits that original sin is nothing but divine non-acceptance on account of some preceding demerit in another, if he were not prohibited by the authorities of certain fathers, which seemed to him to say that original fault is the lack of justice that ought to be present (Occamus, in 2, q. 14). Thus for this man, original sin would be only the non-acceptance of God on account of Adam’s offense, if he did not wish to seem to depart from the diverse opinion of the saints. Are these men ever to be thought to have even dreamed of the contagion and magnitude of original sin?”
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pp. 6-7
“Let your theologians [O Stapleton] dispute as much as they will that it is the least of all sins, and less than any venial one: what else do they reveal to all but their singular ignorance? If it is so minimal that it ought to be considered less than even any venial sin, then it cannot even be a sin, because what is less than venial is not to be placed among sins, since no sin is less than venial.
Do you think Thomas felt this, when he writes that original sin is greater extensively than actual sin, but intensively less, because the actual has more of the nature of the voluntary (Thomas, in pt. 1 of 2, q. 82, art. 2)? If that reason does not deceive, they did rightly who placed it below any venial sin whatsoever, since in the slightest sin there is more of the voluntary than in the original, unless we are understood to have willed in Adam.”
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p. 8
“But for what reason, then, is eternal punishment due to it? You respond, by the condition of man, who is found without grace; and that this is the doctrine of St. Thomas (Stapleton, Of Original Sin, bk. 1, ch. 1, disp. 1, q. 5). Whatever this may be, it is surely most absurd: that man is punished not because he is stained by original sin, but because he lacks the grace which ought to have been present.
Is it thus graver and more repugnant to original justice to lack grace than to be stained with a fault? But this very lack of justice, if it could be separated from stains, would be much lighter than to be stained with sins; for it could happen that someone is held to be unjust, as Pighius thought, on account of a plainly alien offense, of which he himself was never an associate. Then, a stain brings a deformity worthy of hatred and punishment; to lack justice indeed removes a habit, but does not posit the contrary. But Scripture, on the contrary, teaches that nothing but uncleanness and abomination delays entry into heaven (Apoc. 21:27).
But from these things it is now sufficiently clear how this error about the punishment of original sin is not undeservedly or falsely imposed upon you. For first you teach that no punishment of sense, neither exterior nor interior, is due to this sin (Thomas, in 2, dist. 33, q. 2, art. 2). For there is a certain eternal punishment, if we believe you, without the sense of pain, and with this original sin, if it is alone, is punished: a mild punishment, I believe, which inflicts no pain either without or within. What is this other than to take away all punishment?”
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p. 23
“But what the sin of Adam was, you say does not pertain to the present matter, although in that matter some Scholastics have tormented themselves much and in vain; and indeed so ineptly and ridiculously that it is not obscure from what school they have come.
Lombard himself, whom all salute as master, thinks that Adam sinned in this: that he indulged his wife too much, not from lust, but from love, because he believed that she, unless her wish were granted, would perish from grief (Lombard, bk. 2, d. 32, ch. 5). Thus Scotus, and Bonaventure, and Durandus, and even before them, Anselm (Scotus and Bonaventure in 2, d. 32; Durandus in 2, d. 32, q. 2).
Others almost excuse Adam and transfer all the blame to Eve. Thus Biel, not insipidly for the capacity of this school:
“And thus it is clear that the sin of the woman was begun in pride, had its progress in avarice, but its consummation in gluttony.” (in 2, dist. 32, q. 1).
What could be said more lazily? Do you think these men ever thought seriously on this matter? Do you not see their so signal infidelity, from which ambition and ingratitude emerged? For if they had believed that they would die if they did contrary to what they were commanded, they would never have dared so great a crime. But giving more faith to the devil than to God, they immediately progressed to such audacity as to contemn the precept of God, to cast out all memory of the divine benefits from their minds, and to snatch at the kingdom and divinity.
The root therefore and fount of all evils was infidelity; as on the contrary, the beginning and mother of all good things is faith. Thus Prosper:
“if he had not lost the first faith, he would not have lacked all other good things” (Prosper ad excerpt. Genuens.).
But this is not now being discussed, that we should inquire in what thing the first parents sinned most. But that you say no one is born proud or gluttonous, surely the seeds of these vices are in us from nature; nor is there any sin to which we are not too much inclined, unless we are prohibited by discipline or grace. But if we are born sinners, with the stain of what sin, in the end, are we infected, if not of pride, and of gluttony, and of infidelity, and finally of all wickedness?”
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Latin Articles
1600’s
Maresius, Samuel – A New Synopsis of Elenctic Theology… (1646-1647), vol. 1, ch. 11
1. ‘Whether the first parents were made entirely whole, just, perfect and immortal? It is affirmed, contra Pelagians and Socinians; and simultaneously it is shown that Jesuits and Scholastics really agree here with Pelagians in contriving in the state of pure nature and many other things.’ 461-67
9. ‘Whether the blessed Virgin was conceived in original sin, as the rest of men? It is affirmed, contra Scotists and the minor orders and Jesuits of the Papal communion; and Tirinus with them and with other is charged’ 518-36
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Related Pages
On the Reception of Aquinas in Church History