05 — The Grace Controversy
The most argued question in Vincentian scholarship: whether the Commonitorium, beneath its anti-Nestorian surface, is a covert attack on Augustine’s doctrine of predestination — and whether Vincent is the author of the anti-Augustinian Objectiones preserved by Prosper. This section sets out both questions with care, the named scholars on each side, and the “Semi-Pelagian” reputation of the Lérins milieu in which Vincent and Cassian moved.
Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (pre-Schism West; the canon of catholicity)
Lérins and Marseilles in the 420s and 430s were the heartland of what later polemics — never the participants themselves — called “Semi-Pelagianism”: a current of monastic teachers, Cassian foremost, who accepted the necessity of grace but resisted Augustine’s later doctrine of unconditional predestination as novel and pastorally ruinous. Vincent wrote in this milieu, and his insistence on antiquity and consensus has long been read as a weapon against the Augustinian innovation. This section presents the case for and against that reading — sharpened by the discovery that Vincent also compiled the Excerpta, a florilegium of Augustine’s own anti-heretical texts — and the disputed authorship of the Objectiones Vincentianae.
Files in This Section
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| Vincent and Augustine | The long-argued question whether the Commonitorium‘s polemic targets Augustine’s predestinarianism: Chapter 26’s “deceivers,” the “Semi-Pelagian” Lérins milieu, the complicating evidence of the Excerpta, and the named scholars on both sides — no verdict, per METHODOLOGY §4. |
| The Objectiones Vincentianae | The sixteen anti-predestinarian “objections” known only through Prosper’s Responsiones, the old attribution to Vincent, the case for and against his authorship, and what they show of the anti-Augustinian reaction whether or not Vincent wrote them. |
See Also
- The Monk Vincent — the Lérins setting of the controversy
- A Lérins Theology — the semi-Pelagian reputation reassessed
- Quod Ubique, Quod Semper — the canon as a possible anti-Augustinian instrument
- St. John Cassian — the abbot of Marseilles, the classic voice of the same reaction and Prosper’s chief target
- Holy Tradition — the appeal to antiquity that frames the dispute
References
- Vincent of Lérins. The Commonitory. Trans. C. A. Heurtley. In Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series II, Vol. 11. 1894.
- Prosper of Aquitaine. Pro Augustino Responsiones and Liber contra Collatorem. Trans. P. De Letter, Ancient Christian Writers 32. Westminster, MD: Newman Press, 1963.
- Madoz, José. Excerpta Vincentii Lirinensis. Madrid: Estudios Onienses, 1940.
- Chadwick, Owen. John Cassian. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968.
- Weaver, Rebecca Harden. Divine Grace and Human Agency: A Study of the Semi-Pelagian Controversy. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1996.