More Examples Of Extrabiblical, Pre-Reformation Support For Eternal Security

In the ninth century, Rabanus Maurus wrote:

Extrabiblical, Pre-Reformation Support For Eternal Security

I wrote a post about the subject in 2007. Below are links to my recent series on the topic. I expect to add further links to this page in the future, as I write more material that's relevant.

Part 1: Preliminaries, Some Earlier Sources
Part 2: Augustine And His Opponents
Part 3: The Mercyists
Part 4: Some Other Sources

I later wrote about some medieval sources supporting eternal security.

And here's a post about some relevant comments made by Caesarius of Arles.

Go here for a discussion of support for eternal security in Jerome's Letter 119 and his commentary on Amos.

Another post discussed how pre-Reformation sources interpreted Biblical passages that have been cited in support of eternal security.

Mary's Sinfulness In Pre-Reformation Sources

Gavin Ortlund recently produced a video about the sinlessness of Mary. I've written a few posts over the years (here, here, and here) providing some of the many examples of references to her sinfulness among pre-Reformation sources. I've come across more over the years, but I haven't been posting all of them.

For example, earlier this year, I was looking something up in Michael O'Carroll's Theotokos (Wilmington, Delaware: Michael Glazier, Inc., 1988), and I came across a few more relevant sources unexpectedly. As I recall, I was looking up one of the entries in the "H" section. While I was there, I decided to read a few of the nearby entries. Over and over, there are references to how various pre-Reformation sources denied Mary's sinlessness in one way or another. Helinand of Froidmont, who died in the thirteenth century, is referred to as thinking that Mary "was sanctified in the womb", meaning that she wasn't immaculately conceived (169). Henry of Ghent, in the thirteenth century, held that "Mary's soul in the very moment in which it was united to the body was both contaminated by sin and sanctified" (169). Hesychius, who died in the fifth century, interprets the sword of Luke 2:35 as a reference to doubt on Mary's part, commenting that "though Mary was a virgin, she was a woman, though she was the Mother of God, she was of our stuff" (170). Those are just a few examples among so many others like that in O'Carroll's work alone. And he leaves out a lot that could have been included.

I want to make another point relevant to Luke 2:35. During the patristic era, the verse was commonly viewed as a reference to sin on Mary's part, which is likely a correct interpretation. Basil of Caesarea, one of the sources who saw a reference to sin on Mary's part in Luke 2:35, goes as far as to say that there's "no obscurity or variety of interpretation" (Letter 260:6). That's not accurate, but it does illustrate how widespread belief in Mary's sinfulness was, that Basil would go so far in describing how popular his view was at the time. And it illustrates how we need to take into account not only what sources like Basil tell us about their own views, but also what information we can gather from them about other sources.

The sinlessness of Mary isn't just denied by a few sources in the earliest centuries, but instead is widely contradicted for hundreds of years, from the first century onward, including by apostles, prominent church fathers, and Roman bishops. Rejection of her sinlessness is still found in some sources well into the medieval era, even into the second millennium.

Trent Horn's Recent Video On Mary's Assumption

You can watch the video here. I replied to a previous video he produced on the topic last year, and some of what could be said in response to his recent video was said in last year's context. You can go here for my response to that previous video. I want to reiterate or expand upon several points:

Widespread Disagreement About The Afterlife Before The Reformation

In a recent post, I cited a book on the cult of the saints by Matthew Dal Santo. Something that often comes up in the book is the wide variety of views of the afterlife held by late patristic and medieval sources. For example:

Opposition To Prayer To The Saints Among The Pre-Reformation Hussites

The pre-Reformation Hussites differed with each other in some of their beliefs, but we find a rejection of prayer to saints among some of them. For example, the historian Nick Needham wrote concerning the Taborites:

"They were much more radical in their rejection of Catholic doctrines and practices than the Utraquists were (e.g. Taborites denied transubstantiation, the invocation of saints, and prayers for the dead), and wanted to break away entirely from the Catholic Church." (2000 Years Of Christ's Power, Vol. 2: The Middle Ages [United Kingdom: Christian Focus, 2016], approximate Kindle location 6711)

See here for a collection of other examples of pre-Reformation opposition to praying to saints and angels and responses to arguments for the practice.

Other Anti-Roman-Catholic Views Of The Pre-Reformation Waldensians

I won't address all of them here, but I want to provide some examples. I discussed their opposition to praying to saints and angels and their opposition to some related Roman Catholic beliefs and practices in a post last week. Gabriel Audisio covers some other disagreements as well in his book I cited in that post.

Claudius Of Turin's Opposition To Prayer To The Saints In The Ninth Century

The historian Philip Schaff wrote the following about the views of Claudius, a bishop of Turin in the ninth century:

"The departed saints themselves do not wish to be worshipped by us, and cannot help us. While we live, we may aid each other by prayers, but not after death." (section 105 here)

The historian Nick Needham wrote:

"Scholars once thought Agobard was the author of Concerning Images, an attack on image-worship which anticipated many of the concerns of the Protestant Reformation, rejecting the practice of invoking the saints, and exalting Christ as the only Mediator between God and humankind, the sole object of religious trust. However, modern scholars now doubt whether Agobard wrote this - the real author was probably bishop Claudius of Turin (died 827), another distinguished Carolingian scholar." (2000 Years Of Christ's Power, Vol. 2: The Middle Ages [United Kingdom: Christian Focus, 2016], approximate Kindle location 1136)

Opposition To Praying To Saints And Angels Among The Pre-Reformation Waldensians

They weren't consistent in all of their beliefs, and different Waldensians have held different views of prayer, but many of them opposed praying to saints and angels to one degree or another. That includes opposition to those practices during the Waldensian movement's pre-Reformation years. In a book on the Waldensians, the historian Gabriel Audisio writes:

Justification Apart From Baptism Among Pre-Reformation Lollards

I've written a lot over the years in response to the false claim that nobody believed in justification through faith alone prior to the Reformation or between the time of the apostles and the Reformation. See here, for example. The claim often focuses on the relationship between baptism and justification. We'll be told that all of the church fathers believed in baptismal regeneration or that none of the patristic or medieval sources believed in justification apart from baptism, for example. In recent months, I've written some posts about support for justification through faith alone, including justification apart from baptism in particular, in the first two centuries of church history. See here, here, and here. What I want to do in this post is discuss some examples at the other end of the spectrum, from the closing years of the medieval era.

Focusing Too Much On The Patristic And Medieval Eras

One of the most popular criticisms of Protestantism, and one that seems to go a long way in convincing people, is the allegation that various Protestant beliefs were absent or not popular enough during the patristic and medieval eras. We're told that justification through baptism was widely accepted during that timeframe, for example, or we're even told that it was universally believed. Or look at how popular it was to pray to the saints and angels. Look at all of the agreement on such issues among the apostolic churches. And so on.

Patristic And Medieval Beliefs Are More Complicated Than Often Suggested

When discussing the history of beliefs, people often underestimate the diversity of views that have been held. I'm focused on patristic and medieval sources, since those come up so prominently in the sort of discussions I've been having lately about the claims of groups like Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. We shouldn't just count up how many people were for or against a particular view. For example, sometimes a source was agnostic on an issue or held a position on it, but qualified that position with an expression of hesitation about it.

I've been posting a lot about the Assumption of Mary lately, and that's a good example of a belief that's relevant in this context. It's not as though every source was ignorant of the assumption claim, favored it, or opposed it. There are more categories than those three, and we should be taking more of the details involved in each category into account. There were some patristic and medieval sources who were agnostic about whether Mary was assumed or expressed a view, but accompanied that expression with significant qualifiers, such as by commenting on how hesitant they were about their conclusion. That's relevant to the claims Pope Pius XII and other Catholics and non-Catholics have made about an assumption of Mary. If somebody says that he thinks it seems fitting that God would assume Mary to heaven, but that he's hesitant about it, that other Christians are free to not accept her assumption, or something like that, that's significantly different than saying that Mary's assumption is an apostolic tradition always held by the church. It's important to make distinctions like these. And though I've used the Assumption of Mary as an example, we need to take these issues into account across the board, whatever the issue is that's being considered.

Forerunners Of The Reformation

Gavin Ortlund just put out a good video on reform groups in the centuries leading up to the Reformation, especially the Waldensians. You can find some material on medieval agreements with Protestantism in our archives, such as some discussions of medieval sources in my article on the history of sola fide. I'm more familiar with the patristic era than the medieval era, but I've occasionally addressed medieval issues, in the article just linked and elsewhere. Go here for an example of a Catholic scholar acknowledging belief in some of the Protestant solas prior to the Reformation. A different, but related issue is how well some Protestant beliefs were initially received at the time of the Reformation. See here. If Protestantism is as much of a departure from earlier history as its critics often claim, why do we see groups like the ones Gavin Ortlund discusses and beliefs and circumstances like the ones discussed in my articles linked above?

The Perennial Jewish Corroboration Of Christianity

What's below are some comments from Augustine on Jewish corroboration of Christianity. Notice that he was writing about 1600 years ago and that his comments are applicable to every century of the church's history. We're sometimes told that people didn't have much evidence for Christianity during most of church history, as if people had little evidence for the religion between the earliest years of the history of the church and the modern era. Supposedly, recent developments in fields like archeology and historical scholarship have brought about a major change. Those who lived in the medieval era, for example, allegedly didn't have much evidence to go by. It's true that they had significantly less evidence than we have, but they had more than is often suggested. Augustine is addressing a significant line of evidence for Christianity that's existed throughout church history:

"Indeed, it is a great confirmation of our faith that such important testimony is borne by enemies. The believing Gentiles cannot suppose these testimonies to Christ to be recent forgeries; for they find them in books held sacred for so many ages by those who crucified Christ, and still regarded with the highest veneration by those who every day blaspheme Christ. If the prophecies of Christ were the production of the preachers of Christ, we might suspect their genuineness. But now the preacher expounds the text of the blasphemer. In this way the Most High God orders the blindness of the ungodly for the profit of the saint, in His righteous government bringing good out of evil, that those who by their own choice live wickedly may be, in His just judgment, made the instruments of His will. So, lest those that were to preach Christ to the world should be thought to have forged the prophecies which speak of Christ as to be born, to work miracles, to suffer unjustly, to die, to rise again, to ascend to heaven, to publish the gospel of eternal life among all nations, the unbelief of the Jews has been made of signal benefit to us; so that those who do not receive in their heart for their own good these truths, carry, in their hands for our benefit the writings in which these truths are contained. And the unbelief of the Jews increases rather than lessens the authority of the books, for this blindness is itself foretold. They testify to the truth by their not understanding it. By not understanding the books which predict that they would not understand, they prove these books to be true." (Reply To Faustus The Manichaean, 16:21)

The Church's Considered, Mature Rejection Of Roman Catholic Teaching

I want to add something to the points Steve Hays has been making lately about development of doctrine. It's common for Roman Catholics to tell us that the church often doesn't define a doctrine until it's been violated. Supposedly, the church develops a fuller understanding of the faith, or expresses what it understands more fully, as it struggles against heretics and other opponents. Or something that existed in seed form all along won't grow into a tree until the church later gives the subject more consideration for some other reason. Large and complicated beliefs that are not only consistent with scripture, but also implied by it, such as Trinitarianism and the canon of scripture, are often cited as examples.

Doing well and doing good

Peter Abelard draws some distinctions that are germane to theodicy in general and Calvinism in particular:

When the Father handed over the Son and the Son handed himself over, as the Apostle mentions, and Judas handed over his master, certainly the handing over of the Son was done by God the Father; it was also done by the Son, and it was done by the traitor. Therefore, the traitor did what God did too. But did he do well to do it? For even if it was good, it was not at any rate done well, for something that ought to have been beneficial to him. For God doesn't think about the things that are done but rather in what mind they are done. The merit or praiseworthiness of the doer doesn't consist in the deed but in the intention. 

Often in fact the same thing is done by different people, through the justice of one and the viciousness of the other. For example, if two people hang a criminal, one out of a zeal for justice and the other out of hatred springing from an old feud, then although the hanging is the same action, and although they certainly do what is good to be done and what justice demands, nevertheless through the difference in their intention the same thing is done by different people, one badly and the other well. Peter Abelard, Ethical Writings (Hackett 1995), 12-13.

Indeed it often happens that the same thing is done by different people in such a way that the one does it well and the other evilly, according to their intention. For instance, if two people hang some criminal, the one solely because he hates him but the other because he has to carry out this justice, this hanging is accordingly done justly by the latter, because it was done with the right intention, but unjustly by the former, because it was done not out of love of justice but out of fervor for hatred or wrath.

Sometimes too, evil men, or even the Devil himself, are said to work together with God in doing the same deed, in such a way that the same thing is asserted to be done both by God and by them. For look, we see the things Job possessed taken away from him by Satan, and nevertheless Job himself professes they are taken away from  him by God. He says "The Lord has given, the Lord has taken away".

The Lord Jesus Christ's being handed over into the Jews' hands is mentioned as being done by Jesus himself, by God the Father, and by the traitor Judas…Yet although in such doings either the Devil or Judas did the very same thing God did, nevertheless they shouldn't be said to have done well, even if perhaps they seem to have done something good. Even if they did or wanted to be done what God wants to be done, or have the same will as God has in doing something, should they for that reason be said to do well because they do what God wants to be done? Or do they have a good will because they want what God wants? Of course not! For even if they do or want to be done what God wants to be done, nevertheless they don't do or want to do it because they believe God wants it to be done. Their intention isn't the same as God's in the same deed. And although they want what God wants, and God's will and theirs can be called the same because they want the same thing, nevertheless their will is evil and God's is good since they want it to be done for different causes. So too, although different people's action may be the same because they do the same thing, nevertheless according to the difference in intention this one's action is good and that one's evil. For although they accomplish the same result, nevertheless this one does the selfsame thing well, and that one evilly. Ibid. 143-44.

Upon This Sand They Built A Church

I want to gather a collection of links to some posts I've written on the papacy over the years.

Here's an overview of the Biblical evidence pertaining to the papacy. And here's a post addressing the earliest extrabiblical sources. In another post, I addressed the absence of a papacy in early responses to Christianity by non-Christian sources. Regarding how we should expect to see the papacy referred to in the early sources if such an office existed, see here.

I wrote a series on apostolic succession, and that series discusses many subjects relevant to the papacy. There's a lot of material on how Hegesippus, Irenaeus, and other early sources viewed Peter, the nature of succession, and other pertinent issues. And here's a post on the episcopate in the early church.

Sola Fide Before The Reformation

The doctrine of justification through faith alone is foundational to the Christian life. It's a source of great peace, love, joy, and other blessings. And it's one of the central themes of the Reformation, which is relevant in light of Reformation Day coming up next week.

Disputes over sola fide often focus on Biblical and philosophical objections to the concept. But there's a common historical objection that's seldom addressed in depth, and it's even more uncommon for it to be addressed well. It's an objection that has a lot to do with the Reformation and, thus, Reformation Day. Did anybody hold to justification through faith alone between the time of the apostles and the Reformation? If not, then isn't that absence of the doctrine strong evidence against it? There are many implications that follow for the plausibility of a Protestant reading of scripture, how we view church history, and other issues.

I've addressed sola fide before the Reformation in many posts over the years. What I want to do here is link my central post on the subject. The comments section of the thread has some relevant material as well, such as a discussion of sola fide in Clement of Rome. You can find similar material in other threads in our archives, like the ones I link in the post just mentioned.

The Text and Interpretation of Scripture in the Middle Ages

Here’s more from Richard Muller, with some scintillating and not-well-known commentary from John Bugay:

The issue of text and interpretation was further complicated by the many popular Bibles of the Middle Ages, both Latin and vernacular, prose and verse, and by the interrelationship of Scripture, tradition, and legend with the medieval identification of the literal meaning of the text and the temporal sojourn of the people of God as historia.

Note that even the most famous Medieval writer, Thomas Aquinas, blended very much “legend” with his theology and philosophy. For example, the “global influence of Dionysius on the metaphysic of Aquinas”, according to Francis O’Rourke, “extends to such central questions as the very nature of existence, the hierarchy of beings, the nature of God, and the theory of creation” (O’Rourke, “Pseudo-Dionysius and the Metaphyics of Aquinas”, Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, © 1992, 2005, pg xvi).

This is even though Aquinas (and others of his era) mistakenly thought that the fifth-century writer “Pseudo-Dionysius” was actually the companion of Paul from Acts 17.

Similarly, Aquinas’s Contra errors Graecorum, written in 1263, (commissioned by the Curia for Pope Urban IV), relied very heavily on the Symmachan forgeries, the forged “Donation of Constantine”, and the “Pseudo-Isidorean Decretals”.

You don’t find many loose copies of that major work of Aquinas lying around – a testimony to Rome’s tidiness in the face of its own profound embarrassments.

Works like the Speculum historiale of Vincent of Beauvais and the Speculum humanae salvationis of Ludolph of Saxony functioned as biblical paraphrases that mediated the sacred history of the Scriptures together with legendary additions and augmentations, some of which, in the case of the latter work, come from ancient secular history, and virtually all of which serve the underlying hermeneutical purpose of manifesting the movement through history from obscurely promised salvation under the Old Testament to clearly offered redemption under the New.

The typological interpretation of the entirety of history by means of the New Testament fulfillment is not only characteristic of these works and others of their type, it is also the basis, by way of these popular Bibles, of much of the art of the Middle Ages.

This gradual accommodation of the text to its interpretation and the “corruption” of the text through scribal errors did not pass unnoticed during the scholastic era. Virtually at the same point that the Paris text, the Glossa ordinaria, and Lombard’s Sententia became standard components of a highly organized and interrelated program of theological study, the text of the Vulgate itself became the subject of debate.

Even in the twelfth century a few theologians had raised questions about the relationship of the Vulgate to the Hebrew Old Testament: at the beginning of the century (1109), Stephen Harding, abbot of Citeaux, had excised, with the help of a convert from Judaism, passages in the Vulgate not found in the original Hebrew.

Similar efforts characterize the work of another Cistercian of the twelfth century, Nicholas Manjacoria. Nicholas had studied Hebrew and worked to remove additions that had been made to the text of the Vulgate. He specifically singled out for criticism the idea that the most elaborate version of a text was the best, and he spelled out his approach to the text at length in a treatise, the Libellus de corruptione et correptione Psalmorum (ca. 1145). Hugh of St. Victor (d. 1141) had also noted textual corruptions in the Vulgate.

In the thirteenth century, particularly in the great teaching orders, there was a concerted effort to disentangle text and gloss and even to correct the text on the basis of the Hebrew and Greek originals.

Thus, Hugh of St. Cher tested the text of the Vulgate against Jerome’s commentaries, several pre-Carolingian codices, and the Hebrew text.

So extensive was this effort that Hugh and his associates produced a supplement to the gloss—in effect, “a new apparatus to the whole Bible.”

On the one hand, Hugh superintended the production of a massive concordance organized alphabetically; on the other, he developed a new set of postils or annotations on the entire Bible in which he emphasized parallels between texts and stressed, as did his contemporaries Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas, the priority of the literal sense as the basis for the examination of the other three senses of Scripture.

The thirteenth century was, moreover, responsible for the standardization of the text and its chapter divisions in the so-called Paris text, begun by Stephen Langton and carried forward in the corrections of Hugh of St. Cher and in the adept edition of William de la Mare, who knew both Hebrew and Greek.

Muller, R. A. (2003). Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics: The Rise And Development Of Reformed Orthodoxy; Volume 2: The Cognitive Foundation Of Theology (2nd ed., pp. 33–35). Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic.

I’ve been publishing selections from Richard Muller’s Volume 2, dealing with the doctrine of Scripture through the Middle Ages, here at Triablogue, at the following links:


Richard Muller, “Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics”, Volume 2: Scripture, September 25, 2014

“Scripture interprets Scripture” through the centuries, October 2, 2014

The Medieval Biblical Canon Revisited, October 3, 2014

How Scripture and Tradition Became Conflated in the Middle Ages, October 13, 2014

Tim Enloe relaunches “Societas Christiana”

Tim Enloe has re-launched his Societas Christiana blog, a primarily historical treatment of what he calls “the Christian society” of the Middle Ages.

Tim is a student of the middle ages and all things Medieval, and I believe that knowing this period will be helpful in all kinds of ways for those interested in learning more about the Reformation and applying its lessons to our own times.

What is “Societas Christiana”? (Part 1): Some Basic Terminology

What is “Societas Christiana”? (Part 2): A Survey of Medieval Diversity

If he gives a theme, it may be found in the first link:

This new iteration of the blog will be dedicated exclusively to re-engagement with issues of Medieval history and culture, with an eye towards what we as Modern Christians can learn from our brethren in the past.

In his first posts, he provides definitions of “Christian society”, “Christian”, and “society”. In the second post, he works through a number of the unique features of “the Middle Ages”, including a broad-brush treatment ranging from patristic questions about how the church should interact with the government and society:

in which apologists and theologians formulated four distinct positions on the locus of authority in Christian society. The four positions held then were: (1) “What has the Emperor to do with the Church?,” (2) “The Church is in the Empire,” (3) “The Empire is in the Church,” and (4) “The Church and Empire are separate, but cooperative.”

The history of the Middle Ages (and indeed, the history of our own time) can be seen as a struggle among those basic kinds of positions. Tim’s summary:

[T]he key point [is] that Medieval thought about societas Christiana was fantastically diverse, and that there is likely much we can learn from it for our own attempts to think about and live out the societal implications of the Christian gospel.