Abstract

Since Augustine and the Pelagian controversy Western soteriology has been dominated by the Pauline dichotomy between grace and merit. Yet precise statements concerning the respective roles of human and divine action in the ordo salutis came only after the dam had burst in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Until then Latin theologians had been bound only by the patristic understanding of Pelagianism and the ancient understanding of fatum or determinism. In short, God must be responsible for salvation, but humans must be culpable for their own damnation. Working within that framework medieval Scholastics had arrived at a consensus concerning predestination by the thirteenth century: single-particular election . According to SPE God actively wills to save particular individuals, and therefore those individuals receive grace. Those for whom God does not will salvation do not receive grace and thus remain in sin and justly merit damnation. According to this account, the term “predestination” refers to the divine will to save particular individuals; “reprobation” refers to the foreknowledge of sins in those toward whom God does not have such a will