Browsing Category Saint of the Day

The Rev’d Alban Butler (1710-1773) undertook to write a thoroughgoing account of saints for the Catholic Book Society (Derby, England: Thomas Richardson & Son). What resulted was a massive 12-volume (one per month) work: The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Other Principal Saints: Compiled from Original Monuments and Other Authentic Records. The first edition was completed in 1759, and became a classic in hagiography, with later editions that included commentary, such as the 1842-1846 work, used here.
[Because subsequent research showed that certain individuals never existed or had actually been pagan deities cloaked in a Christian veneer, or because the miracles were simply too “out there” for a more modern audience, a severe gelding of Butler’s magisterial work took place in 1956. Alas.]
Out of each day’s multiple stories, I shall lift up those vignettes to riff on. Enjoy and (if it’s in your particular vernacular) be edified! – TK

Heresy Helps Me to Come Out: St. Prosper & Semi-Pelagianism (What?!)–June 25

Tim Koch God Talk, Saint of the Day 0 Comment

Our St. Prosper lived in the 5th century and is primarily known (and was sanctified) for his battles against the Semi-Pelagians. So you ask: “The Who-Whatzits? And–please–before you tell me more, why should I even care let alone read on about what appears to be only so much ‘picking gnat shit out of pepper’?!” Fair enough. All I can say is–please humor me a bit here.

This is a case of drilling way way down in the field of Christian doctrine. And the only reason I can see for doing so is because it touches upon something very very important and fundamental to our lives together. At root in the Pelagian (and Semi-Pelagian) heresies is the question of how good things can be done by which human beings.

In brief, the core belief (or simply observation) is that human beings–left to their own devices–do not just automatically do good and loving things all over the place. This, to me (after over a half-century of life) seems a justifiable assertion.

So back to Prosper and three age-old choices under consideration back in the 5th century and still viable in the 21st, given the conviction that humans do not simply go about doing good things all the time:

  1. Human beings utterly lack the capacity to generate good actions unless and until God leads them to do so. (Calvinism)
  2. Human beings have the capacity to generate good actions if and only if they assent to God’s empowering grace (i.e., God generates the grace, metaphorically taps humans on the shoulder, and humans either accept it or not in an exercise of free-will-with-eternal-consequences). AKA Orthodoxy.
  3. The Semi-Pelagian option (heretical): Human beings have the capacity, in the exercise of their own free will, to access divine power to assist them in doing good works (i.e., Humans recognize their limitations in bringing about the good that they seek and so seek the Divine assistance).

Why in the world does this matter? Or, maybe, how does this matter?

Possibility number one: Only God can lead people to good actions. Well, this is an ultimate in dehumanization–ascribing to some ethereal God all that is “good” and to human beings all that is “sinful” or “bad.” It does give one the peace of knowing “God is in total control” and it gives one the nihilism of “God’s will is going to happen no matter what.”

The second option (the one that the Catholics like): God gets credit for making “good” possible and human beings–who cannot make good possible on their own–nevertheless have agency in saying Yes or No to Divine grace. This provides the hope that good is always possible, no matter how bad things get; it simultaneously limits the way that it can happen–by saying Yes to the Christian-preferably-Catholic God.

The last (Semi-Pelagian) option that was so darned attractive to people that it took a saint (Prosper) to wrestle it to the ground? That people (of any or of no particular religious bent) who want to do good works often find that they need help along the way, and… guess what?! Help IS available, if one should so request or invoke Divine Power.

As to Option Number 1, above, I’m simply going to join the Catholic church and set it aside as the diminution of human agency and a world too stultifying to live in. “Good” has no meaning to me if no human choice is involved, and, as a corollary, how (or even why) should one address “evil” if no one can be held culpable?

So at long last, here we are back with St. Prosper: Orthodoxy v. Semi-Pelagianism. The orthodox view (number 2, immediately above)  is that God alone enables people to even want to good things. The heresy, Option 3, is that people can bring God (by-whatever-name) into the arena of empowering their good acts.

Does this sound like much ado about precious little difference? I assure you it isn’t. Here’s where it breaks apart: Under one scenario, the only people capable of doing good are God-followers (Christians, pretty much exclusively). Under the other, any person is capable of doing good and of invoking/evoking divine POWER to make it happen (so Wiccans, yes!! And Christians, too. And Buddhists. And atheists).

In writing this blog, I may have actually found my religious niche in this life–I, Tim Koch, at least for this day and night, am a Semi-Pelagian. Bring it on!