The Predestination of Humans and Angels: Augustinus, Tome III, Book IX by Cornelius Jansen (review)

Reviewed by: The Predestination of Humans and Angels: Augustinus, Tome III, Book IX by Cornelius Jansen Shaun Blanchard The Predestination of Humans and Angels: Augustinus, Tome III, Book IX. By Cornelius Jansen, translated by Guido Stucco. [ Early Modern Catholics Sources Series.] ( Washington D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press. 2022. Pp. vii, 322. $65. ISBN 978-0-813-23542-4.) For an author who gave his name to one of the most important movements in early modern Catholicism, the work of the Dutch bishop and scripture professor Cornelius Jansen (1585–1638) is, to put it mildly, not often encountered first-hand. Due to the painstaking labor of the Italian scholar Guido Stucco, we now have access to a substantial and pivotal selection of Jansen's Augustinus in English. Stucco's work consists in three parts. The first is a highly detailed 48-page essay introducing readers to the debate Jansen entered, rather than to the long story of "Jansenism," which did not exist when the Augustinus was posthumously published in 1640. Instead, Stucco provides an excellent overview of the De Auxiliis crisis that pitted Molinist Jesuits against Thomist Dominicans, with their competing visions of the relationship between grace, predestination, and free will. Jansen can be read as a response to the Jesuit Luis de Molina's claim that had St. Augustine been aware of the concept of "middle knowledge" (i.e. that God predestined humans to salvation based on His foreknowledge of their future choices), there would have been no semi-Pelagian controversy (6n10). The heart of the volume is Stucco's translation of Tome III, Book IX, "The Predestination of Humans and Angels," which is formed of twenty-six chapters, [End Page 423] ranging from two to twenty pages. While absolutely fixated on Augustine, whose doctrine (at least on divine grace) he equates, simpliciter, with tradition and the teaching of the Church, Jansen's confidence in Augustine is based ultimately on the Doctor of Grace's correct exegesis of the New Testament, especially St. Paul (130). Jansen constantly cites the Bible, especially particular stories that illustrate, in his view at least, the truth of the Augustinian doctrine of gratuitous, efficacious grace. Those familiar with later disputes will be unsurprised to see a discussion of the rise, fall, and rise again of the Apostle Peter (227–28). While primarily a work of academic controversy, pastoral concerns were not absent from Jansen's mind (he briefly served as Bishop of Ypres from 1636 to his death in 1638). For him, the Augustinian doctrine of predestination was in fact comforting (177–79), for it allows weak sinners to cast themselves on the abundant grace of a good God who infallibly brings their salvation to fulfillment. Additionally, Jansen was clear that God in no way predestines anyone to sin. Following Augustine, he argues that the system of gratuitous efficacious grace does not make God the author of sin (144). If God's ways seem inconceivable—on what basis does He damn some and save others?—we should remember that according to the gospel it is the humble who see clearly while the wise are confounded (248–51). It struck this reviewer that the gulf between the theological world of Jansen and our own is made nigh-unbridgeable by the almost total contemporary (Catholic) abandonment of the massa damnata—the notion that all of humanity is justly condemned by God to hell for the sin of Adam (and their own sins) and that few, probably very few, would ultimately be saved. This terrifying idea was certainly not unique to Jansenists or to those who emphasized predestination. This is not to say that key details of Jansen's theology were not offensive to many contemporaries. My point is simply that to most modern ears, the conversation Jansen was having—with fellow Augustinians, with Thomists (whom he judges confused and lukewarm), with Molinists (little better than Pelagian heretics), with "Massilians" (untenable), and with a cast of patristic figures like Fulgentius and Prosper—is part of a Catholic thought-world that has for the most part passed away. Stucco concludes with a very helpful appendix, a translation of a summary table of contents of the Augustinus...