The question we have now to consider is: Does man need actual grace in every one of these three states, and if so, to what extent?
1. Semipelagianism.—Semipelagianism is an attempt to effect a compromise between Pelagianism and Augustinism by attributing to mere nature a somewhat greater importance in matters of salvation than St. Augustine was willing to admit.
a) After Augustine had for more than twenty years vigorously combatted and finally defeated Pelagianism, some pious monks of Marseilles, under the leadership of John Cassian, Abbot of St. Victor,[296] tried to find middle ground between his teaching and that of the Pelagians. Cassian's treatise Collationes Patrum,[297] and the reports sent to St. Augustine by his disciples Prosper and Hilary, enable us to form a pretty fair idea of the Semipelagian system. Its principal tenets were the following:
α) There is a distinction between the “beginning of faith” (initium fidei, affectus credulitatis) and “increase in faith” (augmentum fidei). The former depends entirely on the will, while the latter, like faith itself, requires the grace of Christ.
β) Nature can merit grace by its own efforts, though this natural merit (meritum naturae) is founded on equity only (meritum de congruo), and does not confer a right in strict justice, as Pelagius contended.
γ) Free-will, after justification, can of its own power secure the gift of final perseverance (donum perseverantiae); which consequently is not a special grace, but a purely natural achievement.
δ) The bestowal or denial of baptismal grace in the case of infants, who can have no previous merita de congruo, depends on their hypothetical future merits or demerits as foreseen by God from all eternity.[298]
b) Informed of these errors by his disciples, St. Augustine energetically set to work, and in spite of his advanced age wrote two books against the Semipelagians, entitled respectively, De Praedestinatione Sanctorum and De Dono Perseverantiae. The new teaching was not yet, however, regarded as formally heretical, and Augustine treated his opponents with great consideration, in fact he humbly acknowledged that he himself [pg 099] had professed similar errors before his consecration (A. D. 394).[299]
After Augustine's death, Prosper and Hilary went to Rome and interested Pope Celestine in their cause. In a dogmatic letter addressed to the Bishops of Gaul, the Pontiff formally approved the teaching of St. Augustine on grace and original sin, but left open such other “more profound and difficult incidental questions” as predestination and the manner in which grace operates in the soul.[300] But as this papal letter (called “Indiculus”) was an instruction rather than an ex-cathedra definition, the controversy continued until, nearly a century later (A. D. 529), the Second Council of Orange, convoked by St. Caesarius of Arles, formally condemned the Semipelagian heresy. This council, or at least its first eight canons,[301] received the solemn approbation of Pope Boniface II (A. D. 530) and thus became vested with ecumenical authority.[302]
2. The Teaching of the Church.—The Catholic Church teaches the absolute necessity of actual grace for all stages on the way to salvation. [pg 100] We shall demonstrate this in five separate theses.