Chapter 6 considers The City of God books XIII and XIV, which complete Augustine’s inquiry into the origins of the two cities, one marked by humility and obedience, the other by pride and rebellion, and the metaphysics of pride and humility. Augustine’s defense of humility in this pair of books aims to reveal humility as fertile soil for abundant life, while pride pollutes the ground and withers life at its root.

This chapter returns to the start of Bayle’s publishing career, and the famous argument for the possibility of virtuous atheism in the Pensées diverses. Bayle’s sources and modes of argumentation are identified. Ultimately, the work was a relatively trivial piece of haute vulgarisation; to the extent that the book had an underlying message, it was to outline an anti-Pelagian anthropology. The book proved entirely uncontroversial until it was incorporated into the anti-Bayle campaign waged by Jurieu in the early 1690s. Only at this point did Bayle come up with the elaborate historicisation already discussed in II.1, which also served to expand greatly the canon of (moral) ancient and Asian atheists. But this argument also served another purpose: to further elaborate Bayle’s case for toleration, based on the rights of the errant conscience. This involved Bayle in the theological controversy over ‘philosophic sin’ that had been stirred up by Antoine Arnauld. It led him to develop his mature position. Philosophy had historically been valuable in morality, but disastrous when it came to conceptualising the divine. Christianity had resolved the situation by providing solutions to otherwise insoluble theological problems via its doctrine of creation ex nihilo by a transcendent creator deity (rather than a metaphysical first principle), and by supplying the common people with a set of moral doctrines clearer than those of any philosopher.

To say that human beings are creatures is to say that they are finite, fallible, and defined by their need of others to nurture and support them. It is to understand that people must learn to receive and then share again the life that they have been given. This places people in positions of vulnerability that are often hard to bear. This chapter explores the contours of creatureliness, and examines the character of our interdependence while also describing the communal conditions that are necessary if the vulnerability of people is to be honored rather than violated. Put another way, to live into our creaturely condition it is important for people to exercise forms of power that are modelled on the love of God made incarnate in Jesus. Characterized this way, creatureliness is humanity’s way of participating in the divine love that creates and sustains all of life.

Features of Fichte’s ethical theory point to a radical moral individualism, on the one hand, and a form of social ethics, on the other. I argue that Fichte’s theory of moral evil contains both elements, but that locating the source of moral evil in social factors would amount to a form of social determination that is incompatible with Fichte’s understanding of moral autonomy. Fichte’s explanation of moral evil in terms of a natural force of inertia, when viewed in conjunction with the clear consciousness of duty required by conscience, generates a paradox concerning how an individual could ever be considered responsible for the state of moral evil which he or she is in. In response to this paradox, I argue that Kierkegaard’s account of the concept of anxiety provides some resources for overcoming this difficulty faced by Fichte’s theory of moral evil, though only if an element of social influence is introduced. Even then, however, this theory will be shown to generate certain problems.

Between AD c. 400 and c. 1100, Christian ideas about the afterlife changed in subtle but important ways. This chapter outlines broad trends in thought about the afterlife in this period in the Latin West, and examines the concomitant changes in thinking about the post-mortem fates of souls. Ongoing contemporary discourse around topics such as sin and penance or baptism contributed to developments in the way that contemporaries understood the afterlife, including heaven, hell, and an interim state between death and universal judgement. Significantly, as Christians came to be more certain about some aspects of the afterlife, the possibility of salvation for individual souls was perceived to be less certain. As a result, by the end of the period there is much greater evidence for concern about the post-mortem fate of the soul than there had been at the beginning, laying the foundations for high medieval theological discussions and developments.

This chapter focuses on the rise of the contraband culture in Hispaniola in response to the economic challenges the island faced during the last decades of the sixteenth century. Smuggling existed in some measure throughout the earlier years of the colony, but contraband as a widespread phenomenoninvolving all social groups of the island’s inhabitants appeared during the second half of the sixteenth century and had its origins in the lack of official trade and the search by local residents for alternatives to the Sevillian trade. By the early seventeenth century, contraband had become an intrinsic part of Hispaniola’s culture, and that of many other parts of the Spanish Caribbean. This raised the suspicions of some authorities and members of the clergy who feared the consequences that such close relations with foreign Protestant traders might have for the economic and spiritual life of the local residents. These concerned observers made no distinctions between French or English merchants. They were all seen as a threat to the economy of the island and the faith of its residents. This chapter also reveals the complete inability of Spanish bureaucracy to curve illicit trading.

Ancient Egypt, its society, law and belief system were brought into being, and sustained, by the threat and application of violence in the form of cruel and unusual punishments intended unabashedly to intimidate. The ‘Big Man’ role which informs the office of kingship from the outset of Egyptian history, maintains itself on celestial as well as terrestrial levels. The fertility of valley and delta promised untold agricultural riches to the human community if there was general cooperation; it was essential therefore to deter free thought and action by all available means of violent force. Prosperity would come through the plans of a single authority, not the collective debate of a people. Similarly, in Egypt’s sphere of influence whole-hearted subservience was required on pain of violent punishment. From the third millennium BCE Egypt had begun the process of cloning this life to produce a heaven and hell.

This chapter analyses the innovative moral structure of Dante’s afterlife as a whole. Where some scholars, such as Cogan and Moevs, have tried to set out an overarching moral rationale for the Commedia, Dante incorporates diverse ethical criteria for Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise.

Analyzing the work book by book, this essay discusses the many aspects of sin and concupiscence in Augustine’s “Confessions.” It leads to the conclusion that confessio in the sense of confession of sexual sins is an essential feature of the title and contents of Augustine’s most famous writing.

This chapter deals with the question of how the established order of salvation, expressed in terms of the processus iustificationis, can be reliable without in some sense being necessary – and hence violating the divine freedom. This debate became increasingly important in late thirteenth-century theology, and was generally framed in terms of a dialectic between the ‘two powers’ of God. God’s ordained power designated the realm of the actual which, though reliable and grounded in God’s promises, was contingent. God’s absolute power referred to a world of possibilities which subverted the established order of salvation – such as God’s ability to accept someone without a created habit of grace. The chapter opens by considering how medieval theology used the notion of God’s ordained power (potentia ordinata) to explore the self-limitation of God, simultaneously establishing the provisionality and reliability of the established order of salvation. It then moves on to consider criticisms of the logical necessity of certain aspects of this established order, particularly those developed by Duns Scotus, William of Ockham, and representatives of the via moderna,such as Gabriel Biel.

Chapter 22 considers an attempt to secure some degree of rapprochement between Catholics and Protestants as rising tensions seemed to point towards an irreversible fissure within western Christianity. Aware of the significance of the divisions over the nature of justification and justifying righteousness, a group of Catholic and Protestant theologians met to discuss these at the Regensburg Colloquy (also known as the Colloquy of Regensburg) in April and May 1541. This chapter considers the positions that were represented at this Colloquy, and the outcomes of their deliberations. The importance of the Colloquy rests in part on first-hand accounts and explanations of the theological concerns about justification from each side of the debate. Although the Colloquy secured an informed and balanced way of approaching the doctrine of justification, its outcome was inconclusive, and unable to prevent a final rupture between Catholic and Protestant.

The fifth section of this volume deals with the discussion of justification in the modern period, and deals mainly with Protestant approaches to the issue. Chapter 27 opens this discussion by considering the emergence of new attitudes to justification in England, in response to growing interest in the cultural virtue of ‘reasonableness’, the concept of ‘natural religion’ and the wider issue of religious toleration. Although there is now growing support for the notion that ‘Deism’ is partly socially constructed for polemical purposes, it remains a useful tool for discussing more rationalist approaches to the Christian faith which emerged in the eighteenth century. This chapter thus considers the Deist critique of the foundations of justification, such as the notion of original sin, focussing on writers such as John Toland and Matthew Tindal. The chapter then turns to consider the debates about justification which took place during the German Enlightenment, particularly the approaches associated with Johann Gottlieb Töllner and Gotthilf Samuel Steinbart. Finally, the chapter considers the philosopher Immanuel Kant’s views on radical evil and justification, which some scholars consider to mark a re-appreciation of the continuing significance of justification in secular moral discourse.

This chapter continues the exploration of the development of the doctrine of justification during the Middle Ages, focussing on the question of how sinners are able to appropriate justification. The chapter opens by considering the nature of the human free will (liberum arbitrium), a question discussed by Augustine, but which was found to require further conceptual development in the light of ambiguities and lack of precision at certain points. One of the questions regularly raised for discussion in the early medieval period concerned whether some form of predisposition for justification was required, and how this was to be correlated with the compromised capacities of fallen humanity. This chapter considers the debates within medieval theology over the the necessity and nature of the proper disposition for justification, which often centred on the question of the relation of human and divine contributions to the process of justification. Finally, the chapter considers the origins and application of the medieval theological axiom facienti quod in se est Deus non denegat gratiam (‘God does not deny grace to anyone who does their best’).