Letter 3

From: Faustus, Bishop of Riez To: Lucidus (a presbyter) Date: ~474 AD Context: Faustus rebukes the presbyter Lucidus for teaching a rigid predestinarianism — the letter that triggered the semi-Pelagian controversy at the Council of Arles, and Lucidus's subsequent retraction. Faustus, bishop, to Lucidus, beloved brother in Christ. I have heard what you have been teaching, and I cannot remain silent about it. You have been telling people — apparently with considerable conviction — that some human beings are predestined to damnation regardless of their choices; that Christ died not for all humanity but only for those elected to salvation; and that the final state of any individual is fixed from before their birth, leaving their own will and choices without real significance. I understand where these ideas come from. They are a reading of Augustine — a selective reading, I would argue, but I recognize the texts you are drawing on. But they lead somewhere Augustine himself would not have gone. If what you are teaching is true, then the proclamation of the Gospel is a kind of cruelty: we call people to repentance when repentance is possible only for some, and impossible for the rest. More than this: your teaching makes God the author of damnation. You will say that God merely permits it, merely declines to elect. But if God foreknows from eternity who will be saved and who will not, and if that outcome is fixed independently of the human will, then the distinction between God permitting damnation and God causing it is verbal, not real. I am asking you — not ordering, but asking, as a brother who is concerned — to reconsider. The tradition's position is that God wills all to be saved. The doors of repentance are genuinely open. The human will is genuinely involved. Grace does not override the will but enables it. I await your response. Faustus