Ex Meritis Praevisis: Predestination, Grace, and Free Will in intra-Jesuit Controversies (1587-1613)
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Eleonora Rai
Abstract
This article retraces the intra-Jesuit theological debates on the theology of salvation, including the relationship between the elements of predestination, God’s foreknowledge, Grace, and free will, in the delicate passage between the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries, and within the debates on Augustine’s theological legacy. Specifically, it explores the Flemish Jesuit Leonard Lessius’ theology and the discussions raised by it within the Society of Jesus, in order to show how soteriology has been central in the process of self-definition of the Jesuit identity in the Early Modern Age. This is particularly clear from the internal debates developed between Lessius, on the one hand, and General Claudio Acquaviva and curial theologian Roberto Bellarmino, on the other hand. Not only does the article investigate little known aspects of intra-Catholic theological debate in the post Tridentine period, but it also shows how deep pastoral and moral concerns strongly contributed to the rise of Lessius’ open-minded theology of salvation, which seemed to deprive God’s sovereign authority in favour of humankind’s free will, and human agency in the process of salvation.
© 2020 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Making and Meaning-Making: The Antwerp Altarpiece in Ringsaker (c. 1530) across the Reformation
- Remembering the Dead and Reminding the Living: Blessing of the Corpse and Burial in Sixteenth-Century Sweden
- Alfonso de Castro on Vernacular Bible Translation and Christian Education
- The Origins of the Furnace Motif: From Magico-Religious Ritual to Early Modern Tale of Makeability
- Ex Meritis Praevisis: Predestination, Grace, and Free Will in intra-Jesuit Controversies (1587-1613)
- Uneasy Agents of Tridentine Reforms: Catholic Missionaries in Southern Ottoman Hungary and Their Local Competitors in the Early Seventeenth Century
- Shaping the Profession: Some Thoughts on Office, Duty, and the Moral Problematisation of Professional Activities in the Counter-Reformation
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Making and Meaning-Making: The Antwerp Altarpiece in Ringsaker (c. 1530) across the Reformation
- Remembering the Dead and Reminding the Living: Blessing of the Corpse and Burial in Sixteenth-Century Sweden
- Alfonso de Castro on Vernacular Bible Translation and Christian Education
- The Origins of the Furnace Motif: From Magico-Religious Ritual to Early Modern Tale of Makeability
- Ex Meritis Praevisis: Predestination, Grace, and Free Will in intra-Jesuit Controversies (1587-1613)
- Uneasy Agents of Tridentine Reforms: Catholic Missionaries in Southern Ottoman Hungary and Their Local Competitors in the Early Seventeenth Century
- Shaping the Profession: Some Thoughts on Office, Duty, and the Moral Problematisation of Professional Activities in the Counter-Reformation
