On monkeys and exemplar theories of salvation

On “exemplar” theories of salvation, Christ’s work of the cross saves us by providing a deeply inspiring example of love, sacrifice, or the like.

Such theories of salvation have the following unsavory consequence: they imply that it would be possible for us to be saved by a monkey.

For imagine that a monkey typing on a typerwriter at random wrote a fictitious story of a life in morally relevant respects like that of Christ, and people started believing that story. If Christ saves us by providing an inspiring example, then we could have gotten the very same effect by reading that fictitious story typed at random by a monkey and erroneously thinking the story to be true.

Of course, that’s just a particularly vivid way of putting the standard objection against exemplar theories that they are Pelagian. I have nothing against monkeys except that they are creatures, and so that if it is possible to be saved by a monkey, then it is possible to be saved by creatures, which is Pelagianism.

The DIY urge, Satan's sin and Pelagianism

I've got a big DIY urge. My motivations usually include being too cheap to buy something (typically because I'm saving up for something else--right now, a 3D printer). A fair amount of the time there is vanity--wanting to brag online, say. Sometimes perhaps there is a minor motivation (which really should be much stronger) to repair things rather than wastefully throwing them out. And sometimes the activity itself is very pleasant (I really enjoy using power tools like a sewing machine, a drill press or a stand mixer; I like the smell of solder rosin or freshly cut softwood wafting in the air). But I think often the strongest motivation is the intrinsic pull of doing things myself.

According to Aquinas, that motivation is why Satan sinned. He wanted the good things that God was going to give to him, but he didn't want them from God--he wanted getting them himself. In other words, the first sin is Pelagianism.

This makes me a bit worried about my DIY urge. Is it an echo of the Satanic pride that led to the downfall of the universe?

Not necessarily. Aquinas' discussion of the first sin is driven by two theses: (a) Satan was very smart and (b) Satan's motivations were good. So Aquinas needs needs to identify a good motivation that led him to sin, not simply by a stupid mistake. It is thus central to Aquinas' story that the DIY urge that Satan had was a good motivation: there is a genuine good in achieving good things by oneself. But in order to achieve that good, Satan refused God's gift of grace, settling for (lesser, presumably) goods that he could get by himself.

The fundamental motivation behind the DIY urge is good, thus. But there is a serious danger that it misses what St. John Paul II called our "nuptial nature": that it is our nature to give ourselves to others and to receive others' gift of themselves. Satan refused God's gift. The parallel danger in the DIY case is that it not turn into a refusal of the gift of others' creativity and labor, a refusal to acknowledge that (to use older language) we are social animals.

Of course, the products of commerce are not gifts personally directed to us. (After all, we have to pay for them!) But there is a sense in which they still have some gift-like nature. People have chosen not to be subsistence farmers, but to make stuff for others. There is an imperfect duty somewhere around here to participate in the back-and-forth of commerce, which bears some relevant resemblance to the back-and-forth of gift giving and reciprocation. And so, like all things, the DIY urge needs moderation, not just for reasons like not wasting time or avoiding vanity, but lest it become a denial of our social nature.

The unavoidability of sin

Aquinas says that without grace we can avoid each individual mortal sin but not all mortal sin, at least not for a significant length of time.

On its face, this seems contradictory. After all, I can avoid the first mortal sin. If I avoid it, then I should be able to avoid the next one. And so on. And hence I should be able to avoid all mortal sin.

But this argument mistakenly agglomerates what one can do. For instance, suppose that there is a mine field with a thousand mines. I know how to defuse a mine, but I have an independent probability of 10% of slipping and detonating the mine. It's correct to say that each mine can be defused by me—being able to do this with 90% reliability is sufficient for this—but it is incorrect to say that I can defuse the whole minefield. It is appropriate to look at the minefield that one is to defuse and think: "This is an impossible task without help."

The person without grace is unable to presently control her future actions in favor of the good. Each individual action is in her power, but she cannot control them all at once. Hence she can rightly look with trepidation at her future moral life and say: "This is an impossible task without help."

But a virtuous person can control future actions in favor of the good en masse, by growing in virtue and resolving to do good.

Epistemic theories of the atonement

Every orthodox Christian agrees that:

1. Salvation occurs at least in part because of Christ's death on the cross.

The "at least in part" is because Christ's earlier life and subsequent resurrection no doubt play a role. It is also uncontroversial that this has something to do with atonement and sin, but there are many theories here. Epistemic theories say:

2. The explanatory connection between Christ's death on the cross and the salvation of an individual always involves the individual's epistemic encounter with Christ's crucifixion.

For instance, it may be that Christ's death expresses to the sinner the weight of the sinner's sin and seeing the free acceptance of the penalty transforms the sinner. Epistemic theories as I defined them need not hold that the epistemic encounter is the whole story. Someone could, for instance, hold that there are two essential components to atonement, one of them an epistemic component and the other a penal substitution component. Such a theorist would count as an epistemic theorist.

But there is a plausible argument against this:

3. Nobody is saved except because of Christ's death on the cross.
4. Some are saved who have no epistemic encounter with Christ's crucifixion.
5. Hence, the explanatory connection between Christ's death on the cross and salvation does not always involve an epistemic encounter with Christ's crucifixion.

And so, it seems, epistemic theories of atonement are false.

I think (3) is a central part of Christian orthodoxy, assuming that by "nobody" we mean no human beings other than Christ (contextually restricted quantifiers!). One way to see this is to consider the debate over Mary's Immaculate Conception. The doctrine says that Mary was conceived without original sin. Probably the deepest theological objection to the doctrine has centered on arguments that the doctrine is incompatible with (3). If rejecting (3) were an option for a Christian, the defenders of the doctrine would have had ample motivation to reject (3). But they didn't—instead, they offered theories that attempted to reconcile (3) with the Immaculate Conception. It is not my point to evaluate the arguments for or against the Immaculate Conception (though of course I do accept the Immaculate Conception) but simply to note that both sides admitted that (3) is non-negotiable.

Now, it may seem that (4) directly contradicts the epistemic view (2), and hence begs the question. That's not quite right. Claim (2) is that whenever there is an explanatory connection between Christ's sacrifice and salvation, that connection is at least in part epistemically mediated. As far as that goes, this is compatible with the possibility, denied by (3), that some are saved without any such explanatory connection.

Why accept (4)? Because of the following three classes of persons:

• Jews and gentiles who were saved prior to the time of Christ.
• Those who are saved without ever hearing about Christ's death.
• Those (e.g., at least baptized infants) who are saved despite dying prior to having developed an ability to have an epistemic encounter with Christ's crucifixion.

In each of these types of cases, it certainly seems that we have (4).

I want to consider now one kind of reply. We could modify (2) by restricting the quantifiers. For instance, we could apply (2) only to those who have achieved the age of reason and positing that all who die prior to the age of reason are saved, thereby ruling out the third class of cases as offering an argument for (4). This would be an unacceptable variant of Pelagianism. The person who died in infancy would be saved not by Christ, but by natural causes—namely, the causes of death. If some who die in infancy are saved—and certainly at least those baptized people who die in infancy are saved—even they had better be saved only by Christ.

Or we could, if we were willing to bite the bullet on the case of infants in some way, restrict the quantifiers in (2) not to apply to those who died prior to Christ's death, thereby ruling out the first class of examples as offering an argument for (4). I think this, too, is a kind of Pelagianism. Moreover, consider the weirdness of supposing that an Inuit who died at 2:59 pm on Good Friday could be saved not by the cross, while an Inuit who died two minutes later needed to be saved by the cross.

Another move one might make would be to deny that, at least since the time of Christ's death, anyone is saved without ever hearing the Gospel. This is a hard-line response to my argument. For sociological reasons, I suspect this response to my argument is not going to be that popular. I suspect that most of the people who take a hard-line on those who die without hearing about Christ's death take some substitutionary sacrifice theory of the atonement. This is not because there is a good logical connection between these two views—indeed, substitutionary sacrifice theories of the atonement appear to me to be our best bet for explaining how one can be saved without expressly hearing the Gospel—but simply because the kind of tough-mindedness that inclines one to a hard-line on salvation outside the apparent boundaries of the Church is apt to incline one to a substitutionary sacrifice theory.

A different response is that a transformative epistemic encounter with the crucifixion occurs after death for those who are saved despite having died without hearing about Christ's death. Such a view would not only be committed to post-death purgation—i.e., to purgatory. That is not a problem. But it would, further, require the thesis that baptized infants who die prior to hearing about Christ's sacrifice go to purgatory, if only for an instant, and that view simply seems wrong. For one, it downplays the effects of baptism.

One might, however, suppose a miraculous epistemic encounter prior to death. God can miraculously make it possible for an infant, or even embryo, to understand the central doctrines of Christianity, whether explicitly or more vaguely. That this view posits a miracle is no objection. Salvation always involves a miracle. I do not know how plausible this way out will be for particular epistemic theorists. But I think in the end this is the only satisfactory account available to them.

So, unless one wants to posit a miraculous raising of intellectual abilities—and I do not reject this option—epistemic theories of atonement should be rejected.

But I don't think the substitutionary sacrifice theorist is off the hook either. For the above argument gives us a necessary condition for a theory of atonement: it must explain the connection between Christ's sacrifice and the salvation of an infant. If the theory is that Christ is paying the penalty for the individual's sin, then that theory will not be sufficient to account for the salvation of infants who have never committed any sins.

There are two separate issues here, I think. One is the issue of overcoming personal sin. That issue does not come up for the infant, as far as we know (I am inclined to some epistemic caution on this point). The other is the issue of attaining salvation. Many Catholic theologians have said that lack of personal sin is insufficient for salvation. A supernatural love is necessary and sufficient for salvation, a love that can only come from grace. Atonement is not only atonement for sin. It is, as its corny but apparently genuine "at-one-ment" etymology indicates, a matter of uniting us with God. While sin keeps us from union with God, union with God is not constituted by the absence of sin. It requires something more than absence of sin. And for fallen humanity, even in the case of non-sinful members such as infants, this "something" more must be held to come from the Cross. A puzzle or maybe even mystery, then, is how it is that the "something else", the supernatural agapê, comes from Christ's sacrifice. I am inclined to think that a crucial component here is that by our membership in the Body of Christ, Christ's sacrifice is our sacrifice, and the agapê of his sacrifice is our agapê.

Are naturalists Pelagians?

Yes, they are: For they think that the central goals of human life are of a sort that can be achieved by natural powers alone.

No, they aren't: For they think that intimate union with God cannot be achieved by natural powers alone.

OK, so what's the right answer? In a sense, both yes and no. If we define Pelagianism by the natural achievability of the central goals of human life, then yes. If we defined it by the natural achievability of intimate union with God, then no. On Christian doctrine, the two definitions will come to the same thing. But on naturalism, they don't.

This might, however, yield a question-begging (but perhaps still useful) argument against naturalism. According to naturalism, the central goals of human life can be achieved by natural powers alone. But union with God cannot be. And union of God is a central goal of human life.

Anti-pelagianism

Here are three levels of anti-Pelagianism:

1. No fallen human being can attain personal union (i.e., union of the relevant sort—such as the beatific vision) with God by his own powers.
2. No mere human being can attain personal union with God by his own powers.
3. No mere creature can attain personal union with God by his own powers.

Here, a "mere F" is a being that is an F and that has no nature other than the F-nature. The main point of this qualifier is to exclude cases where God is incarnate as an F. For in those cases we are dealing with an F, but not a mere F. Claim (3) entails claim (2), and claim (2) together with the plausible assumption that in fact every fallen human being is a mere human being entails claim (1).

An interesting difference at least of emphasis between Catholics and Protestants is that Protestants see Pelagianism primarily as a denial of (1), and focus on (1) in anti-Pelagian polemic, while Catholicism, I think, has an emphasis not just on (1), but also on (2)—grace is not only needed now for fallen man, but Adam and Eve needed grace, too, to attain the beatific vision. And even (3) is probably pretty common in Catholicism. E.g., Aquinas would surely endorse (3). His view of the fall of Satan, if my shaky memory serves me, was that Satan wanted to get by his own powers the good that God was going to give to him by grace—i.e., that Satan was a practical Pelagian.

Faith and works, and Pelagianism

I think sometimes, especially in popular discussion, the debate over Pelagianism is seen as the "faith versus works" debate. But that is incorrect. These are two separate, and almost orthogonal debates. The question of Pelagianism is whether

1. one can be saved by one's own efforts without grace

or whether

2. grace is necessary for salvation.

Pelagius thought it would be really hard to be saved without grace, but it could in principle be done. The faith versus works question is whether the human state that salvation is somehow based around and that ensures salvation (at least should one die in that state) is

3. faith

or

4. love or morally good actions.

There are four polar views possible:

	(1)	(2)
(3)	salvation is based on faith, and one can get attain this faith by one's own efforts without grace	salvation is based on faith, and faith requires grace
(4)	salvation is based on love or morally good actions, and one can attain this love or do these actions by one's own efforts without grace	salvation is based on love or morally good actions, and one needs grace to have love or do the actions

The position stereotypically ascribed to Protestants is, of course, the upper right corner, and the position stereotypically ascribed to Catholics is, of course, the lower left corner.

But note that it is quite possible to be a Pelagian and believe in sola fide: this is the upper left corner in the table. For instance, one might think that faith is an intellectual assent, and believe that one can come to this assent on the basis of apologetic arguments. Likewise, someone can believe that salvation is solely by works, and yet be in no way Pelagian, if she believes that these works are of such a nature that they cannot be done save by grace: this is the lower right corner.

Why is there an idea that there is a link between the two questions? Well, one line of thought takes "works" in a very thin sense, as bodily movements (placing a sandwich before a homeless person, etc.), without considering intentions and motivations. If so, then it seems quite likely that we could, by our own efforts, do whatever "works" would be specified as needed for salvation. But that is a magical view of salvation, and not really held by any serious thinker. Even those Catholic and Orthodox theologians who lay a greater emphasis on works than on faith understand the works in the light of intentions and motivations. But once one understands that a part of doing the right works is having the right intentions and motivations, the inference from salvation by works to Pelagianism fails—for it may well require grace to do have the right intentions and motivations.

The relative independence of the two questions should, I think, help to clarify our thinking on the issues.

I think the really interesting theological and philosophical questions here is to figure out (a) how faith and love are interconnected so that (3) and (4) are both true, and (b) see how there is a deeper form of (2) that ties together grace and our own efforts.