He, all too often, gives us the means to judge the value of this
assertion of his. In the same year, for instance, he sums up the chief
points of the theology which alone he had learnt, and calls it in all
good faith the scholastic theology of the Church, though it was merely
the meagre theology of his own Occamist professors.
In order to show all he had had to struggle with he says: “I had
formerly learned among the monstrous things (‘_monstra_’) which are
almost accounted axioms of scholastic theology ... that man can do his
part in the acquiring of grace; that he can remove obstacles to grace;
that he is able to oppose no hindrance to grace; that he can keep the
commandments of God according to the letter, though not according to
the intention of the lawgiver; that he has freedom of choice [personal
freedom in the work of salvation] between this and that, between both
contradictories and contraries; that his will is able to love God
above all things through its purely natural powers and that there is
such a thing as an act of charity, of friendship, by merely natural
powers.”[334]
We are to believe that these were the “axioms of scholastic theology!”
Such was not the case. For all acts necessary for salvation true
Scholasticism demanded the supernatural “preventing” grace of God.[335]
Yet as early as 1516 Luther had elegantly described all the scholastic
theologians as “Sow theologians,” on account of their pretended
“_Deliria_” against grace.[336] His first fault, that of unwarranted
generalisation, comes out clearly.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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