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- Herausgeber: IVP Academic
- Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
- Serie: Ancient Christian Texts
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021
"Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind . . . " Julian of Eclanum (c. 386–455) was the bishop of Eclanum, located in modern-day Italy. In this volume in IVP's Ancient Christian Texts series, Thomas Scheck provides a new translation of Julian's commentaries on the biblical books of Job and those of three Minor Prophets: Hosea, Joel, and Amos. Here, readers will gain insight into how early Christians read texts such as God's speech to Job, Hosea's symbolic representation of God's unending love for a faithless Israel, Joel's anticipation of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, and Amos's call for social justice. While Julian was a well-known leader among the Pelagians, whose theology was famously opposed by Augustine of Hippo and ultimately determined to be outside the bounds of the church's orthodoxy, the Pelagian movement was a significant element within the early church. And although Julian's Pelagianism does not fundamentally affect the commentaries presented in this volume, Christians can gain insight into the truths of Scripture by reading the text alongside others, even when—or perhaps especially when—we might disagree with other aspects of their beliefs. Ancient Christian Texts are new English translations of full-length commentaries or sermon series from ancient Christian authors that allow you to study key writings of the early church fathers in a fresh way.
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ANCIENT CHRISTIAN TEXTS
COMMENTARIESON JOB, HOSEA, JOEL,AND AMOS
Julian of Eclanum
TRANSLATED AND EDITED BY
SERIES EDITORS
GERALD L. BRAY, MICHAEL GLERUP,AND THOMAS C. ODEN
TO MY FRIEND AND COLLEAGUE BARRY DAVID,professor of philosophy at Ave Maria University,
AND TO MY NINETEEN-YEAR-OLD SON JOHN,missionary to Mexico.
CONTENTS
GENERAL INTRODUCTION
Ancient Christian Texts (hereafter ACT) presents the full text of ancient Christian commentaries on Scripture that have remained so unnoticed that they have not yet been translated into English.
The patristic period (AD 95–750) is the time of the fathers of the church, when the exegesis of Scripture texts was in its primitive formation. This period spans from Clement of Rome to John of Damascus, embracing seven centuries of biblical interpretation, from the end of the New Testament to the mid-eighth century, including the Venerable Bede.
This series extends but does not reduplicate texts of the Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture (ACCS). It presents full-length translations of texts that appear only as brief extracts in the ACCS. The ACCS began years ago authorizing full-length translations of key patristic texts on Scripture in order to provide fresh sources of valuable commentary that previously were not available in English. It is from these translations that the ACT series has emerged.
A multiyear project such as this requires a well-defined objective. The task is straightforward: to introduce full-length translations of key texts of early Christian teaching, homilies and commentaries on a particular book of Scripture. These are seminal documents that have decisively shaped the entire subsequent history of biblical exegesis, but in our time have been largely ignored.
To carry out this mission each volume of the Ancient Christian Texts series has four aspirations:
1. To show the approach of one of the early Christian writers in dealing with the problems of understanding, reading and conveying the meaning of a particular book of Scripture.
2. To make more fully available the whole argument of the ancient Christian interpreter of Scripture to all who wish to think with the early church about a particular canonical text.
3. To broaden the base of the biblical studies, Christian teaching and preaching to include classical Christian exegesis.
4. To stimulate Christian historical, biblical, theological and pastoral scholarship toward deeper inquiry into early classic practitioners of scriptural interpretation.
For Whom Is This Series Designed?
We have selected and translated these texts primarily for general and nonprofessional use by an audience of persons who study the Bible regularly.
In varied cultural settings around the world, contemporary readers are asking how they might grasp the meaning of sacred texts under the instruction of the great minds of the ancient church. They often study books of the Bible verse by verse, book by book, in groups and workshops, sometimes with a modern commentary in hand. But many who study the Bible intensively hunger to have available as well the thoughts of a reliable classic Christian commentator on this same text. This series will give the modern commentators a classical text for comparison and amplification. Readers will judge for themselves as to how valuable or complementary are their insights and guidance.
The classic texts we are translating were originally written for anyone (lay or clergy, believers or seekers) who wished to reflect and meditate with the great minds of the early church. They sought to illuminate the plain sense, theological wisdom, and moral and spiritual meaning of an individual book of Scripture. They were not written for an academic audience, but for a community of faith shaped by the sacred text.
Yet in serving this general audience, the editors remain determined not to neglect the rigorous requirements and needs of academic readers who until recently have had few full translations available to them in the history of exegesis. So this series is designed also to serve public libraries, universities, academic classes, homiletic preparation and historical interests worldwide in Christian scholarship and interpretation.
Hence our expected audience is not limited to the highly technical and specialized scholarly field of patristic studies, with its strong bent toward detailed word studies and explorations of cultural contexts. Though all of our editors and translators are patristic and linguistic scholars, they also are scholars who search for the meanings and implications of the texts. The audience is not primarily the university scholar concentrating on the study of the history of the transmission of the text or those with highly focused interests in textual morphology or historical-critical issues. If we succeed in serving our wider readers practically and well, we hope to serve as well college and seminary courses in Bible, church history, historical theology, hermeneutics and homiletics. These texts have not until now been available to these classes.
Readiness for Classic Spiritual Formation
Today global Christians are being steadily drawn toward these biblical and patristic sources for daily meditation and spiritual formation. They are on the outlook for primary classic sources of spiritual formation and biblical interpretation, presented in accessible form and grounded in reliable scholarship.
These crucial texts have had an extended epoch of sustained influence on Scripture interpretation, but virtually no influence in the modern period. They also deserve a hearing among modern readers and scholars. There is a growing awareness of the speculative excesses and spiritual and homiletic limitations of much post-Enlightenment criticism. Meanwhile the motifs, methods and approaches of ancient exegetes have remained unfamiliar not only to historians but to otherwise highly literate biblical scholars, trained exhaustively in the methods of historical and scientific criticism.
It is ironic that our times, which claim to be so fully furnished with historical insight and research methods, have neglected these texts more than scholars in previous centuries who could read them in their original languages.
This series provides indisputable evidence of the modern neglect of classic Christian exegesis: it remains a fact that extensive and once authoritative classic commentaries on Scripture still remain untranslated into any modern language. Even in China such a high level of neglect has not befallen classic Buddhist, Taoist and Confucian commentaries.
Ecumenical Scholarship
This series, like its two companion series, the ACCS and Ancient Christian Doctrine (ACD), is an expression of unceasing ecumenical efforts that have enjoyed the wide cooperation of distinguished scholars of many differing academic communities. Under this classic textual umbrella, it has brought together in common spirit Christians who have long distanced themselves from each other by competing church memories. But all of these traditions have an equal right to appeal to the early history of Christian exegesis. All of these traditions can, without a sacrifice of principle or intellect, come together to study texts common to them all. This is its ecumenical significance.
This series of translations is respectful of a distinctively theological reading of Scripture that cannot be reduced to historical, philosophical, scientific or sociological insights or methods alone. It takes seriously the venerable tradition of ecumenical reflection concerning the premises of revelation, providence, apostolicity, canon and consensuality. A high respect is here granted, despite modern assumptions, to uniquely Christian theological forms of reasoning, such as classical consensual christological and triune reasoning, as distinguishing premises of classic Christian textual interpretation. These cannot be acquired by empirical methods alone. This approach does not pit theology against critical theory; instead, it incorporates critical historical methods and brings them into coordinate accountability within its larger purpose of listening to Scripture.
The internationally diverse character of our editors and translators corresponds with the global range of our audience, which bridges many major communions of Christianity. We have sought to bring together a distinguished international network of Protestant, Catholic and Orthodox scholars, editors and translators of the highest quality and reputation to accomplish this design.
But why just now at this historical moment is this need for patristic wisdom felt particularly by so many readers of Scripture? Part of the reason is that these readers have been longer deprived of significant contact with many of these vital sources of classic Christian exegesis.
The Ancient Commentary Tradition
This series focuses on texts that comment on Scripture and teach its meaning. We define a commentary in its plain-sense definition as a series of illustrative or explanatory notes on any work of enduring significance. The word commentary is an Anglicized form of the Latin commentarius (or “annotation” or “memoranda” on a subject, text or series of events). In its theological meaning it is a work that explains, analyzes or expounds a biblical book or portion of Scripture. Tertullian, Origen, John Chrysostom, Jerome, Augustine and Clement of Alexandria all revealed their familiarity with both the secular and religious commentators available to them as they unpacked the meanings of the sacred text at hand.
The commentary in ancient times typically began with a general introduction covering such questions as authorship, date, purpose and audience. It commented as needed on grammatical or lexical problems in the text and provided explanations of difficulties in the text. It typically moved verse by verse through a Scripture text, seeking to make its meaning clear and its import understood.
The general Western literary genre of commentary has been definitively shaped by the history of early Christian commentaries on Scripture. It is from Origen, Hilary, the Opus imperfectum in Matthaeum, John Chrysostom and Cyril of Alexandria that we learn what a commentary is—far more so than in the case of classic medical, philosophical or poetic commentaries. It leaves too much unsaid simply to assume that the Christian biblical commentary took a previously extant literary genre and reshaped it for Christian texts. Rather it is more accurate to say that the Western literary genre of the commentary (and especially the biblical commentary) has patristic commentaries as its decisive pattern and prototype.
It is only in the last two centuries, since the development of modern historicist methods of criticism, that modern writers have sought more strictly to delimit the definition of a commentary so as to include only certain limited interests focusing largely on historical-critical method, philological and grammatical observations, literary analysis, and socio-political or economic circumstances impinging on the text. While respecting all these approaches, the ACT editors do not hesitate to use the classic word commentary to define more broadly the genre of this series. These are commentaries in their classic sense.
The ACT editors freely take the assumption that the Christian canon is to be respected as the church’s sacred text. The reading and preaching of Scripture are vital to religious life. The central hope of this endeavor is that it might contribute in some small way to the revitalization of religious faith and community through a renewed discovery of the earliest readings of the church’s Scriptures.
An Appeal to Allow the Text to Speak for Itself
This prompts two appeals:
1. For those who begin by assuming as normative for a commentary only the norms considered typical for modern expressions of what a commentary is, we ask: please allow the ancient commentators to define commentarius according to their own lights. Those who assume the preemptive authority and truthfulness of modern critical methods alone will always tend to view the classic Christian exegetes as dated, quaint, premodern, hence inadequate, and in some instances comic or even mean-spirited, prejudiced, unjust and oppressive. So in the interest of hermeneutical fairness, it is recommended that the modern reader not impose upon ancient Christian exegetes modern assumptions about valid readings of Scripture. The ancient Christian writers constantly challenge these unspoken, hidden and indeed often camouflaged assumptions that have become commonplace in our time.
We leave it to others to discuss the merits of ancient versus modern methods of exegesis. But even this cannot be done honestly without a serious examination of the texts of ancient exegesis. Ancient commentaries may be disqualified as commentaries by modern standards. But they remain commentaries by the standards of those who anteceded and formed the basis of the modern commentary.
The attempt to read a Scripture text while ruling out all theological and moral assumptions—as well as ecclesial, sacramental and dogmatic assumptions that have prevailed generally in the community of faith out of which it emerged—is a very thin enterprise indeed. Those who tendentiously may read a single page of patristic exegesis, gasp and toss it away because it does not conform adequately to the canons of modern exegesis and historicist commentary are surely not exhibiting a valid model for critical inquiry today.
2. In ancient Christian exegesis, chains of biblical references were often very important in thinking about the text in relation to the whole testimony of sacred Scripture, by the analogy of faith, comparing text with text, on the premise that scripturam ex scriptura explicandam esse. When ancient exegesis weaves many Scripture texts together, it does not limit its focus to a single text as much modern exegesis prefers, but constantly relates them to other texts, by analogy, intensively using typological reasoning, as did the rabbinic tradition.
Since the principle prevails in ancient Christian exegesis that each text is illumined by other texts and by the whole narrative of the history of revelation, we find in patristic comments on a given text many other subtexts interwoven in order to illumine that text. In these ways the models of exegesis often do not correspond with modern commentary assumptions, which tend to resist or rule out chains of scriptural reference. We implore the reader not to force the assumptions of twentieth-century hermeneutics upon the ancient Christian writers, who themselves knew nothing of what we now call hermeneutics.
The Complementarity of Research Methods in This Series
The Ancient Christian Texts series will employ several interrelated methods of research, which the editors and translators seek to bring together in a working integration. Principal among these methods are the following:
1. The editors, translators and annotators will bring to bear the best resources of textual criticism in preparation for their volumes. This series is not intended to produce a new critical edition of the original-language text. The best urtext in the original language will be used. Significant variants in the earliest manuscript sources of the text may be commented upon as needed in the annotations. But it will be assumed that the editors and translators will be familiar with the textual ambiguities of a particular text and be able to state their conclusions about significant differences among scholars. Since we are working with ancient texts that have, in some cases, problematic or ambiguous passages, we are obliged to employ all methods of historical, philological and textual inquiry appropriate to the study of ancient texts. To that end, we will appeal to the most reliable text-critical scholarship of both biblical and patristic studies. We will assume that our editors and translators have reviewed the international literature of textual critics regarding their text so as to provide the reader with a translation of the most authoritative and reliable form of the ancient text. We will leave it to the volume editors and translators, under the supervision of the general editors, to make these assessments. This will include the challenge of considering which variants within the biblical text itself might impinge upon the patristic text, and which forms or stemma of the biblical text the patristic writer was employing. The annotator will supply explanatory footnotes where these textual challenges may raise potential confusions for the reader.
2. Our editors and translators will seek to understand the historical context (including socioeconomic, political and psychological aspects as needed) of the text. These understandings are often vital to right discernment of the writer’s intention. Yet we do not see our primary mission as that of discussing in detail these contexts. They are to be factored into the translation and commented on as needed in the annotations, but are not to become the primary focus of this series. Our central interest is less in the social location of the text or the philological history of particular words than in authorial intent and accurate translation. Assuming a proper social-historical contextualization of the text, the main focus of this series will be upon a dispassionate and fair translation and analysis of the text itself.
3. The main task is to set forth the meaning of the biblical text itself as understood by the patristic writer. The intention of our volume editors and translators is to help the reader see clearly into the meanings that patristic commentators have discovered in the biblical text. Exegesis in its classic sense implies an effort to explain, interpret and comment on a text, its meaning, its sources and its connections with other texts. It implies a close reading of the text, using whatever linguistic, historical, literary or theological resources are available to explain the text. It is contrasted with eisegesis, which implies that interpreters have imposed their own personal opinions or assumptions on the text. The patristic writers actively practiced intratextual exegesis, which seeks to define and identify the exact wording of the text, its grammatical structure and the interconnectedness of its parts. They also practiced extratextual exegesis, seeking to discern the geographical, historical or cultural context in which the text was written. Our editors and annotators will also be attentive as needed to the ways in which the ancient Christian writer described his own interpreting process or hermeneutic assumptions.
4. The underlying philosophy of translation that we employ in this series is, like the Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture, termed dynamic equivalency. We wish to avoid the pitfalls of either too loose a paraphrase or too rigid a literal translation. We seek language that is literary but not purely literal. Whenever possible we have opted for the metaphors and terms that are normally in use in everyday English-speaking culture. Our purpose is to allow the ancient Christian writers to speak for themselves to ordinary readers in the present generation. We want to make it easier for the Bible reader to gain ready access to the deepest reflection of the ancient Christian community of faith on a particular book of Scripture. We seek a thought-for-thought translation rather than a formal equivalence or word-for-word style. This requires the words to be first translated accurately and then rendered in understandable idiom. We seek to present the same thoughts, feelings, connotations and effects of the original text in everyday English language. We have used vocabulary and language structures commonly used by the average person. We do not leave the quality of translation only to the primary translator, but pass it through several levels of editorial review before confirming it.
The Function of the ACT Introductions, Annotations and Translations
In writing the introduction for a particular volume of the ACT series, the translator or volume editor will discuss, where possible, the opinion of the writer regarding authorship of the text, the importance of the biblical book for other patristic interpreters, the availability or paucity of patristic comment, any salient points of debate between the Fathers, and any special challenges involved in translating and editing the particular volume. The introduction affords the opportunity to frame the entire commentary in a manner that will help the general reader understand the nature and significance of patristic comment on the biblical text under consideration and to help readers find their critical bearings so as to read and use the commentary in an informed way.
The footnotes will assist the reader with obscurities and potential confusions. In the annotations the volume editors have identified Scripture allusions and historical references embedded within the texts. Their purpose is to help the reader move easily from passage to passage without losing a sense of the whole.
The ACT general editors seek to be circumspect and meticulous in commissioning volume editors and translators. We strive for a high level of consistency and literary quality throughout the course of this series. We have sought out as volume editors and translators those patristic and biblical scholars who are thoroughly familiar with their original language sources, who are informed historically, and who are sympathetic to the needs of ordinary nonprofessional readers who may not have professional language skills.
Thomas C. Oden, Gerald L. Bray, and Michael Glerup, Series Editors
VOLUME EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION
A Brief History of the Pelagian Controversy
This volume contains the first English translation of four commentaries on Scripture by Julian (380–ca. 445), the “Pelagian” bishop of Eclanum, Italy. I use quotation marks here because the term Pelagian is problematic. Julian never used this word to describe himself. His adversaries, especially Augustine, Jerome, the Roman bishops, and the imperial power, labeled him so. Yet modern scholarship does not necessarily concur that the doctrines defined as Pelagian were actually held by the persons accused. The author of a recent monograph argues that Pelagianism was in fact the heresiological construction of a heresy and that what the members of this movement preached was something different.1 At the very least, most modern scholars concede that it is impossible to speak of Pelagianism as a monolithic movement as if there were no differences among its exponents. It was Augustine and Jerome who tried to present the movement as unified.
To understand Julian and situate him in his historical context, it is first necessary to become acquainted with the heresy with which he is associated. Pelagianism is named after the British monk Pelagius (ca. 360–ca. 420), a zealous and learned Christian leader and Pauline exegete in the ancient church who conflicted theologically with St. Augustine (354–430) and St. Jerome (ca. 347–ca. 419) in the second decade of the fifth century.2 After being acquitted by two Eastern synods and exonerated by at least one Roman pope, Pelagius was eventually branded as a heretic in the West. In his Christology and trinitarian doctrine, Pelagius was orthodox.3 Traditionally the principal error of the Pelagian heresy is its doctrine of sin. Pelagius and another contemporary figure named Caelestius claimed that the sin of Adam affected only himself; it did not implicate or cause the downfall of the entire human race. According to Caelestius, Pelagius, and Julian, while Adam’s transgression set a bad example for his posterity, his sin and guilt could not have been transmitted to his descendants, especially newborn infants, to make them guilty and culpable for what he had done and therefore worthy of eternal damnation. In his interpretation of Romans 5:12, for example, Pelagius bypasses the idea that Adam transmitted to the human race an inheritance of guilt, physical death, ignorance, and concupiscence. It is interesting to note, however, that in this passage, Pelagius simply lists the arguments of those who are against the transmission of original sin. He does not explicitly say that he supports their teaching, though this is the impression one has. The tone of Pelagius’s writings strikes me as churchman-like. In any case, Catholics and Protestants, following the main lines of Augustine’s teaching (though not necessarily all his inferences and particular interpretations of biblical texts), have generally agreed that all human beings enter this world subject to fallen conditions, mysteriously implicated in Adam’s sin, and in need of grace and redemption. This predicament is the result of our entailment in Adam’s sin and condemnation and is not merely the result of our own actual sins carried out in imitation of Adam. J. N. D. Kelly formulates Pelagius’s teaching as follows:
He rejected as Manichaean, as well as stultifying to endeavor, the notion that human nature has been corrupted by original sin transmitted from Adam, and can raise itself only by God’s help. Although a habit of sinning has set in, a man is always free to shake it off, and by the exercise of his will to choose either right or wrong. Indeed, so far as from there being any necessity of sinning, a man is in principle able to live without sin. Regarding sin as a voluntary act, he denied that new-born babies, who have no choice, can be guilty of it, yet he upheld the traditional practice of having them baptized. Assuredly men always need God’s grace; but Pelagius defined grace, not as an inner power transforming them, but as their original endowment with rational will, the divine forgiveness they obtain through baptism, and the illumination provided by the law of Moses and the teaching and example of Christ.4
Beatrice explains that for Caelestius (and Pelagius), “babies are born without original sin, that is, they are in the same condition as Adam was in the Garden of Eden before he sinned. This is because sin is not something that can be transmitted or passed on.”5 Julian of Eclanum concurred with this Pelagian doctrine, and this particular Pelagian teaching (that is, the reduction of Adam’s fault to that of a bad influence) has been repudiated in the magisterial teaching of the church.6
The difficulty in discerning the extent to which Pelagius and Julian’s writings were infused with the other errors of which they were accused by their orthodox opponents is illustrated by the striking fact that many of their written works were transmitted in the West anonymously or under false attributions to saints. And so long as their ascription to Pelagius (or Julian) was unknown, the writings were treasured. For instance, Ali Bonner has studied the manuscript tradition of Pelagius’s Letter to Demetrias and pointed out how influential it was throughout the medieval period. When authorship of these writings by Pelagius (or Julian) was discovered in modern times, suddenly these same works began to be accused. Lamberigts comments with respect to Pelagius:
It would appear, however, that the tradition was not always so ill at ease with Pelagian perspectives as was the case with Augustine of Hippo, certainly if one takes into account the fact that several so-called Pelagian documents have survived to the present day because the said tradition had ascribed them to other, “orthodox,” Christian authors. Perhaps the most striking example thereof is Pelagius’ Epistula ad Demetriadem, authorship of which was ascribed for a significant period of time either to Jerome or to Augustine himself on account of the quality of the ascetic content of the work. When scholars came to be convinced that the work could be ascribed with certainty to Pelagius, it suddenly acquired the epithets “un-evangelical” and “non-Pauline,” a somewhat surprising change of perspective given the fact that Pelagius’s writings tended to afford a significant amount of space to commentary on the letters of Paul.7
It appears that scholars in the Greek Orthodox tradition likewise take a more moderate stance to interpreting the polemics between Augustine and Pelagius and Augustine and Julian. John McGuckin, for instance, argues that
Eastern Christianity to this day senses that Augustine’s clash with Pelagius was unnecessarily limiting, and that while all the initiative for grace and redemption, at every level and stage, lies with God, the same God expects each believer to do his or her part in responding to the divine assistance. For the East, grace was not simply an assistance of God in the soul, but more so the transfigurative indwelling of God.8
McGuckin adds further that in the later theological tradition the heresy of “Pelagianism” has generally been drawn up in reference to Augustine’s theology of grace and “what Augustine said were Pelagian implications, not to what Pelagius was actually saying. Pelagius believed that God gave grace to human beings, certainly, but his primary grace was the freedom to choose and respond.”9 When interpreting the works of Pelagius and Julian I have taken an irenic and ecumenical approach that takes into account the positions of the Eastern fathers of the church, and thus the received tradition of Eastern Orthodoxy, rather than limiting myself to an Augustinian interpretation that is progressively narrowed by medieval Scholasticism and Magisterial Reformation Protestantism.
The Life and Career of Julian of Eclanum (ca. 380–ca. 445)
We now turn to Julian of Eclanum’s involvement in the Pelagian controversy.10 Julian is first encountered in ancient Christian literature as the son of an Italian bishop named Memor, or Memorius, and the recipient of an epithalium, or wedding poem, composed by his father’s friend St. Paulinus of Nola (ca. 355–431) between 401 and 404.11 Julian had been a lector in the church over which his father presided. In addition to Paulinus of Nola, Augustine of Hippo was familiar with his family and wrote of them respectfully and affectionately prior to the outbreak of the Pelagian controversy. After the sack of Rome in 410, Pelagius and Caelestius fled to Africa.12 At the time, Pelagius was regarded in the West as an outstanding spiritual director. He, along with Augustine and Jerome, was solicited to offer spiritual counsel to the noble woman Demetrias, who had taken a vow of virginity.13 Pelagius went to Carthage and thence to Palestine. Caelestius stayed in Carthage, where he was accused of heresy by Paulinus, the former deacon of Ambrose in Milan. He was found guilty of six charges by Aurelius, bishop of Carthage, in 412.14 In June 415, Pelagius was acquitted of heresy charges in a synod in Jerusalem presided over by John of Jerusalem.15 In December of the same year, Pelagius was again acquitted of heresy charges by fourteen Eastern bishops at the Synod of Diospolis (Lydda) in Palestine.16 This synod was possibly attended by St. Chromatius of Aquileia and Jovinus.17 The eleventh accusation was based on words taken from Caelestius’s book, where it was objected against Pelagius that he had said that “everyone can have all virtues and graces and that they destroy the diversity of graces which the apostle [Paul] teaches.” Pelagius replied that this was a “malignant and blundering charge.” “We do not . . . destroy the diversity of graces; rather we say that God gives all the graces to one who is worthy to receive them, as He gave them to the apostle Paul.”18 To this response the synod replied, “Your views on the gift of the graces found in the holy apostle are reasonable and in accord with the mind of the Church.”19 The modern Greek Orthodox scholar, John A. McGuckin, assesses this vindication as follows:
And when Pelagius came to Jerusalem and was forced to answer ecclesiastical charges that the way he taught underestimated God’s grace and placed too high a premium on human effort (saving ourselves by good works) the learned bishop John exonerated him there, finding nothing wrong with his ascetical teachings at all.20
Pelagius’s troubles, however, did not end with these acquittals. Through Augustine’s initiative, the cases of Pelagius and Caelestius were reopened and they were condemned in provincial synods in Africa. The Africans reported their actions to Pope Innocent of Rome, who in late January 417 excommunicated Caelestius, Pelagius, and their followers.21 Pope Innocent died in March 417 and was succeeded by Pope Zosimus. Caelestius appeared in Rome and requested a hearing. Letters and a profession of faith, which Pelagius addressed to Innocent, also arrived. Zosimus looked into the matter and acquitted Pelagius and Caelestius in September 417. Burns writes, “Pelagius’ profession of faith astonished the Roman clergy and attendant bishops who could not understand how such a man could be accused of heresy.”22 Lamberigts writes in summary of Pope Zosimus’s rehabilitation of Caelestius,
A sharper critique of the anti-Pelagian movement is inconceivable. Therefore one may believe that Caelestius did not try to mislead Zosimus in order to be set free [as Augustine misleadingly claimed] but that he was set free while stating that the doctrine of original sin as understood by Augustine, was against the catholic doctrine.23
Beatrice states the matter this way: “Zosimus completely rehabilitated Caelestius and Pelagius, declaring them in full communion with orthodoxy. Moreover . . . he accepted essentially without reservation their rejection of the Augustinian notion of peccatum ex traduce [sin by transmission].”24 The African bishops did not obey the instructions found in the papal letters that arrived in Carthage on November 2, 417. Instead they dispatched countering letters to Rome to which Zosimus responded on March 23, 417. The Roman pope persisted in his conviction that the case had not been proven. He refused to comply with the request to take further action against Caelestius. A dramatic contest between Rome and Carthage had arisen. The next event occurred on April 30, 418 when an imperial rescript was published. It condemned Caelestius and Pelagius as heretics and denounced them for disturbing the peace of the church and of the city of Rome. The cooperation between imperial authority and the African episcopacy isolated Zosimus, who then submitted to this outside pressure and issued his Epistula tractoria to all the bishops of the East and West for subscription. The theological content of the surviving fragments of the Tractoria is analyzed linguistically by Beatrice.25 He claims that it does not amount to being a full recognition by Rome of the Augustinian theology of original sin, but an attempt at compromise, “more in word than in substance, between the theological tradition of Rome, which was influenced in a markedly profound way by orthodox Greek theology.”26 Julian was among the eighteen Italian bishops who refused to subscribe to the Tractoria. These bishops were deposed and afterward exiled under the edicts issued by Emperor Honorius in 418. Eugene TeSelle wonders whether the papal action may have been a “premature decision”:
Eighteen bishops in Italy and Illyria, led by Julian of Eclanum, asked that the issues be examined in a general council. They had a credible argument. The controversy had been decided after only a few years of formal debate (415–18); the condemnation had come from the imperial court and only then, under duress, from the pope; and many regions were unacquainted with the doctrine of original sin and had scarcely heard of Augustine’s approach to grace and free will.27
Julian now addressed two letters to Zosimus in the fall of 418, using very harsh language. About the same time, Julian addressed a letter to Rufus, bishop of Thessalonica (410–431), on his own behalf and that of eighteen fellow recusants. For Julian it was very clear that the Roman clergy had changed sides because of fear of the imperial edict. They contradicted their earlier attitude and were now declaring human nature to be evil. Pope Zosimus died on December, 26, 418, and was succeeded by Boniface I on April 10, 419. Augustine responded to Julian’s letter to Rufus and to another epistle of Julian to the clergy of Rome in his Contra Duas Epistulas Pelagianorum. According to Augustine’s account, Julian had tried to persuade the Eastern bishops that Augustine’s doctrine was Manichean, and Julian had denounced Pope Zosimus for vacillation. Moreover, Julian had accused the Roman clergy of unjustly condemning the Pelagians and had argued that the Roman church had embraced heresy and that the Western bishops had been victims of imperial extortion.
After composing two letters to Pope Zosimus, Julian replied to the first book of Augustine’s De nuptiis et concupiscentia. His work was dedicated to a fellow recusant named Turbantius. Julian again accused the church of having embraced Manicheism. Julian sent portions of this four-book work to Valerius, friend of Augustine. The title of Julian’s book accused Augustine of condemning marriage and assigning its fruits to the devil. Augustine answered the accusations in the second book of De nuptiis et concupiscentia. When Augustine received Julian’s complete work, he published a more detailed answer in his Contra Julianum Pelagianum. In this work Augustine quoted his opponent at length.
Julian and other deposed Italian bishops took refuge with Theodore of Mopsuestia in Cilicia. Julian occupied himself with a translation of Theodore’s Commentary on the Psalms from Greek into Latin, thus demonstrating his competency in the Greek language.28 Julian answered Augustine’s reply to him in a lengthy work dedicated to Florus, a fellow recusant. Augustine cites extensively from Julian’s attack in his Opus Imperfectum.29 Julian returned to Italy when Pope Celestine I succeeded Boniface I in September 422. He may have hoped for rehabilitation, but the endeavor was not successful and he was exiled a second time. Julian apparently died in Sicily between 443 and 445.30
Julian’s Surviving Exegetical Writings
Commentary on the Song of Songs. Until the beginning of the twentieth century, only fragments and excerpts from Julian’s writings had been preserved under his name in the West, most of these in the form of quotations and allusions recorded in Augustine’s works against him. Fragments of a Commentary on the Song of Songs by Julian are attested by Bede the Venerable. This is probably the work Julian refers to in the preface to Hosea as a commentary on the books of Solomon. Holder writes of it,
[Bede’s] commentary begins with a polemical preface in which Bede refutes the teachings of Julian of Eclanum, a fifth-century Italian bishop who had opposed Augustine by defending Pelagian notions affirming free will and denying original sin. Perhaps inspired by his time in exile under the tutelage of the Antiochene exegete Theodore of Mopsuestia, Julian had written a treatise De amore in which he advanced a literalistic interpretation of the Song of Songs as a celebration of human sexuality. . . . Bede calls Julian a “snake in the grass” because he presented heretical doctrine under the guise of seductive eloquence. Further on, however, Bede quotes Julian’s completely innocuous interpretation of the hair of the bridegroom in Song 5,11, with apparent approbation.31
It is noteworthy that despite his view that the main theme of the Song of Songs is a literal defense of the goodness of human sexuality after the fall of Adam and Eve, Julian also uses allegorical exegesis in this commentary, including Marian interpretations.32 Bede rejected Julian’s Mariological interpretation of Song 8:1-2, which identified the Blessed Virgin as the mother referred to. In these texts, Julian had argued that there was nothing sinful about human birth, since the Lord was completely encircled in flesh yet was free from sin.33 It seems most unfortunate that Julian’s commentary does not survive.
Exposition of the book of Job. A date in the early to mid-420s for Julian’s Exposition of the Book of Job is reasonable. The unique manuscript attributes the Expositio to Philip the Presbyter (a disciple of St. Jerome). Unfortunately, it is damaged at the end and terminates with commentary on Job 42:7. Thus, it does not contain an interpretation of the Lord’s restoration of Job’s fortunes (Job 42:10-17). The manuscript was first printed by Abbot Amelli, archivist of Monte Cassino.34 Schanz confused this commentary on Job with the Expositio interlinearis libri Job, printed among the spuria of Jerome.35 His mistake was slavishly copied by the writer of the article on Julian in the Dictionnaire de théologie catholique. In an important monograph, A. Vaccari proved that Julian of Eclanum was the author.36 His arguments were based on the doctrine, vocabulary, style, exegesis, sources, and the biblical text used (namely, Jerome’s new version).37 Vaccari showed that the incorrect attribution arose from a banal confusion between the authentic work of Philip and that of Julian, and also the fact that Julian knew the work of the disciple of Jerome. Vaccari also used the material collected by the French scholar G. Morin, who successfully attributed to Julian the Tractatus prophetarum Osee Iohel et Amos, a work that had previously been published among the works of Rufinus.38 Morin’s work enabled Vaccari to demonstrate that even the Expositio in Iob was to be attributed to the author of the ad Florum, which was considered a certain work of Julian. J. Stiglmayr persistently contested the result, yet Vaccari has prevailed.39
Vaccari showed that Julian’s Exposition was inspired by the Antiochene John Chrysostom and the Greek writer Polychronius (d. ca. 430),40 who is obscurely referenced in passages that are not well preserved in the manuscript.41 There is also a connection to Olympiodorus, but since the latter lived a century and a half after Julian, it must be assumed that both of them drew from a common source.42 Julian was also familiar with views of Philip the Presbyter (d. ca. 455), disciple of Jerome.43 Philip, whose commentary dates around 393–397, appears to have been the first to adopt Jerome’s new Vulgate translation as his reference text.44 Philip’s Commentary on Job survives only in fragments but provides important evidence of the Vulgate. It exists in a long and a short recension.45 Julian imitates Philip by adopting Jerome’s version. Julian’s Exposition of the Book of Job is the oldest surviving patristic commentary on Job that covers (virtually) the entire book.46 St. Gregory the Great’s famous exposition of Job dates to 579, thus 150 years after Julian. My own estimation is that Julian is unsurpassed as a Christian exegete of the books he took under his consideration.
Annecchino observes that Julian’s Expositio in Iob contrasts strongly with his anti-Augustine manifestoes, ad Turbantium and ad Florum, because it is free from doctrinal controversy. The great motifs of Pelagian preaching are absent from it.47 The Expositio is more of a “hymn to reason, not in the sense that rationalism itself is exalted, but in the sense that it highlights a great confidence in man’s rational abilities that make him free from a frustrating fatalism.”48 The preface to the Exposition can be divided into two distinct parts.49 The first half lays the foundations of Julian’s doctrine: (1) the importance of the teachings of a virtuous life for achieving virtue and (2) the recognition of an inborn natural human goodness, which allows a person to live virtuously. At the basis of these doctrines lies the awareness of a free will, which can be inspired by positive examples and which allows us to live a life free from sin. In the second half of the preface, the theme of human suffering and divine justice is announced through Job’s dialogue with his “friends.” The preface ends with the recognition of divine providence, which is realized, among other things, through the works of creation.
Julian opens his exposition of the speech by quoting the words of St. Paul: “All things whatsoever that have been written were written for our instruction” (Rom 15:4). Julian argues that if it is important that the things that have been written not disappear in silence, it is more important that the actions of the holy people, which have been set forth for our imitation or to teach us, not vanish into thin air. For Julian, the importance of the exemplary model for the achievement of virtue is one of the main purposes of Christ’s coming among people (cf. Job 10:9-11).50 Christ became human in order that humans, by looking at the model of perfection, could strive for perfection (cf. Job 17:8-9). We are justified in speaking about holy Job, so that in him we can recognize the goodness of human nature. In Julian’s theology, humanity is responsible for its own condemnation and salvation. These themes are significantly placed among the first lines of the preface to Job and thus occupy an emblematic role in Julian’s thought.
Julian says that when their merits are made public, just people will shine like a splendid lamp (cf. Job 12:4-5). They will be recognized for their merits because they acted in full freedom. This freedom is granted from creation to enable people to live according to the divine laws. It exists even among those outside of Christian revelation. It is a force activated by the law of God and the example of Christ. Julian justifies the choice of the life of the holy Job, not to honor him through the exaltation of his good works but to show posterity that the way of virtue is accessible to everyone. Praising Job, in short, does not increase the esteem that God has of him but rather strengthens the hopes of those who want to become virtuous, so that through Job’s example we become aware of the fact that virtue is not inaccessible (Prol).
It is interesting to note the resemblance between Julian and Pelagius’s interpretation of Job. In Pelagius’s famous letter to Demetrias, Ad Dem 6.1-3 (which was attributed to various saints for most of its reception history), Pelagius describes Job as a man who fought against the devil to the very end. The Lord himself testified on his behalf (Job 1:8; 2:3), and this testimony was not undeserved, for “he always feared the Lord,” and “at no time did he dare to scorn one whom he believed to be ever present with him but said: I am safe, for my heart does not reproach me for any of my days” (Job 27:6). Pelagius cites Job 31:29, 32, 13 and 24 as evidence that Job anticipated the behavior commanded by Christ and exemplified by Paul. Pelagius writes,
What a man Job was! A man of the gospel before the gospel was known, a man of the apostles before their commands were uttered! A disciple of the apostles who, by opening up the hidden wealth of nature and bringing it out into the open, revealed by his own behavior what all of us are capable of and has taught us how great is that treasure in the soul which we possess but fail to use and, because we refuse to display it, believe that we do not possess it either.51
Returning to Julian, in the second half the preface, Julian summarizes and anticipates the debate between Job and the “friends” who came to visit him. Job’s “friends” maintained that physical miseries are linked to moral decadence. The dispute reaches a crescendo after the accusations and defenses unfold in a series of very significant statements. Julian begins by noticing that the debate is divided into three parts. In the first round, Job defends himself from the accusations of his “friends,” who say that he has been complaining without moderation. Job affirms that this must not be ascribed to his guilt, since his sufferings have been utterly unspeakable. In the second round, Julian emphasizes the questionable attitude of friends, who came with the intention of consoling him but ended up afflicting Job’s dispirited mind by attributing to him the responsibility for the calamities that struck him. The third part highlights how the “friends” attempt to show that Job is guilty precisely because he was struck by misfortune. But this is invalidated by the fact that many people of a corrupt life lead a prosperous existence.
Julian notes that Job justifies his defense also by addressing those who have been silent, because they could not refute his words. Job enumerates actions he performed on various occasions that were in accord with justice and done with a spirit of deference to the divine will. Annecchino shows that the tendency of Julian’s discourse, through the lengthy dialogue between Job and his friends, wherein each one is the spokesperson for a well-constructed religious position, responds to the typical characteristics of an apologia, in which the accusations and defenses are intertwined.
The whole discourse, by exposing the earthly condition of man through the misfortunes of Job, tends, in the restoration of the latter, to the exaltation of divine justice. Sometimes one has the impression of being in the presence of a text that is following the typical canons of a legal defense.52
The preface concludes by exalting divine providence. Overall, Julian wants to show how even those who have been tested the most severely cannot be conquered by the devil if they will to live their humble human condition according to the virtue and freedom with which humanity has been endowed. Job has become an example for achieving virtue. Julian recognizes in the first words of the biblical story the moral qualities of this man: Job was simple in that he was far removed from any contamination of vices (Job 1:1). This means he was not a hypocrite (8:20). Job was upright because he feared the Lord (1:1). True wisdom lies in respecting the divine prohibitions and obeying God (28:28), and this is how Job had lived. However, the greatness of Job’s soul was best praised in his endurance of hardships (1:2-3). Job recognized the inconstancy of ephemeral goods and never surrendered morally to the circumstances that afflicted him.
K. Steinhauser commends Julian’s insight in understanding the main theme of the book of Job: “He is one of the few ancient commentators on Job who comes close to the actual theme of the book, when he states that God permits the good to suffer in order to demonstrate their devotion and increase their merit.”53 In fact, the word meritum appears sixty-four times in Julian’s text, which makes clear that for Julian human beings can earn merit before God. Steinhauser speculates reasonably that Julian’s motives for expounding Job were determined by his dispute with St. Augustine over grace and hereditary sin. Julian chose to write a commentary on Job rather than on Romans “because the book of Job provides a more benign environment for the development of Pelagian thought and a more effective vehicle for its expression.”54 We should recall, however, that Pelagius himself wrote substantial commentaries on the Pauline epistles. Steinhauser thinks that Romans was Augustine’s preferred battlefield with the Pelagians, whereas Job was theirs. Allegedly, Romans gave Augustine the tactical advantage whereas Job gave his opponents the high ground. Romans allegedly affirms the existence of hereditary sin whereas Job speaks of a sinless person.55 Dealing with Job left Augustine with the embarrassing task of proving that this Old Testament saint was a sinner:
One is reminded of a similar development in the Donatist controversy. The Donatists continuously extolled Cyprian, the martyred bishop of Carthage, as their ideal teacher and model of courage, thus leaving Augustine in the embarrassing position of having to condemn Cyprian in order to condemn them. Julian of Eclanum, the Pelagian genius, perceived a golden opportunity and decided to capitalize on this opportunity by writing a commentary on Job.56
Citing Pelagius’s use of Job in his Epistle to Demetrias, Steinhauser reasonably claims that the Pelagians found in Job a corroboration of the good Gentile who was living in accord with natural law that Paul testified to in Romans 2:15-16. Julian agrees (cf. Job 23:12). Pelagius affirms from the Old Testament examples of Abel, Melchizedek, Abraham, Joseph, and Job that human beings have “the ability to reform themselves without any additional intervention on the part of God. Human beings, who do not exercise this freedom, insult God. The concept of natural sanctity without hereditary sin could only be scandalous to Augustine.”57 I would comment here that the words “without any additional intervention on the part of God” are Steinhauser’s, not Julian’s or Pelagius’s. They are really an inference drawn by Augustine and applied to those who did not identify his doctrine of grace with the teaching of the church. In my view, A. Dupont summarizes Pelagius’s views more accurately and in a manner that I believe could be applied to Julian as well:
He rejects every thesis that alleges that God commends to man something impossible and that God’s commandments cannot be fulfilled by individuals separately but only by all in community. Notice that Pelagius states that it is possible for the individual to observe God’s commandments. This opens the possibility of a righteous, sinless life. Pelagius condemns those who with Mani reject marriage or those who like the Cataphrygi are against remarriage. Pelagius finally emphasizes human freedom (liberum arbitrium), without denying the human need for God’s help.58
The italicized words are of great importance since critics of Pelagius and Julian often rely on an argument from silence. With respect to Julian, Ogliari says that for him, “although man remains responsible for his moral activity, God’s helping grace is also at work co-operating with him whenever something good is achieved.”59 We know that according to the report of Melania the Younger, Pelagius actually wrote,
I declare anathema anyone who thinks or says that the grace of God by which “Christ came into this world to save sinners” (1 Tim 1:15) is not necessary, not only at every hour and at every moment, but also for every act of ours. And those who attempt to do away with this doctrine deserve eternal punishment.60
I cannot imagine Julian disagreeing with Pelagius’s declaration. Yet it is commonly assumed that the “Pelagians” did not mean it when they anathematized those who denied the need for divine grace. In a carefully written study, Dupont and Malavasi conclude that the fact that Augustine and Jerome found fault with Pelagius’s interpretation of grace does not imply they shared the same theology of grace between themselves.
Our study of their respective exegesis of Rom. 9,16 and Phil. 2,13 clearly illustrated that they upheld a different vision on the relation between good human volition and divine grace. Thus, we also find diversity within the anti-Pelagian camp. Whether Augustine was fully aware of Jerome’s doctrine of grace is not completely clear, but if he was, he likely deemed Jerome’s doctrine as incomprehensive and insufficient.61
What follows is a more detailed synopsis of Julian’s interpretation of the book of Job.62 To begin with, he regards the book as composed by the Holy Spirit (1:8). This is noteworthy because Julian’s teacher, Theodore of Mopsuestia, whose Commentary on the Psalms he had translated into Latin and whose “Antiochene” approach to exegesis had greatly influenced him, apparently rejected the divine inspiration of the book of Job. Angela Kim Harkins reports that for Theodore, Job’s angry outbursts (cf. Job 3) were irreconcilable with the portrait of him being a moral exemplar and “raised serious questions about the book’s inspired status.”63 She further notes that the Acts of the Council of Constantinople in 553 preserve fragments of Theodore’s critical comments on Job in which he rejected the book in its present form.
Second, the text that Julian interprets is Jerome’s new Latin version of Job translated from the Hebrew, not the Old Latin translation of the Septuagint (LXX) version. The Hebrew version is about 20 percent longer than the LXX. In his preface to the Vulgate version of Job (AD 393), Jerome reports to his readers that the LXX version is significantly reduced:
Wherefore, let my barking critics listen as I tell them that my motive in toiling at this book was not to censure the ancient translation [the Old Latin rendering of the LXX], but that those passages in it which are obscure, or those which have been omitted, or at all events, through the fault of copyists have been corrupted, might have light thrown upon them by our translation; for we have some slight knowledge of Hebrew.64
Julian adopts Jerome’s text while making some seventy references to Greek readings. According to Annecchino’s analysis, Julian used the version of the LXX handed down by the Codex Alexandrinus (mid-fifth century).65 Julian often offers several readings of a single passage introduced by uel uel and aut aut, and about fifty introduced by aliter. Annecchino notes that the use of the latter adverb, which is absent in the Tractatus, is really interesting because, in addition to the cases in which it is used between one interpretation and another, it sometimes makes a transition between the translation of the LXX and the comment linked to Jerome’s biblical text. In two cases it is placed between the text and explanation (14:5; 41:24); at other times it is placed between the biblical quotation, presented both in Jerome’s and the Greek versions, and explanation; in some cases it is not connected to the biblical text or to the commentary that comes before; in two cases it lies between the text of the LXX and the commentary based on the LXX.66 Noteworthy is that Julian’s interpretive technique does not seem altered by the text forms. He puts the literal interpretation first, conforming to the context of the passage and in respect of the contextual coherence, which is considered decisive in establishing the real meaning of the text, beyond any subjective or symbolic interpretation.
In basing his commentary on the new Vulgate translation, Julian has followed the path taken by Philip, disciple of Jerome, as mentioned above. It is noteworthy, however, that Julian does not copy Philip’s heavily allegorical approach to interpreting Job. Simonetti and Conti describe Philip’s exegesis of Job in these terms:
The interpretation proposed by Philip is on two different levels. The first is the historical level which deals with the misfortunes of Job and explains them in a literal way. The second level is characterized by an extremely allegorical interpretation that considers Job as a figure of Christ and his three supposed friends as symbols of the heretics. These two kinds of interpretations run in parallel lines throughout the work. For instance, the seven sons of Job prefigure the sevenfold grace of the Holy Spirit, and his three daughters the law, the prophets and the gospel. Job, who curses the day of his birth, signifies Christ, who has taken upon himself the entire mortality of the human race and deprecates the transgression of Adam.67
In contrast with such a strongly allegorical reading, Julian focuses on the historical level without denying the prophetic and messianic aspect of some of Job’s oracles.
Thematically, and resuming the issues mentioned above in our discussion of the preface, Julian says that Job’s life is praised in Scripture because in him the goodness of human nature can be recognized, even without his having been taught by the law of Moses. Job shows that human nature was sufficient unto itself to know the one true God, to reject sins and pursue all virtues (Preface; 16:19; 23:13; 33:15-16). Job’s prudence and perfect circumspection concerning sin are shown by his response to his trials (Job 1:22). He did not sin with his lips or do anything wrong before God (23:15). The theme of the book, then, is that God takes pride in those who are innocent, who practice sincere and unfeigned virtue, and who live according to his law. Julian, commenting on Job 17:8-9, writes,
For the Lord wanted to conceal his own justice in order to broadcast the merits of his servant [Job], in order that by his example every innocent person will not only stand up confidently against the hypocrite, but, moreover, while proceeding down the continuous way of virtue, will always increase his own former pursuits for the sake of those who are following.
