4.22.2012 BRADWARDINE: IS IT 'I FOUND HIM' OR 'HE FOUND ME'?

this is taken from 'john wycliffe and his english precursors' by gotthard lechler 1878

robert grossetete, bishop of lincoln, henry bracton, william occam, richard of armagh and thomas bradwardine are briefly discussed in order to put john wycliffe in context as he appears on the english religious scene. they were, each in his own way, contributory to wycliffe. we pick up bradwardine as he goes to oxford as a student and enters merton college

'it was at this period, also, that an incident occurred to him which gave a decisive turn to his inner life and which we fortunately learn from his own pen. his narrative is as follows:  -"i was at one time, while still a student of philosophy, a vain fool, far from the true knowledge of God, and held captive in opposing error. from time to time i heard theologians treating of the questions of grace and free will, and the party of pelagius appeared to me to have the best of the argument. for i rarely heard anything said of grace in the lectures of the philosophers, except in an ambiguous sense; but every day i heard them teach that we are the masters of our own free acts and that it stands in our own power to do either good or evil, to be either virtuous or vicious and such like. and when i heard now and then in church a passage read from the apostle which exalted grace and humbled free-will, -such, ie. as that word in romans 9, 'so then it is not in him that willeth, nor in him that runneth, but in god that showeth mercy', and other like places, - i had no liking for such teaching, for towards grace i was still unthankful. i believed also with the manicheans, that the apostle, being a man, might possibly err from the path of truth in any point of doctrine. but afterwards, and before i had become a student of theology, the truth before mentioned struck upon me like a beam of grace, and it seemed to me as if i beheld in the distance, under a transparent image of truth, the grace of God as it is PREVENIENT both in time and

prevenient - coming before, antecedent; anticipatory

and nature to all good deeds - that is to say, the gracious will of God which precedently wills, that, he who merits salvation shall be saved, and precedently works this merit of it in him, God in truth being in all movements the primary Mover. wherefore, also, i give thanks to him who has freely given me this grace."

from this interesting testimony from his own lips, it appears that bradwardine, while still a student, and even before he had begun the regular study of theology, had experienced a spiritual awakening which brought him off from the pelagian way of thinking and led him to the conviction that the grace of God is prevenient to all God-pleasing action, instead of being acquired by such action preceding. this awakening had evidently occurred in connection with such utterances of st. paul as that in romans 9.16, which had suddenly struck upon the young men's soul with a clear light and arresting force, insomuch that from that day forward the all-determining power of grace became the central truth of his christian thinking...\

brad's theological views are exhibited in a systematic form in ..'of the cause of God', for the author has the consciousness of appearing like an advocate in defence of God's honour, in standing forward to oppose pelagianism and to exalt the agency of God's free and unmerited grace in the conversion and salvation of man. he by no means conceals from himself that in so doing he is swimming against the current of prevailing opinion, for it is his own remark that 'the doctrine is held by many either that the free will of man is of itself sufficient for the obtaining of salvation; or if they confess the need of grace, that still grace may be merited by the power of the free will, so that grace no longer appears to be something undeserved by men, but something meritoriously acquired. almost the whole world, he says, has run after pelagius and fallen into error. but brad does not allow himself to be disheartened by this state of things. he knows for certain that one man, if the lord is with him, will be able to chase a thousand foes, yea to put twelve thousand to flight  (I Samuel 18.7)

this joyful courage in conflict, this devout confidence of victory in pleading the cause of God's grace as the only source of salvation, cannot fail to remind us of the reformers, who were essentially heralds of the same grace and opposers of the delusion that salvation can be earned by human merit. the method, it is true, which the scholastic divine followed was different from theirs, owing to the peculiar character of mediaeval culture. the reformers went to work theologically, brad philosophically, he gives as his reason for adopting this method, that the later pelagians had asserted that pelagius had been overcome purely by church authority and by theological proofs, but in a philosophical and rational way it had never been possible to confute him. brad's design, therefore, is to make use mainly of philosophical arguments and authorities. in regard to authorities he adheres so closely to his declared design, that he gives more space to the sayings of philosophers, old and new, and attaches more stress to them, than he does to his own independent reasonings. however, he also elucidates the question theologically, namely by arguments of scripture and appeals to the Fathers and the Scholastics, with the view, as he says himself, of showing the right sense of many passages of holy scripture and the Fathers, which had often been misunderstood and perverted by the pelagians of ancient and later times.

but the spirit which animates him is worthy of all recognition. he is filled with a moral pathos-a lofty earnestness of christian piety, which cannot fail to make the deepest impression.

in proof of this, i point to the fervent prayer with which brad, towards the close of the work..invokes the redeemer thus -
'Good Master-Thou, my only Master-my Master and Lord, Thou, who from my youth up, when i gave myself to this work by Thy impulse, hast taught me up to this day all that i have ever learned of the truth, and all that, as Thy pen, i have ever written of it,-send down upon me, also now, of Thy great goodness, Thy light, so that Thou who hast led me into the profoundest of depths mayest also lead up to the mountain height of this inaccessible truth. Thou who hast brought me into this great and wide sea, bring me also into the haven. Thou who hast conducted me into this wide and pathless desert, Thou my Gide, and Way, and End, lead me also unto the end. show me, i pray Thee, Thou most learned of all teachers, show to Thy little child, who knows no outlet from the difficulty, how to solve the knot of  Thy word so hardly knit...but now i thank Thee, serenest Lord, that to him who asketh, Thou hast given; to him that seeketh, Thou hast shown the way; and to him that knocketh, Thou hast opened the door of piety, the door of clearness, the door of truth. for now when Thou liftest the light of Thy countenance upon Thy servant, i believe i see the right understanding of Thy Word...

his drift is to exhibit grace as a free and unmerited gift of God and to strike down every imagination of human merit in the work of conversion. it is for this reason that he controverts in particular the favourite dogma of the Scholastics that man can qualify himself to receive grace, in other words, that he can deserve grace, if not to the strict extent of full worthiness, still in the sense of meetness and suitableness. to acquire merit before God, brad holds to be impossible for man in any sense whatsoever. he who affirms the contrary turns God, in effect, into a poor trafficker; for he who receives grace on the footing of any kind of merit, has purchased the grace and not received it as a free gift.

brad sets out, in fact, as pointed out above, from his own experience-from actual life-and he keeps actual experience ever in his eye. and in regard to the authorities for the doctrine of unmerited grace to whom he cares most to appeal, he is thoroughly alive to the fact that it was by their own living experience that they too were brought to the knowledge of that grace. the apostle paul, for example, was 'a chosen vessel of grace', inasmuch as, at a time when he was not thinking of good works at all, nor was even standing aloof from deeds of wickedness; at a time when he was thirsting for christian blood and was even persecuting the Lord Himself, suddenly a light from heaven shone round about him, and the grace of Jesus Christ at the same instant preveniently laid hold upon him. he speaks of the apostle as emphatically a child of grace, who, in gratitude for the same, makes devout and honourably mention of this grace-his mother=in almost all his epistles, vindicating her claims, particularly in his epistle to the Romans, where he makes grace the subfect of a large and acute investigation which fills the epistle almost from beginning to end. and quite in a similar spirit he remarks upon augustine that, 'like the apostle, he was at first an unbeliever, a blasphemer, and an enemy of the grace of Jesus Christ, but after the same grace had converted him with like suddenness, he became, after the apostle's example, an extoller, a magnificent and mighty champion of grace'. and like the apostle paul, like augustine the great church father of the west, thomas bradwardine too became, by the light from heaven which shone upon him in his youth, an extoller and champion of the grace of God, in opposition to the pelagian and self righteous spirit which prevailed in his time.

it was by no means his intention, indeed, in so doing, to place himself in antagonism to the church of rome. on the contrary, he declares expressly his steadfast belief in the doctrinal authority of the Church. he submits his writings to her judgment; it is for her to determine what is orthodox in the questions which he has investigated; he wishes with all his heart to have her support where he does battle with the enemies of God; where he errs, to have her correction; where his is in the right, to have her confirmation. but still, in the last resort, he consoles himself with the help of God, who forsakes no one who is a defender of his cause.

when i was 8 i feared i would die and go to hell and prayed and asked Jesus into my heart. no life and gave up religion. when i was 20 i knew i was a sinner and deserved to go to hell and set myself to obey romans 6.11 and regard myself as dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. no life so became a pharisee.