Carey Senior Faculty Fellow 2001-02
†Rev. Dr. Salvatore Camporeale (History)
The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies, I
Tatti
Human Free Will and Divine Predestination
in Renaissance Thought: Lorenzo Valla's De libero arbitrio (1438-39)
The question of free will and predestination has been a basic
question in Christian thinking, and a central problem for Scholastic
philosophy and theology. The question will also remain fundamental
for 15th/16th c. Renaissance Humanism, from Valla to Pomponazzi.
Lorenzo Valla's dialogue De libero arbitrio constituted a turning
point on both the theoretical and existential dimensions of the
central antinomy “human freedom / divine determination”.
Valla’s discourse, resulting in a statement of the “insolubility”
of the question in terms of philosophical argument and Aristotelian
dialectic (Perí hermenéias), is preceded by an analytical
and incisive critique of Boethius’ well-known solution in
De consolatione philosophiae. Valla resumed the anti-philosophical
and anti-dialectic critique of Peter Damian, and of certain schools
of monastic theology. At the same time, Valla’s critique,
while rejecting the terms of philosophical apodictic discourse,
attains full expression as “rhetorical argumentation”
- unlike the previous criticism of Peter Damian, who rejected both
classical types of discourse, philosophical and rhetorical. Hence,
the new humanist perspective of Valla.
The last section of the Dialogue moves to another stage: from the
“philosophical” problem of free will vs. divine providence
to a specifically “theological” one: the free will of
the “justified” (by “divine grace”) vs.
“predestination to salvation”. Valla’s argument
for a statement of the “insolubility” of the antinomy
“human freedom / divine predestination” is grounded
on: (1) the incompatibility of “philosophical categories”
with the “biblical (theological) discourse”; and (2)
the divine mystery of “predestination”, about which
Paul had written in the Epistle to the Romans. Finally, the conclusive
statements of the humanist are that any theological speculation
about the predestination to salvation of the individual human being
must, in the presence of divine revelation, be reduced to “silence”
(the
“mystical/arcane silence” or “sighe” of
the pseudo-Dionysius), and that the insoluble antinomy of “free
will / divine predestination” may be transcended” (Hegelian
“Aufhebung”) only by the Christian’s praxis of
“caritas”, the evangelical “agape”.
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