Michael J. Lynch on John Davenant’s (1572–1641) Correction of Those Misreading Prosper of Aquitaine’s First Letter to Augustine

Another argument for reading Prosper as initially affirming that Christ died for the elect alone has been offered by Haykin:

In a letter to Augustine, he also challenged the view of the so-called Semi- Pelagians that “the propitiation which is found in the mystery of the blood of Christ was offered for all men without exception.” From the letter it is clear that Prosper does not agree with this statement, and Augustine does not refute Prosper in his reply. In his later career, Prosper appears to have either softened this commitment to definite atonement, or even rejected it in favor of an advocacy of the universal salvific will of God based on his reading of 1 Timothy 2:4.¹¹⁷

Haykin misreads Prosper’s Letter to Augustine. First, it is not “clear [that] Prosper does not agree with” the view of the semi-Pelagians that Christ died for all.¹¹⁸ Here is the fuller context of the Prosper quotation in question:

For this is their [viz., the semi-Pelagians’] argument and profession: that every human being has sinned by sinning in Adam, and no person is saved by their own works, but by regeneration through the grace of God: nevertheless, God put forward Christ as a propitiation which is in the sacrament of the blood of Christ for all human beings without exception in order that whosoever wishes to come to faith and baptism is able to be saved.¹¹⁹

In the first sentence, which begins an enumeration of the semi-Pelagian positions on grace, Prosper says that the semi-Pelagians also teach that “every human being has sinned in Adam, and no person is saved by his or her own works, but by regeneration through the grace of God.” Are we to believe that just because Prosper lists this as a position of his opponents that he must disagree with it? Haykin assumes, following Blacketer, that what Prosper explains as the view of his opponents is rejected by Prosper. Yet Davenant himself warned against Haykin’s false assumption:

Therefore, it should be observed that when Hilary and Prosper are noting the opinion of the semi- Pelagians, many things are mixed together, some of which agree with the truth, and others savor of error. When, therefore, they record that the semi-Pelagians declared that all people sinned in Adam, and that our Lord Jesus Christ died for the whole human race, and some other things, they do not note these ideas as the errors of the semi-Pelagians, but in order to show how far they agree with the orthodox, and so that they may explain the whole order and connection of the semi-Pelagian doctrine. Those, then, greatly err who think that all the things which are attributed to the semi-Pelagians by Prosper and Hilary are erroneous and Pelagian.¹²⁰

Furthermore, Haykin fails to address the remarks Prosper gives regarding the semi-Pelagian opinion later on in the letter.¹²¹ As Davenant noted, what Prosper rejects is not the position that Christ died for all. Rather, the objection seems to be the attached condition, “even if he lives his whole life in complete estrangement from [God],” coupled with a denial of unconditional predestination, resulting in a predestination to faith which is dependent upon free choice.¹²²

Haykin at one point confesses, “Prosper admitted that Christ may be said to have died ‘for all’ because he took on the human nature that all humanity shares and because of the ‘greatness and value’ of his redeeming death,” while also teaching that “Christ ‘was crucified only for those who were to profit by his death,’ that is, only the elect.”¹²³ This position, ironically enough, sounds quite similar to the position Davenant himself would go on to defend in De Morte Christi.
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117. Haykin, “‘We Trust in the Saving Blood,’” 72–73.
118. Cf. almost the same language in Blacketer, “Definite Atonement,” 310.
119. Prosper, Epistola ad Augustinum, 880; Prosper, Letter to Augustine, 39. [Lynch knows that the label “semi-Pelagian” is problematic. See p. 180n67].
120. Davenant, De Morte Christi, in DD, 5 (328).
121. Prosper, Epistola ad Augustinum, 883– 84; Prosper, Letter to Augustine, 43–44.
122. Davenant, De Morte Christi, in DD, 5 (329).
123. Haykin, “‘We Trust in the Saving Blood,’” 72.

Michael J. Lynch, John Davenant’s Hypothetical Universalism: A Defense of Catholic and Reformed Orthodoxy. Oxford Studies in Historical Theology, ed. R. A. Muller, et al. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2021), 38–40.

David Allen also recently noted the following:

Augustine asserted that Christ died for the sins of Judas, and in many places in his writings he asserted that Christ died for the sins of all humanity. Some have maintained that Prosper of Aquitaine, early in his career, taught “definite atonement,” based on an early letter that he wrote to Augustine (e.g., Michael A. G. Haykin, “‘We Trust in the Saving Blood’: Definite Atonement in the Ancient Church,” in Gibson and Gibson, From Heaven He Came, 72–73). But they falsely assume that just because Prosper attributed to the Massilians (or the so-called Semi-Pelagians) the belief that “Our Lord Jesus Christ . . . has died for the whole of mankind [pro uniuerso autem humano genere mortuum esse dominum nostrum Iesum Christum]” (Prosper of Aquitaine, “Letter to Augustine,” in Defense of St. Augustine, trans. P. De Letter (New York: Newman Press, 1963), 43; Letter 225.6), he therefore must have disagreed with it. This is clearly a false inference since he also attributed to them the belief that “Every man has sinned in Adam, and no one is reborn and saved by his own works but by God’s grace” (Prosper, Defense of Augustine, 36; Letter 225.3). Augustine and Prosper both believed that. John Davenant dealt with this erroneous inference long ago. See John Davenant, “A Dissertation on the Death of Christ,” in An Exposition of the Epistle of St. Paul to the Colossians, 2 vols., trans. J. Allport (London: Hamilton, Adams, 1832), 2:328. See also Michael J. Lynch, John Davenant’s Hypothetical Universalism: A Defense of Catholic and Reformed Orthodoxy. Oxford Studies in Historical Theology (New York: Oxford University Press, 2021), 38–40.

David L. Allen, “A Critique of Limited Atonement,” in Calvinism: A Biblical and Theological Critique, ed. D. L. Allen and S. W. Lemke (Nashville, TN: B&H Academic, 2022), 74–75, n. 8.