The Predestination of Humans

No other theological text polarized the early modern Catholic world as much as Cornelius Jansen's Augustinus. In it the erudite bishop not only reconstructed St. Augustine's teaching on grace and free will, but also boldly claimed that his views were in line with the Council of Trent and the Society of Jesus. For Jansen the latter had marginalized the Church Father's doctrine on divine predestination by overemphasizing human free will. Published after his death in 1640, Jansen's work drew a large crowd of followers and inspired an Augustinian reform movement. Its papal condemnation unintentionally spread this theology, but stifled an impassionate, academic engagement with the Augustinus. This first-ever translation of some of its central chapters enables historians, philosophers and theologians to finally engage with the founding text of Jansenism.

Cornelius Jansen (1585 – 1638) was the Dutch Catholic bishop of Ypres in Flanders and the father of a theological movement known as Jansenism. Guido Stucco earned a Ph.D. in Historical Theology from St. Louis University. He has written five books in which he outlined the Catholic doctrine of predestination from the V to the XVII centuries. He has also translated from the French Antoine Arnauld's The Necessity of Faith in Jesus Christ to Obtain Salvation (1701) and from the Italian three works by the Jesuit missionary to Tibet, Ippolito Desideri (1684-1733): When Thomas Aquinas Met Nagarjuna: Two Works by Ippolito Desideri, SJ, and The Ultimate Good: A Theist Assessment of Madhyamika's Views.