submitting to each other does not involve a loss of face. Furthermore,submitting to another believer, is ‘merely submitting to Christ himself’(p. 136). While she admits that ‘to honor someone is to submit to them’(p. 138), she considers that Paul weakens the force of the wives’ sub-mission by calling all believers to submit to each other (p. 141).

With regard to husbands being the ‘head’, Cohick contends that therewas not the metaphorical understanding of the head being equatedwith leadership in Paul’s day, and that ‘this metaphor was not a fixedsymbol with a literal meaning’ (p. 137). Rather, the point was to showthat different body parts which were linked together produced oneintegrated and united whole (pp. 137–8). She also points out that ‘sub-ordination in the ancient world was not limited to male/female’ since afemale patron (‘master’) could have a male slave (p. 135).

As well, Cohick maintains, Paul directly addresses slaves, ‘somethingnot seen outside the New Testament’ (p. 147) and that masters are to dothe same things to their slaves as their slaves are to do to them. Sheconcludes that, ‘Before God, in other words, the owner is stripped of allsocial privilege and is judged on how they treated another humanbeing, who might also be a believer. With this underlying assumption,Paul undercuts the power of the institution of slavery and its attendingreliance on social rank and status’ (p. 149). Elsewhere, she presents acompelling case for Onesimus not being a runaway slave (pp. 28–30).

On the whole, this is a worthwhile commentary for ministers andstudents, for Cohick combines well-crafted explanations and argu-ments with fresh insights.

Julie WoodsLondon

★ ★ ★

La grâce de la liberté: Augustin et Anselme [The Grace of Freedom:Augustine and Anselm], Michel Corbin, SJ, Éditions du Cerf, 2012(ISBN 978-2-204-09738-3), 372 pp., pb €33

In this brilliant and deeply spiritual theological work, Fr Michel CorbinSJ reevaluates the age-old opposition between divine grace and humanfreedom in its most acute form – Augustine’s controversy with Pelagius– and finds a reliable, though unexpected, guide in the eleventh-century luminary, Anselm of Canterbury.

This is not merely a work in the history of theology, but of theologyproper, and so a critical attempt to perceive the ‘Truth’ of the matter (p.9). Chapter 1 divulges the general argument, and seems especially

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concerned to discard the oppositional framework between grace andfreedom inherited from Thomas Aquinas. For Corbin, Aquinas’s zeal tosynthesize Christianity and Aristotelianism tended to recast the grace-freedom relation in terms of causal, external movements (p. 31, p. 54). Tograpple with how the problem assumed a misleading form in the West(though never in the East), one must return to the fourth and fifthcenturies, where with Pelagius grace and freedom was first ‘conceivedin terms of rivalry, not in love’ (p. 17, original emphasis). That is,Pelagius was unable to hold both that human salvation depended com-pletely on grace, and that this did not nullify human freedom, and so heprioritized the latter over the former. This raises the key question of thework, though asked about Augustine’s response to Pelagius: ‘Did[Augustine] deploy his refutation in a polemical manner, insisting acontrario on grace alone, or did he denounce even the presupposition ofthis doctrine, rejecting any idea of a possible rivalry between God andman, marching toward that which can be called the summa concordia ofgrace and freedom, thus recovering what the Eastern Church had neverceased to hold?’ (p. 19). It is this summa concordia, ‘greatest accord’between grace and freedom, which Corbin undertakes to expose.

In Chapter 2 Corbin commends the Annunciation to Mary (Lk 1.26–38) as the prototypical relation between God and humanity (i.e. theChurch, the believer). Here one beholds a discourse ‘that knows noopposition, but opens upon an accord that exceeds every description’.‘God’, says Corbin, ‘by his grace, awakens in Mary the welcome of orthe consent to His provision; two yeses meet one another, and the yes ofMary is such that, coming from the yes of God, it comes also fromherself, God giving to her to pronounce it’ (p. 68, emphasis original).

The ability to say ‘yes’, which God always deploys and which human-ity can proclaim only within God’s excessive ‘yes’, that is, as response,raises the question of the precise definition of human freedom. Is it, ashas become common in the West after Aquinas, the ability to say ‘yes’ or‘no’ to God, to love or not to love, to do good or evil? Corbin, followingAnselm, rejects this definition in Chapter 3, for three reasons. First, it‘covets . . . a situation of independence’ rather than of loving reciprocitywith the Creator, for this is a thoroughly autonomous ‘freedom’ (p. 95).Second, if freedom inherently includes the power to do evil, then bothGod (2 Tim. 1.3) and good angels are unfree. Third, the ‘ability’ to say‘no’ is not really an ability, but a limitation of one’s ability to perseverein the good. Thus, to be able to say only ‘yes’ to the Good, to be just, ‘tolove God for God’ (p. 111), is the truth of human freedom revealed inChrist (2 Cor 1.19–20; p. 113).

The next three chapters explore the contours of Augustine’s conceptof grace and freedom throughout the Pelagian controversy. Chapter4 explicates Augustine’s notion of the ‘two economies of grace’ inDe correptione et gratia, Adam’s grace at creation and Christ’s

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superabundant grace in recreation (Rom. 5.20). Whereas Adam sinned‘without reason (Ps. 34.7) by lack of reason, God responded to this follyby giving “his own Son” (Rom. 8.3) with no other reason than thisexcess of reason’ (p. 129). But does this ‘second grace’ show its superi-ority by suppressing human liberty? Corbin observes that ‘one could betempted to respond to the sola libertas of Pelagius with a sola gratia of thesame order’ (p. 135). Although Augustine sometimes falls prey to sucha distortion, this contradicts his own conversion experience under thefig tree (pp. 138–43), as well as sentiments elsewhere in his writings (pp.150–1). In Chapter 5 Corbin recalls and supports Augustine’s refuta-tions of Pelagius and their ratification at the Council of Carthage in 418CE, but his own most interesting critique is that Pelagius’s god is morelike the Stoic ‘transcendent Principle, guaranteeing justice’ but alooffrom human history; for man does not need God, in principle, to dogood (p. 181). And if humanity has no need of God, the God-humanrelation is something other than reciprocal, ceaseless love – a viewhorrifying to Augustine. ‘One must go beyond the transitory momentof the sola gratia, opposed to the sola libertas, to open upon their summaconcordia; one must [first] be humiliated in one’s pride to discover thatGod humiliated himself still more to heal man of his pride’ (p. 227).

Corbin then turns to Anselm’s De concordia and there discerns thetrue relation between divine grace and human freedom:

neither grace alone nor freedom alone, but grace being all the more gratu-itous because it calls forth freedom, freedom all the more free becausegrace supports it. The and that must appear is that of Charity, whichdestroys rivalry and makes everything common between God andhumanity. For, instead of an alone opposed to another alone, [Charity]makes heard the word of Jesus: ‘Father, all that is mine is Yours, and whatis Yours is mine’. (Jn. 17.10)

In the end, the ‘place’ where such a glorious accord is most evident,both in its resistance to all totalistic synthesis and in its profoundlymysterious union, is the ‘place’ of prayer, of address and response, ofhumility, of a wounded soul beseeching He who alone can heal the soul– ‘Our Father’ (p. 279).

In Chapter 8 Corbin rejects Augustine’s doctrine of ‘double predes-tination’, God’s mysterious election of some and damnation of others.For Corbin, the real mystery is the ineffable concord of grace and libertyin prayer: here is the ‘place of coherence of every discourse about graceand liberty’ (p. 292). Corbin sees a necessary corrective in Anselm’sdiscussion of divine justice and mercy in the Proslogion, where God’sjustice ‘exceeds all justice by being mercy’ (p. 298). God’s saving andpunishing are not simply ‘yes’ and ‘no’ (which is not true freedom),since Christ’s ‘satisfaction’ calls forth a reciprocal ‘satisfaction’ in divineLove and reveals God’s infinite ‘yes’ to humanity (pp. 309–17).

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The final chapter is a rereading of Romans 9–11 in the light of thesumma concordia. Paul’s discussion of God’s election and rejection ofboth the nations and Israel variously throughout salvation history con-cludes: ‘God enclosed all humanity in disobedience in such a way thatHe might have mercy on all’ (Rom. 11.32). What these passages show,then, is that in both election and rejection, God is working for thesalvation of all. Being the God of resurrection, He can and wishes (1Tim. 2.4) to bring even the ‘dead’ back to life, the hostile ‘rivals’ intoloving accord.

Corbin’s work is invaluable for several reasons. First, while Englishscholarship on Anselm often focuses on soteriology or on his philo-sophical contributions to notions of human freedom, Corbin recoversAnselm’s specifically theological vision. Second, certain versions ofCalvinism, which draw extensively on Augustine, are becoming morepopular in the English-speaking world. Corbin’s critical yet apprecia-tive engagement with Augustine regarding the nature of divine grace isa much needed voice amidst these broader trends. One hopes, there-fore, that an English translation appears in the near future.

Jordan Daniel WoodBoston College

★ ★ ★

Image, Identity, and the Forming of the Augustinian Soul, MatthewDrever, Oxford University Press, 2013 (ISBN 978-0-19-001633-7), 275pp., hb £48

Early Christian writers followed Paul in turning to the ‘image of God’ inGenesis to address questions about the origin and identity of humanpersons. By Augustine’s time, Gen. 1:26–27 had been interpreted insuch diverse ways by Irenaeus, Origen, Lactantius, Hilary, Ambrose,and Victorinus that Augustine faced vexing hermeneutical challengesin providing his own account. Scholars engaging Augustine’s writingstoday confront similar difficulties as they seek to understand whatAugustine meant by his affirmations of human persons as created outof nothing (ex/de nihilo) according to the image and likeness of God (adimaginem et similitudinem dei). Alienation from the Bishop of Hippo interms of time, context, culture, and customary genres has contributed toa predictable cacophony of divergent understandings.

Matthew Drever’s Image, Identity, and the Forming of the AugustinianSoul offers welcome, wide-ranging, and well-informed interventionsinto such dissonance. Among the book’s primary aims is to ‘repair

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