Salvation of the Involuntarily Ignorant in Medieval Theology

This book examines how Latin theologians from Augustine to Aquinas addressed the thorny question of whether those in involuntary ignorance of Christianity can be saved; a dilemma which seemed to imperil either the justice and loving benevolence of God, or the unique status of Christ as the mediator of salvation. It concerned three overlapping groups of persons: unbaptised infants, righteous gentiles who lived before Christ, and those living after Christ without knowledge of the Gospel. The problem stands at the confluence of the most fundamental themes of Christian theology, including divine justice and love, faith, nature, grace, and free will. Through close readings of Augustine, Abelard, William of Champeaux, Bernard of Clairvaux, Hugh of St Victor, Peter Lombard, the Summa Halensis, William of Auvergne, Albertus Magnus, and Thomas Aquinas, the book traces the emergence of a theological consensus that God makes salvation through grace genuinely available to all. It challenges several prevalent notions: that Abelard's approach was particularly redolent of divine benevolence; that in his later works, Aquinas abandoned his earlier conviction that God condemns no one for what they cannot avoid; and that the conviction that the involuntarily ignorant could be saved arose primarily as a consequence of the European discovery of the Americas. The book argues instead that the theological foundations for this conviction were established during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, formed in the crucible of debates between Abelard and the school of St Victor, whose founder - William of Champeaux - this book restores, for the first time, to his rightful place of historical significance. In the context of the birth of the universities, the challenge of popular heresy, and the broadening of international horizons in the wake of the Mongol conquests, scholastic debates yielded the theology of implicit faith, baptism of desire, and the limbo of unbaptised infants. Thomas Aquinas brought this constellation of ideas to a certain maturity and cohesive unity. Whether further elaborated or vehemently impugned, this medieval scholastic synthesis has been immensely influential on all subsequent theology.

Liam McDonnell is Junior Research Fellow, Blackfriars Hall, University of Oxford. He read medieval history and theological studies at the University of St Andrews and his undergraduate dissertation won the Gray Prize for Best Theological Essay and Hope Trust Award for Church History. From 2018 to 2019, he completed an interdisciplinary MSt in Medieval Studies at Blackfriars Hall, University of Oxford followed by a DPhil in Theology.