Katherine Chambers: Respecting Augustine's language: the meaning of ‘good works' in his anti-Pelagian writings

This paper offers a new interpretation of what was at stake in the Pelagian controversy by focusing on what exactly Augustine meant by the terms "good works" and its cognates ("right living," "acting virtuously"). It argues that accounts of the Pelagian controversy too often uncritically assume that Augustine used these terms in an ordinary sense, when he actually used them in a technical or specialized sense. When these terms are correctly understood, it becomes clear that Augustine was not at all concerned with distinguishing the actual behaviour of believers and unbelievers in his anti-Pelagian writings, despite his choice of language which seemed to focus his concern precisely on our actions. Even though he attributed "good deeds" to believers alone, he did not intend, by this choice of language, to convey the view that faith necessarily transformed our actions. Faith necessarily transformed the ultimate value of our actions, not our actions themselves. Reading his anti-Pelagian works, we must be alert to the fact that the term "good works" and its cognates had two possible meanings: they could be used in the ordinary sense to describe a characteristic inhering in an action itself; and they could be used in a specialized or technical sense to indicate that an action was meritorious for salvation. To call an action good in this second sense was to indicate the presence of something external to the action itself which meant that that action qualified as worthy of an eternal reward: this something was, of course, grace.