Throughout the history of Christianity, the relationship between God's sovereignty over creation and mankind's freewill within that creation has long been a source of argument and debate. Due to the influence of Greek philosophical concepts, classical Christian theism has traditionally maintained that God is omnipotent (i.e., all powerful) and, therefore, directly responsible for all that goes on in the world. At the same time, however, Christians throughout the centuries have stressed the importance of mankind's ability to make decisions freely, for good or for bad. The Reformation was a particularly important time in the history of western Christianity in that this relationship between divine sovereignty and freewill was heavily debated. Perhaps as a revolt against humanism, the Reformation produced a decidedly pessimistic view of mankind and freewill, and such reformers as Zwingli and John Calvin revived and stressed the concepts of predestination and the total depravity of man which had long been ignored or overlooked by the Roman Catholic Church of their day.

It would be a misconception, however, to say that the ideas of Calvin (which were not 'new' in any real sense) were held exclusively by Protestants. In the centuries following the Reformation, Calvinist doctrines -- which were based heavily on the ideas of Augustine and other early Church fathers -- were becoming popular among many Roman Catholics. Indeed, as the sixteenth century began to unfold, new movements within the Catholic Church were beginning to emerge that, in terms of doctrine, had many similarities with Calvinism. Jansenism, which would take hold primarily in the Low Countries and France during the sixteenth century, had many striking similarities with the views of Calvin.

Noting this similarity, this paper will briefly compare and contrast the doctrinal positions of French Jansenists and French Calvinists (i.e., Huguenots) in an attempt to uncover a particular doctrine, or set of doctrines, not held in common by both groups, that may have served as the foundation upon which divergent religious characteristics of each group was formed. Dissimilarities in reaction to both religious communities by the Crown, Church and people of France will then be taken into consideration as they relate to these divergent characteristics. I propose that on the issue of the knowledge of one's salvation, such a doctrine is found. Although perhaps a minor issue, this one doctrinal belief produced distinct and separate expressions of religious piety for both Jansenists and Huguenots. Their reception by the French state differed as a direct result.

History of the Hugenots

Before taking into consideration the matter at hand, however, a short overview of the history of both religious communities, and their relationship to the state of France within the context of absolutist rule in France, will be in order. A Huguenot from the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries was simply any citizen of France who was a Protestant. However, from its early beginnings, the Protestant Reformation in France was decidedly Calvinistic in nature--thus to speak of the Huguenots, is to speak of French Calvinists. Viewed as heretics by an almost exclusively Roman Catholic France, French Calvinists were from a very early date persecuted by the French government. As the French state began to move towards political absolutism, any religious dissent that emerged was seen as a challenge to both the French church and the state. The Huguenots were therefore seen not only as heretics and schismatics from the 'One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church,' but were also seen as insurgents against France itself. A series of anti Protestant edicts were passed by Francis I in the early 1540's, and throughout the following decades, both kings and dukes alike attempted to either restrict, or do away with altogether, the growing Huguenot movement. The Huguenots did, however, see some relief under the reign of Henry IV. A former Huguenot himself, the King was instrumental in establishing the Edict of Nantes, which guaranteed Huguenots the right to worship freely.

History of the Jansenists

While French Calvinism is, relatively speaking, rather easily described, Jansenism is, in its various aspects, a rather difficult phenomenon to describe. It was for the most part a movement within the Roman Catholic church that, throughout the better part of the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, looked to re-establish within the church of Rome the Augustinian belief in the total depravity of man, and the doctrine of predestination.

The movement traces its most direct origins back to the Flemish theologian and bishop, Cornelius Otto Jansen. It would be incorrect, however, to say that Jansen founded the Jansenist movement. What Jansen himself was most directly responsible for was an exhaustive study of the doctrines of Augustine which were published post-humously in a book entitled Augustinius . The book was immediately accused of being Calvinistic in flavor, and among those Catholics who supported freewill and the humanist impulses of the sixteenth century (e.g., the Jesuits), it was harshly condemned. Although the movement began as a theological one, it would be incorrect to say that Jansenism was primarily concerned with theological problems, for in the eighteenth century, it would take on a distinctly political flavor. For this reason, this paper will look at Jansenism primarily in its early stages, before the term Jansenist was applied to any malcontent of the upper middle class.

Augustine

With that significant, albeit brief, history of Jansenism and French Calvinism now safely recounted, one more important piece of background must be considered before continuing on. At the heart of Calvinist theology and Jansenist theology are the ideas and beliefs of Saint Augustine of Hippo. Therefore, it is to a brief description of Augustinian theology--and how the influential theologian's ideas manifested themselves in Calvinism and Jansenism--that one must turn in order to fully understand the similarities and the differences between the two movements. It is, of course, beyond the scope of this paper to look at the entire theology of Augustine; therefore, it will be on the issue of God's grace, and the related issue of predestination, that sole attention will be given.

Original Sin

For Augustine, mankind was totally powerless to do anything good on its own, and thus could not change or improve its condition. The velle or the will of mankind, the thing that allows people to make decisions, was in Augustine's eyes completely ignorant and in trouble due to the effects of Original Sin. Original Sin, according to traditional Christian theology, is the result of Adam and Eve's disobedience in the Garden of Eden, and is the inherited condition that causes men and women to do evil. On the one hand Augustine can state that people sin by their own free will. But at the same time, our very selves were present in the "loins" of Adam at the time of his sin, and thus we participate in the sin of Adam, even if in a secondary sense:

But man, being of his will corrupted, and justly condemned, begot corrupted and condemned children. For we all were in that one man, since we all were that one man.... For not yet was the particular form created and distributed, in which we as individuals were to live, but already the seminal nature was there from which we were to be propagated.

To be sure, Augustine believed in the importance of free choice in order to vindicate God's just punishment of the wicked, but mankind is so heavily influenced by the effects of Original Sin, as to make the outcome of these decisions virtually foreordained. Since mankind cannot change its own condition by itself, salvation for Augustine was an act completely dependant upon God. Unfortunately for some, however, Augustine did not think that God bestowed his grace upon everyone.

I am speaking of those who are predestined to the kingdom of God, whose number is so determined that nobody can be added and nobody subtracted from them.... That the number of elect is determined, not subject to increase or subtraction...is stated more overtly in the Apocalypse, "Keep hold of what you have, in case someone else should get you crown" (Rev. 3:11). For if it is not to be got by someone else without the first one's losing it, the number is determined.

Both Jansenists and Calvinists narrowly interpreted Augustine, and stressed the predestinarian aspects of his works. Both movements advocated that mankind was totally corrupt and helpless due to Original Sin; that God was totally sovereign over creation, and that man was completely dependant upon God for salvation. Blaise Pascal, certainly one of the most famous defenders of Jansenist doctrine, perhaps best expresses Jansenist views on predestination when he writes that "...men are saved or damned according as to whether it has pleased God to choose them as recipients of this [efficacious] grace from out of the corrupt mass of men, in which He could with justice abandon them all.2

Predestination was, of course, central to both movement's theologies. But for Calvinists, God not only predestined people to heaven, but he also consigned people to hell as well. Based upon Calvin's most important work, Institutes of the Christian Religion , nearly the whole of Calvinist theology revolves around the idea of predestination in its most absolute form. At the end of Book III, chapter 21, Calvin writes:

In conformity to the clear teaching of scripture, we assert that by an eternal and immutable counsel, God hath once for all determined both whom he would admit to salvation and whom he would condemn to destruction. We affirm that this counsel, as far as concerns the elect, is founded on his gratuitous mercy, totally irrespective of human merit; but that to those whom he devotes to condemnation the gate of life is closed by a just and irreprehensible but incomprehensible judgement.

Calvinists and Assurance

For the Huguenot, the state of his salvation could be known, and the assurance that he/she would never lose that salvation was absolutely certain; for the Jansenist, however, neither was true. "Calvinists, like Lutherans, believed in justification by faith alone quite independent of good works; Jansenists believed in salvation by the good works which only 'charity' as bestowed by efficacious grace enable them to perform." Expanding on this, Pascal stressed the idea that Christians must always be striving to be "perfect as [their] Father in Heaven is perfect," and that they should not be content with limited perfection. Since there was something that the Jansenist could "do" to achieve salvation, there is a very curious tension that exists between the idea of salvation by good works and the idea that man is totally helpless to change his condition. As in the works of Augustine himself, the two never seem to have been satisfactorily reconciled, and Jansenists therefore took on a very different lifestyle because of this tension. For the Huguenot, there was no doubt that there was nothing he could do on his own to achieve salvation, and faith alone was his sole assurance that he had achieved it.

According to the synod of Dordtrech, in 1619, Calvinists believed in a doctrine known as the "preserverance of the saints." The notion is that "once a recipient of divinely bestowed faith, a man need no longer fear for his salvation, no matter how far he might subsequently fall from the glory of God." Once Huguenots received this gift of Grace, they were completely assured that they were part of the elect, part of those people who were chosen by God. As one might expect, this assurity of salvation seems to have been a completely freeing experience for the Huguenots. No longer completely concerned with the idea of their salvation, they were free to follow worldly vocations, and even Calvin himself stressed the idea of secular callings. There were, of course, signs to follow this salvation, and although faith was to be the determining factor in assurance of one's salvation, signs to reassure the validity of that salvation were certainly helpful for the individual. Calvinists (although not Calvin himself), therefore, have traditionally held to the notion that God bestows prosperity upon the elect, and the famous 'Protestant work ethic' that resulted from this belief was instrumental in Huguenot economic success.

Jansenists and Assurance

The Jansenist was not lucky enough to have a total assurance of his salvation. "The Jansenist believed that there were other kinds of grace, and that one could never be entirely certain that he possessed the right kind, and if one possessed any other he might easily fall from the state of grace at any moment." Without the assurance that the Huguenots had, the Jansenist was forever uncertain about what his fate would be. In our own day, the concept of salvation may not be the primary interest of many people (if it is afforded any attention at all), but in the sixteenth century, it was of utmost importance to the Jansenist. To perhaps gain a small piece of assurance of their salvation, Jansenists developed a puritanical piety that the Catholic church considered to be grounded in an elitist mentality. The Church feared that in Jansenism, "salvation appeared to be inaccessible to the ordinary mortal."

"For the good Jansenist, the 'world' offered too many distractions and diversions capable of turning his mind from God and therefore removing him from the state of grace." Jansenists made it their central goal to remove themselves from "the world" and its temptations; often times giving up their secular lives and vocations to embark upon an ascetic retreat from the world. Not long after the death of Jansen and the publication of Augustinius , Jansenism began to form into a movement, and it wasn't long before it began to win adherents. Important to the movement's early success was the conversion of Mere Angelique, the abbess of the convent of Port-Royal. Following the monastic reform that accompanied the Catholic Counter-Reformation, Angelique also reformed Port-Royal. Unlike other monasteries, however, Port Royal was reformed into a center for Jansenists. Many of the movement's most important writers and leaders, including Antoine Lemaistre and Thomas du Fosse, gave up important careers to retreat to Port-Royal. The Calvinist it seems would never have done such a thing. Instead of giving up his secular vocation or retreating to a monastery, the Huguenot would most likely redouble his efforts at his career, thus bringing more glory to God.

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