Sense and Nonsense: Supralapsarianism

Not too long ago, I received a letter from my friend Robert Reilly, who had recently switched from the U.S. Consulate in Berne to the Intercollegiate Studies Institute in Bryn Mawr. Thanks to Anne Burleigh, I had been on a binge of reading Jane Austen, which I had mentioned to Reilly. “I am glad to see you are enjoying Jane Austen,” he wrote back. “For my own spiritual and mental refreshment I turn to P. G. Wodehouse and refuse to travel without one unread Wodehouse volume at my side.”

Naturally, this reminded me of my much valued copy of The World of Wodehouse Clergy, to which I have several times referred in these columns. This book is a priceless gift from Mike and Caron Jackson, who possess the finest collection of Wodehouse I know. The following passage caught my eye:

Anne Benedict had been waiting in the hall of Lord Uffenham’s club some ten minutes before his lordship finally appeared, descending the broad staircase with one hand glued to the arm of a worried-looking bishop, with whom he was discussing Supralapsarianism. At the sight of Anne, he relaxed his grip, and the bishop shot gratefully off in the direction of the Silence Room.

Needless to say, I looked at the word “supralapsarianism” a couple of times tentatively trying to recall what the darn word meant. To no avail. I knew it had something to do with the Fall, but what precisely?

I had, moreover, just received the following remarks from Anne Burleigh about a professor, thank God not me, who had used words carelessly:

Words only mean something when they are seen in reference to their spiritual anchor and foundation. Everybody is most careless and casual today, because words are not taken as a point of honor. They do not refer to anything, so what difference does it make if they are misspelled or misused? The professor has learned the process of writing a research paper, but he missed learning the devotion to what words mean.

With this in mind, that words are taken “as a point of honor,” I looked up “supralapsarianism.” It turns out to refer to the doctrine that the decree of election preceded the creation and the Fall. Fair enough, I remembered the doctrine. The argument that some of us were damned before the Lord ever thought of creation, or even before Adam and Eve, makes discussions about valid theological arguments seem more pertinent.

Then the dictionary added that “supralapsarianism” was the opposite of “infralapsarianism.” This turned out to be the doctrine that God chose a certain number for redemption, but after the Fall. Either way, of course, this is all very undemocratic, so we are not much into either supra- or infralapsarianism these days. We think that if theology is not “democratic” it is not theology—never suspecting, apparently, that if it is merely democratic, it may not be theology but merely ideology. However, these two lapsarian words do mean something, though we can hardly blame the erstwhile bishop for slipping off when he saw the chance to escape from Lord Uffenham’s musings on the divine decrees.

We are mostly bemused today by the theological efforts to discuss how many will be saved. At the same time we mostly hold that everyone will be saved (there are no ultimate sins) and that political sins condemn whole classes of people, so that we march against what are called “social sins” with placards and shouts. But I cannot help but admire Lord Uffenham’s club wherein such conversations about salvation might just have taken place.

Pascal remarked:

We desire the truth, and find within ourselves only uncertainty. We seek happiness, and find only misery and death. We cannot but desire truth and happiness, and are incapable of certainty or happiness. This desire is left to us, partly to punish us, partly to make us perceive wherefrom we are fallen.

In the light of lapsarianism, this reflection has its point, viz., that we are “punished” when we realize that we cannot save ourselves.

This same Pascal, however, did not like the Jesuits too much, because on this very point they seemed to give too much ground to free will. He wrote them a letter on September 9, 1656, in which he greeted my spiritual ancestors as follows:

REVEREND FATHERS,—I was prepared to write you on the subject of the abuse with which you have for some time past been assailing me in your publications, in which you salute me with such epithets as “reprobate,” “buffoon,” “blockhead,” “merry-Andrew,” “imposter,” “slanderer,” “cheat,” “heretic,” “Calvinist in disguise,” “disciple of Du Moulin,” “possessed with a legion of devils,” and everything else you can think of.

Lord Uffenham’s bishop, perhaps, finding this a more lively topic of conversation than supralapsarianism, might not have slid into the Silence Room so adroitly.

In a letter to her brother Frank, Jane Austen noted the death of a Mr. Theo. Leigh—”the respectable, worthy, clever, agreeable Mr. Theo. Leigh,” who seems to have been locally famous for the following reasons:

He has just closed a good life at the age of 79, & must have died the possessor of one of the finest Estates in England & of more worthless Nephews and Neices [so spelled in the Oxford edition of Jane Austen’s letters] than any other private man in the United Kingdoms.

Whether such worthless nephews and “neices” were decreed before or after the Fall, Jane Austen does not tell us. Lord Uffenham’s worried-looking bishop may have suspected something like this, and surely a few of the endearing words Pascal applied to the Jesuits might, in another context, have come from someone less delicate than Jane Austen.

The “devotion to what words mean,” even in the case of “supralapsarianism” and “infralapsarianism,” ought to make us realize that earnest issues of our status before God, how we are to understand our relation to Him, do demand that we reach the truth behind the word. These words are not merely silly or outlandish, even if they may be wrong in some way or another. We must look for their “spiritual anchor and foundation,” take them as a “point of honor,” so that we can understand their import, and, in so understanding, decide where the truth about the Fall lies, be it with the supralapsarians, the infralapsarians, Pascal, the Jesuits, the worried-looking bishop headed for the Silence Room, or the worthless nephews and “neices” of Mr. Theo. Leigh.

Author

  • Fr. James V. Schall

    The Rev. James V. Schall, SJ, (1928-2019) taught government at the University of San Francisco and Georgetown University until his retirement in 2012. Besides being a regular Crisis columnist since 1983, Fr. Schall wrote nearly 50 books and countless articles for magazines and newspapers.

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