John Cassian

Abstract This chapter argues that in De incarnatione Domini, Cassian is not concerned with Christological terminology or precision; he is concerned about the identity of the Saviour as the eternal Son of God, and he believes that Nestorius is denying that. The chapter argues that Cassian’s depiction of Nestorius’s Christ as a man who attained deity by his merits may constitute an amalgamation of Nestorian thought with that of the pre-correction Leporius, and this Leporianized ‘Nestorius’ would become the main target of other Gallic writers. The chapter then examines Conlatio 13 in the light of its monastic context in order to argue that it is not describing different people (some who can make the first move to God without grace, and others who cannot), as Prosper alleged, but different situations in the life of a monk in which he needs and receives different kinds of grace. The grace of the Incarnation makes the monk an adopted son, and particular and varied kinds of grace operate in the monk’s life. As a result, while Augustine and Cassian have a similar Christology, their understandings of grace are different because Augustine reasons from the Fall to predestination to the Incarnation, whereas Cassian reasons from the Fall to the Incarnation to the action of grace in a monk’s life.