Prosper of Aquitaine

Abstract This chapter describes the well-known shift in Prosper’s thought from restricting God’s salvific will to the elect early in his life, to arguing robustly for God’s universal salvific will in De uocatione. The chapter surveys scholarly opinion on the various factors that led to this shift and then argues, on the basis of a close reading of the Epitaphium, that Prosper’s increasing appreciation of the Saviour’s identity as the eternal Son—gained as a result of opposing ‘Nestorianism’—played a role in his development. While we have little data on which to make a judgement, we can be reasonably confident that Prosper’s Christology was broadly Cyrillian, and the universal significance of the Word’s descent to the human sphere was part of what pushed him to affirm God’s universal salvific will, in opposition both to the later Augustine and to his own earlier view. We may recognize that the earlier Prosper reasoned from the Fall to predestination and only then to the Incarnation, whereas the later Prosper reasoned from the Fall to the Incarnation, and thus to an understanding of grace that includes universal aspects. We may also recognize that this is the way Cassian and Vincent have always reasoned from Christology to grace; Prosper’s transition from one sequential logic to a different one throws into relief the differences between the Gallic writers and Augustine.