Of Works of Supererogation
Voluntary works besides, over and
above, God's commandments which they call Works of Supererogation, cannot be
taught without arrogancy and impiety. For by them men do declare that they do
not only render unto God as much as they are bound to do, but that they do more
for His sake than of bounden duty is required: Whereas Christ saith plainly,
When ye have done all that are commanded to you, say, We be unprofitable
servants.
Opera quae Supererogationis
appellant non possunt sine arrogantia et impietate praedicari. Nam illis
declarant homines non tantum se Deo reddere quae tenentur, sed plus in eius
gratiam facere quam deberent: eum aperte Christus dicat: Cum feceritis omnia
quaecunque praecepta sunt vobis, dicte, Servi inutiles sumus.
Provenance
Composed
in 1552/3 by the English reformers and unchanged since.
Some
background is offered from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy at:
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/supererogation/.
Here is a quote from their site:
“The Catholic doctrine of supererogation met with an
extremely fierce opposition in the times of the Reformation. Luther, Calvin and
Anglican theologians attacked both the theory of“super-meritorious” actions and
the corruption involved in the commercialization of the institution of
indulgences for which the theory served as a cover. No human being, not even a
saint, can do all that is strictly required as a duty, let alone hope to go
beyond that. The way to salvation is not through “works” but through divine
grace alone (Luther 1957). Even the most dramatic acts of martyrdom and
self-sacrifice, which served the Catholics as paradigm examples of
supererogation, are strictly speaking obligatory. Protestant ethics thus
undermines the distinction between the two faces of morality: on the one hand,
normative requirements cannot be defined in terms of rules fixing minimally prescribed
behavior; on the other hand, every religiously good behavior is obligatory.
Saints and sinners are equally dependent on God's grace for their salvation.
Paradoxically, it may be noted, exactly because human actions can never fulfill
God's commandments, divine grace is never due or ethically called for:
it is typically supererogatory, a free gift of God!”
And, giving notice
to the disappearance of this issue in our time:
“The hostile attitude of the Reformation to
supererogation and the disappearance of the institution of indulgences in the
Catholic Church led to the rapid decline in the theological and philosophical
interest in the concept of supererogation in the modern era. However, the great
theological debates about actions beyond the call of duty set the stage for the
contemporary discussion of the subject. The revived interest in supererogation
since the 1960s has completely shifted the focus from the theological context
to the ethical, but the structure of the argumentation is often reminiscent of
the traditional Christian debate.”
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