In Salvation and Sin: Augustine, Langland, and Fourteenth-Century Theology, David Aers begins with an insightful reading of St. Augustine’s writings on divine and human agency, grace, and sin and then goes on to read four fourteenth-century authors—William of Ockham, Thomas Bradwardine, William Langland, and Julian of Norwich—through the lens of Augustine. By focusing his readings through Augustine and his writings, Aers addresses the limitations of applying the terms “semi-Pelagian” and “Pelagian” to the complex and varied debates on salvation taking place in theological and literary works of the fourteenth century. Despite his focus on Augustine, Aers also draws on an impressive array of both Latinate and vernacular theologians to discuss attitudes toward salvation in fourteenth-century literature and to highlight the importance of William Langland and Julian of Norwich to the central theological debates of the fourteenth century. As a result, this book will appeal to theologians as well as literary scholars.

One of Aers’s main goals is to encourage scholars to return to the original sources to understand the subtleties of the theological positions of William of Ockham and Thomas Bradwardine. He emphasizes how their writings and their relation to earlier theologians, such as Augustine and Aquinas, influenced later vernacular writers. To this end, Aers uses the first three chapters to outline Augustine’s theology of conversion and the responses to it from Ockham and Bradwardine. Aers skillfully underlines the importance of community to salvation by arguing that, for Augustine, salvation is mediated through people and processes as Christians are converted from the earthly city to the city of God. In this system, sin has a destructive force on both the community and the individual. He is careful to emphasize that Augustine did not envision salvation as an autonomous or internal act.

Once he has established an outline of Augustine’s theology of conversion, Aers turns his attention to fourteenth-century authors. He begins with a discussion of two theologians, Ockham and Bradwardine, who are often portrayed as espousing distinct viewpoints on conversion. Aers discusses Ockham’s theology of salvation and how it differs from Augustine’s writings on the same topics by contrasting Ockham’s Pelagianism with Langland’s Augustinian approach to conversion and salvation.

Aers addresses Ockham’s pactum model, in which God, through his free will, agrees to save those who repent from sin. He also explains how Ockham’s distinction between the potentia ordinata (God’s ordained power) and potentia absoluta (God’s absolute power) sustains God’s power even when he agrees to save those who do well with their own power. Aers finds fault in this account of salvation because it overlooks the fact that humans trapped in sin are incapable of not continuing in sin. From this criticism, Aers points out that if Langland followed this theology, then each of the elements of Ockham’s position on salvation would be apparent in Piers Plowman. Aers then addresses Ockham’s contemporary, Thomas Bradwardine, who wrote a treatise against Pelagianism. Yet Aers finds him to be not an opponent of Pelagianism but rather one who holds another viewpoint in a “strikingly diversified discourse” about salvation (56). Aers ultimately argues that Bradwardine’s position is closer to Pelagian writers to whom he is responding in his own theological writings.

The fourth chapter, “Remembering the Samaritan, Remembering Semyuief,” uses the theological arguments that Aers established in earlier chapters to examine Langland’s portrayal of sin and salvation. He begins with an overview of current scholarship on Langland’s theology, which aligns Langland either with Augustine or with Pelagian beliefs. Aers follows this outline with a consideration of “Langland’s own explorations of salvation, sin, and agency” (88). He argues that Langland employs a simplistic understanding of Augustine’s theology that pays little attention to Christ’s role in the process. He focuses primarily on two scenes concerning salvation in the C-text of Piers Plowman: the parable of the Good Samaritan and the story of Trajan. The Good Samaritan parable acts as a corrective to other statements concerning salvation in the poem because it emphasizes the Christocentric nature of conversion. For Aers, the Good Samaritan passage supersedes any ambivalence that exists in the Trajan episode and the tearing of the pardon.

In the fifth and final chapter, “Sin, Reconciliation, and Redemption,” Aers turns to Julian of Norwich, whom he describes as a theologian who is well suited to explore “central strands of Christian teaching” (134). Aers is most interested in how Julian responds to the question “What is synne?” and he begins with Denise Baker’s suggestion that Julian offers a counterpoint to Augustine’s assertion that sin is an act of free will. He compares Julian of Norwich’s account of man’s first sin with Augustine’s account of the episode in City of God. Aers argues that Julian’s approach to sin should not be considered Augustinian, because she distinguishes sin as suffering and denies that the will’s consent is a part of sin. For Aers, this occludes the necessity of the Crucifixion and therefore cannot align with Augustine’s views of salvation. Further, Julian’s conception of two wills, a lower and a higher, does not allow her to acknowledge the individual’s freedom to reject God. Aers concludes by suggesting that Julian’s “hollowing out of the language and theology of sin” (170) does not allow for a wide-ranging enough theology to deal with the broad scope of Christian teachings on salvation.

Aers offers an intensely focused study of the use of medieval theology in vernacular writing. He passionately approaches each of his subjects, particularly Augustine and Langland, through a nuanced and sophisticated analysis of a number of important theologians and vernacular literary texts and in the process suggests their ongoing relevance to medieval studies. Aers’s book is an important addition to both literary and theological study, and his call to take up primary sources with renewed interest is an invaluable one that highlights the importance of theological debates to the understanding of fourteenth-century vernacular culture.