14th–15th centuries

The Via Moderna and the Schola Augustiniana Moderna: The Dispute over Meriting the First Grace

McGrath shows that in the late Middle Ages there were two nominalist schools whose only common feature was anti-realism, while in the theology of grace they differed radically. The via moderna (Ockham, d'Ailly, Holcot, Biel) built its soteriology on a covenant: God bound himself to justify the one who "does what is in him," and human works, like a lead coin, have value only by the king's promise to accept them. Lane writes that Ockham applied this principle to a person who does not yet have grace, reviving the Semi-Pelagianism condemned in 529. Thomas Bradwardine opposed this at Oxford with The Case of God against Pelagius (c. 1344), and Gregory of Rimini in Paris founded the schola Augustiniana moderna, which taught that all the resources of salvation lie outside human nature. Luther and other reformers were educated in the theology of the via moderna.