0745685749 enemies democracy

24 The Inner Enemies of Democracy
to be like God, acting as free, self-determined subjects
who shape their own destiny.
This is not the place to enter into the details of this
debate, one of the most important in Christian history.
The official dogma of the church is still the one
bequeathed by Augustine, but throughout the history of
Christianity, it has been necessary to combat the rebels,
those who ascribe too active a role to man. They are suspected
of being contaminated by the Pelagian or at least
‘semi-Pelagian’ heresy. ‘Fundamentalist’ Christians take
a stand against this deviation. For Luther, it is inconceivable
that man can ensure his salvation by his own
efforts. The Jansenist controversy was fought out on
the same ground: when Pascal describes man after the
Fall, you can hear in his words the reproaches addressed
to the Pelagians. Pascal imagines God saying that man
‘wanted to make himself his own centre, independent of
my help. He withdrew from my domination and, as he
made himself equal to me in his desire to find his happiness
in himself, I abandoned him to himself.’ 5 Calvin, as
shown by Louis Dumont, forged a remarkable synthesis
of the two views. By bringing the individual with his
values into the social world, by interpreting his submission
to divine grace as an act of will, man shapes himself
in the image of God. In this way, Calvin contributes to
modern Prometheanism. 6
In parallel with this, from the Renaissance onwards,
non-religious authors engaged in a defence of human
abilities, which is why they are known as humanists.
Among the opponents of Augustinian pessimism
about human nature we find, for example, Pico della
Mirandola, whose thinking is similar to that of Pelagius,
even if he does not mention him: Pico’s God speaks
to man in terms very different from those transcribed
by Pascal: ‘you may, as the free and proud shaper of
your own being, fashion yourself in the form you may
prefer’. A few years later, in the early sixteenth century,