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Predestination stalled progress for centuries
Early Christianity was highly agentic and highly optimistic, which is not what most people are taught in school. Then Saint Augustine held that grace is arbitrarily bestowed by God. Predestination followed, and with it the idea that no human will exists independent of that grace.
That became the theology of the Middle Ages. Plotted across time, progress in those centuries follows a belief that God does it and humans do not.
Progress and agency have not climbed in a straight line through human history, and the Middle Ages are the clearest stagnation. It was not until the Renaissance that Augustine's views were overthrown and progress broke out.
Who argued against Augustine on grace?
A monk named Pelagius argued around 400 CE that people can choose good without special divine help. Augustine opposed him in a series of writings. A council at Carthage in 418 condemned Pelagius's views, and Augustine's account of grace became central in Western Christianity.
What did Renaissance thinkers say about human will?
Giovanni Pico della Mirandola wrote his Oration on the Dignity of Man in 1486. In it, God tells Adam that he has no fixed nature and may shape himself upward or downward by his own choice. The text was written as an opening for a planned public debate in Rome. The debate was blocked before it began.
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