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“We should not love unless He had first loved us
and made us to love Him!”
–Augustine
Introduction and made us to love Him!”
–Augustine
St. Augustine was a Calvinist and John Calvin was an Augustinian. That is to say that both Augustine and Calvin adhered to the Gospel of Jesus Christ found in the Bible even though they lived over a millennia apart. The material contained in their systems of thought surrounding justification, the atonement, sovereignty, grace, perseverance and the like, was the same. They taught the same doctrines of God’s sovereignty and free grace that “Calvinism“ has taught for hundreds of years, no thousands of years. Why? The terms Augustinian or Calvinist simply refer to a system of thought that has at its center the complete and utter sovereignty of God in salvation. That is to say that salvation is monergisitic. It is accomplished by God on behalf of man. As the Psalmist so eloquently stated, “But our God is in the heavens: he hath done whatsoever he hath pleased.” (Psa. 115:3). God is the Author and Finisher of the faith for those whom Christ died and gave His life as a ransom. God initiates salvation, gives the gift of salvation and preserves the Christian in salvation. He is the all in all. This is not a new concept or a new-fangled idea. It is old time religion of the Gospel of Jesus Christ taught from the Garden of Eden in Genesis 3:15, throughout the history of God’s chosen people, through the ministry of the Incarnate Word Jesus Christ, the ministry of the apostles, the ministry of the early church fathers, and yes, the ministry and voluminous teaching of St. Augustine.
The Augustinian or Calvinistic system does not solely refer to what has become commonly known as the Doctrines of Grace. These biblical systems of theological thought extend to all facets of biblical and systematic theology. One would not rightly be a Calvinist who solely held to the doctrines of grace. They could not, for example, believe in the five points and not believe in the sacramentology of the Calvinistic system. Calvinists, or Augustinians, were those who held to what Augustine or Calvin actually taught. They do not hold to a “piece” of what Calvin or Augustine taught. Christian doctrine in this way is not a smorgasbord. However, in recent days the term “Calvinistic” has come to refer to the single systematic package of the doctrines of grace. It has been so more frequently due to the modernization and popularity of grace infiltrating more denominations that many not necessarily subscribe to the entirety of the Reformed Faith. Many sectarians have come to believe and understand grace in the five points of Calvinism which to them means that they are Calvinists. Though it is spiritually great that various denominations across the globe are continuing to hold to the free grace of God in salvation (the only Gospel) it is also bad historically speaking in that they are stigmatizing the term Calvinist as that which only surrounds grace, when in fact Calvinism, or Augustinianism, houses more than simply five points on grace. They have in fact not treaded the paths Calvinism has to offer in the systematized work of The Institutes of the Christian Religion penned by Calvin. Instead, they are holding to the work that Augustinians and Calvinists formulated later in the consensus of the Synod of Dordt which expelled the Pelagian and Arminian systems in the 17th century. It would be, then, much better to call those who only hold to the doctrines of grace Dordtians than Augustinians, or Calvinists.
The filtered systematization of the five points of Calvinism which have been brought to the modern church as the doctrines of grace were originally systematized and widely written on, not by Calvin, but by Augustine. This is why one finds that every four pages written in the Institutes of the Christian Religion John Calvin quoted Augustine. Calvin, for this reason, would deem himself not a Calvinist, but an Augustinian. And both Augustine and Calvin would really deem themselves children at the feet of Jesus Christ and the teachings of the Bible, especially quoting their favorites passages from the Apostle Paul over and over again. They are Pauline, and bibline, to the glory of Jesus Christ. To work backwards, then, one moves from the doctrines of grace today, to the Synod of Dordt, to the Institutes of the Christian Religion by Calvin, to the writings of Augustine, to the Bible. The biblical record is the foundation for all that came after concerning grace. It is no wonder why Augustine, even in his own day, was deemed the “Doctor of Grace.” Here we turn to him for this study.
This work is concerned with the writings of Augustine to determine Augustine’s views on the doctrines of grace (or what has become to be known as Calvinism or TULIP) and if his views are the same as John Calvin‘s, or for that matter the Synod of Dordt, the Westminster Confession and other reformed viewpoints on the Gospel that have been since penned. Knowing that the Bible does not change, and the matters of faith and practice in the Bible do not change, one should find Augustine’s words and thoughts about grace lying within the same veins as any reformer who believed the Gospel of grace, or any Puritan afterwards. It is easy to see where the Reformers or Puritans believed these doctrines. Again, those who believe these doctrines are referred to as “Calvinists.” But why are they not referred to as Augustinians? This is the scope of the study. Is it determinable that instead of calling one who believes the doctrines of grace a Christian Calvinist, should they be more likely deemed an Augustinian Calvinist? Are those terms interchangeable? Did Augustine believe these doctrines in the same way that Calvin, or the later Puritans did, or even Calvinists today?
Defining the Doctrines of Grace
What are the Doctrines of Grace? The term “doctrines of grace” is not a relatively new term. It has been used at certain junctures and times through the history of the church, even dating back to the time just after the disciples. Augustine refers to the phrase twice, some of the early church fathers make use of it, and certainly later, at the dawn of the Reformation with the magisterial Reformers and of the puritans after them, the term was quite widely used. Today it is the synonym for those unfamiliar with historical theology to simply refer to being Calvinistic. Specifically it refers to the systematic formulation of those biblical concepts which teach and describe God’s sovereign work in salvation in five important areas: Gods work in rescuing sinners from the curse and depravity of original sin, God’s choice of saving sinners unconditionally through Jesus Christ, God’s means by which sinners are saved which is only through the death and sacrifice of Christ, the manner in which God saves men irresistibly through the regenerating power of the Holy Spirit, and the final perseverance of those He saves in Christ being preserved to the end by the gift of grace. Such passages as Exodus 33:19, Ephesians 1:3-10, Romans 5:1ff, 9:1-32 and John chapters 6 and 10 come to mind as succinct hallmarks of the doctrines of grace. These doctrines, or teachings, resulting from a responsible survey and exegesis of the Bible, construct the heart of the Gospel. They are the precise teachings of the Gospel and of saving grace. Augustine said,“The grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord must be understood as follows: grace is the only thing that delivers human beings from evil; without it, they do absolutely nothing good, whether in thought, or in will and emotion, or in action. Grace not only makes known to people what they ought to do, but also enables them to perform with love the duty that they know…The apostle Paul certainly asked God to inspire the Corinthians with this good will and action when he said, ‘Now we pray to God that you do no evil, not that we should appear to be approved, but that you should do what is good’ (2 Cor.13:7). Who can hear this and not wake up and confess that the Lord God is the One who turns us away from evil so that we do good? For the apostle does not say, “We admonish, we teach, we exhort, we rebuke.” He says, “We pray to God that you do no evil, but that you should do what is good.” Of course, he was also in the habit of speaking to them, and doing all those things which I have mentioned — he admonished, he taught, he exhorted, he rebuked. But he knew that all these things which he was openly doing in the way of planting and watering were of no avail, unless He who secretly gives the increase answered his prayer on the Corinthians’ behalf. For as the same teacher of the Gentiles says, “Neither he who plants is anything, nor he who waters, but God who gives the increase” (1 Cor.3:7).”
Augustine’s concept of grace extends to the sovereign God who is the one which “maketh thee to differ.” The grace of God, then is the “only thing” that delivers a human being from the evils of the fall and of human depravity which, without such grace, would render men an eternal condemnation in hell.
Pinpointing the most concise and helpful declaration of the doctrines of God’s grace by post-biblical theologians and writers is not difficult to do. One could look to the early church writings of Clement of Alexandria, Chrysostom, Basil the Great, Ignatius, Justin the Martyr, Irenaeus, and others who wrote extensively on grace throughout their various early church documents. Skipping Augustine for the moment, we could turn to the doctrines of grace and see in the writings of the middle ages with men such as Smaragdus, Ambrose Rupert, Alcuin, Agobard of Lyons, and Gottschalk of Orbais who wrote precisely about these biblical truths. In the interim period between the Middle Ages and the reformation one has to simply glance at the writings of Aquinas’ Suma Theologica, or Wycliffe’s works, or the writings of John Huss to see all the facets of the doctrines of grace housed in their writings. Interestingly enough, when surveying the theological landscape of the Reformation, one finds the reformers relying little on the Middle Ages, and less on the early church writers, while extensively upon Augustine. John Calvin quotes St. Augustine over 400 times in the Institutes of the Christian Religion within its 1500 theologically rich pages. Again, one time every four pages Calvin quotes Augustine in the most widely read Reformation document ever penned. If Augustine and Calvin were so “far off” from one another, it is unlikely, even absurd, for Calvin to rely so heavily on Augustine. If Augustine’s doctrines on grace were deviant from Calvin’s or so immature in comparison to Calvin’s it would again be equally absurd for Calvin to rely so heavily on him. Thus, pinpointing a formulation of the doctrines of grace in Augustine’s writings should be relatively easy to do; and it is.
The Doctrines of Grace Formally Defined
It was not until the early 17th century that a concise and formal document of these doctrines was set down in a systematized fashion. This document arose sometime after the famous Synod of Dordtrecht (or Dordt) convened, and subsequently decades after the Institutes were penned by John Calvin. The Netherlands’ churches, after much deliberation over the period of a year, with constituents from other countries, finalized a document called The Articles of the Synod of Dordtrecht which summed up the church’s confessional position on the doctrines of God’s graciousness against the rise of certain heretical doctrines plaguing the church at the time. These articles have become to be known as the “doctrines of grace” formally, and were later summed up in the acronym T.U.L.I.P. T.U.L.I.P. stands for Total Depravity, Unconditional Election, Limited Atonement, Irresistible Grace, and Perseverance of the Saints. It has been said that this acronym itself came to light at the Synod itself, but this is not accurate. The acronym itself developed later, though the five points which make up the acronym were readily distinguished in the 5 articles, or heads, of Dordt’s formulation of the doctrines of grace which are subsequently found strewn throughout Calvin’s works, and as will be seen, through Augustine’s voluminous works as well.T.U.L.I.P. was a formulation of what was already believed, but restated concisely in reaction to heresy intruding into the church. It is almost always the case that such formulations, creeds and confessions arise out of such need. It may be helpful, though, to retrace some of the more important facts concerning the rise of these articles and the later innovation of T.U.L.I.P. as a confession of the Reformed churches before looking at the works of Augustine.
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