Augustine & Pelagian Controversy

We are at Lecture 16 now, God Himself is our power, saying the Guston and the Pelagian controversy. The last time we looked at this letter from a Guston to a widow whose name was Prova, a letter that a Guston wrote and answered to some questions that she had about prayer. And he answers her in considerable detail telling her how to pray. I read a quotation from the letter last time before the prayer from a Guston and I'd like to read another section from this letter today before we use one of a Guston's prayers. He says this, this being so to allow yourself a great deal of time for prayer is neither wrong nor unprofitable, if you're not hindered by other responsibilities involving good and necessary activity. But even during these we ought, as I have said, always to be praying by our desire. To pray long is not as some people think to pray with much speaking. Many words are one thing, a prolonged disposition to prayer is another. So with those words in mind about prayer, let's pray to God using one of a Guston's prayers, let's pray. Oh God, you are the light of the minds that know you, the life of the souls that love you, and the strength of the wills that serve you. Help us so to know you that we may truly love you, so to love you that we may fully serve you, whom to serve is perfect freedom through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. So we come to this topic today, we come to a discussion finally of the doctrine of grace. I have mentioned a number of times in the class that we don't find all that much emphasis on the doctrine of grace prior to a Guston. It certainly is present in the Bible and particularly in Paul. But as we come to the church fathers, except for some glimmers into Taliyah and some of the other of the fathers, there is not a strong and concerted emphasis on grace. F.F. Bruce in his book The Spreading Flame puts it this way, the biblical doctrine of grace seems almost to go underground, he said, in the post-Athostolic age, to reappear only with a Guston. I used to think that statement was a kind of an exaggeration, but I've been testing it now for a few years, and I think, unfortunately, F.F. Bruce is right. V.B. Warfield puts it this way, there is no other such gulf in the history of human thought as that which is cleft between the apostolic and the immediately succeeding ages. You think the message of grace would be so clear to people from the Bible and particularly from the writings of Paul that the early church would just pick it up from there and continue to stress it as Paul did. Of course, the Guston was not the first person in the post-Athostolic period to believe in the doctrine of grace. Many people, those who came to the Lord for salvation believed in grace, they believed that they were sinners, they believed that they needed God's help in order to be saved, and then they believed that as God's people, it was imported and necessary for them to live good and holy in godly lives. Warfield puts it this way, no doubt the essence of evangelical religion remained the implicit possession of every truly Christian heart. We really find it difficult to think of people being saved without some understanding at least of what it means to be saved by grace. And I think we would see that in these early centuries, despite the fact that in the teaching of the church fathers, this is not a prominent theme, nonetheless the understanding of salvation by grace was present in the lives and hearts of people who came to the Lord. I think we have a situation here like the doctrine of the Trinity before Nicaea and the doctrine of the two natures of Christ before Calcadon, where people believed in the Trinity but did not have the words to express their faith properly. And they believed in the two natures, Jesus is both God and man, but they could not really find a good way to say that until the church struggled with those imported doctrines and came up with formula that could be used to express the biblical teaching on the Trinity and the two natures of Christ. The same thing I expect is the way we should look at the doctrine of grace, people believed in grace, they knew of our grace, they were being saved by grace, but they did not understand clearly how to express their belief in grace. They placed great ill of emphasis, I would say not too much emphasis because it's impossible to place too much emphasis on good works. But in their emphasis on good works there was a kind of imbalance as they fail to understand fully how to express the doctrine of grace and relate the doctrine of grace to the Christian life. Let me illustrate this by quoting just one of the church fathers prior to Augustine, one that I highly respect, as you know, and lectured on recently Chrysostom, the great preacher of Constantinople, the greatest exegy in the history of the early church. But listen to Chrysostom on grace, he says this all depends indeed on God but not so that our free will is hindered. God does not anticipate our choice, less our free will should be outraged. But when we have chosen then great is the assistance he brings to us. Well that's not an uncommon way of explaining it in the church prior to Augustine, God is our helper. We do what we can and we can use our free wills to turn to God and then God turns to us and helps us with our salvation so that we can become Christians with God's help. No said Augustine, God is our power, not our helper. We can do nothing, he must give us everything because we lack everything. Well that brings us to Augustine, grace and Augustine. If Augustine was not the first person in the post-apostolic period to believe in grace, he was the first or one of the first to clearly teach it. By the way he learned a good bit of this from Ambrose and he gives Ambrose credit for it. So Ambrose deserves our thanks for moving Augustine further along the line that Augustine would follow in his career as the doctor or theologian of grace. Like Esther in the Old Testament I think Augustine was raised up for such a time as this. God providentially prepared him and set the stage for Augustine to be able to express in such memorable ways the biblical teaching of grace. Augustine's own experience led him this way. He was a born again man so he saw from last time having struggled a long time not being able to find the answer or the piece that he desired in his own life and heart until finally God miraculously brought him to himself. To many people then as now the religious light was the toil some search for God and Augustine as young man certainly experienced that as he went through the various stages of his search for God or for inner peace. But as Augustine came to realize God was really the seeker rather than the sought and from his own experience Augustine knew that God takes the initiative. Augustine would fully have understood Francis Thompson's story of his flight from the hand of heaven as Augustine had that same flight from Augustine to Carthage to Rome to Milan. Finally he is captured in the garden in Milan so his experience in coming into the Christian faith being sought by God and captured by God is born again experience prepared Augustine in his own life for his teaching on the doctrine of grace. Augustine was not a man who could see his life as a good life just getting better and better. It was a life in rebellion against God until God found him and turned him around and made him his own son along with his experience comes Augustine's study of the scriptures. When he found in his own heart that is that he was the center he tells us in his confessions from the very first day he was born he was sending as far as he knew he was sending before he was born. He found that same idea in the Bible and then he discovered that he couldn't do anything about his sin. First of all he did not want to and then he could not give me custody he said but not yet he realized that he was captured by that sin and he could not really break with it and then he found that too in the Bible that we are unable to change our sinful condition. And then he found in the Bible what he could not find in the neoplatonic philosophers he found that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners. And then he eventually found in the Bible that God saves us by faith and that faith is itself a gift of God. We believe the good news and accept God's gift of salvation which itself are believing our faith is God's gift and that he came to find in the Bible to understand that if God provides the faith for us to believe he had in his great mercy from all eternity plan to give us that faith and to bring us into his family. So his own experiences his lifelong study of the Bible particularly the epistles of Paul but then there was something else very important to focus a guest in on this issue and to bring the mind of this great Christian to bear on it. And that was his clash with Pelagius. Pelagius had come to Rome from the British Isles we're not sure if he was from Ireland or from Wales or from Britain but we know he was from the British Isles. We're not sure whether he was a layman or a monk he really don't know all that much about him but he arrived in Rome. Dr. Mason in one of his lectures calls him a respectable gentleman and they're in Rome he set out to work with the poor the urban poor and the dock workers in the city he wanted to teach them. And to enable them to live good Christian lives. Pelagius soon received two very great shocks. First of all these people who claim to be Christians certainly didn't behave like Christians. Their low level of Christian life shocked him they were church members but they were not living very good Christian lives. Before he could get over this problem he was shocked by something else and that was Augustine's confessions which he began to read. And he read things like this Augustine saying to the Lord in the confessions give me the grace to do as you command and then command me to do what you will and he couldn't believe that he was reading that. Because he said if you start telling people that we can't do what you command we can't do what God commands until God gives us the grace and the strength to obey then people won't obey. It will be an excuse for passivity I can't do anything anyway unless God does it so I won't do anything. And Pelagius felt that that was a very very bad thing to say so he set out to teach a doctrine that would challenge people to live good lives and to tell them that they could indeed do it if only they would. Let me summarize his teaching in three points he said first of all everybody born in this world is born neutral we're not born centers we become centers because we choose to sin not because we're born centers. Our wills can go either way we can choose to do good or we can choose to do evil now he said of course practically everybody chooses to do evil but the reason they do that is that there are so many bad examples around we look at other people and we see them doing evil and so we follow their examples but it's not necessary for us to do evil we actually can do good. But there is the possibility within us then the second point to do good or bad now he called this free will sometimes he called it the grace of free will partly because Augustin and others could have sized him for not talking about grace very much so he started talking about grace but his meaning of grace was quite different from what Augustin it by grace. The grace to Pelagius was the gift of giving us this wonderful free will to enable us to do whatever we choose to do and there were some other gifts to the scripture with its commands and some examples of good lives on the parts of saints and holy people those are all helps to enable us to make good choices but all of this God's grace if we could call it such does not really in to enable us to will or to act but it helps us as Augustin explained Pelagius's position it helps us to the possibility of willing or acting that's what grace is it gives us that possibility of being able to make our own choice. Adam sin did not affect us except by setting a bad example nobody sin affects us we're independent free agents who can choose to do what we want to do and so therefore Pelagius said in his Bible teaching in Rome to all these people who were claiming to be Christians but living very worldly lives. This goodness is possible except to you and even perfection is possible if you only chose to do so you could live not only a good life but a perfect life well this is the gospel according to Pelagius. FF Bruce said that Pelagius was the spiritual father of all those who profess the popular English creed of justification by decency it's not only English it's an American creed and it's creed all over the world because many people do believe that if they only do some good things enough good things then they will get to heaven so they try to do those good things remember hearing what's the story of a man preaching and a rescue mission to all the poor men who were there homeless people and people without much hope in this world and this preacher began quoting Roger Kipling's poem if you can fill the unforgiving minute with 60 seconds worth of work well done you will be a man my son and if you can keep your head when all around you are losing theirs and blaming it on you you will be a man my son and you know how that poem goes on with all of these suggestions as to how we ought to live good life well that's a Pelagian message but as the preacher continued to quote the poem finally he was interrupted by a desperate voice from a man in the back of the room who said but what if I can't and that's the Augustinian response at least part of it we can't well what did Augustin say let's look at his teaching as he said it forth based on his own experience but primarily on his reading of the scripture he said we can't we can't do what Pelagia says we can do we are both unwilling and unable to do good how did we get this way but Adam was certainly created perfect by Adam sin and lost the freedom of his will now Augustin would always say that Adam could still choose in one sense he had free will but he could still choose only to do what he now wanted to do which was to do evil so free will is still there in one sense but it's a will enslave to evil it's not free now to do either good or evil because it doesn't want to do good so Adam was created perfect but by sinning lost the freedom of his will and that all gets passed on to us somehow as the children of Adam were born corrupt we inherit his guilt and his corruption this is called original sin Augustin is not quite sure how this happened how it works was it because of a representative idea that Adam was viewed by God as standing for the whole race and so God treats the race as he treated Adam who sinned for us or is it a kind of realism in which we are implicitly in Adam as he is the biological head of the race he is the root and we are the branch from that root he really has both views as I think Calvin does too he doesn't come down on one side or the other although Calvin seems to come down more on the side of the federal headship view but in some way Adam sent his past on to us so we're not born neutral we're born centers this world does not start over every time a baby is born it just goes on and that baby is just part of it so we're born centers and therefore we sin let's look at a couple of church history pigs and compare the pelagian view and the Augustinian view here is the pelagian pig sinning just because he wants to we sin we become centers because we sin well here's the Augustinian pig sinning because of his fallen nature we sin because we are centers well that's pretty big news up until this point that Augustin goes on to say we do have God's grace therefore God's grace is necessary he puts it this way in one of his writings on admonition and grace the grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord must be understood is that by which alone we are delivered from evil and without which we do absolutely no good things so God's grace is not just there to help us is there to save us and without God's grace we could not believe we could not do anything good we could not take one step toward God how do we get this grace well God gives it to us Augustin never tired of talking about the fact that grace is gratis grace is free grace is a gift it's not by works so we can't boast why does God give this grace he gives it out of his sheer mercy it's not because he sees anything in us to deserve it it's not because he foresee anything in us doesn't see that we will believe and so he gives us his grace in response to our foreseen faith four knowledge according to Augustin is God's four knowledge of what he will do not his four knowledge of what we're going to do because we can't do anything anyway so we're not going to do anything well does God give this grace to everybody no gives it only to some people and he doesn't give it to others why then does he only give it to some and not give it to others we don't know said August I think one of the most incisive clear short statements of this comes from a book that I quoted a number of times Charles Williams to sit of the dove and he says it this way talking about Augustin God as it were determined and predestinated himself to do good in certain lives this is his grace and what of the lives in which he does not determine and predestinate himself to do good well he does not those lives then are lost well yes God saves whom he chooses and the rest are lost and then he quotes a statement from Augustin his that is God's equity God's justice is so secret that it is beyond the reach of all human understanding God's wisdom equity justice God's acts all these are so secret that they are beyond the reach of all human understanding and then Charles Williams adds it is of the highest importance to realize that in that sentence Augustin from the bottom of his heart met equity justice and he met beyond human understanding does that mean then does all this mean God gives us the gift of grace God predestines those who will receive it by faith does that mean as Bellagia said that well we can just do anything we want to then that's the end of any exhortation to Christian living to Godliness because if God does it all then it's no point in us doing anything well Augustin says no Christian conduct is rooted in a lifelong response of love for God and obedience to his will as Thanksgiving and gratitude for God's grace there is growth in grace it's often slow many painful setbacks but the Christian grows in grace must grow in grace the true Christian will grow in grace Bellagia's seem to have the view that the church should be like a big monastery full of super Christians all of whom are living perfect are almost perfect lives if we only would do that we could Augustin said no my church is more like a hospital all of us are sick some of us are pretty seriously sick and injured but we're all getting better slowly painfully but complete perfection will come only in heaven well what did what did this teaching do in the church if this kind of teaching had not been heard before at least not the way Augustin is setting it forth with the power and clarity that he expresses in his writings and in his sermons on grace how did the church respond to it officially the church accepted it at least in several church councils the Synod of Carthage in North Africa in 418 condemned pallagianism and the third ecumenical council of Ephesus in 431 we'll look at later in connection with the Christological debate condemned an expression a variety of pallagianism that was relevant to that council because it was particularly centered in the east but despite these early official stamps of approval for Augustin's teaching there was pretty soon a rather significant revolt against what Augustin was saying and it really happened in his own life time so that the latter part of Augustin's life was taken out with a very bitter struggle against some opponents to his doctrine of grace and the revolt comes primarily from the monasteries and for two reasons powerful opposition to Augustinianism in the monasteries one from traditional Catholicism or traditional theology because Augustin's teaching seen new because people were not used to hearing this but Ambrose had been teaching it but Ambrose was one among many John Chrysostom was not teaching it most of the church fathers don't teach it at least very consistently or clearly and so it seemed like something that was different and new in the traditional church was not willing to embrace something so new because in the context of this controversy that we have the famous statement from Vincent of Leyren in Gaul Catholic doctrine is what is taught always and everywhere and by everybody and Augustin's doctrine of grace did not seem to fit those categories not much else did either but that did not seem to bother Vincent too much he did say or at least almost all the priest and the doctors so the fact that this comes into the church as something startling and something new is a problem people had to learn to realize that it was really something old the church had just lost sight of it for a while because the church can in various places in history we'll see the same thing as we come to the reprimation people were saying well this is new Catholic church has the old faith and the Protestant church has some kind of newfangled faith that's why Bullinger in Zurich wrote a book called the Old Faith in which he traced Protestantism back to Genesis 315 in the Garden of Eden Adam and Eve were the first Protestants not much possible to argue that Protestantism is new according to Bullinger well the same problem here in the aftermath of the writings of Augustin on grace but there was another part of the revolt in the monasteries and that was through aesthetic copolysis after all the people in the monasteries were there because they felt that by being there they could earn credit toward their salvation this becomes more and more pronounced as we go along into medieval church history but it's already present and Augustin's teaching seemed to destroy the meritorious nature of good works if Augustin is right why are we doing this? why are we here living this way and trying to earn our salvation or at least earn God's favor and blessing because of our goodness that was hard for the months to take and some of his most bitter opponents come out of the monasteries as they object to Augustin's teaching well just to glance ahead and then we'll stop for today grace after Augustin looked at grace before Augustin we found some but not all that much clear expression of the doctrine of grace and then Augustin and grace those two words just have to go together now almost as a kind of shorthand you can say Augustin and mean grace you can say grace and mean Augustin but what about the church after Augustin? well the Senate of Carthage and the Council of Ephesus did approve Augustinianism the monasteries revolted the church struggles for a long time over this issue finally in a very important Senate that we will look at in more detail later the Senate of Orange 529, 100 years after Augustin's death Augustinianism was embraced almost in the Western Church but not quite so orange leaves the door open for some kind of compromise and that compromise is what we call semi-Phalagianism or perhaps we should call it semi-Augustinianism but it is semi-something it's not pure-Phalagianism neither is it pure-Augustinianism and we'll try to trace that later through the history of the medieval church there will be some outstanding voices raised in opposition to that like God's chalk and Thomas Brad Wardine but not too many most of the flow of theology after the Council of Orange until the reprimation will be a compromise between Phalagianism and Augustinianism God saves his yes but he doesn't do it without our help it's what I call percentage theology you do your part God does his God's part maybe 99% but if you don't do your 1% you're going to be lost and there were different ways in which the medieval church tried to put together the percentages and we'll look at that as we move on in our course the reprimation of course is a great revival of Augustinianism Luther's bondage of the will draws heavily on Augustin and Calvin's institutes heavily on Augustin in fact at one point Calvin exalted Augustin is totally hours he was quoting him so much and he felt that Augustin was on the side of the Protestants and certainly in the issue of grace he was it's another side to Augustin too that we'll look at next time that's the doctor of the church and there it's not so clear that Augustin was on the Protestant side that's why Warfield says the reprimation is really Augustin versus Augustin Catholic Augustin versus the Protestant Augustin after the Reformation there is a slow but steady slide away from Augustinianism into the confusion of modern Christianity much of which is Phalagian much of which is Semi-Phalagian or at least Semi-Augustinian but thank God the message of grace is still heard and we pray that there might be in our time a great revival of biblical doctrine of grace so that people are and wide we'll hear it as we hear it constantly here at Covenant Seminary grass withers flower fades but the word of our God will stand forever good question it relates to how people without understanding the doctrine of grace in the early church could become Christians and the question also related to modern day Catholics you know we're not we're not saved by being able to quote the catechism exactly and get every word right we're saved by God's grace and our understanding of God's grace even Augustin's understanding of God's grace isn't complete and perfect it's better than anything that we had before Augustin after the time of Paul so people can be saved with some very long ideas seems to be there is some basic ideas that have to be understood there is a God I'm a sinner and God is a savior God has sent Christ as a redeemer for me at least that much has to be understood but a person can be saved by hearing that and believing it and then spend the rest of his or her life understanding what all that means I think the same thing is true for Catholics or Presbyterians or Baptist or anybody today that is if people respond to that much of the gospel there is salvation regardless of perhaps the false teaching that we hear in different churches and the Lord can work in very faulty and imperfect situations with very limited understanding and I really want to make it very clear when I say nobody really was teaching this until Augustin you might think nobody was saying for 300 years because if you don't understand grace you can't be saved but you can piece together as I think Warfield puts it a mosaic even in the teachings of the church fathers to pull out a little bit here a little bit there ignore some other things and you get it all but with Augustin it comes together in one person at one time with great clarity just like I said earlier people believed in the deity of Jesus and they believed that there was only one God so they were Trinitarian before the word was invented they believed in the Holy Spirit was God but they didn't know how to say this they didn't know how to express it they never heard of the Homo Useos but they could still believe in some simple way so it seems to me we need to have a view in church history that God works in very imperfect situations at the same time give God thanks and praise for the accomplishments that come to help us to know more and to see deeper into the teachings of the scripture so are you all Augustinians or if I can convince everybody here or as Augustin I hope I can fuse somebody