SAINT AUGUSTINE

THE THEOLOGIAN
OF GRACE

PREPARED BY:
EDA AQUILA F. YAP
BSN 4B
 QUESTIONS Who was Augustine and what made him “tick”? What
doctrines did he help clarify for the Church? What are Sacraments and how do
they work?

HIS INFLUENCE Saint Augustine of Hippo (A.D. 354-430) is by far the most
quoted person on the doctrines of the Church outside of the writers of the
Bible Some of the things that he is most remembered for in formulating for
the Church are: a more complete understanding of the Trinity the way God
governs His people The “ontology” of God and the soul the efficacy of the
Sacraments how we know God predestination the nature of love and
(especially) loving God the nature of divine Grace the role of secular
government and the Christian’s place in it Defining “the inner self” “Just War”
etc.
• He was born on a small farm in Thagaste (in modern-day Algeria)

• BIBLE BELT Christianity had long since become established in that region of Roman Africa
His mother was a staunch Catholic His father was a pagan (who was Saved sixteen years
before his son)
• He was born on a small farm in Thagaste (in modern-day Algeria)
• BIBLE BELT Christianity had long since become established in that region of Roman Africa
His mother was a staunch Catholic His father was a pagan (who was Saved sixteen years
before his son)
• In modern-American terms, he was born in Hicksville in the middle of the Bible Belt
• STEALING PEARS At one point, he and his friends, in addition to a lot of other “normal”
teenage pranks, went onto his neighbor’s property and stole pears from the neighbor’s
tree The adult Augustine, when remembering this in The Confessions, seems more torn
up about this than many of his other sins (like heresy and fornication)
• A MAJOR SIN? Why, do you suppose, would he see stealing some pears to
throw to the pigs as being so bad?
• SEARCHING FOR TRUTH The fall into heresy was because he was searching
for the truth, but going about it in the wrong way
• BASIC NEEDS/DESIRES The fornication and the like were attempts to satisfy
basic needs/desires, though in the wrong way.
• THE THRILL OF SIN Stealing the pears was sin for sin’s own sake He was not
hungry, he had a pear tree of his own, etc. The thrill was in knowing that he
was sinning for no other reason than to be sinning
• BIG EMPIRE DREAMS Growing up, he was by far the smartest person around, and he
knew it Ambitious and arrogant, he went into the study of rhetoric Rhetoric was a
prerequisite for virtually any position of power in the Roman Empire
• His studies take him to the major metropolitan city of Carthage
• For historical context, the Council of Constantinople (381 AD) met while he was in
Carthage and finally finished the Nicene Creed
• Manichaeanism was gnostic religion out of Persia that at its height “conquered” from
Britain to China, and was Christianity’s chief rival when the Roman gods fell until the
rise of Islam
• Being both highly mystical and rational, they had answers for many of the questions
about God that nobody else really had good responses for, such as a holy God creating
evil
• While in Carthage, Augustine became a Manichaean, finally finding answers to the
questions that no one else he’d met could provide
• LEARNING TO LOVE TRUTH While in Carthage he lead a rather hedonistic life, but he reads
a great deal by Cicero, the famous Roman rhetoritician, which brought him to study
philosophy As he wrote later in the Confessions, Augustine says that the study of
philosophy is what created that burning passion to know Truth
• Growing up he had indulged in many “youthful indiscretions,” but now he started to settle
down He lived with his girlfriend and was faithful to her, and she soon bore him a son
• GETTING ENGAGED When his mother, Monica, joins him much later, she makes
arrangements for Augustine to become engaged to a wealthy Christian girl The girl was
underage for marriage, but Augustine had to send away his “concubine” – whom he had
loved and been faithful to for over 12 years – which broke his heart (read Confessions
6.15) While waiting for his fiancé to be “of age” (thirteen), he could not stand being alone
any more and took another lover for a while. He never reestablished his relationship with
his fiancé.
• After over a decade in Carthage, he moved to Milan as professor of rhetoric at the imperial court there
• BOOKS OF THE PLATONISTS Augustine read “books of the Platonists” and finally got the answers to some of the
questions that had been plaguing him This was good because it gave him many of the intellectual tools that he was
able to use in defending the Christian Faith and made him the single most influential of the Church Fathers The
negative consequence was that Plotinus had a very allegorical way of reading the Bible, which Augustine also
adopted, paving the way for over a thousand years of absolutely nonsensical interpretations of the Word
• MEETING AMBROSE He went to listen to Bishop Ambrose speak because Ambrose was one of the best living orators,
and Augustine wanted to learn his techniques While listening to Ambrose, Augustine heard an expression of
Christian faith that wasn’t just for simpletons, but of a Christianity that answered the questions he had been asking
all his life
• AMBROSE OPENS THE BIBLE From the influence of Ambrose he saw that what he recognized as Truth was also what
the Christian Church taught This caused him to take another look at the Bible
• As he read the Bible and became increasingly convinced of its truths, he recognized an old and bitter conflict in his
will: “as a youth … II had prayed to you for chastity “as a youth … had prayed to you for chastity and said, ‘‘Give me
chastity and continence, and said, Give me chastity and continence, but not yet.’’ For II was afraid that you would
but not yet. For was afraid that you would answer my prayer at once and cure me of the answer my prayer at once
and cure me of the disease of lust, which II wanted satisfied, not disease of lust, which wanted satisfied, not
quelled.” (Confessions 8.7) quelled.” (Confessions 8.7)
• It was very much the same with his conversion: even though he willed that he could
turn himself over to God and become a Christian, he also willed that he wouldn’t
Without the grace of God, his sinful nature would always have won Augustine later
makes it clear, particularly in his writings against the Palagians, that even that part of
his will that wanted to become Christian was entirely the gracious gift of God, not
something inherent in himself
• As he wrote later, the inner struggle was forcing him to the brink of madness, with
his will tearing his mind and soul apart
• While in a garden he heard a child’s voice repeatedly saying, “Take up and read.”
• He rushed and grabbed a Bible from his friend and read the first passage he came
across: Let us pass our time honorably, as by the light of day, not in reveling and
drunkenness, not in lust and wantonness, not in quarrels and rivalries. Rather, arm
yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ; spend no more thought on nature or nature’s
appetites. (Romans 13:13-14)
• That did it – that was when God had “flipped the switch” and Augustine finally
became a Christian He was baptized, along with his brilliant son and close friends, by
Ambrose the following Easter
• LOCAL BOY DONE GOOD After his mother dies, he returned to Thagaste to found a
monastic community Monasticism was a new movement, and Augustine’s monastery
became one of the principle developers of the movement in the Western Church He is
received very much as a “local boy done good,” and becomes tremendously popular
with the Christian community
• A few years later, while visiting Hippo, a priest begins talking in his sermon about how
desperately the Church needs people like Augustine, and Augustine is grabbed by the
parishioners and ordained – very much against his will – as a priest Augustine wanted
to live his life as a scholar; not having to spend his time worrying about all the
“trivialities” involved in running a parish and trying to teach “simple” people the deep
things of God
• After only four years as a priest, he distinguished himself so much as a man of God that he was made the
Bishop of Hippo
• Fifteen years after his appointment as Bishop, Rome falls for the first time in her thousand year history
• This sparked an enormous political and cultural crisis
• The pagans blamed the Empire’s conversion to Christianity, saying that it was the gods’ punishment on
Rome for leaving her roots
• This prompted Augustine to write “The City of God”, his most famous book alongside “The Confessions”
• He spelled-out the differences between the City of God and the City of Man
• In 430 A.D., as the Vandals are at the gates of Hippo, Augustine died
• FREE WILL
• “Free will” means that we are able to make own our choices It is what makes us moral beings
• WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?? Does that mean that a pagan can choose to live a righteous life, pleasing to
God, and therefore go to Heaven? Does it mean that a Christian can choose to live a wholly unrighteous
life?
• SOVEREIGN? ELECT PUPPETS? When the Bible talks about God’s “elect,” is He reacting to the choice we make to
believe in Him? Or does He make it happen?
• SOVEREIGN! PUPPETS? Does He control every aspect of our lives, manipulating us like puppets? If God makes
the choice for us, doesn’t that override our freedom and therefore makes our choices – be they good or evil –
out of our control? Then He’s cruel to condemn people that He essentially ordains to Hell
• FREE! SOVEREIGN? Does He leave us to our own devices, “hoping” that we come back to Him (or stay with Him
once we’re His children)? If He leaves the choice up to us, does it strip God of His power over His creation,
making Him reliant upon us to shape our lives: the choices of Man being what controls history?
• How we view free will defines not only how we see ourselves, but how we see God
• The Heart of the Church Every time we say things like, “I was saved” or “I chose Christ” or even “I have sinned,”
we express the cor ecclesiae: the very heart of what we believe, and how we view the grace of God
• PELAGIANISM
• “Grant what thou commandest, and “Grant what thou commandest, and command what thou dost desire.”
command what thou dost desire.” That prayer Augustine published was an example of what really ignited a
brilliant and eloquent Celtic monk named Pelagius
• He had no qualms with the second part as God has every right to command what He desires; God is Lord, after
all Pelagius was, however, greatly distressed by Augustine’s implication that we need God’s help to fulfill His
commands
• God is completely holy and perfectly just, he argued: God wouldn’t command us to
do something that He knows we don’t have the ability to do (e.g., “Be ye holy even as
I am holy,” for example) For God to command us to do something that He knows we
can’t do is simply cruel, and the Scriptures make it abundantly clear that there’s no
way you can attribute cruelty with Jehovah
• Pelagius rejected the idea of Original Sin, saying that God’s creation was good and His
good creation can’t be anything other than good Our will is wholly free and can
choose to give into the temptations of Satan or to rebuke him Adam and Eve failed
that test, but we are all born with the same opportunities as them to choose holiness
or perversion
• Charles Finney, the father of modern evangelism (he was a direct influence on Dwight
L. Moody, J. Wilber Chapman, Billy Sunday, and Billy Graham, among many others)
was one of the most vocal voices of Pelagius’ teachings in the modern Church
“II object to the doctrine of constitutional sinfulness “ object to the doctrine of
constitutional sinfulness [Original Sin], that it makes all sin original and [Original Sin],
that it makes all sin original and actual, and not a crime… If the nature is sinful, in actual,
and not a crime… If the nature is sinful, in such a sense that action must necessarily be
sinful… such a sense that action must necessarily be sinful… then sin in action must be a
calamity, and can be no then sin in action must be a calamity, and can be no crime. It is
the necessary effect of a sinful nature. This crime. It is the necessary effect of a sinful
nature. This cannot be a crime, since the will has nothing to do cannot be a crime, since
the will has nothing to do with it.” {Finney, Systematic Theology, lecture 16} with it.”
{Finney, Systematic Theology, lecture 16} In short, if we are born sinful then we can’t be
accused of committing a crime [sin] against God since we didn’t have any choice in the
matter It would be like condemning people for simply living
• it was by the evil use of his free-will that man destroyed both it …it was by the evil use of his free-will that man
destroyed both it and himself. For, as a man who kills himself must, of course, be alive and himself. For, as a man who
kills himself must, of course, be alive when he kills himself, but after he has killed himself ceases to live, when he kills
himself, but after he has killed himself ceases to live, and cannot restore himself to life; so, when man by his own free-
will and cannot restore himself to life; so, when man by his own free-will sinned, then sin being victorious over him,
the freedom of his will sinned, then sin being victorious over him, the freedom of his will was lost… was lost… But
whence comes this liberty to do right to the man who is in But whence comes this liberty to do right to the man who is
in bondage and sold under sin, except he be redeemed by Him who has bondage and sold under sin, except he be
redeemed by Him who has said, “He whom the Son has freed is free indeed.” [John 8:36]? said, “He whom the Son has
freed is free indeed.” [John 8:36]? And before this redemption is wrought in a man, when he is not yet And before this
redemption is wrought in a man, when he is not yet free to do what is right, how can he talk of the freedom of his will
free to do what is right, how can he talk of the freedom of his will and his good works, except he be inflated by that
foolish pride of and his good works, except he be inflated by that foolish pride of boasting which the apostle restrains
when he says, “By grace are ye boasting which the apostle restrains when he says, “By grace are ye saved, through
faith” [Eph. 2:8]. {The Enchiridion: On Faith, Hope saved, through faith” [Eph. 2:8]. {The Enchiridion: On Faith, Hope
And Love; 1:675} And Love; 1:675}
• “The human will is free, therefore men have power “The human will is free, therefore men have power
or ability to do all their duty. The moral or ability to do all their duty. The moral government of God
everywhere assumes and government of God everywhere assumes and implies the liberty of the human
will, and the implies the liberty of the human will, and the natural ability of men to obey God. Every
natural ability of men to obey God. Every command, every threatening, every expostulation command,
every threatening, every expostulation and denunciation in the Bible implies and assumes and
denunciation in the Bible implies and assumes this.” {Finney, Systematic Theology, lecture 20} this.”
{Finney, Systematic Theology, lecture 20}
• Against these teachings of Pelagius and his followers, Augustine took his famous stand that earned him
his title as The Theologian of Grace