Luther and Erasmus: The Controversy Concerning the Bondage of the Will

Protestant Reformed Theological Journal ^ | April 1999 | Garrett J. Eriks

[jo kus]

There is only one truth.

I agree. Thus, when two different Christians, who claim to be inspired by the SAME Holy Spirit, proclaim two different truths, what does that tell you about the "perspicuousness" of Scriptures? Certainly, you don't think the Spirit leads people into different truths, do you? Thus, in our case, say between the matter at hand on this thread, what is going on?

As it was for the Apostles, so it is for those to whom God gives eyes to see and ears to hear.

I doubt anyone here will "understand" the Lord as well as the Apostles did - for the simple fact that they actually WROTE the Scriptures, and thus, fully understand what they meant when they wrote it...Such things as "unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man, you shall not have eternal life." THEY certainly knew what that meant. As Catholics, we presume that the second generation, who explain the meaning of such phrases, was giving faithful witness to the first generation. As a Calvinist, you rely on Calvin's understanding of the Apostles from 1500 years removed.

Regards

[jo kus]

In effect, you told me flat out that God ordained His elect through His foreknowledge.

I didn't say God ordained what He foreknew. "Seeing" doesn't mean that God brought it to completion. That would make God necessarily the author of evil - in the case when He sees a sinful act.

Also, note I said God does not "foreknow" what HE does, strictly speaking, because there is no "before" for God. He certainly sees what happens within Creation.

Regards

[jo kus]

Jesus is clear that He is making a comparison, but He is not talking about a repeat of the same act. Being born of the flesh and being born of the Spirit are different things altogether. Do you deny this?

That is exactly why I disagree with Harley's Bible's interpretation of "born again". How can a person be born of the Spirit AGAIN? One is born "from above".

Regards

[jo kus]

Well, I would cite Saint John Calvin but I doubt if you would feel that qualifies. Instead Augustine points to Saint Cyprian as instructing him in the Reformed belief; so I guess that qualifies as "one" Father. ;O)

I would like to see the full context of that, if you don't mind.

Regards

[blue-duncan]

Soooo, you guys are responsible for the sinful condition we are in!

[blue-duncan]

"LOL! Yea, I seem to be having that problem!"

Let me know if I can help you see the light.

[HarleyD]

look right above "CHAP. II [VI.]--

Thanks, gbcdoj. You used a different title than the one I'm use to and I thought it was a different writing of Augustine. Here I was quoting from it all along.

I would agree with Augustine on man's free will. Calvin and the Westminster Confessions would agree. But you fail to read the entire document on "Grace and Free Will" or the "Treatise on the Predestination of the Saints.

Even faith itself is a gift from God, who prepares the will of the elect to accept it freely: the man who claims that his faith is solely from himself and not received from God is wrong, "not because it is not in the choice of man's will to believe or not to believe, but because in the elect the will is prepared by the Lord."

YES!

"And what I next subjoined ... I certainly could not have said, had I already known that faith itself also is found among those gifts of God which are given by the same Spirit. Both, therefore, are ours on account of the choice of the will, and yet both are given by the spirit of faith and love..."

YES!!!

"That is to say, Augustine nowhere denies that "man somehow makes a choice to choose God or reject God." What he's saying is that God's choice is logically prior to man's choice: we are made holy because God predestined us to be so..."

Man does make a choice. This is what free will is about. The issue is when God gives man faith, what choice will man make? Man in his unregenerated state will always choose to reject God. Man when instilled with God given faith will always choose to accept God.

What Augustine (and scripture) also states is that God doesn't give His faith to everyone.

Faith, then, as well in its beginning as in its completion, is God's gift; and let no one have any doubt whatever, unless he desires to resist the plainest sacred writings, that this gift is given to some, while to some it is not given. - Augustine, A Treatise on the Predestination of the Saints

If man does not have God-given faith he will 1) never please God, and 2) never come to God on his own. Catholic doctrine would like to pretend that God gives a tiny bit of faith to everyone. This simply isn't the case and is at odds with what Augustine states.

[HarleyD]

"I would like to see the full context of that, if you don't mind.

It was not thus that that pious and humble teacher thought—I speak of the most blessed Cyprian—when he said "that we must boast in nothing, since nothing is our own." And in order to show this, he appealed to the apostle as a witness, where he said, "For what hast thou that thou hast not received? And if thou hast received it, why boastest thou as if thou hadst not received it?" [1 Cor. 4.7.] And it was chiefly by this testimony that I myself also was convinced when I was in a similar error, thinking that faith whereby we believe on God is not God's gift, but that it is in us from ourselves, and that by it we obtain the gifts of God, whereby we may live temperately and righteously and piously in this world. For I did not think that faith was preceded by God's grace, so that by its means would be given to us what we might profitably ask, except that we could not believe if the proclamation of the truth did not precede; but that we should consent when the gospel was preached to us I thought was our own doing, and came to us from ourselves. And this my error is sufficiently indicated in some small works of mine written before my episcopate. Among these is that which you have mentioned in your letters,7 wherein is an exposition of certain propositions from the Epistle to the Romans. Eventually, when I was retracting all my small works, and was committing that retractation to writing,—of which task I had already completed two books before I had taken up your more lengthy letters,—when in the first volume I had reached the retractation of this book, I then spoke thus: —"Also discussing, I say, 'what God could have chosen in him who was as yet unborn, whom He said that the elder should serve; and what in the same elder, equally as yet unborn, He could have rejected; concerning whom, on this account, the prophetic testimony is recorded, although declared long subsequently, "Jacob have I loved, and Esau have I hated,"' [Mal. 1.2,3. Cf. Rom. 9.13.] I carried out my reasoning to the point of saying: 'God did not therefore choose the works of any one in foreknowledge of what He Himself would give them, but he chose the faith, in the foreknowledge that He would choose that very person whom He foreknew would believe on Him,—to whom He would give the Holy Spirit, so that by doing good works he might obtain eternal life also.'I had not yet very carefully sought, nor had I as yet found, what is the nature of the election of grace, of which the apostle says, 'A remnant are saved according to the election of grace.' [Rom. 11.5.] Which assuredly is not grace if any merits precede it; lest what is now given, not according to grace, but according to debt, be rather paid to merits than freely given. Augustine - A Treatise on the Predestination of the Saints CHAP. 7 [III.]

Now I would ask you, what precisely was it that Augustine saw differently to make him retract ALL of his previous works? He was a Christian. He was in the Church. He was publishing and respected.

Here is a clue: "...where he said, "For what hast thou that thou hast not received?"

He recognized the grave error this represents as a teacher of God.

[Gamecock]

We've all bitten from it.

[Rhadaghast]

"We Calvinists can trace our roots back to the Garden of Eden." But only if God elected you to do that!

[AlbionGirl]

Hi qua,

I'm responding to this post a little late, I know. I've not been able to respond until now, but it really stuck with me. Not because I know anything about Thomas Aquinas' thinking on the body such as you have indicated, but because I believe that until recently RC did hold the body to be evil, if not in theory, in practice. When I say recently, I mean that JP II's Theology of the Body seems to step away from that. When I say in practice, it is from personal experience that extends beyond one religious, one place, one time.

There is a quote of Augustine, towards the end of his life when he's arguing with a Julian regarding the conjugal union. Julian (I'm sorry I can't remember the rest of his name, but I believe he was a follower of Pelagius) was arguing the liberal point of view advocating that sex, in and of itself, was neutral, and could be used for good or ill, however Augustine fired back contending the opposite, noting that it's fitting we should so often be disturbed by lustful impulses as that was how Original Sin was first passed on, Ecce Unde!, was how he stated it, IIRC.

I haven't come across too much of Calvin's writing which gives me a full-view of how he saw the body, but I do know that he held it to be one of the finest of God's Works. And a paradox seems to exist between his thinking on Total Depravity, and his exaltation of man as God's finest Creation. His thinking on priestly celibacy is an excellent example of getting it right, in my view, and the language he uses gives me the impression he sees the body in a much more natural and positive light than how I perceive Augustine to have viewed it.

One of the things I'm interested in knowing about is how the conjugal union between man and woman (Adam and Eve) was believed to be given or issued by God. Was it to be viewed as a blessing or a curse? I've always had the sense that it was one of God's finest Gifts, somewhat like His Signature, in that through it abundant life is begotten, and that beyond that, it was bestowed as a unitive gift for man and woman too, that is, as a refuge for oneness and non-division that was basically lost once paradise was lost, and that it remained a life-line from God to man in the most fundamental yet deepest of ways.

qua, Dr. E, Harley and FK, I never know for sure whether I should approach these kinds of issues or not through this medium. I did 'cause I thought you might have some thoughts on the subject, but if you'd rather I reserve this sort of stuff for my own musings, I understand perfectly.

[gbcdoj]

Harley,

Now I would ask you, what precisely was it that Augustine saw differently to make him retract ALL of his previous works?

"Retract" here means something like "to consider again" (it's not a very good translation of retractarem.) He didn't retract all his previous writing on the subject - as he goes on to say, he had realized his error by the time he wrote to Simplician in 397 AD: "if they had been so careful, they would have found that question solved in accordance with the truth of the divine Scriptures in the first book of the two which I wrote in the very beginning of my episcopate to Simplicianus, of blessed memory, Bishop of the Church of Milan ..." (On the Predestination of the Saints, I:8:IV), while his Retractations of course wasn't composed until almost 30 years had passed, around 426-8 AD.

[HarleyD]

Actually I too find it to be an interesting topic. I would agree that building a new creation is through supernatural procreative means.

While researching A-G comment I was rather surprise that there seems to be precious little writings on sexuality from an academic perspective. This appears to be odd seeing how often sexuality is talked about in scripture; the whole book of the Songs is dedicated to this topic.

[gbcdoj]

Harley,

Man in his unregenerated state will always choose to reject God

But Augustine wouldn't have agreed with that statement any more than we do. Regeneration is for him just another term for the justification that takes place in baptism. Thus Orange II: "If anyone says that just as the increase of faith so also the beginning of faith and the very desire of credulity, by which we believe in Him who justifies the impious, and by which we arrive at the regeneration of holy baptism, is not through the gift of grace, that is, through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit reforming our will from infidelity to faith, from impiety to piety, but is naturally in us, he is proved to be antagonistic to the doctrine of the Apostles ..." (Canon 5). Now here faith is clearly prior, logically and temporally, to "the regeneration of holy baptism," whereas for the Reformed regeneration precedes faith, if I understand the so-called "ordo salutis" correctly.

What is necessary for the choice of good by means of the free-will is not regeneration but a divine motion upon the will (actual grace). Augustine affirms, as the Church has defined, that the will retains some power even under the corruption of human nature after the fall: as Trent put it, "free will, attenuated as it was in its powers, and bent down, was by no means extinguished in them." Therefore God is able to guide, lead, and move a man's will to choose good even before he regenerates him: for instance, the actions which Trent enumerates as preparatory for justification: belief, fear of God, hope, love, repentance, and the intention to receive baptism and thereafter keep the commandments, these are all good although the man is not yet regenerated in baptism, nor are they not the gifts of God, accepted by a man whose will is already moved and inspired by grace. We reject both Pelagianism and Semipelagianism, the heresies Augustine fought against, and the application of his arguments against beliefs we condemn as heretical against the Catholic belief just doesn't work. "If any one saith, that without the prevenient inspiration of the Holy Ghost, and without his help, man can believe, hope, love, or be penitent as he ought, so as that the grace of Justification may be bestowed upon him; let him be anathema" (Trent, Canon 3 on Justification).

Moreover, as Augustine says: "faith itself also is found among those gifts of God which are given by the same Spirit. Both, therefore, are ours on account of the choice of the will, and yet both are given by the spirit of faith and love ..." Now, clearly he says here the faith itself is ours "on account of the choice of the will." This means that man chooses to believe. The choice to believe must be prior to belief. Therefore, for Augustine man chooses to believe before he is "instilled with God given faith"-that is, he chooses to accept God before becoming one of the faithful and before regeneration. This choice is not from him because it is given by the Holy Spirit, but it is his because he makes it freely while aided by the grace of God: ours on account of choice of the will, yet given by the spirit of faith and love. So according to Augustine it is true that "man somehow makes a choice to choose God or reject God."

Man when instilled with God given faith will always choose to accept God.

Again, this is a statement that Augustine would not have agreed to. Over and over again he impresses on his Catholic listeners and readers the fact that, despite having been justified, they can still fall from grace by the use of their free-will. Just read the Treatise on the Gift of Perseverance, the complement to the Treatise on Predestination: "But it is said, 'It is by his own fault that any one deserts the faith, when he yields and consents to the temptation which is the cause of his desertion of the faith.' Who denies it?"

Catholic doctrine would like to pretend that God gives a tiny bit of faith to everyone.

I'm not acquainted with this particular "Catholic doctrine."

[blue-duncan]

"This appears to be odd seeing how often sexuality is talked about in scripture;"

Do you realize that there are more laws concerning sexual conduct of every kind in Levitcus and Deuteronomy than just about any other subject (someone told me this)? The Children of Israel were a randy bunch and just goes to prove there is no new sin under the sun.

"While researching A-G comment I was rather surprise that there seems to be precious little writings on sexuality from an academic perspective"

After being around academics for some time I think you would understand why.

[Kolokotronis]

" Well, I would cite Saint John Calvin but I doubt if you would feel that qualifies."

LOL!!!!!!! :)

[Kolokotronis]

Excellent and succinct exposition of Augustinian thought. Thanks. I wish you'd have put it this way about 18 mos. ago, g! :)

[annalex]

there is an erroneous interpretation of Peter's "that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation" that says the phrase applies to one's reading of the scriptures, however looking at it in context it is readily apparent it applies to the writing of the prophecies, not the reading of them

The context does not forbid the Catholic understanding of the verse: St. Peter reminds us that the signs of revelation were not received privately and so they should not be interpreted privately. This is consistent with the warning to shun the "lying teachers" in the future as there were "false prophets" in the past.

[Dr. Eckleburg]

~~"As a Calvinist, you rely on Calvin's understanding of the Apostles from 1500 years removed."~~


See post #4858.


http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/1550381/posts?page=4858


Like Calvin, the Reformed rely on Scripture alone.