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To: D-fendr

Not exactly D-fendr. Augustine Himself admitted that he changed his mind on his views of grace. AFTER he wrote what you cited, he seems to have "refined" his view even more to the point that God gives the gift of perseverance to a person so that they will NEVER leave him. Augustine believed one needed to pray for that gift, but believed that true believers would persevere until the end. Augustine still seemed to have a problem with assurance until death had occurred, but most assuredly believed that those whom were predestined by grace would also persevere by grace until the end.

Chapter 33.--God Gives Both Initiatory and Persevering Grace According to His Own Will.

From all which it is shown with sufficient clearness that the grace of God, which both begins a man’s faith and which enables it to persevere unto the end, is not given according to our merits, but is given according to His own most secret and at the same time most righteous, wise, and beneficent will;


And...
Chapter 56.--God Gives Means as Well as End.



Wherefore if I am unwilling to appear ungrateful to men who have loved me, because some advantage of my labour has attained to them before they loved me, how much rather am I unwilling to be ungrateful to God, whom we should not love unless He had first loved us and made us to love Him! since love is of Him, [1 John iv. 7] as they have said whom He made not only His great lovers, but also His great preachers. And what is more ungrateful than to deny the grace of God itself, by saying that it is given to us according to our merits? And this the catholic faith shuddered at in the Pelagians, and this it objected to Pelagius himself as a capital crime; and this Pelagius himself condemned, not indeed from love of God’s truth, but yet for fear of his own condemnation. But whoever as a faithful catholic is horrified to say that the grace of God is given according to our merits, let him not withdraw faith itself from God’s grace, whereby he obtained mercy that he should be faithful; and thus let him attribute also perseverance to the end to God’s grace, whereby he obtains the mercy which he daily asks for, not to be led into temptation. But between the beginning of faith and the perfection of perseverance there are those means whereby we live righteously, which they themselves are agreed in regarding as given by God to us at the prayer of faith. And all these things--the beginning of faith, to wit, and His other gifts even to the end--God foreknew that He would bestow on His called. It is a matter therefore, of too excessive contentiousness to contradict predestination, or to doubt concerning predestination. http://www.romancatholicism.org/jansenism/augustine-perseverance.htm


4,240 posted on 01/06/2007 8:41:17 PM PST by Blogger (In nullo gloriandum quando nostrum nihil sit- Cyprian)
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To: Blogger

Yet again I agree with you, and Augustine, on pieces.

It is the whole you derive from the pieces that should cause you to shudder.


4,243 posted on 01/06/2007 8:45:42 PM PST by D-fendr
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