The Reformers and Church Fathers on Nature, Grace, and Choice

When Martin Luther defied a Pope and proclaimed salvation only through the ineffable grace of God, he had no idea that he was rending the body of the ancient church that had for so long known only unity. As his revolution spread, though, all Christendom watched as the Church began to fracture like one of the rose windows smashed by a maddened Swiss mob. Northern Germany, Scandinavia, and a large portion of the Swiss cantons turned away from the faith they had known for centuries, causing no small consternation in a civilization that valued timeless truths above novelty, and which viewed the past as the repository of truth and the present and future as decay. When the reformers were accused by men like Cardinal Sadoleto of pulling away from their faith for the sake of unprecedented novelties, both Luther and Calvin responded that it was their medieval forbears who had introduced devilish novelties into the Church, and that they were merely restoring Christianity to its ancient form (“Reply,” 56).

Such claims and counter claims were absolutely vital in the spirit of those times. For if Christ had indeed left His authority with a body of believers upon his ascension, then any faction claiming to possess the true meaning of His scriptures would logically have to be in agreement with that original body that carried on Christ’s truth after His return to His Father. It is outside of the purview of the discipline of history to ask questions about the existence and nature of God or the supernatural claims of any institution. We can, however, examine the claims of historical continuity by the various parties involved: Were Doctors Luther and Calvin reclaiming an ancient theology obscured by centuries of scholastic decadence, or were they, as their opponents claimed, introducing novelties never before seen under the sun? I intend, through an examination of patristic sources in comparison to Luther and Calvin, to demonstrate that the reformers reclaimed certain Augustinian principles, but in carrying them to their logical extremes, went to lengths that were utterly without precedent.

In examining the Reformation and its dogmas, we must first understand the key fulcrum upon which the reformation turned. This point, though, is often obscured when navigating through a list of secondary issues like use of images, liturgical style, church property, etc. We would do well to note that all of these issues pale besides that which drove the reformers to the lengths they went—“Therefore it is clear that, as the soul needs only the Word of God for its life and righteousness, so it is justified by faith alone and not any works; for if it could be justified by anything else, it would not need the Word, and consequently it would not need faith.” The reformation stands or falls on the basis of the assertion that man is justified before God only through His ineffable grace, by faith alone.

At the outset, this should not seem like too much of a problem. Even the most adamant pre-Vatican II Catholic will acknowledge the corrupt nature of man and inability to approach the righteousness of Christ without divine grace. Why then, did the reformers’ preaching of grace cause such a stir? If we delve below the surface, the problem with sola fide soon becomes apparent. If salvation comes by grace through faith alone, then no works of man can have anything do to with his salvation. If that is the case, then, as Luther tells us, this discounts any act of the will, for if one were to be able to will oneself to believe, faith would simply be a meritorious work (Luther, 135). Calvin reaches a similar conclusion in his Institutes (XXI, 1), and such thinking leaves us with the uncomfortable notion that, if one is to be saved by faith alone, then man, shorn of his free will, is reduced to the role of a puppet dancing on God’s strings. This of course opens up a host of other difficulties, and the perplexed believer is left asking if God in His love also responsible for evil. In the end, the Roman Catholic Church rejected reformed dogma in order to defend the doctrine of man’s freedom (Tracy, 101).

This rejection then left the reformers in the position of standing against the ancient Catholic Church and demanding that they, rather than the ancient church, possessed apostolic truth. Erasmus of Rotterdam had this to say about Luther’s claim to have re-discovered the truth:

Since Erasmus felt it meet to bring the Church Fathers into the discussion, I shall begin my examination with patristic sources. I intend first to examine the works of Justin Martyr, a second century convert and one of the first Christian apologists. I intend to examine Justin’s work as a case study for several reasons, chief of which are that his first and second apologies were written both to answer objections to the Christian faith and outline its basic principles, and, if we are looking for a picture of early Christianity as handed down to the apostles, we could do no better than to examine the product of a Church removed from the death of the last apostle by less than a century.

To properly comprehend the early Church’s positions on the freedom of the will, we must first examine the philosophical background of the classical world from which Christianity emerged. We quickly find that, as a general rule, the classical world was hostile to the notion of humanity possessing the free ability to choose. Democritus with his mechanistic view of the cosmos and the Eleatics with their monism both held that all events and choices were under the sway of a deterministic necessity (“Free Will”). Aristotle was a bit more optimistic, allowing for contingency, but then, with his cosmos brought into being by a primum mobile, it is hard to escape the notion that all subsequent causes must be dependent of the first cause (ibid). Nor did the stoics allow for free choice, which was precluded by their pantheistic picture of the universe (ibid). It was against such background that Christianity addressed the issue of man’s freedom.

In Chapters XLIII and XLIV of his Second Apology, Justin examines the question as to whether or not men are free. His conclusion is an unambiguous rejection of the classical world’s determinism. Martyr makes several arguments, one based on a usage of the term “devour” in Isaiah, and another on the dubious notion that Plato learned what he knew from the Hebrew prophets (Martyr, XLIV). We shall pass over these, though, in favor of the much more powerful argument of responsibility. He tells his reader “unless the human race have the power of avoiding evil and choosing good by free choice, they are not accountable for their actions” (Martyr, XLIII). Justin hammers this point home further in stating that God made man, “not like other things, as trees and quadrupeds, which cannot act by choice” (ibid). For Martyr, the sinner would not be worthy of punishment if his action were not of his own volition, but a result of the condition in which he was made (ibid). He then quotes Deuteronomy 30:15, 19: “Behold before thy face are good and evil: choose the good” (1.2.5).

Augustine in his answer affirmed that man does evil through the use of his free choice (Free Choice, 1.16.35), and that evil comes not from God, but rather from a negation of His goodness, that is, in a man turning from the good that which is God to follow his own desires (ibid, 2.20.54). In agreement with Justin Martyr, he asks rhetorically, “How could a man be punished justly, if he used his will for the very purpose for which it was given” (ibid, 2.1.3)? He goes on to state that to be justly punished, sin must be committed by a free act of the will (ibid).

In this context, when Augustine speaks of the decrees of God, he speaks of God’s predestination as coming through the foreknowledge of His omniscience. Indeed, he goes out of his way to state that foreknowledge is not the same as compulsion (Free Choice, 3.4.10), and states that, simply because God has foreseen an evil does not mean that He is responsible (ibid, 3.4.11). He draws the notion of foreknowledge to its logical conclusion, stating that because God foreknows everything, then events must happen as He has foreseen (ibid, 3.3.8). This appears to satisfactorily wrap up the issue of God’s decrees.

All of the above would seem to create the impression that God’s only action in working out His will is in foreseeing that which will occur and thus working out His will through man’s will. But we must carefully bear in mind that Augustine is speaking of the origins of evil. We have not yet examined what Augustine taught from scripture concerning, not man’s reprobation, but his salvation. When we look to this issue, the picture of Augustine becomes much murkier.

Augustine notes that the first man fell through his own completely free choice. Adam, in Augustine’s thinking, was completely free to choose either good or evil, and opted for evil (Free Choice, 3.24.73). From this point, humanity was enslaved to original sin. The original sin came through free will, but subsequently, though still free, the will was subject to corruption, and thus, unable to rise to salvation. This can be summed up in the statement, “But, though man fell through his own will, he cannot rise through his own will” (ibid, 2.20.54).

At this point in his career, Augustine might have been willing to acknowledge that man can freely look for the grace of God in order to assist him in doing good, stating that man, though subject to concupiscence, nonetheless has the knowledge of God, by whose grace he might rise to a higher state (ibid, 3.19.53). If we were to cease our examination of Augustine here, we would find a ready partisan of Rome, affirming man’s free choice, predestination through foreknowledge, and the ability of man to choose God. Alas, the picture is not that simple.

For at the turn of the fifth century, the notorious heretic Pelagius preached that man in and of himself had the ability to be perfect, and that the fall of Adam, rather than plunging the whole of the human race into sin, served merely as a bad example (Nature and Grace, 9.10). To the dismay of the good Doctor, Pelagius and his followers sought to bolster support for their beliefs with Augustine’s very own writings on free will (Retractions, 1.9.3). Augustine’s response to this heretic’s teachings generated his later writings on the will, predestination, and divine grace.

It must be noted that Augustine’s later writings on original sin and predestination seems to show a markedly different posture from his earlier work on free will. While it has been argued that this hardened stance was due either to his reaction to the fall of Rome or the Pelagian heresy, it is more likely that his own views were gradually evolving under the influence of St. Paul, independent of external circumstances. I base my judgment on Augustine’s quotation of his Retractions in On the Predestination of the Saints:

We will be going too far, though, if we make Augustine a five point Calvinist. We must note that, for starters, when he issued a retraction concerning his first writings on the nature of evil, he stated that free will was inadequate for man to rise to God. He never, though, changed his statement that evil comes only from the free exercise of the will, and never denies that in choosing to do evil, Adam was under no compulsion. When he mentions predestination, he is quite clear that only by God’s predestination can man come to an efficacious and saving faith, but what is striking is that predestination is only mentioned regarding salvation. Those that are condemned do so merely because they follow their own corrupt will, and God justly punishes their evil deeds. Augustine takes his stand for grace and salvation through election, while at the same time avoiding the horror of double predestination.

Luther would be in perfect concord with Augustine in his affirmation of salvation by grace through faith. In The Bondage of the Will, though, he arrives at Augustine, but then passes him completely, arriving in territory where none have trodden before. Augustine stated that man’s fall came through his choice, and the resulting corruption of human nature resulted in a will that commits sin of its own volition. Luther does the good doctor one better, though, and asserts that the wicked man sins “under the impulse of divine power” (Luther, 130). Luther even challenges Augustine in his definition of free will, stating that, if in a fallen state the will is unable to seek God, then it is not in fact free (ibid, 113), and that Augustine and others who have called such a will free are degrading the very word (ibid, 120). Luther goes to the extreme end of the spectrum, and then beyond the pale, but recognizes and embraces this: “Therefore, we must go to extremes, deny free will altogether, and ascribe everything to God” (ibid, 133)!

Indeed, his statement that a will unable to do good is in fact under compulsion makes fine logical sense, but the end result is a man with no freedom, and one whose evil must be the responsibility of divine omnipotence. Luther here returns to the Augustinian notion that in His omnipotence God allows but does not cause the workings of evil in order to further His divine plan (ibid, 130). It almost seems here that Luther is pulling back from the brink of a precipice to which he has been running headlong, staring into an abyss to which he dare not attempt to apply his own feeble reason. And indeed, though throughout this debate on free will with Erasmus Luther employs the techniques of reason and dialectic, in the end he felt that any attempt to use reason to fathom the mind of God was a fairly silly exercise (ibid, 129). As the reformation continued, though, another figure would arrive who would see no problem in attempting to apply human reason to the workings of the Eternal God, taking every statement on grace, sin, and God’s decrees to their horrifying ends, leaping joyfully into the abyss from which Luther held back. That man was Jean Calvin.

Even the extreme bombast of Luther’s Bondage of the Will does not take the horrific final step in the picture it paints of God’s omnipotence. Like Augustine, Luther admits that since the fall, man has been a slave to sin, but Calvin finally dares to examine from whence came the fall. His conclusion, unlike Augustine’s, is that God actively caused the fall of Adam and the whole human race into sin and damnation as part of His “wonderful plan” (Institutes, XXIII, 7). The ruthless Frenchman then goes on to state that God is nonetheless just in punishing the reprobate (ibid, XXIII, 4). Though this horribly contradicts both Augustine and Justin Martyr’s writings of responsibility, Calvin barely hesitates when he states that he is leaving behind the bulk of the Church’s traditions in favor of his alleged ruthless adherence to scripture (ibid, XXII, 1). Calvin has no problem in that asserting that, since salvation is not by works, then neither is damnation (ibid, XXII, 11), and that the reason for the eternal torment of the vast majority of the human race lies, not in their guilt, but in the arbitrary choice of God.

This horror, then, is the end result of the reformation: God has arbitrarily predestined some to eternal life, and has likewise predestined others to eternal damnation. Calvin then states that certain people might object to this, stating that it makes God a cruel tyrant, to which he responds that since God is both omnipotent and the creator of everything, then all that He decrees, ipso facto, is righteous, good, and just (Institutes, XXIII, 2). He then has the chutzpah to go on and tell the reader that his dogma is not one of absolute might, since God is “free from fault,” and the quintessence of Law and Right (ibid).

Jean Calvin then, has started from Augustine, who among the Church Fathers was most friendly to predestination, and taken the teachings of predestination to their logical extreme, crafting a dogma that would have caused St. Augustine to blanch in horror. Did St. Augustine believe in divine election and predestination of believers? Most assuredly. It was up to Jean Calvin, though, to add double predestination and eliminate Augustine’s free will theodicy in favor of a God who has decreed evil and suffering for his own amusement.

I submit, though, that such questions concerning free will and predestination would inevitably have come to the fore and been the cause of controversy even without Luther and Calvin. The reason for this is that Augustine loomed large over the western Church down through the centuries, and at times there seem to be two Augustines. Why is this the case? The reason that there seem to be two St. Augustines lies in the Bible itself, since there seem to be two St. Pauls*. We have the Paul who tells the believer in Romans Chapter 9 that God prepares some men for eternal life and some for damnation, answering the obvious objection to this with a “Who are you, O man, to talk back to God” (Romans 9:20)? On the other hand, we are also told that there is a loving God who “desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of truth” (1 Timothy 2:4). Such contradictions in the Christian faith, then, were present at its inception.

Indeed, such difficulties are inevitable in any faith that attempts to posit a God who is all-powerful, all knowing, and all good. Paul, who likely never intended to be considered a basis for systematic theology, is all over the map when it comes to how to resolve such questions. As such, there is no pat resolution to these seeming contradictions. Perhaps the error of the church was to seek one; Luther is at his best not when he is glorying in the slavery of man, but when he is proclaiming the mercy of Christ.

---. “Reply to Sadoleto.” A Reformation Debate. Ed. John C. Olin. New York, Fordham University Press, 2000. 43-88.

“Free Will.” The Catholic Encyclopedia. Michael Maher. 1909. Transcribed 1999.

Argh. My point in writing the essay in the first place was not to defend either Arminian or Calvinist dogma, the Rush song that I threw in notwithstanding. My point was examining what the historical Church thought about the issue. The conclusion that I reached was that from the closing of the canon to the writings of Augustine, the Church generally held to a position acknowledging free will, whereas with Augustine under the influence of Paul, the Church adopted a more "Calvinist" posture, which gradually evolved into a system more or less friendly to free will again by the time of the Reformation and that Luther recovered Augustinian principles, but Calvin, with double predestination and the like, went much further than even the African Doctor. I am not trying to defend dogmas, I am merely attempting to explain what the historic position of the Church's first fifteen hundred years was.

Yo, homey: I know what you are attempting to do.

Trouble is, you really haven't addressed Augustine's treatment of Matthew 11:20-27.

And it is fundamental. Your claims that Calvin and Luther "went much further" than Augustine are groundless. Such is the normal Roman claim, I'll admit; but that doesn't change the fact that it is a ridiculous claim. Augustine's writings on the doctrine of Reprobation, the Predestination of the Damned (so called "double" predestination), were if anything considerably stronger than Luther's or yes, even Calvin's. And the reason you don't know that, is because you aren't familiar with Augustine's treatment of Matthew 11:20-27.

Maybe you shouldn't dismiss my reading of your essay so swiftly. I realize that you are trying only to air your claims regarding the authority of the Patristics. But understand that orthodox Protestants do know our Patristics. And I am telling you that your understanding of the Patristics is wrong.

FWIW, I think it is a fairly silly excercise in attempting to apply our own feeble reason to the workings of the Infinite Mind.

FWIW, I think it is a fairly silly exercise to claim that you cannot attribute certain facts of Foreknowledge to God which He expressly claims to know!! No one is asking you to "reason out the workings of the Infinite Mind". We are, however, asking you to acknowledge those Facts of which God (in the Person of the Incarnate Christ) expressly declares his own knowledge. And the reason you are unwilling to attribute to God specific Facts of Foreknowledge which He attributes quite specifically to himself, is because you really are Semi-Pelagian, and you really do understand that this passage annihilates your position... just as Augustine knew it annihilated the Pelagians.

Do NOT deny to God Foreknowledge which He specifically claims unto Himself. Let's try this again:

Scripture

Matthew 11: 20 - 27 --
Then Jesus began to denounce the cities in which most of his miracles had been performed, because they did not repent. "Woe to you, Korazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! If the miracles that were performed in you had been performed in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. But I tell you, it will be more bearable for Tyre and Sidon on the day of judgment than for you. And you, Capernaum, will you be lifted up to the skies? No, you will go down to the depths. If the miracles that were performed in you had been performed in Sodom, it would have remained to this day. But I tell you that it will be more bearable for Sodom on the day of judgment than for you. At that time Jesus said, I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for this was your good pleasure. All things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.

Question

God foreknew Tyre and Sidon's free choice NOT TO REPENT in the case of His non-performance of Miracles equivalent to those performed in Chorazin and Bethsaida; AND
God foreknew Tyre and Sidon's free choice TO REPENT in the case of His performance of such Miracles; AND
God CHOSE not to perform these Miracles in Tyre and Sidon, a choice which had as its perfectly foreknown result the NON-Repentance of Tyre and Sidon, just as He foreknew.
True, or False?

No one is asking you to "reason out" the workings of God's Mind in this; only to acknowledge as fact that Foreknowledge which He claims unto himself.

I'll await your response.

Still, I don't know that I am a double-Predestinarian. It may just be another "terminology" type confusion.

I believe the problem is only a matter of terminology in your case.

When you think about it, a double predestination actually just amounts to absolute predestination--which tells us that real predestination is necessarily "double or nothing, as one theologian has said. To use Spurgeon's language, if there is a single atom out of the control of God--anywhere in the universe--we have chaos!

It is important to notice that the term "double predestination" does not in and of itself discuss how the predestination of the reprobate is arranged. It merely presents the fact of that predestination.

In his post on Matthew 11, OrthodoxPresbyterian has elucidated something of the arrangement of the predestination of the reprobate. God's foreknowledge is a planning faculty. It plans the salvation of the elect, but it also plans the sealing of the reprobate in his doom. God deliberately passes up some folks. The interesting thing about this is that He often makes confrontational presentations of Himself to reprobates even as He allows them to get worse. And they certainly will get worse!

In the case of reprobate churchgoers, this entails what is called "gospel hardening." It is a thing of divine design. And it leaves the sinner responsible. He really does despise the warnings and the free offer which could save him.

In other words, the predestination of the reprobate unfolds in such a way as to make us realize that God's predestination of the reprobate involves a passive decree. But it is nonetheless a decree. This idea of a decree is seen in verses such as "vessels of wrath fitted for destruction" and "before of old ordained to this condemnation."

Another knotty problem in the matter of the arrangement of God's absolute and necessarily double predestination--i.e., real predestination--concerns the order of God's decrees. This centers on the controversy of the supralapsarians versus the infralapsarians (see below).

The supralapsarian position basically involves the notion that God's decree to damn comes before His decree to create. The idea which winds up being emphasized in this proposed theology is that God purposed to damn people who were not sinners--so He ordained that they become sinners to make for a just damnation.

The infralapsarian, on the other hand, insists that we cannot look at the order of things in God's decrees (e.g., creation versus damnation) in that simplistic way--largely because the decrees did not occur in time and therefore do not have have what we would regard as chronology. The infralapsarian regards the whole matter of the decrees of creation and the Fall and reprobation as a matter of logical order rather than temporal order. And the infralapsarian maintains that God never decreed to reprobate sinners until He regarded them in their status of sinners. (Never mind that this regard on the part of God occurred before even creation.)

Romans One seems to support this infralapsarian position, since God's revealed reprobation of the non-elect does not hit the Adamic race until the Fall.

Spurgeon has some unusually good meditations on this stuff, and OrthodoxPresbyterian probably has it bookmarked. (Spurgeon was basically an infralapsarian. So was Jonathan Edwards. So are most of today's mainstream Calvinists. So are OrthodoxPresbyterian and I.)

***

I hope this helps. I just wanted you to realize that double predestinarians are not necessarily supralapsarians. But as Matthew 11 reveals--not to mention several other passages, the reprobate really is predestined to hell--by the very fact that God is aware of options which He chooses not to take on behalf of the reprobate.

Firs off, on Augustine's treatment of Matthew 11 on On The Gift of Perseverance has Augustine stating that pre-destination to damnation comes in God not granting the believer the grace to believe. This is Augustine's, Luther's, and the Church's (for a few centuries after Augustine) position. But, the punishment that is meted out is due to the fact that the reprobate are still in the bondage of original sin and thus by their own evil works damn themselves, God's part being that he does not allow them to turn from evil.

Your claims that Calvin and Luther "went much further" than Augustine are groundless. Such is the normal Roman claim, I'll admit; but that doesn't change the fact that it is a ridiculous claim.

Augustine, speaking in the same work you have recently cited states that, "Thus his mercy is unsearchable, through which he has mercy on whom he will, independent of prior merits on that person's part, and his truth is unsearchable, by which he hardens whom he will, whose deserts have indeed preceded, but deserts for the most part held in common with him on whom he has mercy" (On Gift of Perseverance, 11.25). This is the key difference between Calvin and Augustine regarding predestination. Calvin states that the reprobate are damned for nothing they have done, but for the good pleasure of God, and that their evil works are merely incidental. Augustine states that though elect and reprobate both deserve damnation, one set is given grace apart from their works, while the other is given what they deserve from their works. This seems a minor difference, but it is crucial.

Going back to my original essay, another key point raised in it is that the medieval Church, in attempting to reach a position based on predestination as fore-knowledge, was turning away from her position outlined in the Canons of Orange. You, though, immediately jump to the conclusion that I am attempting to defend the Roman position (which, btw, was what I started out planning to do, before I closely read On the Predestination of the Saints, which caused me to modify the entire direction of the paper). The straight Roman position even your Catholic will acknowledge is fairly hard to defend, since it involves concentrating on early Augustine and ignoring later Augustine. All that said, when Calvin examines the origin of the fall, he most definitely does go past Augustine. Even when Augustine issued a retraction concerning some of his earlier writings, in that retraction he still maintained that Adam fell through his free choice. Calvin, though, states the fall was planned by God. To make such an answer concerning the fall and thus the origins of evil is fraught with peril and no less a Calvinist than Jonathon Edwards had great difficulty resolving this issue.

As I have told you recently, I have just come to accept and I thought "understand" "double predestiantion"......now I am wondering if my simple mind really had the concept down in a way that would be doctrinal at all??? :>))

As I contemplated the Piper meditation I mentally looked at the whole of creation. I thought of the parable of light and salt, and wheat and tares.

It seemed to me as I considered it that God allowed in His grace to allow men to be born and die .He did not wipe out man from the face of the earth as he could have. Instead He allowed man to continue to enjoy the fruits of His creation, without intervening in the fallen natural mans sinful and rebellious nature. This man ,because of the fall could not and would not hear him or see him.The nature of the fall was so great that forever producing after their own kind man would be forever rebellious and sinful.They would reject God because that was now their nature.God knew that and his decision not to act to alter their nature was infact a predestination of their lives and choices.

But God wishing to have a rhemnant,a people to be light and salt and a testimony to His glory created a people for Himself .He sowed the wheat ,and allowed Satan to sow the tares without any intervention on His part.That was a sovereign act on the part of a sovereign God .

I told you I have a "devotional" approach to scripture and scripture study. I did not consider the doctrinal aspects to this...only that God is God.

correction from you all as needed

To: OrthodoxPresbyterian ~~ First off, on Augustine's treatment of Matthew 11 on On The Gift of Perseverance has Augustine stating that pre-destination to damnation comes in God not granting the believer the grace to believe. This is Augustine's, Luther's, and the Church's (for a few centuries after Augustine) position.

Indeed this is Augustine's position.

Will any man date to say that God did not foreknow those to whom He would give to believe, or whom He would give to His Son, that of them He should lose none? And certainly, if He foreknew these things, He as certainly foreknew His own kindnesses, wherewith He condescends to deliver us. This is the predestination of the saints,--nothing else; to wit, the foreknowledge and the preparation of God's kindnesses, whereby they are most certainly delivered, whoever they are that are delivered. But where are the rest left by the righteous divine judgment except in the mass of ruin, where the Tyrians and the Sidonians were left? who, moreover, might have believed if they had seen Christ's wonderful miracles.

But you overstep yourself when you go on to claim:

When he mentions predestination, he is quite clear that only by God’s predestination can man come to an efficacious and saving faith, but what is striking is that predestination is only mentioned regarding salvation. Those that are condemned do so merely because they follow their own corrupt will, and God justly punishes their evil deeds. Augustine takes his stand for grace and salvation through election, while at the same time avoiding the horror of double predestination.

Augustine makes no such exceptions as those you claim for him. In the very next sentence following his analysis of Predestination unto Salvation, Augustine affirms that the Reprobation of the Damned necessarily entails the action of a positive and efficacious decree:

But since it was not given to them to believe, the means of believing also were denied them.

To put it bluntly, Augustine PRE-EMPTIVELY DISALLOWS the unscriptural and inconsistent idea of "single predestination" claimed by Rome against the Reformers. Augustine affirms that a negative decision is of necessity a positive decision of Negation.

Essentially, Augustine's argument is that, if presented the choice to wear black shoes or brown, you elect to wear black shoes, you are of necessity actioning a positive decision NOT to wear the brown shoes. And if a mere Man understands that when he Elects the black shoes and not the brown, he is positively de-selecting the brown, we cannot claim that it "would not occur" to the perfect Knowledge of God that in positively selecting the One, He is positively de-selecting the Other. Augustine tells us, in short, that "single predestination" is a doctrine of thoughtlessness, and we cannot claim that Almighty God is "less thoughtful" than a mere Man. Any negative decisioning is, of necessity, a decisioning of negation.

But since it was not given to them to believe, the means of believing also were denied them.

But, the punishment that is meted out is due to the fact that the reprobate are still in the bondage of original sin and thus by their own evil works damn themselves, God's part being that he does not allow them to turn from evil.

Entirely true.
And entirely Calvinist.

Some Calvin to establish the point:

(Calvin, Institues, Book III, excerpts)
...For if predestination is nothing else than a dispensation of divine justice, secret indeed, but unblamable, because it is certain that those predestinated to that condition were not unworthy of it, it is equally certain, that the destruction consequent upon predestination is also most just. Moreover, though their perdition depends on the predestination of God, the cause and matter of it is in themselves. The first m an fell because the Lord deemed it meet that he should: why he deemed it meet, we know not. It is certain, however, that it was just, because he saw that his own glory would thereby be displayed. When you hear the glory of God mentioned, understand that his justice is included. For that which deserves praise must be just. Man therefore falls, divine providence so ordaining, but he falls by his own fault.

THE REPROBATE BRING UPON THEMSELVES THE RIGHTEOUS DESTRUCTION TO WHICH THEY ARE DOOMED.

...The refusal of the reprobate to obey the word of God when manifested to them, will be properly ascribed to the malice and depravity of their hearts, provided it be at the same time added that they were adjudged to this depravity, because they were raised up by the just but inscrutable judgment of God, to show forth his glory by their condemnation. In like manner, when it is said of the sons of Eli, that they would not listen to salutary admonitions "because the Lord would slay them," (1 Sam. 2:25), it is not denied that their stubbornness was the result of their own iniquity; but it is at the same time stated why they were left to their stubbornness, when the Lord might have softened their hearts: namely, because his immutable decree had once for all doomed them to destruction. Hence the words of John, "Though he had done so many miracles before them, yet they believed not on him; that the saying of Esaias the prophet might be fulfilled which he spake, Lord, who has believed our report?" (John 12:37, 38); for though he does not exculpate their perverseness, he is satisfied with the reason that the grace of God is insipid to men, until the Holy Spirit gives it its savor.

(backtracking to Calvin on the subject of Will, Institutes Book II, excerpts...)

Bernard says not improperly, that all of us have a will; but to will well is proficiency, to will ill is defect. Thus simply to will is the part of man, to will ill the part of corrupt nature, to will well the part of grace....

Let this, then, be regarded as the sum of the distinction. Man, since he was corrupted by the fall, sins not forced or unwilling, but voluntarily, by a most forward bias of the mind; not by violent compulsion, or external force, but by the movement of his own passion; and yet such is the depravity of his nature, that he cannot move and act except in the direction of evil. If this is true, the thing not obscurely expressed is, that he is under a necessity of sinning. Bernard, assenting to Augustine, thus writes: "Among animals, man alone is free, and yet sin intervening, he suffers a kind of violence, but a violence proceeding from his will, not from nature, so that it does not even deprive him of innate liberty," (Bernard, Sermo. super Cantica, 81). For that which is voluntary is also free. A little after he adds, "Thus, by some means strange and wicked, the will itself, being deteriorated by sin, makes a necessity; but so that the necessity, in as much as it is voluntary, cannot excuse the will, and the will, in as much as it is enticed, cannot exclude the necessity." For this necessity is in a manner voluntary. He afterwards says that "we are under a yoke, but no other yoke than that of voluntary servitude; therefore, in respect of servitude, we are miserable, and in respect of will, inexcusable; because the will, when it was free, made itself the slave of sin." At length he concludes, "Thus the soul, in some strange and evil way, is held under this kind of voluntary, yet sadly free necessity, both bond and free; bond in respect of necessity, free in respect of will: and what is still more strange, and still more miserable, it is guilty because free, and enslaved because guilty, and therefore enslaved because free."

My readers hence perceive that the doctrine which I deliver is not new, but the doctrine which of old Augustine delivered with the consent of all the godly, and which was afterwards shut up in the cloisters of monks for almost a thousand years.

Contrast Augustine's statements, though, with what Calvin states about damnation in his Institutes (XXII, 11): "Now a word concerning the reprobate, with whom the Apostle is at the same time there concerned. For as Jacob, deserving nothing by good works, is taken into grace, so Esau, as yet undefiled by any crime, is hated. If we turn our eyes to works, we wrong the Apostle..." He further states, "the reprobate are raised up to the end that through them God's glory may be revealed." Augustine, speaking in the same work you have recently cited states that, "Thus his mercy is unsearchable, through which he has mercy on whom he will, independent of prior merits on that person's part, and his truth is unsearchable, by which he hardens whom he will, whose deserts have indeed preceded, but deserts for the most part held in common with him on whom he has mercy" (On Gift of Perseverance, 11.25). This is the key difference between Calvin and Augustine regarding predestination. Calvin states that the reprobate are damned for nothing they have done, but for the good pleasure of God, and that their evil works are merely incidental. Augustine states that though elect and reprobate both deserve damnation, one set is given grace apart from their works, while the other is given what they deserve from their works. This seems a minor difference, but it is crucial.

No, I freely admit: It is indeed, a crucial distinction.
And what is more, it is a distinction which you have fabricated!!

Calvin stands in unbroken solidarity with Augustine on this matter.
If anything, his declaration is more clear than that of Augustine:
"THE REPROBATE BRING UPON THEMSELVES THE RIGHTEOUS DESTRUCTION TO WHICH THEY ARE DOOMED" (Calvin's own subtitle for his chapter on the subject!!)

I'm pleasantly surprised that you are able to admit this much.
In fact, I would argue that even the Acts of the Council of Orange were flawed.

But it did not stop there. Medieval Rome not only discarded the (Augustine-derived) truths of Orange, she whole-heartedly embraced the errors thereof!!
Personally, the more I study the subject, the more I am inclined to blame the Synergism of Maximos (called "Confessor). But that is a subject for another day.....

You, though, immediately jump to the conclusion that I am attempting to defend the Roman position (which, btw, was what I started out planning to do, before I closely read On the Predestination of the Saints, which caused me to modify the entire direction of the paper). The straight Roman position even your Catholic will acknowledge is fairly hard to defend, since it involves concentrating on early Augustine and ignoring later Augustine. All that said, when Calvin examines the origin of the fall, he most definitely does go past Augustine. Even when Augustine issued a retraction concerning some of his earlier writings, in that retraction he still maintained that Adam fell through his free choice. Calvin, though, states the fall was planned by God. To make such an answer concerning the fall and thus the origins of evil is fraught with peril and no less a Calvinist than Jonathon Edwards had great difficulty resolving this issue.

Nope.

Calvin not only depended upon Augustine for his exposition of this doctrine, he adamantly refused to go beyond Augustine's treatment of the matter.

They deny that it is ever said in distinct terms, God decreed that Adam should perish by his revolt. As if the same God, who is declared in Scripture to do whatsoever he pleases, could have made the noblest of his creatures without any special purpose.... Nor ought it to seem absurd when I say, that God not only foresaw the fall of the first man, and in him the ruin of his posterity; but also at his own pleasure arranged it. For as it belongs to his wisdom to foreknow all future events, so it belongs to his power to rule and govern them by his hand. This question, like others, is skillfully explained by Augustine: "Let us confess with the greatest benefit, what we believe with the greatest truth, that the God and Lord of all things who made all things very good, both foreknow that evil was to arise out of good, and knew that it belonged to his most omnipotent goodness to bring good out of evil, rather than not permit evil to be, and so ordained the life of angels and men as to show in it, first, what free-will could do; and, secondly, what the benefit of his grace and his righteous judgment could do," (August. Enchir. ad Laurent).

In fact, Augustine (only echoed by Calvin, and less forcefully at that) insisted rightfully that the very first clause of the Nicene Creed, our belief in God the Father Almighty, demanded of the Christian the belief that God ordained the fall of Man (and, commensurately His own eventual Conquest of the Fall) by the decree of His Sovereign Will.

For if it were not a good that evil should exist, its existence would not be permitted by the omnipotent Good

And if we do not believe this, the very first sentence of our creed is endangered, wherein we profess to believe in God the Father Almighty.

Augustine, Enchiridion

Your battle is not with Luther.
Your battle is not with Calvin.
Your battle is with Augustine, and with the Scriptures upon which Augustine stood.

Augustine, Augustine, and Augustine stands (with Paul and Peter and James and John and Christ) as the foremost Patristic expositor of the doctrine of God's Absolute Sovereignty. Augustine demands of the Christian the belief that GOD, God alone, God always, and God without exception, is constantly and unreservedly in intimate, undiluted, uncontested, and total authority and control over every atom of creation from beginning to end.

But there is one more point which Augustine makes, although he does not say it directly (for indeed, he considers it obvious):

Augustine's exigesis carries the implicit claim that Scripture is intelligible and that it means what it says.

Which brings us again to this:

Scripture

Question

God foreknew Tyre and Sidon's free choice NOT TO REPENT in the case of His non-performance of Miracles equivalent to those performed in Chorazin and Bethsaida; AND
God foreknew Tyre and Sidon's free choice TO REPENT in the case of His performance of such Miracles; AND
God CHOSE not to perform these Miracles in Tyre and Sidon, a choice which had as its perfectly foreknown result the NON-Repentance of Tyre and Sidon, just as He foreknew.
True, or False?

Your #135 to Andrew:

This is Uriel's favorite Chorazin/Bethsaida post. Have you borrowed it from him? You have repeated it several times, insisting upon an answer before you go on, as though you were getting ready to pin a wrestler to the floor. Would you do such a thing? I'll say this, you can wax fully as voluminous as doc.

Uriel's point always was to attempt to prove by this passage that Tyre, Sidon, and Sodom are in Hell now because God withheld the grace to repent. That is not the point our Savior is making.

He is saying that the people of Chorazin and Bethsaida at that time were rejecting a Greater Light, and thus if they persist they will be much worse off in the Day of Judgment than those who do not receive His personal ministry in this life (which is almost everyone who ever lived, including us), but would have repented if they had. No statement is made as to the final status of any individual or group. If Jesus had gone to Tyre and they repented, for example, they may have returned to sinfulness later, as Judas did. Some individuals in Chorazin may have hearkened to His message.

There have been many excellent posts from Hank and others on free will. The Calvinist notion of it is simply not correct. Will is not free if it is overpowered by a fallen nature. We all have God-given free will and are accountable before Him for our use of it and all His other gifts to us. Without it, no learning or spiritual growth is possible. All of us use it everyday, so Calvinists understand it in a practical sense even if their theoretical understanding of free will or free agency is the prisoner of tangled logic. It is very important to understand this doctrine properly, because we are accountable before God for what we do.

All that said, when Calvin examines the origin of the fall, he most definitely does go past Augustine. Even when Augustine issued a retraction concerning some of his earlier writings, in that retraction he still maintained that Adam fell through his free choice. Calvin, though, states the fall was planned by God. To make such an answer concerning the fall and thus the origins of evil is fraught with peril and no less a Calvinist than Jonathon Edwards had great difficulty resolving this issue.

Very shrewd observations. This is the point in Calvin where I don't follow the path of his logic to its destination.

It seems to me that in such discussion, it's very easy to move beyond the statements of scripture to particulars of logic based on the use of literal readings of particular passages. It is no doubt very tempting to any theologian given the nature of the work and the type of individual who is drawn to it. Yet, their work involves reading the Word and producing more words, relying upon the flawed reasoning of man to thereby describe the most intimate nature of God's character and motives.

And yet, Augustine's understanding is not that of the full nature of God. Nor is Luther's or Calvin's. These matters are not fully given to the understanding of man from the scripture. The conclusions are not plainly spoken in scripture. And they are not the central message of Christian belief, a fact overlooked by their most devoted supporters and opponents.

The real practical impact of these human ideas of predestination is that they go so far as to cause people to believe that God is the author of all evil, that God desired from the very beginning to damn the vast majority of all mankind. The rejection of this general predestinarian conclusion is that which causes Pelagianism and Arminianism whose theologians then are forced to elevate the will of man and his ability to "choose" faith and salvation as the central point of God's interest in man.

To fully believe these theories and apply them to our fellow-men is to change the Good News of the Gospel we are to present to all men into the Bad News of the New Covenant that the vast majority of mankind are damned because it pleased God to do so from the very beginning and was part of His central purpose.

Predestination is true. God is sovereign in all things. But we are not given to know these things quite so precisely as Augustine, Luther, and Calvin have written. The actions and motives of God as described in scripture do not fully inform us as to His motives and ultimate purpose with men in general or with the eternal fate of any particular man. Clearly, there are matters which He does not wish us to know or which He knew we would misuse if He explained them fully to us. He gives us assurance of His sovereignty in all things in scripture but He does not grant us full knowledge of His purpose, His methods, or His criterian in predestining men toward Him.

Augustine tells us, in short, that "single predestination" is a doctrine of thoughtlessness, and we cannot claim that Almighty God is "less thoughtful" than a mere Man. Any negative decisioning is, of necessity, a decisioning of negation.

Augustine tells us this. That doesn't make it true.

God is a pure Spirit who brought all of His creation into being from the void by a sheer act of divine will. I would think that Augustine should have considered whether God's will is actually comparable to that of man.

For instance, the Bible tells us that God cannot lie. This is presented as intrinsic to His nature and His pure holiness. And yet, man easily lies. Therefore, God is in this matter considerably lesser than His own creation. Does this mean He is not God? Of course not. God's nature is an utter holiness of which we are incapable to fully perceive or imagine. I think God is not capable of the sort of ambiguousness which He created in man. I think God deliberately created in angels and in man a particular nature that He desired. And He is does not share their limitations. Perhaps they are capable of things He is not and that pleases Him and is their purpose in His creation. Again, I don't pretend to know this. But it does seem that these classes of being must have a particular purpose which pleases God. And I don't need to go further than that.

Augustine's case is not established. God is not like a man or any other thing in Creation. And God is not a debater.

We really cannot understand the full Godhead, the power and the eternal will of the Father in this life. I think the Father laughs when we try to put Him in some little box of human reasoning. He no doubt forgives our ignorance and arrogance to pretend to a full knowledge of His most intimate nature. I tend to think that some of these matters are simply unknowable, even in heaven. He is God and we are men. Do you think even the angels know His full nature and purpose? I don't.

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