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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.

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

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?

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.