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“This is precisely what I am getting at. Lutheranism no longer reflects what Luther was claiming the Scripture said, but what it thinks is true, irrespective of whether Luther agreed or not.” —> from my interactions with other Lutherans (not xone), I can say that is an incorrect statement for the LCMS and WELS organizations.

Augustinian predestinationalism.

Calvinists get this wrong. The idea that a person can be predestined to come to God yet not be predestined to stay the course may be new to Calvinists and may sound strange to them, but it did not sound strange to Augustine, he did not draw Calvin's inference that all who are ever saved are predestined to remain in grace.

While Calvin's view of predestination might be a variation of Augustine's view, the two are not the same.

Augustine did not believe in Calvin's understanding of the "perseverance of the saints," and neither did the broadly Augustinian tradition. That understanding was new with Calvin.

In 1748 the Church declared Thomism, Molinism, and a third view known as Augustinianism to be acceptable Catholic teachings

Augustine

"[N]othing could have been devised more likely to instruct and benefit the pious reader of sacred Scripture than that, besides describing praiseworthy characters as examples, and blameworthy characters as warnings, it should also narrate cases where good men have gone back and fallen into evil, whether they are restored to the right path or continue irreclaimable; and also where bad men have changed, and have attained to goodness, whether they persevere in it or relapse into evil; in order that the righteous may be not lifted up in the pride of security, nor the wicked hardened in despair of cure" (Against Faustus 22:96 [A.D. 400]).

Remember also that Augustine rejected any notion of an invisible Church and believed in sacraments (Augustine too believed that Christ was really present in the Eucharist)