I wanted to go through these referenced sources and summarize them and reproduce portions of the manuscript. Here are the sources:
THE CORE CONNECTIONS & ACCUSATIONS
- Augustine’s Background: Critics point to Augustine of Hippo’s approximately nine years of involvement with Manichaeism, a religious movement with dualistic teachings, before his conversion to Christianity. Because Augustine’s writings significantly influenced John Calvin and later Reformed theology, critics question whether aspects of his earlier worldview influenced his understanding of sin and human nature. [1, 2]
- Total Inability / Total Depravity: Manichaeism presented a deeply dualistic understanding of good and evil and the human condition. Critics argue that Calvinism’s doctrine of total inability—the “T” in TULIP, which teaches that fallen humanity cannot come to faith apart from God’s enabling grace—resembles this pessimistic view of human nature. [1, 2, 3, 4]
- The Material World and the Flesh: Gnostic movements often viewed the material world as inferior, corrupt, or even evil, although Gnostic beliefs varied. Critics argue that Augustine’s teachings concerning original sin, its transmission through human generation, and the effects of sexual desire reflect a similar pessimism about embodied human existence. They further contend that aspects of this outlook carried into later Reformed theology. [1, 2]
Today I want to deal with the first bullet point — “Augustine’s Background,” source #2 — I say TODAY because I want to open up some of those resources for a better deep dive, of which this is the first. I will try to offer some of the mentioned resources highlighted in the videos and partial transcripts in the videos or summaries.
These sources I put into my earlier post: “Is Calvinism a Heresy? (Bonus: Allie Beth Stuckey)“, and the first source I am opening up today is “Did Gnosticism Influence Calvinism? @Soteriology101 Dr. Leighton Flowers Ruslan Interview“, and here is a partial transcript with the video:
Books explicitly mentioned in the video
| Resource | Author(s) / details | Context in the transcript |
|---|---|---|
| Foundations of Augustinian Calvinism | Ken Wilson | Discussed as an accessible version of Wilson’s Oxford doctoral dissertation, examining the historical roots of Augustinian Calvinism. |
| Why I’m Not an Arminian | Robert A. Peterson and Michael D. Williams | Cited by Leighton Flowers as a book by two Calvinist professors that acknowledges a difference between Augustine’s monergistic doctrine of grace and the tendencies of the Apostolic Fathers. |
Important spelling correction: The transcript’s automatic transcription says “Why I’m Not an Armenian.” The intended title is Why I’m Not an Arminian.
Historical sources mentioned
- Herman Bavinck — Mentioned as a Calvinist theologian whose writings are invoked in the discussion.
- Lorraine Boettner — Mentioned as a Reformed historical and theological source. The transcript renders the name as “Buttner” or “Betner”; the likely intended author is Lorraine Boettner.
- The Apostolic Fathers — Early Christian writers whose views on human nature, free will, and salvation are discussed through the quotation from Peterson and Williams.
- Augustine of Hippo — His writings and theological development are the central historical subject.
- John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion — Explicitly mentioned as a work in which Calvin cites Augustine extensively.
Partial Transcript:
Leighton Flowers
There’s also the book Why I’m Not an Armenian by two Calvinistic professors. They write, the semi-Pelagians were convinced that Augustine’s monergistic emphasis upon salvation by grace alone represented a significant departure from the traditional teaching of the church. They say, quote, and a survey of the thought of the Apostolic Father shows that their argument is valid.
From Calvinist scholars Robert A. Peterson and Michael D. Williams, Why I Am Not An Arminian, p. 39 (pages 35-41 quoted at the bottom):
Does the antipathy between Calvinism and Arminianism suggest that Pelagius, the arch-opposite of Augustine, is the proper ancestor of Arminianism? Calvinists have often sought to paint Arminianism in Pelagian colors. Associating your opponent with a position that the historic faith has repeatedly judged heretical can only help one’s cause. However, the allegation that Arminianism is Pelagian is unfortunate and indeed unwarranted. From Jacob Arminius and the ‘Remonstrance Articles’ on, the Arminian tradition has affirmed the corruption of the will by sin and the necessity of grace for redemption. Arminianism is not Pelagianism….The Semi-Pelagians thought of salvation as beginning with human beings. We must first seek God; and his grace is a response to that seeking. The Arminians of the seventeenth century, however, held that the human will has been so corrupted by sin that a person cannot seek grace without the enablement of grace. They therefore affirmed the necessity and priority of grace in redemption. Grace must go before a person’s response to the gospel. This suggests that Arminianism is closer to Semi-Augustinianism than it is to Semi-Pelagianism or Pelagianism.
Ruslan KD
Ruslan. Let’s talk about this idea of Gnosticism. You had a video up about Augustine, who’s the father of Calvinism. Augustine is who influenced John Calvin and Edwards and Martin Luther, who then influenced a lot of Charles Spurgeon and a lot of our guys today.
You could trace it all back to this gentleman named Augustine, who was a great thinker and a philosopher and all these amazing things. What people don’t know is that He came from a Gnostic background and that then impacted some of his views that you said were not there with the majority of Christians prior to Augustine.
So can you break down what Gnosticism is briefly and how it impacted some of Augustine’s views? Because I have a very specific segue that I deal with all the time with people in my community.
Can you give us just a brief breakdown of what Gnosticism is, how it impacted Augustine, how then that impacted John Calvin and Calvin?
Leighton Flowers
Saying what is Gnosticism can take some time because there’s a lot of different kinds of Gnosticism. Manichean Gnosticism, Manicheanism was the most predominant Gnostic group that many people would have heard of. And it was in particular what Augustine was for 10 years of his life. He was a Manichean Gnostic.
And Manicheanism is very, very different than Christian theology, but there are some similarities. And there are writings from the Manichaeans where they use many of the same proof texts like John 6.44 and other texts like that in order to demonstrate what they believe with regard to total inability.
In other words, one of the things they do teach, they have more of a dualistic view that there’s a good God and a bad God, an evil God and a good God. And they have a lot of different things that are not not like Christianity at all, but one of the things that’s similar to at least Calvinistic Christianity is that they believe that when we’re born, we’re born in a completely evil state and that we’re completely incapable of doing anything without a divine influence.
Ruslan KD
Sounds a lot like total depravity.
Leighton Flowers
Exactly. And so the argument is that this concept of total inability really did not originate within the Bible or early church teachings, but in a more Gnostic or Manichean philosophy of theistic determinism. Now that’s the argument.
But what’s interesting is if you even study John Calvin, he even says that the early church writings, he says they extol the powers of the human will. He says save the exception of Augustine, he said, are confused and they’re vacillating, they’re contradictory, and they extol the powers of the free will of man.
In other words, John Calvin, he wants to validate himself. His doctrines, he wants to make sure people believe them. And oftentimes, especially in that day of the Reformation, you would be reaching back to orthodoxy in order to establish your views as orthodox and as viable. And so he quoted from Augustine over 4,000 times in the Institutes of the Christian Religion.
And he admits, he says the early church writers, all the other early church writers prior to Augustine and even Augustine in his earliest writings, when he first converted out of Manichaeanism into Christianity for the first part of his Christian life, he did teach a doctrine of free will like you and I might believe it.
But only after many years and then eventually a debate with Pelagius does he begin to swing back, we believe, back into a more deterministic, philosophical way of thinking, and he begins to use some of the same arguments that you hear Manichaeans make.
Interesting, I recommend people read Ken Wilson on this particular subject. He’s taken his Oxford doctoral dissertation and made it into a smaller layman book that’s easier to approach than the one with seven different languages in it, and that’s huge.
And at our request, in fact, He was so gracious to do this, but at our request, he actually took his doctoral dissertation and broke it down to the basics and put it all into easy to approach, more English accessible. And it’s called the Foundations of Augustinian Calvinism.
And it really does kind of break down the roots of this and really goes through scholar after scholar after scholar who’s come to the same conclusion. And that’s what’s interesting about this. is not, you know, Leighton Flowers, the, you know, anti-Calvinist saying these things.
We’ve got quotes from Bavinck, Henry Herman Bavinck, who’s a well-known Calvinist, Lorraine Buttner, who is a well-known historical historian from the Calvinist. Matter of fact, Betner is the guy who made Tulip, the Across the Tulip, famous.
There’s also the book, Why I’m Not an Armenian, by two Calvinistic professors from Covenant Theological Seminary, Dr. Robert Peterson and Michael Williams. And they write this, they write, the semi-Pelagians were convinced, and semi-Pelagian is a pejorative term, we wouldn’t like that term, but that’s what they call us oftentimes, semi-Pelagians.
The semi-Pelagians were convinced that Augustine’s monergistic emphasis upon salvation by grace alone represented a significant departure from the traditional teaching of the church. So notice what they’re saying. They’re saying that Augustine, the accusation from semi-Pelagians is that Augustine took a significant departure from the early church.
And they say, quote, and a survey of the thought of the apostolic fathers shows that their argument is valid. In comparison to Augustine’s monergistic doctrine of grace, the teachings of the apostolic fathers tended toward a synergistic view of redemption, end quote.
In other words, I could read you about a dozen quotes here from Calvinist sources, not Armenian sources or provisional sources from actual Calvinistic historians who are intellectually honest enough to say, yeah, really Augustine is the first one on record to really begin to teach these doctrines.
And that’s just the fact of the matter. And it is a fact of the matter that he was influenced by Stoicism, Neoplatonism, and Manichean Gnosticism. That’s just a fact of the matter. That’s a part of his testimony. It’s on record. It’s not a disputable matter.
And so I think many of the scholars who know what they’re talking about realize that Augustine really is the first one to systematize and to teach more Calvinistic theology in the church.
Ruslan KD
That’s interesting. So here is where the logical conclusion of some of that goes. If he then elevates how evil man is and makes man just utterly evil. And you’re saying this doctrine isn’t found in the early church. We don’t see any of the other church fathers who believe them.
And if man is super duper, utterly sinful, hates God this whole bit, well then the material world, which is what also Gnosticism believes, the material world, the physical world is also evil. And everything here is evil and everything here is bad. And so you get saved. God could have just zapped you straight to heaven, but he kind of just leaves you on earth to suffer for a while with all these other filthy humans that he may elect or not elect.
This becomes extremely problematic when it again goes back to my heart for people is, hey, I want people to live out Matthew 25. I want people to live out the parable of the talents, the taking care of the least of these, having an amazing marriage, a godly marriage, a godly family. honoring God with your time, talent, and treasure, this becomes disconnected and incompatible when the worldview is people are utterly evil, humans are utterly evil, the world’s all evil, everyone’s evil, everything’s evil, the material is evil, the physical is evil.
So then, man, should I take that promotion at my job so that I can get my family out of this two-bedroom apartment? Because we’re crammed in here. I literally had somebody ask me this at a Bible study. We’re crammed into this little itty bitty place with two bedrooms. We got four kids. But is it evil? Is it my flesh to take this promotion? Because I don’t know. I mean, does God want me to have influence at my job and have a promotion?
And I’m like, bro, there’s certain things you don’t need to pray about. Your family’s hurting because you’re crammed into into this freaking small apartment, take the promotion and honor your family, right?
And begin, this is seeped into almost every denominational camp has this very low view of the material world of the physical world, forgetting that Jesus comes into the material world in material form as a baby.
I have a four week old, a four week old. She can’t do anything. She just lays there, right? She just lays there. We got to move her. We got to, she got to clean her. Jesus comes as a human, as a baby, and has to be cared for a minute before he could do anything. in the material physical world,
and so many Christians are caught up in this idea of the material physical world that escalates to this persecution complex. Everyone’s out to get me. I’m A Christian victim. The world’s all bad. It’s all evil. What’s the point of honoring God with my time, talent and treasure? What’s the point of taking care of my body? And then it literally just becomes fatalism. Like, well, what’s the point? It’s just all going to hell. It doesn’t make any sense.
And I think this is a vast heresy that is, I mean, every camp, whether you’re Pentecostal, Calvinistic, whatever, has this very low view of the physical material world, has this very low view of the Imago Dean people, has this very low view of our time, talent, and treasure on this side of eternity.
And it’s very frustrating because I deal with it all the time. So I want to hear your thoughts on some of this. And am I seeing the connection from Calvin to Augustine to Gnosticism? Do I see that connection? Is it as connected as I’m making it out to be? What are your thoughts, Doctor?
Leighton Flowers
I mean, there are some aspects of what you’re talking about that I would definitely see as some connection points. I call it worm theology, where no matter what is said in the Bible about us being created in the image of God and all the good things that God says about his creation and it being good, that some people will overemphasize the evil of man and how unworthy and our worthlessness of man.
And there’s a balance. There’s always a biblical balance between the extremes. You’ve got the extreme on the one side is just saying we’re all really good people and nobody’s really bad. And everybody’s basically good. You got that side, which a lot of the world is more in that camp.
You got the other side, the worm theology guys that we’re absolutely viper and diapers. We’re just horrible and nothing good whatsoever. we’re just worthless, all these kinds of things.
And I think that the balance is in the middle of those two things, where we obviously have worth in Christ and that we are created in his image and we are image bearers of the divine. Therefore, God doesn’t make junk. We don’t want to criticize that which God has created because it’s his.
Now, we can’t also underemphasize the impact of sin and corruption in this world. And sometimes we’re accused of doing that, but that’s usually by people who haven’t heard us out and really understood what we’re saying.
Because like I said from the very beginning of this interview with you, we’re in bondage to sin. We’re in enmity with God. We have horrible corruption, but the gospel is sufficient. That’s the good news.
All of the bad news is just as bad on our view as it is on Calvinism. It’s just that we believe that the gospel is sufficient for those who are in that condition.
And whereas the Calvinist says the gospel is not sufficient for the world, that it has to, really what’s sufficient is irresistible grace, this effectual regeneration that is only for some people and not for everyone. And that’s not good news as far as I can tell. That doesn’t seem like very good news.
It’s just It’s just, hey, if you won the divine lottery, so to speak, and I know that sounds pejorative and that’s a bad way to put it, but it’s kind of what it boils down to. It’s like, we don’t know why God picked some people and not others. He just, he picked some people and not others. And if you happen to be one of the blessed ones that got picked, then he’s going to grace you with this miracle of faith to cause you to believe.
I just don’t see this as the tenor of scripture. Instead, what I see within scripture is the good news is yes, we’re all fallen, we’re broken, we’re sinful, we’re depraved, we’ve gone our own ways.
And therefore, what is our only hope? Our only hope is to turn to the Lord so as to be saved. And he has provided a way of salvation for every man, woman, boy, and girl that no one perishes for lack of atonement. No one perishes because they’re rejected by their God. Anyone and everyone can be saved. And that’s what we want to try to highlight.
The book excerpt I mentioned by two Calvinist professors that acknowledges a difference between Augustine’s monergistic doctrine of grace and the tendencies of the Apostolic Fathers will follow these quotes.
BTW, other Calvinists agree with professors Peterson and Williams, which is to say they agree that Augustine introduced something new into the church previously not found in the early Fathers. [RPT and other will add: actually, it existed, but in Gnosticism.]
Herman Bavinck:
- In the early church, at a time when it had to contend with pagan fatalism and gnostic naturalism, its representatives focused exclusively on the moral nature, freedom, and responsibility of humans and could not do justice, therefore, to the teaching of Scripture concerning the counsel of God. Though humans had been more or less corrupted by sin, they remained free and were able to accept the proffered grace of God. The church’s teaching did not include a doctrine of absolute predestination and irresistible grace.
Loraine Boettner:
- “It may occasion some surprise to discover that the doctrine of Predestination was not made a matter of special study until near the end of the fourth century….They of course taught that salvation was through Christ; yet they assumed that man had full power to accept or reject the gospel. Some of their writings contain passages in which the sovereignty of God is recognized; yet along side of those are others which teach the absolute freedom of the human will. Since they could not reconcile the two they would have denied the doctrine of Predestination… They taught a kind of synergism in which there was a co-operation between grace and free … this cardinal truth of Christianity was first clearly seen by Augustine…“
Robert Peterson and Michael Williams of Covenant Theological Seminary:
- “The Semi-Pelagians were convinced that Augustine’s monergistic emphasis upon salvation by grace alone represented a significant departure from the traditional teaching of the church. And a survey of the thought of the apostolic father’s shows that the argument is valid… In comparison to Augustine’s monergistic doctrine of grace, the teachings of the apostolic fathers tended toward a synergistic view of redemption” (36).
Louis Berkhof [in The History of Christian Doctrines]:
- “Their representations are naturally rather indefinite, imperfect, and incomplete, and sometimes even erroneous and self-contradictory. Says Kahnis: “It stands as an assured fact, a fact knowing no exceptions, and acknowledged by all well versed in the matter, that all of the pre-Augustinian Fathers taught that in the appropriation of salvation there is a co-working of freedom and grace.”
Berkhof goes on to admit that “they do not hold to an entire corruption of the human will, and consequently adhere to the synergistic theory of regeneration…” (130).
Alister E. McGrath, Historical Theology: An Introduction to the History of Christian Thought (Malden, MA: Wiley & Sons LTD, 2013), 34.
- One aspect of Augustine’s understanding of grace needs further comment. As human beings were incapable of saving themselves, and as God gave his gift of grace to some (but not all), it followed that God had “preselected” those who would be saved. Developing hints of this idea to be found in the New Testament, Augustine developed a doctrine of predestination. The term “predestination” refers to God’s original or eternal decision to save some, and not others. It was this aspect of Augustine’s thought which many of his contemporaries, not to mention his successors, found unacceptable. It need hardly be said that there is no direct equivalent in Pelagius’s thought.
Here is that excerpt…
Robert A. Peterson and Michael D. Williams, Why I Am Not an Arminian (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2004), 35–41.
Semi-Pelagianism and the Synod of Orange
Although Pelagius was condemned by the bishop of Rome in 417 and then after his death by the Council of Ephesus in 431, he certainly did not set out to be a heretic. Bernhard Lohse makes the point that Pelagius’s intent was “to elevate the difficult ascetic demands which were then permeating monasticism to a position of a fundamental principle for all Christians.” While Pelagius’s inordinately low view of sin and grace might—and should—strike us as scandalous and indeed heretical, Lohse does not exaggerate when he notes that “there is hardly an opinion” in Pelagius’s teaching on sin and grace “for which some confirmation could not be found among the earlier fathers of the church.” Indeed, one could easily argue that it was Augustine, not Pelagius, who was out of step with the tradition of the church.
The generation after Augustine and Pelagius would give birth to the Semi-Pelagian movement. Monks like John Cassian and Vincent of Lérins agreed with Augustine regarding the seriousness of sin, yet they objected to his ideas of the total and disabling bondage of the will to sin, the irresistible power of grace and predestination as predicated upon a particular election. In 434 Vincent of Lérins wrote the Commonitory, which contained both a polemic against Augustine’s doctrine of grace as a dangerous innovation and a description of the Catholic principle of tradition that would become normative for the church. The Augustinian understanding of sin and grace, said Vincent, is contrary to the ancient tradition of the church, “that faith which has been believed everywhere, always, by all. For that is truly and in the strictest sense ‘Catholic,’ which, as the name itself and the reason of the thing declare, comprehends all universality.”[1]
The Semi-Pelagians were convinced that Augustine’s monergistic emphasis upon salvation by grace alone represented a significant departure from the traditional teaching of the church. And a survey of the thought of the apostolic fathers shows that the argument is valid.
While affirming the necessity of grace for salvation, early Christian theological reflection tended to be highly moralistic and even legalistic, emphasizing a view of the Christian life that focused more on conduct—often expressed as rigorous prescription—rather than grace, faith or forgiveness. In comparison to Augustine’s monergistic doctrine of grace, the teachings of the apostolic fathers tended toward a synergistic view of redemption. For them, salvation is the result of a working together of divine grace and human agency. Human beings are fallen such that they need divine help, but that help cooperates with our own striving toward God and the moral life. The synergism in pre-Augustinian thought held that divine grace is necessary for salvation but that our salvation is as much the product of the exercise of human free will and obedience to the law of God as of grace.
The Semi-Pelagian monastics affirmed the free will and ability of human beings. Yet they were far removed from the humanistic monergism of Pelagius. The Semi-Pelagians insisted that human beings cannot be saved apart from the supernatural assisting grace of God. But the fallen human will is not held in bondage to sin; it is not completely disabled by sinful corruption. Human beings can, unaided by grace, take the first step toward salvation. John Cassian held that human nature is weakened but not disabled by sin; we are fallen but able, fallen enough that we need help, but not so fallen that we cannot contribute to our own recovery. Cassian wrote, “And when He [God] sees in us some beginnings of a good will, He at once enlightens it and strengthens it and urges it on towards salvation, increasing that which He Himself implanted or which He sees to have arisen from our own efforts.”[2] In Semi-Pelagian synergism, human beings are the initiators of faith. Grace is responsive to our search for God and the good. God helps those who help themselves.
Throughout the fifth and early sixth centuries, the Augustinians and the Semi-Pelagians continued their debate, until the bishops met in 529 at the Synod of Orange to seek a resolution of the controversy. Even a century after his death, Augustine’s influence was so great that the synod sought to expunge any lingering strands of Pelagianism within the church. This does not mean, however, that the bishops affirmed Augustine’s teaching in its entirety. Somewhat inconsistently, they affirmed the doctrine of original sin and Augustine’s teaching on the bondage of the will, but they failed to affirm the doctrine of predestination. They argued that the freedom of the will has been destroyed by sin such that the only thing inherent in fallen humankind is “untruth and sin.”[3] Faith is not initiated by human beings and then completed by divine grace so that God’s work is dependent upon people. Rather, faith begins in the illuminating work and infused presence of the Holy Spirit, which “precedes” and “enables” human beings’ response to grace.[4] Much of the language of the Canons of the Council of Orange was taken directly from the works of Augustine. For example, using a citation from Augustine himself, the canons rejected the Pelagian charge that Augustine’s teaching was deterministic: “Men do their own will and not the will of God when they do what displeases him; but when they follow their own will and comply with the will of God, however willingly they do so, yet it is his will by which what they will is both prepared and instructed.”[5]
Any goodness or righteousness that humankind displays is the result of God’s grace working in them. But this should not be taken as evidence that the Synod of Orange affirmed Augustine’s gracious monergism. The synod softened the Augustinian teaching into a gracious synergism. First, as stated above, the synod did not endorse predestination. The canons explicitly reject predestination to damnation,[6] but they are completely silent concerning predestination to redemption. Second, while the synod insisted that the initiation of faith begins with the work of grace, it suggested that human agency cooperates with the divine in order to produce redemption. This synergism is subtly but crucially different from that of the Semi-Pelagians. While both see redemption as the product of both divine grace and human effort, the Semi-Pelagians depict redemption as beginning with human agency. The Semi-Augustinian synergism of Orange reversed the sequence. Hence, a person’s contribution to salvation is faithful response to the grace of God. Grace is prevenient here in that it precedes human response.
Nevertheless, there is a problem with the conclusions of the synod. If faith is a gift of God in that the seeds of faith are found in a grace that precedes the actual expression of faith in the responsive heart, and if grace must be given to people enabling them to respond (for a person cannot take the first step toward God), how does one account for the fact that not all respond in faith to the gospel? It seems that the bishops at Orange sought to escape having to address this question.
While the synod held that divine grace is necessary unto faith, its refusal to affirm the particularism of Augustine’s doctrine of predestination seems to be an implicit affirmation of universal preceding grace. That is, universal repairing and enabling grace is given to all, but each person must obediently respond to the illuminating work of the Holy Spirit in order to be saved.
Where Do Calvinism and Arminianism Fit?
The Calvinist understanding of the doctrines of sin and redemption closely conforms to Augustine’s gracious monergism. Redemption is utterly the work of grace. Does the antipathy between Calvinism and Arminianism suggest that Pelagius, the arch-opposite of Augustine, is the proper ancestor of Arminianism? Calvinists have often sought to paint Arminianism in Pelagian colors. Associating your opponent with a position that the historic faith has repeatedly judged heretical can only help one’s cause. However, the allegation that Arminianism is Pelagian is unfortunate and indeed unwarranted. From Jacob Arminius and the “Remonstrant Articles” on, the Arminian tradition has affirmed the corruption of the will by sin and the necessity of grace for redemption. Arminianism is not Pelagian.
If Arminianism cannot be traced back to Pelagius, perhaps the Semi-Pelagianism of John Cassian and Vincent of Lérins is the ancestor of Arminianism. Both Semi-Pelagianism and Arminianism insist upon a synergistic view of redemption. A person’s salvation is the result of two agencies: (1) God’s grace and (2) human faith and obedience. But here again, there are important dissimilarities. The Semi-Pelagians thought of salvation as beginning with human beings. We must first seek God; and his grace is a response to that seeking. The Arminians of the seventeenth century, however, held that the human will has been so corrupted by sin that a person cannot seek grace without the enablement of grace. They therefore affirmed the necessity and priority of grace in redemption. Grace must go before a person’s response to the gospel. This suggests that Arminianism is closer to Semi-Augustinianism than it is to Semi-Pelagianism or Pelagianism. The word Pelagian as a description of Arminians—or Roman Catholics for that matter—does them an injustice because it associates them with a theological tradition that is truly heretical in that Pelagius trivialized grace, and in so doing trivialized the work of Christ. Both the Semi-Augustinians of the fifth and sixth centuries and the Arminians of the seventeenth century sought understandings of sin and redemption that were qualifications of Augustinianism. Semi-Augustinianism was not a Pelagianism that had moved toward Augustine but rather a softening of Augustinianism that sought to modify or excise elements of Augustine’s teaching that were found offensive (particularist election and a doctrine of divine agency that seemed to render human agency irrelevant). As Arminianism began as a reaction to the Augustinian commitments of the Reformed churches and reacted negatively to much the same issues as had the Semi-Augustinians, Arminianism is properly understood as Semi-Augustinianism.
Yet we should appreciate the reality that the four positions sketched here as coming out of the Augustinian-Pelagian controversy of the fifth century do not exhaust the list of possible ways that sin and redemption can be understood or the ways in which divine agency can be thought of as relating to human action and decision making. Yes, Augustinianism (salvation is all of God’s grace) and Pelagianism (salvation is the product of human achievement) do seem to mark the polar extremes. But what lies between might be more of a continuum than a few discrete points. Between the two monergistic poles is the admixture, the synergism of dual agency in redemption. The realization of a continuum of beliefs may help us understand something of the diversity of belief within a tradition.
In 529 the Synod of Orange declared Semi-Pelagianism a heresy and declared a form of Augustinianism to be the official teaching of the Roman Church. Yet the emphasis upon the cooperation of human agency in redemption left a space for Semi-Pelagian ideas to flourish in popular belief. Even though the synod did not affirm a doctrine of meritorious works and insisted that God’s grace is the sole efficient cause of salvation, a Semi-Pelagian—and often an outright Pelagian—view of human agency would dominate in common folk belief. Indeed, the customs and structures that arose within the medieval Roman Church would lean toward a view of Christianity as a religion of performance, merit and obligatory rite. Something quite similar seems to exist within the Arminian tradition. Popular Arminian writing often tends to be so dismissive of anything that might qualify “libertarian free will” that it gives itself over to a moralist and meritorious doctrine of redemption. Redemption is offered by God, but we must earn it. This is, of course, the very danger that the Calvinist sees in all synergistic understandings of redemption.
But we Calvinists have our own version of popular or folk belief as well. If Arminian popular belief tends toward the overestimation of human ability and the redemptive contribution of human achievement, Calvinist popular belief often seems to overemphasize its redemptive monergism. We seek to out-Augustine Augustine. If a little monergism is good, more is better. As a result, we make God the sole cause of all things, sin as well as grace, unbelief as well as belief. And human beings do become mere pawns or actors walking through the scenery of their lives.
The Augustine-Pelagius controversy is our first monumental historical event. This controversy sets the stage for the following two chapters, which focus on issues keenly debated by Augustine and Pelagius and still disputed today: predestination and the perseverance of the saints.
NOTES
[1] Vincent of Lérins Commonitory for the Antiquity and Universality of the Catholic Faith Against the Profane Novelties of All Heresies 2.6.
[2] Quoted in Olson, Story of Christian Theology, p. 283.
[3] Canons of the Council of Orange, para. 1-2, 13, 22.
[4] Ibid., para. 3-7, 18.
[5] Ibid., para. 23.
[6] Ibid., para. 25.