Augustinianism

Augustinianism is the theological system associated with Augustine of Hippo (354-430): the Fall left human nature corrupted and the will unable to turn to God apart from an inward, sovereign, and effectual work of grace. Augustine developed this system against Pelagius, who denied original sin and held that man retains an unaided power to obey God. Augustinianism, as opposed to Pelagianism, names the doctrine “which the whole world of Evangelical Christians hold in common”; Augustinianism as opposed to the later, milder semi-Pelagianism is the system more specifically known as Calvinism.¹

Confessional Definition

The 1689 Second London Baptist Confession does not use the term “Augustinianism,” a label from later church history rather than the confession’s own vocabulary, but its chapter on God’s decree states the same unconditional, grace-grounded election Augustine set against Pelagius: God’s choice of the elect rests on nothing “in the creature as a condition or cause moving him thereunto,” and does not depend on having “foreseen [anything] as future, or as that which would come to pass upon such conditions,” but solely on his “eternal and immutable purpose, and the secret counsel and good pleasure of his will.”² Its chapters on the Fall, free will, and effectual calling draw out the same substance at greater length; see Original sin, Total depravity, and Monergism for those chapters quoted in full.

Historical Development

The controversy with Pelagius

Augustine, bishop of Hippo from 395 to 430, and Pelagius, a British monk assisted by his disciples Coelestius and Julian of Eclanum, set out the two systems’ contrasting positions in controversies during the early fifth century.³ G. F. Wiggers’ four-point summary, quoted at length by A. A. Hodge, states the contrast on each of the controversy’s main questions:

On original sin, Augustinianism held that “by the sin of Adam, in whom all men together sinned, sin and all the other positive punishments of Adam’s sin came into the world,” so that “every man brings into the world with him a nature already so corrupt, that it can do nothing but sin,” propagated “by concupiscence.” Pelagianism held that “by his transgression, Adam injured only himself, not his posterity,” so that “every man is born in precisely the same condition in which Adam was created,” and “there is therefore no original sin.”⁴

On free will, Augustinianism held that “by Adam’s transgression the freedom of the human will has been entirely lost,” so that “in his present corrupt state man can will and do only evil.” Pelagianism held that “man’s will is free,” with “the power to will and to do good as well as the opposite,” so that “it depends upon himself whether he be good or evil.”⁴

On grace, Augustinianism held that any good man wills or does “is merely the work of grace,” “an inward, secret, and wonderful operation of God,” both “preceding” (bringing a man to faith) and “co-operating” (needed “for the performance of every individual good act”), and that “as man can do nothing without grace, so he can do nothing against it,” since “it is irresistible.” Pelagianism held that man has “the capacity of willing and doing good without God’s special aid,” and that while God’s law, Christ’s example, and even grace itself make obedience easier, “man can resist it.”⁵

On predestination and redemption, Augustinianism held that “from eternity, God made a free and unconditional decree to save” his elect “from the mass that was corrupted and subjected to damnation,” giving them “the requisite means” for salvation, while “on the rest… the merited ruin falls,” and that “Christ came into the world and died for the elect only.” Pelagianism held that “God’s decree of election and reprobation is founded on prescience”: God predestines to salvation those he foresaw would keep his commands, and Christ’s redemption is general, extending by instruction and example to all.⁶

Pelagius’s positions were condemned by the councils held at Carthage in 407 and 416, by the Council of Milevum in Numidia in 416, by Popes Innocent and Zosimus, and by the Ecumenical Council of Ephesus in 431.⁷

Semi-Pelagianism and the Synod of Orange

While the Pelagian controversy was at its height, John Cassian, who had settled at Marseilles, began teaching a scheme occupying a middle position between Augustine and Pelagius; his followers, later called semi-Pelagians, found their most distinguished advocate in Faustus, bishop of Riez from 427 to 480.⁸ Bavinck notes that Augustine faced opposition on this point even from within the monastic tradition, including Cassian and Vincent of Lérins, whose Commonitorium “registers his opposition to a rigorous Augustinianism.”⁹ Semi-Pelagianism spread widely through the Western church until the Synods of Orange and Valence condemned it in 529.¹ Bavinck describes the verdict as a mixed one: Orange “took some decisions favoring Augustine but did not prevent the spread of semi-Pelagian ideas. It accepted prevenient grace but did not decisively adopt irresistible grace and particular predestination.”⁹ Pelagianism and semi-Pelagianism alike stood condemned; Bavinck states that “Augustine’s viewpoint became the dogma of the church and remains the teaching of all orthodox, evangelical Christianity.”¹⁰

From the Middle Ages to the Reformation

Augustinianism, understood narrowly as opposed to semi-Pelagianism, “properly designates that system commonly called Calvinism,” while “Cassianism would be the proper historical designation of that Middle or Semipelagian Scheme now commonly styled Arminianism.”¹ Among the medieval Schoolmen, Thomas Aquinas advocated the Augustinian system and John Duns Scotus the semi-Pelagian one, a division continued by the Dominicans and Thomists on one side and the Franciscans and Scotists on the other.¹¹ The Council of Trent (1546) produced canons that A. A. Hodge, citing William Cunningham, describes as “often Augustinian in form” in their general statements but “uniformly Semipelagian” in their more detailed explanations, so that both parties in Rome afterward claimed Trent’s sanction.¹² Cornelius Jansen’s 1638 work Augustinus, defending Augustine’s system from within the Roman church, was condemned by successive papal bulls; his followers, the Jansenists, included Blaise Pascal among their number.¹²

Martin Luther, “a monk of the order of Augustine, and an earnest disciple of that father, taught a system of faith agreeing in spirit and in all essential points with that afterwards more systematically developed by Calvin.”¹³ The Protestant Reformation understood itself, through Luther and Calvin, as a recovery of the Augustinian doctrines of grace against the semi-Pelagianism that had come to prevail in the medieval church, and it is this recovered system, formalized in the Reformed confessions, that the 2LBCF’s chapters on the Fall, free will, and effectual calling carry forward.

Opposing Views

Pelagianism, condemned as heresy by the wider church rather than merely disputed within it, denies both original sin and the necessity of grace; see Pelagianism for the position stated in its own terms. Philip Schaff contrasts the two systems at their root: “The soul of the Pelagian system is human freedom; the soul of the Augustinian is divine grace. Pelagius starts from the natural man… Augustine despairs of the moral sufficiency of man.”¹⁴

Semi-Pelagianism, the milder middle position Cassian and Faustus of Riez taught, affirmed some corruption from the Fall and grace’s priority in the general sense of prevenient aid, while denying that grace is irresistible or that election is unconditional; see Council of Orange for its condemnation in 529 and its afterlife in Rome’s later teaching on prevenient grace. A. A. Hodge identifies the position revived under Arminius in the seventeenth century as, in substance, the same semi-Pelagian scheme under a new name; see Arminianism for that position stated fairly on its own terms.

Objections and Responses

Augustinianism teaches that only a few people are saved. Wiggers’ own formulation of the Augustinian position on predestination speaks of God’s decree “to save a few… from the mass that was corrupted,” a phrase that can read as though the doctrine specifies how large the number of the elect is. A. A. Hodge appends a direct corrective to this exact wording: “The doctrine of Augustine does not by any means involve the conclusion that the elect are ‘few’ or ‘a small number.’”¹⁵ Unconditional election concerns the ground on which God chooses, not a claim about what proportion of humanity he chooses.

Related Doctrines

References

Archibald Alexander Hodge, Outlines of Theology (New York: Robert Carter and Brothers, 1879), 99. ↩ ↩² ↩³
The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1689), chap. 3, “Of God’s Decree,” para. 2, text as transcribed by the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (the1689confession.com and other confession-text sites were unreachable from this session). ↩
Hodge, Outlines of Theology, 96. ↩
Hodge, Outlines of Theology, 97, quoting G. F. Wiggers, Historical Presentation of Augustinianism and Pelagianism, trans. Ralph Emerson, 268-270. ↩ ↩²
Hodge, Outlines of Theology, 97-98, quoting Wiggers, Historical Presentation of Augustinianism and Pelagianism, 268-270. ↩
Hodge, Outlines of Theology, 98, quoting Wiggers, Historical Presentation of Augustinianism and Pelagianism, 268-270. ↩
Hodge, Outlines of Theology, 96-97. ↩
Hodge, Outlines of Theology, 98-99. ↩
Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Abridged in One Volume, ed. John Bolt (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), chap. 2, “The History and Literature of Dogmatic Theology.” ↩ ↩²
Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, chap. 17, “The Order of Salvation.” ↩
Hodge, Outlines of Theology, 99-100. ↩
Hodge, Outlines of Theology, 100. ↩ ↩²
Hodge, Outlines of Theology, 100-101. ↩
Philip Schaff, quoted in Matthew Michael Barrett, “Monergism in the Calvinist Tradition,” in “Reclaiming Monergism: The Case for Sovereign Grace in Effectual Calling and Regeneration” (PhD diss., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2011), 87. ↩
Hodge, Outlines of Theology, 98n. ↩