Augustine and Southern Baptists Part 3B: Infralapsarian Humanity by Dr. Jim Gifford

Dr. Jim Gifford

 

A further difficulty in Augustine's thinking has been aptly pinpointed by John Rist. He writes, "The problem, as Augustine would rephrase it, is not, 'Why does God not save everyone?'; but 'Why does God save anyone?'; for we are all justly condemned. The problem would not be God's justice, but God's mercy which would seem unjust, or at least at the expense of justice".¹⁷

Ogliari continues, 

We must admit that, even though Augustine tried to reduce the brutality of a mechanical and infallible non-predestination of the non-elect, such mitigation was in fact posited only on a hypothetical level, and it was little more than a theoretical exercise. To taste the real extent of Augustine's conviction, and its [unendurable sharpness], it suffices to read the very sharp (not to say shocking) remark in which he affirms that it is of no importance to God whether the mass of the damned is conspicuous or not. He would not really care about the vastness of the numbers involved, since their reprobation and loss are justly deserved.¹⁸

With Ogliari, such a view of justice obscures or even obliterates the idea that God is love (1 John 4:8). Augustine's answer is that God's mercy and justice, respectively, account for the elect and reprobate.¹⁹ He continues,

But as to the actual and particular application of this principle, viz. why God elects some people and not others, Augustine himself believes there is no answer, and would take refuge behind God's inscrutable designs. It really surprises us that Augustine did not realize how the 'just' punishment deserved by the sinners could not be contemplated without at the same time encroaching upon the meaning of God's love, and of God himself. In point of fact, predestination is not merely an anthropo-logical but also a theo-logical problem, and it seems to us that a geometrical justice, bereft of the light and power of love, ultimately impairs the very image of the Christian God, introducing (anthropomorphically speaking) elements such as indifference or even revenge in a God who is essentially a God of love.²⁰ 

Unfortunately, it is clear that Augustine's speculations about human nature and the inevitability of evil led him far from the received tradition of 350+ years of Christianity, if not heart of God as well. In the Enchiridion, Augustine writes,

For if it were not a good that evil should exist, its existence would not be permitted by the omnipotent Good, who without doubt can as easily refuse to permit what He does not wish, as bring about what He does wish.…For He is not truly called Almighty if He cannot do whatsoever He pleases, or if the power of His almighty will is hindered by the will of any creature whatsoever.²¹

He states that evil's existence is good based on divine omnipoetence. This is nothing short of divine determinism. Moreover, Augustine claims that in such areas, humans cannot understand divine justice.²² Such a position can come under criticism because if human and divine ideas of justice are incompatible, what about other virtues such as "love, mercy, humility, and chastity?" Is God's possession of these virtues completely unlike ours as well?²³ Rist continues his criticism by showing how Augustine must retreat to the image of the clay and the potter from Romans 9 (as well as Romans 11:33) to both answer the objections of Julian and ease the fears of Simplician. Rist states the difficulty with clarity,

But the literalism of such a reply [potter and clay] shows up its underlying weakness: God is supposed to evaluate his own created image—for whom he offered his Son—in the same way as a potter a clay pot. Yet the literalism is the product of no simple mindlessness or philistinism; it depends on an important and fundamental disharmony between two visions of the relationship between God and man, which Augustine—along with many other religious thinkers—has failed to overcome. On the one hand God has made man from dust; hence man is as nothing compared with God. On the other, God has made man into his image, and thereby freely bestowed on him a great value. The image of the pot and its maker is appropriate to the first portrait—compared to God you are a sheep (Sermon 26.15)—but inappropriate to the second, whereby even sheep have a certain value, but men much more.²⁴

Ogliari adds that Augustine "suggests that in God there is 'a certain hidden equity' or a 'most hidden equity' that cannot be understood by any human standard of measurement (To Simplician 1.2.16)."²⁵ He continues,

The shift that occurs in this stage of Augustine's thought is of paramount importance: it is the hidden equity on God's part which is now brought into the limelight and which replaces the earlier appeal to the 'most hidden merits of the souls.' In other words, the difference is no longer about those who believe (Jacob) and those who do not (Esau), but about the way God relates to human beings, calling them congruenter or not, choosing them as his elect, or not. The difference lies now entirely in God himself.²⁶ 

Unfortunately, Augustine's conception of humanity fallen and sinful clashes with the account of creation and leads to a misconception of both God and humanity. Creation, and even more so the new creation in Christ, affirms the continuity between God and his creation, that is, it sees creation and re-creation as the outworking of the purpose of God in harmony with himself. Augustine, committed as he was to the inherent evil of humanity rooted in an even more deeply-held dualism between good (God) and evil (humanity), can only operate from a paradigm of discontinuity between God and the created order and can never fully harmonize the fullness of God's loving character with the events he witnessed and attempted to make sense of.

It is Augustine's desire to explain what he observed that ultimately led him to embrace what we would call divine determinism. Peter Thuesen clearly shows another of the bishop's observations thus, "Like other ancients, he lacked the resources of modern science for explaining the causes of things he observed in the world. It was therefore plausible to him that birth defects were the wages of an inherited sin. It also seemed obvious to him that humanity was a massa perditionis (mass of perdition)—a universally fallen multitude. How else could one explain the constant turmoil and sorrow of human existence?"²⁷ It is this limited point of view coupled with a supreme overconfidence in explanatory power that results in such hasty conclusions.

Not only, as we have seen above, does Augustine rely on the inevitability of personal evil, but he also sees humanity as intrinsically evil because of his doctrine of original sin. Therefore he sets up a sort of dualism reminiscent of Manichaeism: an inherently good God juxtaposed with an inherently evil humanity.²⁸ This dualism extends to two classifications of humanity as well because of the doctrine of unconditional election (the elect and the reprobate, to use later terminology). Augustine was roundly criticized by the fifth-century monks in Gaul over this dualistic approach to anthropology. Ogliari writes,

According to the [monks], another feature of Augustine's thought smacking of Manichaeism, was the apparent fatalism lying in the assumption that mankind had been divided into two rival groups, one following God and the other siding with evil. It is most likely that the antithetical and radical dualism of the Manichaean teaching of the two realms of light and darkness, good and evil, exercised an influence on Augustine's doctrines of the two cities/kingdoms, particularly as expounded in De civitate Dei 11. When it comes to the ripest fruit of Augustine's doctrine of grace, viz. his concept of predestination, the [monks] would substantially bring about the same reproach, ready to claim that whereas the Augustine who had defended human freedom before 396 was the "Christian" Augustine, the Augustine who wrote on divine election after that date was the "fatalist" and "Manichaean" Augustine, hiding behind Paul's teaching.²⁹

Such a dualism, Lee argues, makes enslavement to personal evil the key factor in adopting determinism, as he writes,

Since the more deeply one is bonded to evil, the less one is able to control one's destiny, the belief in the inevitability of personal evil would then imply a view that the determination is made by the God who orders the cosmos. Expressed in the language of predestination, this view means that God has the power to elect from the massa damnata those who receive salvation and to leave the rest in damnation.³⁰ 

The received tradition of the church, up to the time of Augustine, never recognized an evil principle operating inherently in humanity. Instead, the tradition of Christianity saw original sin as mortality and the loss of original righteousness. The pre-Augustinian fathers unanimously believed that humanity was basically good, though corrupted and made liable to mortality in the fall. Augustine is the first Christian teacher to so radicalize original sin that humanity becomes a mass of perdition.³¹

Augustine was likewise accused by his critics of being a fatalist. To be sure, Augustine rejected the pagan doctrine of fate, but in reality, he just moved the architect of all that occurs from the stars to the unsearchable will of God. He likewise is the first Christian to articulate a concept of providence that looks like the pagan fate in Christian dress. Ogliari writes, "The deterministic way in which Augustine has depicted God's election and reprobation does allow us to claim that predestination is in fact the concept he has used in place of the old pagan astrological concept of [fate]."³² At the end of the day, the only difference between fate and Augustine's version of theistic determinism is the one pulling the strings—the results are exactly the same.

In the end, Lee has argued that Augustine borrowed the ideas of the "good" and of inevitable personal evil from the Manichees. Ultimately, he rejected his Manichaean roots (though their good and evil dualism remained with him the rest of his life) because he feared God would be too weak—that is, "cruelly weak—to prevent evil.³³ This revolution against any perceived weakness in God also remained with Augustine until his death. Rist writes, "Augustine's continuing fear of God's 'weakness' is part of the explanation of his harsher attitude to the providential governance of the world." While all Christians certainly have believed in an all-powerful God, the Christians in pre-Augustinian times did not over-exalt God's omnipotence in order to overcome a perceived fear of God's weakness. Both of Augustine's first two assumptions, then, are an over-reaction against the Manichaean past and an accommodation to it. He proved unable to overcome the snare of his former heresy even though he repeatedly repudiated it.

 Dr. Gifford is Head of Department of General Studies and professor of theology and church history at  New Life Theological Seminary, Charlotte, NC

 

¹⁷Rist, Augustine, 273.

¹⁸Ogliari, Gratia et Certamen, 372. See also Augustine, Epistle 190, 3.12 (CSEL 57:146).

¹⁹Ibid., 373.

²⁰Ibid. On the speculations on God’s revenge, see Augustine, City of God, 21.12. 

²¹Augustine, Enchiridion, 96. Logos Virtual Library. Accessed 23 Oct 2012. <http://www.logoslibrary.org/augustine/enchiridion/096.html>.

²²See Augustine, To Simplician, 2.2.16 or Augustine Sermon 341.7.9, as shown in Rist, Augustine, 275.

²³Such is the argument Rist, Augustine, 276, makes reflecting the original objection by Julian of Eclanum to Augustine’s refusal to make human justice compatible with the divine.

²⁴Ibid., 277. The Sermon is from Augustine. Italics in original.

²⁵Ogliari, Gratia et Certamen, 316.

²⁶Ibid.

²⁷Thuesen, Predestination, 22.

²⁸See Ogliari, Gratia et Certamen, 388, especially n. 425.

²⁹Ibid.

³⁰Lee, Augustine, Manichaeism, and the Good, 91.

³¹See Ibid., 90 for Lee’s discussion of how Augustine’s mentor, Ambrose, firmly rooted in the received tradition, never arrived at any form of determinism. See also Thomas F. Torrance, “The Goodness and Dignity of Man in the Christian Tradition”

³²Ogliari, Gratia et Certamen, 391.

³³See Rist, Augustine, 262. 

³⁴Ibid.

Below are links to the entire series by Dr. Gifford:

• Coming Series on Saint Augustine and Southern Baptists by Dr. James D. Gifford Jr 
• Augustine and Southern Baptists: an Introduction
• Augustine and Southern Baptists: Augustine and Divine Omnipotence
• Augustine and Southern Baptists: Augustine and Human Nature: Part 3A; Part 3B
• Augustine and Southern Baptists: The Upshot of Augustine's Assumptions: Divine Determinism
• Augustine and Southern Baptists: Augustine's Exegetical and Hermeneutical Method
• Augustine and Southern Baptists: Augustine's Critics and Legacy: Part A; Part B 

 

Comments

[Ken Hamrick]

Jim,

While I don't find anything in particular to address in this installment (at this time), I will say that is seems that you are dismissing much of the substance of the truth due only to the extremes in which it is clothed; and I sense that what you want to replace it with (which you have not yet revealed in any depth) is just as extreme in the opposite direction.

Do you intend only to criticize Augustin and the broad theological framework that followed him, or can we hope for an equally rigorous alternative to be explained and defended?

[Jim G.]

Hi Ken,

I'm a bit puzzled by this comment. You say I am dismissing the "truth." What truth do you believe I am dismissing? I will readily admit I am dismissing original guilt, but I do not believe original guilt to be the "truth." What I believe I have shown is that Augustine's assumptions of the overemphasis on God's sovereignty and infralapsarian humanity are novel for his time. He injected these ideas into the received tradition. I don't think either of these statements are, as you say, "extreme."

I find the sentence "I sense that what you want to replace it with (which you have not yet revealed in any depth) is just as extreme in the opposite direction" to be very presumptuous on your part. All you had to do was ask me if you wanted to know what I thought. Far from being the "opposite extreme," I think that the received tradition on nature and grace that Augustine first embraced then flatly rejected (in favor of, in my opinion, the outworkings of his pagan-based assumptions) is a very good place to start. The Eastern Christian view of original sin is much more faithful to the whole counsel of Scripture, in my opinion, than the Augustinian framework. It is still alive and well in Eastern Orthodoxy today and has been the general view of the church from its very beginnings. Remember, it was Augustine who deviated from this teaching to embrace his own interpretation based on his assumptions.

This series of posts is only about Augustine. Perhaps I can find the time to rigorously construct an alternative, but it might have to wait until the semester is over. In the meanwhile, I think reading some of the critiques of Augustine by John Cassian would be a good start.

Jim G.

[Ken Hamrick]

Jim,

Coming from a position centered between Calvinism and Libertarianism, one of compatibilism/antinomy, I would agree that Augustine went to an unwarranted extreme on some things. But I would also caution that a correction to his extremes is not sufficient reason to reject divine determinism, the moral inability of sinners, or the realistic union of mankind in Adam. In other words, rejecting Augustine's extremes does not mean we should adopt libertarianism.

I don't know if you are a libertarian or not. That's why I used such language as "it seems" and "I sense"--I'm not certain of your views, and so I prodded you in hope that you would share them. If that was presumptuous, I apologize. Of course, you have what you hold to be the truth, just as I hold what I believe to be the truth. But unlike some (not necessarily those here), I am willing to engage in substantive debate to see how the differences hold up in comparison.

One of the areas of disagreement, which you must have anticipated, is that of the role of Providence in the development in the theology of the Church. You seem to assume that differences between Augustine and those before him justify rejecting Augustine's views. But there is a good argument to be made for the fact that God did not intend the theology of the Church to remain forever in the simple state it was in before Augustine (or before Ambrose or Hilary or Cyprian or Tertullian). It is good for the Church to progress in understanding the truth through the development of theology.

In any case, please do not mistake my zeal for vitriol. I appreciate the work you have done on this, and your discussing it here with us.

[Jim G.]

Hi Ken,

I did not mean to suggest you were being vitriolic. I enjoy a good debate, but you could just ask me what I think. I have nothing to hide. Now, not all my thoughts are worked out in full detail yet. They may never be, unless I live to be 250, but I've got some ideas on how a detailed picture would look.

For the record, I do not reject a realistic union of mankind in Adam. I just do not see that union as (for lack of a better word) "active" as Augustine did. Augustine clearly believed that all humans were present in Adam and somehow consented in his sin, thereby bringing upon themselves guilt. Thus, in his view, humans are a mass of perdition. I, on the other hand, believe that I was in some way really present in Adam, but much more passively so, so that his guilt did not spread to me. That is, I was unable to "consent" to his sinful action, though what he did affected me in mortality, death, and the inability to escape inclination to sin. My moral freedom was severely inhibited, but not eradicated altogether. My understanding of and desire for God was darkened, but not extinguished. Had these two things been wiped out in the fall, I would no longer be human, because these properties are fundamentally part of what it means to be human. Augustine , in his later years, believed "human nature" to be a metaphor for something that is not really human anymore. I do not follow his radical path.

What I think will be clear at the end of this series is that beliefs such as divine determinism and moral inability of sinners -- two things I flatly reject as they are usually stated -- are the RESULT of Augustine and his extremes. My next post will show that divine determinism (at least in salvation, what we now call "unconditional election") follows immediately as a "theorem" from Augustine's three key assumptions: exhaustive divine sovereignty, infralapsarian humanity, and the belief that not all are saved. It is because Augustine imported pagan assumptions into the faith that divine determinism took root in some parts of the Christian faith. There were no Christian determinists before him. None. Nada. It was an innovation, and in his era, innovation was anathema. Again, the question we should be asking is why the novelty? I did and this is what I found. Rejecting Augustine's extremes necessitates rejecting the consequences of said extremes - divine determinism, and the Edwardsean moral inability.

As far as providence in doctrinal development, since you are a Protestant, you certainly do not apply this unilaterally yourself, now do you? :0) Theology is always bound to cultural contexts, since it is our reflection upon God. Times changed between Tertullian and the 4th century, and so did reflection. But NEVER does changing times warrant the acceptance of pagan assumptions and the injection of something totally new into the tradition. Progress (as in answering the questions of the day from within the faith) is good. Novelty, especially that with pagan origins, is not.

Jim G.

[Ken Hamrick]

Jim,

Thanks so much for a substantive response (a rare thing now days)! Your second paragraph about being in Adam is suprisingly close to my own view. As for there being no determinists prior to Augustine, I disagree. As Millard Erickson explains, in Christian Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1990), pp. 348-349, the Old Testament writers were themselves determinists:

For the Old Testament writers, it was virtually inconceivable that anything could happen independently of the will and working of God. As evidence of this, consider that common impersonal expressions like “It rained” are not found in the Old Testament. For the Hebrews, rain did not simply happen; God sent the rain. They saw him as the all-powerful determiner of everything that occurs. Not only is he active in everything that occurs, but he has planned it. What is happening now was planned long ago. God himself comments, for example, concerning the destruction wreaked by the king of Assyria: “Have you not heard that I determined it long ago? I planned from days of old what now I bring to pass, that you should make fortified cities crash into heaps of ruins” (Isa. 37:26) Even something as seemingly trivial as the building of reservoirs is described as having been planned long before (Isa. 22:11). There is a sense that every day has been designed and ordered by the Lord…

The Old Testament also enunciates belief in the efficaciousness of God’s plan. What is now coming to pass is doing so because it is (and has always been) part of God’s plan. He will most assuredly bring to actual occurrence everything in his plan. What he has promised, he will do. Isaiah 46:10-11 puts it this way: “I am God, and there is none like me, declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done, saying, ‘My counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all my purpose,’ calling a bird of prey from the east, the man of my counsel from a far country. I have spoken, and I will bring it to pass; I have purposed, and I will do it”…

It is particularly in the wisdom literature and the prophets that the idea of an all-inclusive divine purpose is most prominent. God has from the beginning, from all eternity, had an inclusive plan encompassing the whole of reality and extending even to the minor details of life. “The LORD has made everything for its purpose, even the wicked for the day of trouble” (Prov. 16:4; cf. 3:19-20; Job 38, especially v. 4; Isa. 40:12; Jer. 10:12-13). Even what is ordinarily thought of as an occurrence of chance, such as the casting of lots, is represented as the Lord’s doing (Prov. 16:33). Nothing can deter or frustrate the accomplishment of his purpose. Proverbs 19:21 says, “Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the LORD that will be established” (cf. 21:30-31; Jer. 10:23-24)…

Anyway, I look forward to reading more of your work! Thanks.

[Jim G.]

Hi Ken,

Of course, you do realize that the good Dr. Erickson is a determinist himself.

I would take serious exception to his assertion that "it is virtually inconceivable that anything could happen independently of the will and working of God." The OT is much more complex than Erickson's reductionistic statement makes it out to be. Just look at the text you quoted. Does Erickson cite any narrative texts from the OT, you know, the ones that say so-and-so displeased the LORD? Is Erickson following the proper hermeneutical method for dealing with proverbs as life maxims rather than didactic truth? Is he taking into account the intended effect of figurative language used in the prophets? Does he give a fair treatment to texts such as Jer 19:5 or 32:35 that, taken at Erickson's face-value approach, flatly contradict his assertion? No on all counts.

Anyone can isolate a few texts and cause them to be the controlling ones through which the rest of Scripture is read. When one surveys the entirety of the OT, i do not think a deterministic view of providence is warranted. Moreover, all Christians read the OT through the lens of Christ and the NT. I think determinism is even less warranted there -- especially in the life and person of Christ. That was the subject of my recent ETS paper. So, to answer your response, Augustine is still the originator of what we now call Christian determinism.

Jim G.

[Adam Harwood]

Dr. Gifford,

Your work on this topic is top shelf.

I was unaware of Gratia et Certamen. Fantastic resource.

Blessings, brother.

In Him,
Adam

[Jim G.]

Thanks for the encouraging words, Adam. Call me Jim. :0)

Gratia et Certamen (Grace and Struggle) is the definitive work on the so-called Semi-Pelagian controversy. It is a fantastic read that is meticulously documented. The only drawback is that it costs about $100. That is too much money for a book at this stage in my life. It incorporates so much from Augustine and every major secondary source on nature and grace.

Jim G.

[Lydia]

"In fact, if anything, hatred seems to be an effect not a cause!"

Thank you. Interesting that I have been having this discussion with some others concerning, "cause and effect" that seems to be ignored in so much of the determinist God paradigm when teaching scripture.

[Lydia]

Oops, I put the above comment in the wrong thread. I was responding to Peter's comment about Joseph's brothers on the last thread.

[Malcolm Yarnell]

Thank you very much, Dr Gifford, for the stimulating discussions of Augustine. It is good to see the lights turned on doctrinal development and devolution. Enjoyed the unvitriolic discussion, too.