On Grace and Free Will

Publisher Marketing: Augustine of Hippo (November 13, 354 - August 28, 430), also known as St. Augustine, was Bishop of Hippo Regius. He was a Latin-speaking philosopher and theologian who lived in the Roman Africa Province. His writings were very influential in the development of Western Christianity. According to his contemporary, Jerome, Augustine "established anew the ancient Faith" In his early years he was heavily influenced by Manichaeism and afterward by the Neo-Platonism of Plotinus. After his conversion to Christianity and baptism (AD 387), Augustine developed his own approach to philosophy and theology, accommodating a variety of methods and different perspectives. He believed that the grace of Christ was indispensable to human freedom, and he framed the concepts of original sin and just war. When the Western Roman Empire was starting to disintegrate, Augustine developed the concept of the Church as a spiritual City of God (in a book of the same name), distinct from the material Earthly City. His thought profoundly influenced the medieval worldview. Augustine's City of God was closely identified with the church, the community that worshipped God. In the Catholic Church and the Anglican Communion, he is a saint and pre-eminent Doctor of the Church, and the patron of the Augustinian religious order; his memorial is celebrated 28 August, the day of his death. He is the patron saint of brewers, printers, theologians, the alleviation of sore eyes, and a number of cities and dioceses. Many Protestants, especially Calvinists, consider him to be one of the theological fathers of Reformation due to his teaching on salvation and divine grace. In the Eastern Orthodox Church he is blessed, and his feast day is celebrated on 15 June. Among the Orthodox, he is called "Blessed Augustine," or "St. Augustine the Blessed." On Grace and Free Will, Augustine's doctrine about the liberum arbitrium or free will and its inability to respond to the will of God without divine grace, is interpreted (mistakenely according to Roman Catholics) in terms of Predestination: grace is irresistible, results in conversion, and leads to perseverance. Contributor Bio:  St Augustine Aurelius Augustinus (354-430), better known as Saint Augustine, was born to poor parents in the small town of Tagaste in Numidia, North Africa, A. D. His father, Patricius, a pagan who lived somewhat of a loose life, was converted to Christianity before his death; his mother Monnica is one of the most revered women in the history of the Christian church on account of her personal piety and influence on her son. Augustine was educated at the University of Carthage and, according to his own account, belonged to a group of rowdy friends and joined in their intemperate living. While there, he entered into a fourteen-year relationship with a young woman who became the mother of his son, Adeodatus. He also joined the heretical sect of the Manicheans, who professed to have received from their founder a higher form of truth than was taught by Christ. At the close of his university career, which had been brilliant and full of literary accomplishments despite distractions, Augustine returned to Tagaste. There and later in Carthage and Rome, he taught rhetoric, training young lawyers in the art of debate. By the age of twenty-seven, Augustine had begun doubting the validity of the Manichean faith, and soon thereafter he was converted. Augustine's conversion, one of the and best known in church history, happened after he repeatedly heard a voice say "Take up and read." Augustine, alone in a garden, interpreted the voice as a command from God and instantly picked up the Scriptures. The first passage he came across, Romans 13:13-14, profoundly affected him, and he acknowledged Christ as the only way to salvation. Augustine was baptized the following year, gave up his teaching profession, and became an ascetic--studying the foundations of faith, writing (chiefly against his former sect), and conversing with a group of disciples, first at Rome and then in his native town. During a visit to Hippo, a town not far from Tagaste, Augustine was encouraged to enter the priesthood and did so. In 395 he became Bishop of Hippo, an office he filled for the remaining thirty-five years of his life. Though he took a leading part in the activities of the African Church through all this time and gradually became one of the most distinguished ecclesiastical figures in the Roman Empire, the care of his diocese and the writing of his books formed his chief occupations. He continued to lead a life of extreme simplicity and self-denial and, in his pastoral establishment, trained a large number of disciples who became leaders in the church. Augustine's influence on these younger men was due not only to his intellectual ascendancy but also to the tenderness of his disposition. A bulk of Augustine's literary activity was devoted to refuting heresies of his time. His two most important books are The City of God--which compares the "City of Man," founded upon self-love, with the "City of God," founded upon self-contempt and love for God--and The Confessions. The latter of these speaks for itself; one of the earliest extant autobiographies, it remains unsurpassed as a sincere and intimate record of a great and pious soul laid bare before God. Contributor Bio:  Holmes, Peter Peter R. Holmes (MA, PhD) is a management trainer and co-founder of both Christ Church Deal, Kent and Rapha. He is also a member of the Chartered Management Institute, the Association of Therapeutic Communities (ATC) and a Lead Reviewer on the Community of Communities Research Project of the ATC and the Royal College of Psychiatrists.