Lux Lucet

When reading Luther and Calvin, it’s hard to get very far without finding references to Augustine, for both authors make frequent reference to his work. Luther himself got his start as an Augustinian monk, and Augustine’s work was a major influence on Luther in bringing him to a Biblical understanding of grace and predestination.

While reading Augustine’s major work City of God, I came across the following passage in which Augustine lays out his views on grace and predestination in what must be one of the clearest statements on these issues by any theologian before the time of the Reformation. He writes,

“Now Cain was the first son born to those two parents of mankind, and he belonged to the city of man; the later son, Abel, belonged to the City of God. It is our own experience that in the individual man, to use the words of the Apostle, ‘it is not the spiritual element which comes first, but the animal; and afterwards comes the spiritual’, and so it is that everyone, since he takes his origin from a condemned stock, is inevitable evil and carnal to begin with, by derivation from Adam; but if he is reborn into Christ, and makes progress, he will afterwards be good and spiritual. The same holds true of the whole human race. When those two cities started on their course through the succession of birth and death, the first to be born was a citizen of this world, and later appeared one who was a pilgrim and stranger in the world, belonging as he did to the City of God. He was predestinated by grace, by grace a pilgrim below, and by grace a citizen above. As far as he himself is concerned he has his origin from the same lump which was condemned, as a whole lump, at the beginning. But God like a potter (the analogy introduced by the Apostle is not impertinent but very pertinent) made ‘out of the same lump one vessel destined for honour, and another for dishonour’. But the first one made was the vessel for dishonour, and afterwards came the vessel for honour. For in the individual man, as I have said, the base condition comes first, and we have to start with that; but we are not bound to stop at that, and later comes the noble state towards which we may make progress, and in which we may abide, when we have arrived at it. Hence it is not the case that every bad man will become good, but no one will be good who was not bad originally. Yet the sooner a man changes for the better the more quickly will he secure for himself the title belonging to his attainment and will hide his earlier appellation under the later name.” (Augustine, City of God, Book XV, Chapter 2, Henry Bettenson trans.)

Impressive work, that.