On the Predestination of the Saints

Contents

Reading pages: 1–7 · 8–13 · 14–18 · 19–21

1. 1Augustine writes again at the request of Prosper and Hilary for brothers in Gaul who agree with the church on original sin and prevenient grace but are still in the dark about the predestination of the saints.
2. 2Against those who hold that the beginning of faith is ours and only its increase God's, Augustine argues that faith from its beginning is God's gift, since we cannot even think anything of ourselves.
3. 3Augustine admits that before his episcopate he held that the beginning of faith was ours, and quotes his Retractations correcting his earlier Exposition of Propositions from Romans.
4. 4Augustine shows that he corrected his view in the first book To Simplician, written early in his episcopate, quoting his Retractations; 1 Cor 4:7 excludes claiming even the beginning of faith as one's own.
5. 51 Cor 4:7 cannot refer to natural gifts common to all, since Paul speaks of what distinguishes one person from another; the capacity for faith is natural, but having faith is grace, for in the elect the will is prepared by the Lord.
6. 6That some will to believe and others do not is itself a matter of God's mercy and judgment: the will is prepared in the elect by grace, while the rest are justly blinded.
7. 7Faith itself is the work of God (John 6:29) and his gift (Eph 2:8); even Cornelius's good works before he believed in Christ are to be credited to God.
8. 8Coming to Christ is believing, and is given by the Father's inward teaching; God teaches all who come, out of mercy, and those he does not teach are not taught by judgment; faith, begun and completed, is God's gift, given to some and not others by his just and hidden judgment.
9. 9Augustine explains what he wrote against Porphyry about why Christ came so late: he spoke then only of Christ's foreknowledge of who would believe, without discussing whether faith is God's gift, which now must be said: he came where the elect were.
10. 10Predestination is the preparation of grace and grace its effect; God's promise to Abraham of the faith of the nations was a promise of what God himself would do, so faith too is his gift.
11. 11Faith, like putting to death the deeds of the flesh, is both required of us and God's gift; it is safer to entrust oneself to God's firm promise than to one's own uncertain will.
12. 12Infants and Christ himself refute merit before grace; the suggestion that infants are baptized or not according to merits they would have had if they had lived is absurd, since judgment is according to what one did in the body.
13. 13The theory that infants are baptized or not according to foreseen future repentance would undo original sin; even the Pelagians did not say it, since future merits that will never exist are no merits.
14. 14Defending Wis 4:11 (“he was snatched away lest wickedness should change his understanding”), long read in the church with divine authority, Augustine shows with Cyprian's On Mortality that the righteous who die early are spared, and that no one is judged for deeds he would have done.
15. 15Christ himself is the brightest example of predestination and grace: his human nature was united to the Word with no prior merit; as he was predestined to be our Head, we are predestined to be his members.
16. 16The predestined are called with a special calling that produces faith; Rom 11 shows the Jews' enmity serving the gospel by God's ordering, while the elect remnant is beloved, and the gifts and calling of God are irrevocable.
17. 17The elect are not chosen because they believed but chosen so that they may believe; they were chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world by predestination, and called out of the world by the calling that fulfils it.
18. 18Eph 1:3–11 shows that God chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world not because he foresaw that we would be holy, but so that we might be holy, according to the good pleasure of his will.
19. 19Against the brothers' view that God foreknew only the beginning of faith, Augustine argues from Eph 1 and Paul's thanksgivings for the faith of the Ephesians and Thessalonians that the beginning of faith is God's work.
20. 20Paul's prayers for an “open door” and the opening of Lydia's heart show that the beginning of faith is God's gift; God inclines human wills not only for earthly kingdoms but for the kingdom of heaven.
21. 21Augustine closes the first book, explaining that its length was required by the new claim that the beginning of faith is man's own, and restating that even the beginning of faith is God's gift.