Augustine believed in Onced Saved Always Saved?

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We should all know what Once Saved Always Saved (OSAS) means, but for those who don’t, it is the belief that “the gift of Salvation once received is possessed forever and cannot be lost” (Charles Stanley).

I am currently reading Daniel D. Corner’s 801 page book entitled "The Believer’s Conditional Security, and while He is doing a great job refuting every argument proposed by OSAS believers and giving Scriptures that disagree with this doctrine with excellent explanations , In chapter 2, He states that Saint Augustine of Hippo introduced the heresy of OSAS. He quote him saying, “We are speaking of that perseverance by which one perseveres to the end. If this is given, one does perseveres to the end, and if one does not persevere to the end, it was not given…” (W.A. Jurgens, The Faith of the Early Fathers, Vol 3). Does this sound OSAS, a least in some sense?

According to many theologians and teachers, Saint Augustine was the first to defend the basic doctrines of Calvinistic.

I am confused, because according to “Corunum Catholic Apologetic Web Page”, Saint Augustine is listed as one who did not believe in OSAS, under “Salvation”–>“Once saved NOT always saved!”. Many of the quotes of Saint Augustine seem to contradict the above information.

Did Saint Augustine, in one degree to another, believe in the heresy of OSAS?

Thanks, and God Bless!
 
DarkMark said:
We should all know what Once Saved Always Saved (OSAS) means, but for those who don’t, it is the belief that “the gift of Salvation once received is possessed forever and cannot be lost” (Charles Stanley).

I am currently reading Daniel D. Corner’s 801 page book entitled "The Believer’s Conditional Security, and while He is doing a great job refuting every argument proposed by OSAS believers and giving Scriptures that disagree with this doctrine with excellent explanations , In chapter 2, He states that Saint Augustine of Hippo introduced the heresy of OSAS. He quote him saying, “We are speaking of that perseverance by which one perseveres to the end. If this is given, one does perseveres to the end, and if one does not persevere to the end, it was not given…” (W.A. Jurgens, The Faith of the Early Fathers, Vol 3). Does this sound OSAS, a least in some sense?

According to many theologians and teachers, Saint Augustine was the first to defend the basic doctrines of Calvinistic.

I am confused, because according to “Corunum Catholic Apologetic Web Page”, Saint Augustine is listed as one who did not believe in OSAS, under “Salvation”–>“Once saved NOT always saved!”. Many of the quotes of Saint Augustine seem to contradict the above information.

Did Saint Augustine, in one degree to another, believe in the heresy of OSAS?

Thanks, and God Bless!
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No. He never did. When St. Augustine said that we must presevere to the end, means we must live up to God’s precept by obeying all the commandments of God, and not sin. If we sin, we must repent.
 
Mannyfit75 said:
No. He never did. When St. Augustine said that we must presevere to the end, means we must live up to God’s precept by obeying all the commandments of God, and not sin. If we sin, we must repent.
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👍
 
I would suggest that you read Augustine’s The Predestination of the Saints/Gift of Perseverance. In it he does say that only those who have been predestinated to salvation will persevere to the end. That perseverance is given only to the elect. Those who are not predestinated must inevitably fall. Also the gift of perseverance has nothing to do with any merits.
For there are three points, as you know, which the catholic Church chiefly maintains against them. One of these is, that the grace of God is not given according to our merits; because even every one of the merits of the righteous is God’s gift, and is conferred by God’s grace. The second is, that no one lives in this corruptible body, however righteous he may be, without sins of some kind. The third is, that man is born obnoxious to the first man’s sin, and bound by the chain of condemnation, unless the guilt which is contracted by generation be loosed by regeneration.
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newadvent.org/fathers/15122.htm

In this work he stresses that predestination is not God’s foreknowledge of what we will do, but His foreknowledge of what He, for His unknowable causes, He will cause us to do. Our freewill is such that it God creates the conditions by which our freewill is exercised in the way He wills it to be, much in the Reformed doctrine of second causes. He even deals with the argument that preaching is useless if God has already determined the outcome, again in a way that fits with second causes.

It is true that in On Grace and Free Will, Augustine gives a looser reign to freewill. However to my reading it still fits more with the doctrine of second causes.

It should be noted that Augustine seems to be more adamant in the defense of unconditional predestination and election when writing against the Pelagians than he is in other writings. This is to be expected since the Pelagians taught so much on the supremacy of man’s freewill and ability to act on his own.
 
Did Saint Augustine believed in Onced Saved Always Saved?
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Did any prior to the Reformation?

Augustine wrote many works on the necessity of works to accompany faith, on the nature of grace, etc., which will all tell you something of his views on the matter, and of the Church, as well.

The simple answer is no, however. But let’s not forget while we may never know for sure the state of our soul at any give time, that we can always have a powerful confidence in the unending Grace of God.
 
Nope, not at all. No Catholic saint has believed in once saved always saved. To do so would make them a heretic and not a saint.
 
DarkMark said:
…He quote him saying, “We are speaking of that perseverance by which one perseveres to the end. If this is given, one does perseveres to the end, and if one does not persevere to the end, it was not given…” !
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As Catholics, we should be praying* daily* for the gift of “Final Perseverance” or a “Holy Death” - very catholic notions through and through…which simply means the gift of God to die the state of Sacntifying Grace. I would tend to think that this gift is, as the name implied, given at death. At least that’s when we’ll know we’ve received it 😉 .

I’m not sure how this equates to the OSAS doctrine…I don’t see it.

Peace in Christ,

DustinsDad
 
History of Perseverence of the saints, OSAS, or “Eternal Security” by a Calvinist:

Perseverance of the Saints: A History of the Doctrine by John Jefferson Davis

“It is clear for Augustine, based on his understanding of the Pauline texts in Romans, that God’s elect will certainly persevere to the end and attain eternal salvation…[but] Augustine does not believe that the Christian can in this life know with infallible certitude that he is in fact among the elect and that he will finally persevere…Augustine’s understanding of perseverance, then, reflects his understanding of the eternal predestination of God, the warning passages addressed to believers in the NT, and his sacramental theology of grace and baptismal regeneration…and that in fact one’s justification and baptismal regeneration could be rejected and lost through sin and unbelief. Augustine’s understanding set the parameters for Aquinas, for the Council of Trent, and for the Roman Catholic tradition generally down to the present day.”

I saw this article mentioned once in a footnote by Jimmy Akin in an older article for This Rock, decided to find it, and put it on my site. From the “Evangelical Theological Society” Journal (June 1991).

Phil P
 
Another way to look at St. Augustine is to ask if he believed in the necessity of confession and penance, and he certainly did:

ST. AUGUSTINE OF HIPPO (c. 354 - 430 AD) – Let this be in the heart of the penitent: when you hear a man confessing his sins, he has already come to life again; when you hear a man lay bare his conscience in confessing, he has already come forth from the sepulchre; but he is not yet unbound. When is he unbound? By whom is he unbound? “Whatever you loose on earth,” He says, “shall be loosed also in heaven” [Mt 16:19; 18:18; Jn 20:23]. Rightly is the loosing of sins able to be given by the Church… (Psalms 101:2:3)

Yet those who do penance in accord with the kind of sin they have committed are not to despair of receiving God’s mercy in the Holy Church, for the remission of their crimes, however serious. (Echiridian 17:65)

Iniquity, however, sometimes makes such progress in men that even after they have done penance and after their reconciliation to the altar they commit the same or more grievous sins…and although that place of penance in the Church is not granted them, God will not be unmindful of His patience in their regard…(Letters 153:3:7)

There have been those who would say that no penance is available for certain sins; and they have been excluded from the Church and have been made heretics. Holy Mother Church is not rendered powerless by any kind of sin. (Sermons 352:9)

I don’t know where Dan Corner gets his info on the Church Fathers, but he should try J.N.D. Kelly:

"Augustine, whose allusions to penance are countless, divides [Serm 352:2-8; Serm ad catech 15f] it into three categories. First, there is the penitence which precedes baptism, as a result of which sins of every sort and degree are remitted to the sacrament; secondly, there is the remission which Christians obtain daily for their venial sins by means of prayer, fasting, etc; and, thirdly, for really serious sins after baptism there is the formal penitential discipline, in which the Church raises the sinner from the moribund state in which he lies just as Christ raised Lazarus. These ‘grave and mortal sins’, as he expresses it [Serm 278:12], ‘are remitted by means of the keys of the Church’, for ‘the Church, founded as it is on Christ, received from Him in the person of Peter the keys of the kingdom of heaven, that is, the power of binding and loosing sins.’ " [Tract in ev John 124:5] (Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, page 437-438)

If one accepts mortal sins and confession/penance as a requirement, we can safely say the person didn’t believe in OSAS.

Phil P
 
Am I to understand that Catholics accept the Calvinism aspects of Augustine?
 
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