Was St. Augustine a Catholic?

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Well, if Calvinism were true, then everything about Christianity is rendered pointless. Afterall, what point is repenting and turning to God when God’s already decided who is and who isn’t going to be saved? You’re saved or damned regardless of whether you repent or not.

Not to mention it renders all of humanity mindless puppets with no will of their own.
 
deMontfort said:
Well, if Calvinism were true, then everything about Christianity is rendered pointless. Afterall, what point is repenting and turning to God when God’s already decided who is and who isn’t going to be saved? You’re saved or damned regardless of whether you repent or not.

Not to mention it renders all of humanity mindless puppets with no will of their own.
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Agreed. I don’t think Calvinism is the case. I am just trying to understand why the need to go past Thomism? Again, that is why I am asking is the need to preserve free will (or at least our conception of it) at all cost really due to some need to logically make sense of all this? Where is God’s sovereignty in all of this?
 
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Because Thomism runs into the same problems that Calvinism does. Moreover the Thomists affirmed free will only because the Vatican said they had to; but they didn’t really believe in it and played word games to explain it away. The problem is, both Thomism and Calvinism are predicated on the concept of “Meticulous Providence”, where everything that happens in creation happens solely because God made it happen. If a grain of sand on a beach shifts a quarter of an inch, God made that happen. There is no room for free will in that conception of creation. Free will is impossible.

Thomism and Calvinism simply doesn’t get the idea that God could, through his own sovereign will and pleasure, create a universe where the creatures there in have free will and function in accordance with that will.

It’s funny that, while talking about God’s absolute sovereignty, they put a serious restriction in what God can do.
 
deMontfort said:
Because Thomism runs into the same problems that Calvinism does. Moreover the Thomists affirmed free will only because the Vatican said they had to; but they didn’t really believe in it and played word games to explain it away. The problem is, both Thomism and Calvinism are predicated on the concept of “Meticulous Providence”, where everything that happens in creation happens solely because God made it happen. If a grain of sand on a beach shifts a quarter of an inch, God made that happen. There is no room for free will in that conception of creation. Free will is impossible.

Thomism and Calvinism simply doesn’t get the idea that God could, through his own sovereign will and pleasure, create a universe where the creatures there in have free will and function in accordance with that will.

It’s funny that, while talking about God’s absolute sovereignty, they put a serious restriction in what God can do.
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Isn’t the matter about the definition of “free will”. I am assuming the Thomists, much like the Calvinists (but not to that extreme), probably don’t believe in a libertarian free will? That despite our free will, it will not override God’s will or to see His plan to fruition.

I am not debating you. I hope you’re not getting upset with me, I am just learning. But the way you’re describing the Thomists, is that they were “secretly” Calvinists?
 
Clovis1 said:
I’ve never found a credible source that makes this claim.

My understanding is that Mohommad had an Arian monk for an uncle, and that those beliefs influenced his understanding of Jesus and he denied the trinity on polytheistic grounds.
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Thanks for the correction. Either way, St John of Damascus really hit the nail on the head. Thank you for the suggestion.
 
Hodos said:
I think one needs to look at Augustine in the same light as we would any theologian. We evaluate what they say in light of the scriptures.
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Yet The NT scriptures we know today weren’t officially canonized until A.D. 382 at the council of Rome. In A.D.396 we have the councils of Hippo and Carthage, (Hippo is Augustine’s see). They validate the canon of 382. I mention this because Augustine wrote “Against Manichaeus” in ~396. Note: Ch 4, paragraphs 4-5, http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1405.htm. Augustine notes: The scriptures came from the Catholic Church.

For a further explanation using Tradition, https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/scriptures-giver-and-interpreter.

When Paul taught hold fast to the Traditions, both oral and written, it’s NOT either/or but both. 2 Thes 2:15 and there was no NT scripture written down or canonized then.
 
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More like “Calvinists were secretly Thomists” lol. The two schools of thought are very close to one another…As Jimmy Akin demonstrated.

I don’t debate btw, but even so, I’m not reading you as trying to debate. I wouldn’t be talking to you if you were! I see this as you asking questions.

That being said, I’m no expert in any of these matters, so double check anything I say!

Btw, I should have given this to you earlier, but here’s a refutation of Akin’s article from a more Molinist position >>>>>

http://www.catechism.cc/articles/catholic-soteriology-versus.htm
 
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I could be wrong about the article being from a Molinist position. The author is a frequent poster on the forum, so he may be able to clarify.
 
Of course Augustine was Catholic.

That the original Protestant reformers would have an affinity towards Augustine – or any church father for that matter – is quite natural, because it was in the “Catholic air” that they breathed.

In other words, its predictable that the reformers would look back to the time of the church fathers. Catholics had always done this. And the reformers came from the Catholic tradition.

It would be better to say that the reformers were not consistent in relying on the church fathers, since they were fully Catholic.
 
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Grace and free will are both fundamental to predestination, since prevenient grace enables free will to cooperate with subsequent graces, or to refuse to cooperate. God knows, with absolute certitude, who will be saved in the end, and who will not be saved. But this foreknowledge absolutely does not determine that final destination of Heaven or Hell. The basis for that final destination is the choice of the human will, made truly free by prevenient grace, made able to achieve Heaven by subsequent grace, and known from all eternity by God.
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Ok, so I think I am getting it. We are corrupted but not totally depraved, God offers His initial grace first, we accept or don’t, if we do accept, then there are subsequent graces in which we cooperate with God, but this isn’t certain? There is no perseverance until the end, or there is, but it’s ultimately up to us to freely cooperate with God’s subsequent graces until the end?

God’s foreknowledge of what is to come, who will be saved and who won’t, doesn’t determine the final destination. It just means that He sees the end game, on who will ultimately accept His offer of grace all the way to the end including through sanctification?

The “made able to achieve heaven” does throw me off a bit. It does kind of make it sound a bit like Buddhism, that there needs to a going through all of these levels. Like man trying to reach God, or achieve heaven.

But then again, perhaps all the other religions like this are just mimicking the True faith, the best way they know how to without God’s grace and revelation? And also, that they don’t have a God they’re cooperating with the entire time.
 
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deMontfort said:
Well, if Calvinism were true, then everything about Christianity is rendered pointless. Afterall, what point is repenting and turning to God when God’s already decided who is and who isn’t going to be saved? You’re saved or damned regardless of whether you repent or not.
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Sorry, but that is a total misunderstanding of Calvinism.
 
All one needs to do is read what Augustine said about the Church. For example:

"[T]here are many other things which most properly can keep me in [the Catholic Church’s] bosom. The unanimity of peoples and nations keeps me here. Her authority, inaugurated in miracles, nourished by hope, augmented by love, and confirmed by her age, keeps me here. The succession of priests, from the very see of the apostle Peter, to whom the Lord, after his resurrection, gave the charge of feeding his sheep [John 21:15–17], up to the present episcopate, keeps me here. And last, the very name Catholic, which, not without reason, belongs to this Church alone, in the face of so many heretics, so much so that, although all heretics want to be called ‘Catholic,’ when a stranger inquires where the Catholic Church meets, none of the heretics would dare to point out his own basilica or house" ( Against the Letter of Mani Called “The Foundation” 4:5 [A.D. 397]).

The problem is that Protestants have a very poor understanding of the Early Church, especially prior to the 16th century
 
lanman87 said:
Sorry, but that is a total misunderstanding of Calvinism.
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Yes, I didn’t want to debate, but to be fair to the Calvinists, they think that people just have an inability to come to know God because they’re in rebellion against Him, and in their rebellion, because they do not know God, they will always freely choose themselves. They are actually a slave to their own passions, their own sin. The Calvinists actually teach that they’re bound up by too much free will (I guess, that part could be wrong).

But then here comes God to reveal Himself to the degenerate sinner. He gives the sinner another choice, a choice he or she didn’t even know was an option because of their nature. And that choice is irresistible, because they presume, who can resist God? Does God lose a convert?

By nature, the Calvinists believe, no one seeks after God, no one knows Him, they have an inability issue.

They quote Ephesians 2 a lot to explain their position:

As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, 2 in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. 3 All of us also lived among them at one time,gratifying the cravings of our flesh[a] and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath. 4 But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, 5 made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved.
 
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Augustine lived in the 4th and 5th centuries. Luther didn’t post his theses, hence the beginning of Protestantism until 1513. What else could Augustine have been but Catholic?
 
Demonfort, the article was really helpful. Is the person who wrote it a frequent poster of this forum? Is so, what is his screen name. I would love to converse with this person.

The article helped quell the fear that perhaps this entire experiment was not so much an attempt to make sense of the Bible, but in order to make Catholicism less theocentric and more mancentric. As in to secure man’s will over God’s sovereignty. I was always questioning what is with this obsession with man’s libertarian sense of free will. Why does man need to be totally, free, so much so that it overrides God’s will?

I was more or less questioning the motive behind Molinism.
 
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joeybaggz said:
Augustine lived in the 4th and 5th centuries. Luther didn’t post his theses, hence the beginning of Protestantism until 1513. What else could Augustine have been but Catholic?
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The Protestants take it to mean that he was proto-Protestant.
 
The Protestants take it to mean that he was proto-Protestant.
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I think it fair to say many Catholics, clergy and laity alike, see things in Protestant religious belief and practice that are admirable. I know I do. The doesn’t make us proto-Protestant.
I think much of the regard Protestants have for Augustine is relatable to the fact that Augustine was a part of a much smaller and simpler Catholic “religion” and Church. What we believe today as a church is what was given to us by the apostles, same as in Augustine’s time. I think over the centuries, the way the Church has defined doctrines has become problematic for many Protestants, and they liken back to a simpler time, and a simpler man.
My $.02
 
joeybaggz said:
I think it fair to say many Catholics, clergy and laity alike, see things in Protestant religious belief and practice that are admirable. I know I do. The doesn’t make us proto-Protestant.
I think much of the regard Protestants have for Augustine is relatable to the fact that Augustine was a part of a much smaller and simpler Catholic “religion” and Church. What we believe today as a church is what was given to us by the apostles, same as in Augustine’s time. I think over the centuries, the way the Church has defined doctrines has become problematic for many Protestants, and they liken back to a simpler time, and a simpler man.
My $.02
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You are spot on with this. While I wouldn’t call Augustine “simple” I totally get what you mean. Protestants, tend to have an unusual obsession with “simpleness” which they liken to humility.

The Reformed though even if they too share in the obsession with simplicity, take the matter to breaking it all down to a simple formula, a system, an intellectual system. They treat Christianity almost as like a science.
 
Understand what you are saying. I am just referring to Augustine as “simple” in the sense that he lived in a time before so many of the councils of the church that defined dogma and teaching further and further until many would find fault with it.
The interesting thing about this whole discussion is the truth that what we believe today is what Augustine believed back then. We have added nothing that wasn’t handed down to us by the Apostles. Neither did Augustine.
 
joeybaggz said:
Understand what you are saying. I am just referring to Augustine as “simple” in the sense that he lived in a time before so many of the councils of the church that defined dogma and teaching further and further until many would find fault with it.
The interesting thing about this whole discussion is the truth that what we believe today is what Augustine believed back then. We have added nothing that wasn’t handed down to us by the Apostles. Neither did Augustine.
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Well said. 👏
 
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