Was St. Augustine of Hippo some kind of proto-protestant?

[steffenlaursen]

Hi there,

I have heard the claim from a reformed Christian, that St. Augustine was in favor of justification by faith as understood by Protestants and Calvinists. Is this true? Was Augustine a “Protestant”? Or was he just *more *Protestant than most Catholics? Or is it just nonsense?

I have heard many people claim, that all the church fathers were Catholics, and since this, along with the pontific question, is what really divides Catholics and Protestants… I thought it might be interesting to hear an answer to that question.

Furthermore, being a Scholar of the Catholic Church, Augustine’s views must have a lot of influence on Catholic dogma, so… oughtn’t they have discovered that he was actually Calvin in disguise?

I find it very unlikely, but I usually trust the man who told me.

• Steffen

 

[Contarini]

Hi there,

I have heard the claim from a reformed Christian, that St. Augustine was in favor of justification by faith as understood by Protestants and Calvinists. Is this true?

No, it is not. Luther admitted that Augustine did not “speak clearly concerning imputation” (code language for: he didn’t believe in it). Melanchthon wrote to Brenz (another Lutheran theologian) criticizing him for agreeing with Augustine and admitting that the Lutherans didn’t really follow Augustine on justification though they used his name for PR (this is on Dave Armstrong’s website–the translation of the letter is mine–I would add that Melanchthon wasn’t being completely hypocritical because he honestly believed that Augustine was *closer *to the Protestant position on the whole than to that of the “Papists”).

The Reformed were more genuinely Augustinian than the Lutherans in the sense that they stressed grace more and faith less, but inasmuch as they accepted the Lutheran concept of forensic justification they still disagreed with Augustine, who taught no such thing. In fact, I argued in a paper in grad school that Augustine actually *blurred *the faith/works distinction by his emphasis on grace, since he saw both faith and works as gifts of God’s grace. (My professor–an ex-Presbyterian secular feminist, for what it’s worth!–criticized the paper by saying that in her opinion all the Church Fathers believed in meritorious good works. In other words, she saw me as trying to argue that some of the pre-Augustinian Fathers were more Protestant than they actually were.)

Warfield’s famous dictum that the Reformation pitted Augustine’s doctrine of salvation (maintained by the Protestants) against his doctrine of the Church (maintained by the Catholics) was wrong on both fronts. The Protestants did not agree entirely with Augustine’s doctrine of salvation, and they (especially the Reformed) did not reject his doctrine of the Church.

Edwin

 

[kaycee]

Augustine certainly did not interpret Matt 16:18 inline with the “infallible” interpretation of Rcc. In fact, Augustine left it up to the readers private interpretation to decide what Matt 16:18 meant.

In a passage in this book, I said about the Apostle Peter: ‘On him as on a rock the Church was built’…But I know that very frequently at a later time, I so explained what the Lord said: ‘Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church,’ that it be understood as built upon Him whom Peter confessed saying: ‘Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God,’ and so Peter, called after this rock, represented the person of the Church which is built upon this rock, and has received ‘the keys of the kingdom of heaven.’ For, ‘Thou art Peter’ and not ‘Thou art the rock’ was said to him. But ‘the rock was Christ,’ in confessing whom, as also the whole Church confesses, Simon was called Peter. But let the reader decide which of these two opinions is the more probable (The Fathers of the Church (Washington D.C., Catholic University, 1968), Saint Augustine, The Retractations Chapter 20.1).

 

[Randy_Carson]

But as has been posted elsewhere, this is not a problem.

“To be considered as a Father, one must have orthodox doctrine; but this does not exclude all doctrinal error. An occasional material heresy can be found even in the greater lights among the Fathers. It does not imply, however, a devotion to orthodoxy and a faithful adherence to the orthodox Church.”

William A. Jurgens, Faith of the Early Fathers, vol. 1., Introduction p. X.