predestination Archives

Augustine (rightly) says that both the beginning of end of faith is a gift of God, both the initial belief and the perseverance to the end (Rebuke and Grace, and Perseverance). As Paul says, “I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ” (Phil 1:6).

But this “fact” does not reduce human experience to nothing. We know that people profess faith, have “initial enthusiasm” as Paul Carter recently noted. And this initial enthusiasm often wanes, and so does one’s professed faith. There is no reason to deny this regular experience because the Bible affirms that he who began a good work in us will bring it to completion.

I find this to be one of the oddest things people do: oppose experience to faith as if they contradict each other. [Read more…] about If Perseverance is a Gift Why Do People Seem to Fall Away from Faith?

I like how Augustine and Fulgentius and others in the early church talk about predestination. They teach what the Bible says on these matters, but they have a sort of holy reverence for the doctrine so that they don’t speak about such mysteries lightly.

I find the way in which some young Calvinistic people talk about predestination and reprobation harsh. And so did Augustine, and in his work on Perseverance, he instructs a group of people to teach on this doctrine without harshness. After all, Augustine says, you are talking to Christians in church! Why not assume the best about them.

And so we can make salvation feel like the whims of God’s will, even though that is far away from the truth. God’s essential goodness alone provides the ground for his predestining grace given to us in time as the Spirit awakens faith in our hearts.

Predestination is good news that God gives grace to people who don’t merit it by their good works, because they cannot; the one who sins, Jesus tells us, is a slave to sin. And so we are all enslaved to sin because all people die; and death, as Paul says, is the wages of sin. So if we all die, we must all sin; and if we sin, we must all be slaves of sin.

So only can God’s grace that awakens our evil will to make it a good will save us. That is, predestination saves us because grace awakens our faith and hearts; grace is predestination applied in time, or actualized to use the older language. [Read more…] about Reflections on Predestination in Augustine, Fulgentius, and the Reformation