“For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God” (Ephesians 2:8)
It’s vital Christians understand and believe the depravity of the human condition Scripture teaches. Biblical anthropology shows natural flesh as wicked and evil, rescued only by divine aid. Jeremiah would preach this in the words “the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; Who can know it?” (Jeremiah 17:9). To the Corinthians we hear “the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned” (1 Cor.2:14). Jesus’ words also put things in perspective: “without me you can do nothing” (John 15:5).
One historian claims that before Augustine “the anthropology of the church was exceedingly crude and indefinite,” which may be an overstatement still expressing the idea the church had yet to deeply and even adequately think through the relationship between the human will and divine grace. Augustine is one of the premier theologians of the Western church, but his theological convictions on sin and grace would be forged and sharpened in the crucible of controversy demanding an articulate response and confession on the capabilities of man before God. His opponent was one Pelagius, who argued the power of the human will to ascent to God in doing works apart from divine aid. It was the freedom of the soul to legalistic piety defining Pelagianism’s expression of man capable of pleasing God apart from the Holy Spirit.
Augustine saw it differently. Hereditary sin excluded a capable will trusting God apart from the Holy Spirit. Cooperation is impossible without faith wrought by the Holy Spirit. Divine monergism means God’s “one working” to bring the soul from darkness to life, something man cannot achieve. The two theologies are as different as light and darkness, life and death, which Augustine understood well. A man whose life was marked by vice prior to his conversion, the Bishop of Hippo understood depravity and death of a life struggling and failing to find contentment apart from God, and the futility in trying to access heaven without faith.
How could Pelagius miss a verse like Ephesians 2:8? What could have possibly driven him to his legalistic positions on man? It wasn’t a lack of intellect. He was an austere man of self-righteousness and discipline who disdained the corrupt morals of Rome. We can agree social wickedness should be despised but the answer isn’t convincing man he can do it without the Holy Spirit if he just puts his best foot forward. Augustine’s theological responses to Pelagius would serve the Reformation well in the battle over the Gospel and man’s responsibility to divine things. Sin blinds us all from seeing our true corruption, as we ascend in our own pride to think we’re stronger and less needy than what God is saying. May God guard all of us from such wicked thinking and preserve us to trust in He Who died and rose again, Who gives us by His Spirit that bold confession we still make: “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God.”
Rev. Ryan J. Ogrodowicz
Grace Lutheran Church - Brenham, Texas
The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod
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