SebastianClinciuJJ
Puritan Board Freshman
Hello,
I am reading McGrath’s Iustitia Dei and I came across something strange.
In his analysis of Augustine’s concept of free will, he writes: “According to Augustine, the act of faith is itself a divine gift, in which God acts upon the rational soul in such a way that it comes to believe. Whether this action on the will leads to its subsequent assent to justification is a matter for humanity, rather than for God.” And then he qoutes from Augustine’s Sermones: “The one who created you without you will not justify you without you.” (Sermo 169, 13)
And then he writes: “Although God is the origin of the gift which humans are able to receive and possess, the acts of receving and possessing themselves can be said to be humans’. (All quotations are from p. 42, Iustitia Dei: A History of the Christian Doctrine of Justification, Third Edition, Alister E. McGrath.)
From my read of the work “De Predestinatione Sanctorum” of Augustine, I don’t think he is a synergist in this sense. McGrath, it seems to me, presents Augustine’s doctrine of free will being similar to the Arminian understanding of it.
Did I misinterpret Augustine or McGrath?
I am reading McGrath’s Iustitia Dei and I came across something strange.
In his analysis of Augustine’s concept of free will, he writes: “According to Augustine, the act of faith is itself a divine gift, in which God acts upon the rational soul in such a way that it comes to believe. Whether this action on the will leads to its subsequent assent to justification is a matter for humanity, rather than for God.” And then he qoutes from Augustine’s Sermones: “The one who created you without you will not justify you without you.” (Sermo 169, 13)
And then he writes: “Although God is the origin of the gift which humans are able to receive and possess, the acts of receving and possessing themselves can be said to be humans’. (All quotations are from p. 42, Iustitia Dei: A History of the Christian Doctrine of Justification, Third Edition, Alister E. McGrath.)
From my read of the work “De Predestinatione Sanctorum” of Augustine, I don’t think he is a synergist in this sense. McGrath, it seems to me, presents Augustine’s doctrine of free will being similar to the Arminian understanding of it.
Did I misinterpret Augustine or McGrath?