§ 152. THE AUGUSTINIAN SYSTEM. 828
Finally, A.ugustine speaks most frequently and most fondly of the highest freedom, the free self-decision or self-determincb tion of the will towards the good and holy^ the blessed freedom of the children of God ; which still includes, it is true, in tliis earthly life, the possibility of sinning, but becomes in hgaven the image of the divine freedom, iifelix necessitas honi^ and cminot, because it will not, sin.' It is the exact opposite of the dura necessitas mali in the state of sin. It is not a faculty possessed in common by all rational minds, but the highest stage of moral development, confined to true Christians. This freedom Augustine finds expressed in that word of our Lord : " If the Son shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed." It does jjot dispense with grace, but is generated by it; the more grace, the more freedom. The will is free in proportion as it is healthy, and healthy in proportion as it moves in the element of its true life, in God, and obeys Him of its own spontaneous impulse. To serve God is the true freedom.''
is true (Die christl. Kirehe vom Anfang des 4ten bis Ende des 6teu Jahrhunderta, p. 140), is not wholly wrong when he, with reference to this passage, charges Augustine with an equivocal play upon words, in retaining the term freedom, but changing its sense into its direct opposite. " Meaningless as it is," says Baur, " to talk in this equivocal sense of freedom, we however see even from this what interest the idea of freedom still had for him, even after he had sacrificed it to the determinism of his system." The Lutheran theologians likewise restricted the liberum arbitrium of fallen man to the justitia civilis, in distinction from the justitia Dei, or spiritualis. Comp. Melanchthon, in the Confessio Augustana, art. xviii. The Formula Concordia goes even beyond Augustine, and compares the natural man in spiritualibus et divinis rebus with a " statua salis," " truncus," and " lapis," nay, makes him out yet worse off, inasmuch as he is not merely passive, but " voluntati divinaa rebellis est et inimicus" (pp. 661 and 662).
' De corrept. et gratia, § 32 (x. 768): "Quid erit liberius libero arbitrio, quaudci non poterit servire peccato ? ... § 33 : Prima Hbertas voluntatis erat, posse nou peccare, novissima erit multo major, non posse peccare."
- " Deo servire vera libertas est ; " a profound and noble saying. This highet conception of freedom Augustine had substantially expressed long before the Pela^ gian controversy, e. g., in the Confessions. Comp. also De civit. Dei, 1. xiv. c. 1 1 : " Arbitrium igitur voluntatis tunc est vere liberum, quum vitiis pcccatisque noa uervit. Tale datum est a Deo : quod amissura proprio vitio, nisi a quo dari potui^ reddi non potest. Unde Veritas dicit : Si vos Jilius libei-averit, tunc vere Itbert eritia. Id ipsum est autem, ac si diceret : Si vos Filius salvos fecerit, tunc vere galvi eritJa Inde quippe liberatur, unde salvatur."
824 THIKD PERIOD. A.D. 311-590.
§ 153. The Auyustinian System : The Fall and its Consequences.
To understand Angustine's doctrine of the fall of man, wa mnst remember, first of all, tliat he starts with the idea of the organic unity of the human race, and with the profound parallel of Paul between the first and the second Adam ; ' that he views the first man not merely as an individual, but at the same time as the progenitor and representative of the Mdiole race, standing to natural mankind in the same relation as that of Clirist to redeemed and regenerate mankind. The history of the fall, recorded in a manner at once profound and childlike in the third chapter of Genesis, has, therefore, universal significance. In Adam human nature fell, and tlierefore all, who have inherited that nature from him, who were in him as the fruit in the germ, and who have grown up, as it were, one person with him.^
But Augustine did not stop with the very just idea of an organic connection of the human race, and of the sin of Adam with original sin ; he also supposed a sort of pre-existence of all the posterity of Adam in himself, so that they actually and personally sinned in him, though not, indeed, with individual consciousness. Since we were, at the time of the fall, "in lumbis Adami," the sin of Adam is "jure seminationis et germinationis," our sin and guilt, and physical death is a penalty even upon infant children, as it was a penalty upon Adam. The posterity of Adam therefore sufi'er punishment not for the sin of another, but for the sin which they themselves committed in Adam. This view, as we shall see farther on, Augustine founds upon a false interpretation of Rom. V. 12.
I. The Fall. The original state of man included the possibility of sinning, and this was the imperfection of that
* Rom. V. 12 ff. ; 1 Cor. xv. 22.
' De civit. Dei, 1. xiil c. 14 : '* Omnes enira fuimus in illo uno, quando oranea hiimus illc unus, qui per feminam lapsus est in peccatum, qua3 de illo facta est ant* peccatum." Compare other passages below.