§ 157. Augustine's doctrine of redeeming grace. 849
Gract.', finally, works progressively or ly degrees. It re moves all. the consequences of the fall ; but it removes them ii» an order agreeable to the finite, gradually unfolding nature of the believer. Grace is a foster-mother, who for the greatest good,-of her charge, wisely and lovingly accommodates herself to his necessities as they change from time to time. Augustine gives dift'erent names to grace in these different steps of its development. In overcoming the resisting will, and impart ing a living knowledge of sin and longing for redemption, grace is gratia prceoeniens or prcejparans. In creating faith and the free will to do good, and uniting the soul to Christ, it is gratia operans. Joining with the emancipated will to combat the remains of evil, and bringing forth good works as fruits of faith, it is gratia cooperans. Finally, in enabling the believer to persevere in faith to the end, and leading him at length, though not in this life, to the perfect state, in which he can no longer sin nor die, it is gratia perjiciens.^ This includes the donum perseveranticB^ which is the only certain token of
irresistible grace to all the regenerate. " Not all grace," he says, " but the grace which actually regenerates, Augustine deuouiinates irresistible. By this he meant, not that the human will is converted unwUHugly or by compulsion, but that divine grace is able to overcome the utmost obstinacy of the human spirit. . . . Divine grace is irresistible, not in the sense that no form of grace is resisted by the sinner ; but when grace reaches that special degree which constitutes it rerjeneratwy, it then overcomes the sinner's opposition, and makes him wilUug in the day of God'a power." This is Calvinistic, but not Augustinian, although given as Augustine's view. For according to Augustme all the baptized are regenerate, and yet many are eternally lost. (Comp. Ep. 98, 2 ; De pecc. mer. et rem. i. 39, and the passage? in Hagenbach's Doctrine History, vol. i. p. 368 ff. in the Anglo-American edition.) The gratia irresistibilis must therefore be restricted to the narrower circle of the electi. Augustine's doctrine of baptism is far more Lutheran and Catholic thau Calvinistic. According to Calvin, the regenerating effect of baptism is dependent on the decretum Jiviiium, and the truly regenerate is also elect, and therefore can n«ver finally fall from grace, Augustine, for the honor of the sacrament, assume? the possibility of a fruitless regeneration ; Calvin, in the interest of election and regeneration, assumes the possibility of an ineSfectual baptitm.
' Summing all the stages together, Augustine says: "Et quis istam etsi parvam dare coeperat caritatem, nisi ille qui prcBparat voluntatem, et cooperando perficit^ quod operando incipit? Quoniam ipse ut veliraus operatur incipiens, qui volenlibua cooperatur perficiens. Propter quod ait Apostolus: Certus sum, quoniam qui operatur in vobis opus bonum, perficiet usque in diem Christi Jesu " (Phil, i 6). De grat. et lib. arbitr c. 2Y, § 33 (tom. x. 735).
850 THIRD PERIOD. A.D. 311-590.
election.^ ""We call ourselves elect, or children of God, be^ cause we so call all those whom we see regenerate, visibl;y leading a holy lite. But he alone is in truth what he is called "who perseveres in that from which he receives the name.' Therefore so long as a man yet lives, we can form no certain judgment of him in tliis respect. Perseverance till death, i. e., to the point where the danger of apostasy ceases, is emphatically a grace, " since it is much harder to possess this gift of grace than any other; though for him to whom nothing is hard, it is as easy to bestow the one as the other."
And as to the relation of grace to freedom : Neither excludes the other, though they might appear to conflict. In Augustine's system freedom, or self-determination to good, is the correlative in man of grace on the part of God. The more grace, the more freedom to do good, and the more joy in the good. The two are one in the idea of love, wliich is objective and subjective, passive and active, an apprehending and a being apprehended."
We may sum up the Augustinian anthropology under these three heads :
1. The PRiMiTrvE State: Immediate, undeveloped unity of man with God; child-like innocence; germ and condition of everything subsequent ; possibility of a sinless and a sinful development.
2. The State of Sin : Alienation from God ; bondage ; dominion of death ; with longing after redemption.
3. The State of Redemption or of Grace: Higher, mediated unity with God ; virtue approved through conflict ; the blessed freedom of the children of God ; here, indeed, yet clogged with the remains of sin and death, but hereafter absolutely perfect, without the possibility of apostasy.
' Augustine treats of this in the Liber de dono perseverantiae, one of his lateer writings, composed in 4'28 or 429 (torn, x. f. 821 sqq.).
' Comp. upon this especially the book De gratia et libero arbitrio, which Augustine wrote A. p. 426, addressed to Valcntinus and other rnonks of Adrumetuni, to refute the false reasoning of those, "qui sic gratiam Dei defendunt, ut nrgenf bominis Jiberum arbitrium" (c. 1, torn. x. f. 717).