St. Augustine appears to pursue two distinct (and at times, seemingly contradictory) lines of reasoning regarding the sacraments and predestination. On the one hand, Augustine asserts that the Church and its sacraments were absolute guarantees of the presence of God’s grace. On the other hand, the Bishop of Hippo asserted against Pelagius that the grace of God is absolutely efficacious and irresistible. Taken together this raises the problem: If God’s grace is irresistible and guaranteed by the means of grace, then why is everyone who encounters the means of grace not saved? In part, Augustine’s answer was to emphasize that the grace of perseverance (gained particularly by prayer) is necessary to stay in a genuine fellowship with the Church and its perpetual offer of grace. As a result, the role of the Church and its ministry seems then to be relativized by God’s hidden plan of election. Hence, the question is raised as to whether in the end the external means of grace really provide a definitive guarantee of God’s favor and forgiveness.
The tension between what might be called the sacramentalist and predestinarian tendencies in Augustine’s thought establishes what we will call the “Augustinian Dilemma.” As Jaroslav Pelikan observes:
“To interpret Augustine as a partisan of either scholastic or Protestant doctrine about grace and the means of grace would resolve the inconsistencies of his thought and language, but it would also resolve the paradox of grace. The sovereignty of grace, with its inevitable corollary in the doctrine of predestination, could make the means of grace incidental to the achievement of the divine purpose. . . The mediation of grace, with its emphasis on the obligation to attend upon the services and sacraments of the church, could substitute a righteousness based on works of piety for a righteousness based on works of morality. Each of these possibilities was present in the theology of Augustine, and each has manifested itself in the subsequent history of Augustianism.”[1]
Following a similar line of reasoning to Pelikan’s, it is easy to discern two distinctive trajectories in Augustine’s thought. In one trajectory, one might argue that if grace is irresistible and the result of God’s predestinating act, the external means of grace become understood as only indirectly connected with the operation of God’s grace. As a result, the means of grace possess little function other than to point beyond themselves to God’s eternal act of predestination and grace’s attending invisible enactment among the elect. The means of grace in effect become symbols of what God has already done in eternity. Many who encounter them are not converted because they are not real mediums of grace. As we will see below and in future chapters, as a result of this line of reasoning many Western theologians have rejected sacramental realism in favor of sacramental symbolism and spiritualism.
Following a second possible trajectory, if the sacraments do contain real grace (or, at minimum guarantee the presence of divine grace), then the fact that not all who encounter them are saved is explained by the argument that although sin has damaged free will, it remains operative to a certain extent. Because human free will remains partially operative, people can decide whether or not to participate in the sacramental life of the Church. To use an analogy: Although a patient who is ill cannot make themselves well by simply willing it, they can certainly agree to cooperate with the doctor and take medicine that will make them well. In this perspective, grace is seen not so much as something that unilaterally makes salvation an actuality, but as a possibility to be accepted or rejected by free will. Free will’s grasping onto the possibilities offered by the means of grace results in the actualization of salvation.
The problem posed by the Augustinian Dilemma was felt in the Western Church immediately following the Bishop of Hippo’s death. It must be recognized that although the consensus of the catholic Church was against Pelagius (who was condemned both in local African synods and in the canons of the ecumenical Council of Ephesus),[2] Augustine’s solution to the problem of sin and grace elicited considerable resistance. Indeed, many attempted to modify Augustine’s position in the centuries following the Pelagian controversy.
[1] Pelikan, The Christian Tradition, 1:306.
[2] B. R. Rees, ed., Pelagius: Life and Letters (Woodbridge, MA: Boydell Press, 1998), 4.
From the draft manuscript for Jack D. Kilcrease, Justification by Word (Lexham Press, forthcoming).