|
| Augustine & Original Sin | | Date Created: Dec 02, 2004, 09:47 AM |
Someone asked me about Augustine's teaching on Baptism. It is common for Reformed theologians and historians to posit a fundamental conflict between Augustine's doctrine of grace and his high view of Baptism.
Just a few comments:
1. Why must baptism be considered a "work" and therefore opposed to God's grace. I've never quite gotten this, but I hear it all the time. After all, nobody every does anything when they are baptized. Baptism is something that happens to you, not something that you do or make happen to yourself. Unless, of course, you are Sonny in the movie "The Apostle" and decide to baptize yourself! So why do so many people think that confessing the grace of baptism somehow vitiates sola gratia? How is bowing your head and having water poured on you a "work"? Indeed, whatever mode you prefer, how can the passive reception of baptism be considered a "work" opposed to "grace"? Is it because there is human instrumentality involved? But can grace only be grace when there is no human instrumentality? How then can we receive any grace in the church? I guess listening to the voice of a preacher is a "work." Or how about reading the Bible? After all, one cannot receive anything from God apart from the instrumentality of the human voices and hands. And, remember, grace is not some kind of substance that is passed on through these means. Rather, the grace of God is given and received as a human voice and as water poured on the head.
2. This dilemma is actually a classic Protestant conundrum. Which Augustine will we have? The Protestant or Catholic version? Augustine has a split theological personality, according to many. His monergistic view of God's work of grace contradicts his high view of the sacraments and the church. The two branches of the bride of Christ seem to have ignored Solomonic wisdom and divided the man right down the middle. But in so doing haven't we killed him, so that each side, Protestant and Catholic, has one dead half of Augustine to cling to as their own? Why must we choose? Why can't we have both? For those who want a taste of the history of the severing of Augustine from Augustine, see Jaroslav Pelikan's essay, "An Augustinian Dilemma: Augustine's Doctrine of Grace versus Augustine's Doctrine of the Church?" Augustinian Studies 18 (1987): 1-29.
3. I've done a bit of work on Augustine's teaching on infant baptism. For my take on Augustine's understanding of baptism you can read my somewhat dated paper Babies, Baptism, and Original Sin: Augustine's Understanding of the Theological Implications of Infant Baptism. This paper was written for a graduate seminar class with a slightly different focus than my discussion here, but it still may help. What I find interesting is that Augustine grounded the need for infant baptism in the guilt and corruption of the infant due to original sin. Interestingly, Calvin agrees: "Even infants bear their condemnation within them from their mother's womb; for, though they have not yet brought forth the fruits of their own iniquity, they have the seed enclosed within themselves. Indeed, their whole nature is a seed of sin; thus it cannot but be hateful and abominable to God. Through baptism, believers are assured that this condemnation has been removed and withdrawn from them, since (as we said) the Lord promises us by this sign that full and complete remission has been made, both of the guilt that should have been imputed to us, and of the punishment that we ought to have undergone because of the guilt." (Institutes 4.15.10).
So what is it that Augustine got wrong? I believe that Augustine's high view of baptism needs be recovered, not explained away. What is it about so many Reformed Christians that makes them so frightened of the church, of the sacramental and communal giving and receiving of God's grace? |
|
