Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- 1 Augustine
- 2 Faith and reason
- 3 Augustine on evil and original sin
- 4 Predestination, Pelagianism, and foreknowledge
- 5 Biblical interpretation
- 6 The divine nature
- 7 De Trinitate
- 8 Time and creation in Augustine
- 9 Augustine’s theory of soul
- 10 Augustine on free will
- 11 Augustine’s philosophy of memory
- 12 The response to skepticism and the mechanisms of cognition
- 13 Knowledge and illumination
- 14 Augustine’s philosophy of language
- 15 Augustine’s ethics
- 16 Augustine’s political philosophy
- 17 Augustine and medieval philosophy
- 18 Post-medieval Augustinianism
- Bibliography
- Index
4 - Predestination, Pelagianism, and foreknowledge
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 May 2006
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- 1 Augustine
- 2 Faith and reason
- 3 Augustine on evil and original sin
- 4 Predestination, Pelagianism, and foreknowledge
- 5 Biblical interpretation
- 6 The divine nature
- 7 De Trinitate
- 8 Time and creation in Augustine
- 9 Augustine’s theory of soul
- 10 Augustine on free will
- 11 Augustine’s philosophy of memory
- 12 The response to skepticism and the mechanisms of cognition
- 13 Knowledge and illumination
- 14 Augustine’s philosophy of language
- 15 Augustine’s ethics
- 16 Augustine’s political philosophy
- 17 Augustine and medieval philosophy
- 18 Post-medieval Augustinianism
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
It is not hard to determine what Augustine meant by predestination. In one of his last works, written for those who opposed him mainly on the issue of predestination, he has this to say about his doctrine: “This is the predestination of the saints, nothing else: plainly the foreknowledge and preparation of God's bene- fits, by means of which whoever is to be liberated is most certainly liberated.” His doctrine has a dark corollary. If you are not one of the saints - one of those looked after by God - you are most certainly lost; your lot in life is to remain part of a ruined race, squandered in sin (massa perditionis). The doctrine of predestination and its corollary, the inevitable ruin of those not predestined to be redeemed, fairly encapsulate a career's worth of theological reflection on Augustine's part. He had arrived at a relentlessly God-driven account of human redemption, and if his own assessment of his development can be credited, he had begun from a place not too dissimilar. I will be marking some of the turns in Augustine's trek to his doctrine of predestination, at least in passing, but the question I most have in mind is less one of how he gets there than why he bothers. What moves him so to emphasize God's role in redemption that to even some of his own most loyal supporters, he seems to have all but obliterated the human part?
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- Information
- The Cambridge Companion to Augustine , pp. 49 - 58Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2001
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