Concerning the Relation between Free Will and Grace in Augustine of Hippo
Concerning the Relation between Free Will and Grace in Augustine of Hippo
박찬호
초록
The life of Augustine was composed of various controversies. He fought against the various foes to save the Catholic church. Thus there has been danger of misunderstanding the sayings mentioned in the context of different controversies. Representatively Pelagius did so. He overemphasized and abused the sayings of Augustine concerning free will in the Manichaean controversy. By these arguments, he virtually denied the necessity of grace, although he used the same term grace and acknowledged the need of it. Against the Manichaean dualism, Augustine contends that free will is the origin of evil. Against Pelagius, Augustine asserts that God’s grace of the supernatural sense is necessary for us to do His commands. Pelagius misuses the contention of Augustine that free will of human beings is the origin of the evil and holds that human beings have the freedom to do good things. Pelagius confines the limit of grace in the enabling grace and then consequently denies the necessity of grace. However, Augustine maintains that the grace of Pelagius is not grace at all. Without divine grace including co-operative grace, the fallen human beings can not do anything good. In that sense Augustine refuses the freedom of will to do good in human beings of the fallen state. Augustine was a theologian of grace who had much influence on the Reformers. In that respect, we hope that this paper can contribute to the discussion related to sola gratia among the five solas of Reformed theology accepted by Reformed Life theology.