St. Augustine: Divine Grace and Free Will

Paper Summary:

This paper reviews, discusses and analyzes the teachings of St. Augustine. The paper reports that the teachings of St. Augustine expounded upon the relationship between the Divine Grace and human free will and the influence both have on the achievement of individual human salvation. According to the paper, Pelagius was St. Augustine's biggest rival, teaching that Divine Grace was not the sole necessity for achieving salvation.

From the Paper:

"God has decreed that we are all sinners, but even this condition is a result of a free choice made by Adam and Eve when they committed the original sin. In choosing to sin, the first man and first woman were undertaking truly momentous decision. Rather than accept that which was freely given to them - a beautiful and eternal paradise - they chose to question, and therefore to sin against God. By their choice in the beginning, all humanity was condemned to a life outside Eden, one that necessarily entailed sin. It is like the case of a man who chooses to emigrate from the country of his birth knowing that, once his decision is made, he can never return. He makes his choice, takes with him his wife, and goes to another country. The two have children in that country, and forever afterwards, their descendents are now citizens of that place. Those descendents can, of course, choose to change their habitations at some future date, even possibly deciding to return to the land from which they originally came, but they can never pick up from where their ancestors left off. It is possible, in fact, that the land, or nation, from which their forebears emigrated might no longer exist. At the very least, the position of their family in that country would have changed. It is the same with humankind and the Paradise that was Eden.
"Augustine viewed his own personal conversion as an act of Free Will. All his life, he had been faced with real choices in regard to his thoughts and actions. Throughout his youth, he had chosen to ignore the Path of God, and to follow false philosophies and indulge the pleasures of the flesh. The other choice - to accept Christ's teachings - was always open to him yet, until he consciously made it, could not possibly furnish any stimulus for change in his way of living. St. Augustine explains his discovery in Against the Manicheans"

Sample of Sources Used:

• Augustine. Augustine of Hippo, Selected Writings. Translated by Clark, Mary T. New York: Paulist Press, 1984.
• Augustine. Confessions, Trans. Albert C. Outler, Ph.D, D.D. (1994, orig. pub. 1955).
• Augustine. De Trinitate. Translation. (No Date). URL: http://www.ccel.org/fathers2/NPNF1-03/npnf1-03-07.htm#P168_49840.
• Augustine. Four Anti-Pelagian Writings. Translated by Mourant, John A. and William J. Collinge. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1992.
• Augustine, Saint. The City of God. Translated by Dods, Marcus D. D. New York: Modern Library, 1950.

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