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GRACE
Saint Augustine’s
Theology of Grace
by Stephen N. Filippo
Justification
While Augustine is always concerned with refuting the errors of Pelagianism, the Grace
versus free will issue is not an either/or proposition for him. It is God who justifies
us, yet we must respond in the affirmative; we must cooperate or else lose the grace:
‘He was handed over for our offenses, and he rose again for our justification.’ What does this mean, ‘for our justification?’ So that He might justify us; so that he might make us just. You will be a work of God, not only because you are a man, but also because you are just. For it is better that you be just than that you be a man. If God made you a man, and you made yourself just, something you were doing would be better than what God did. But God made you without any cooperation on your part. For you did not lend your consent so that God could make you. How could you have consented when you did not exist? But He who made you without your consent does not justify you without your consent. He made you without your knowledge but He does not justify you without your willing it.1
Therefore, it is God who justifies us, not we ourselves justifying
ourselves, as Pelagianism taught. What Adam lost for mankind, Jesus restored through His
Cross and Resurrection; namely our being justified in the eyes of God. Although our Lord
in the historical event of the Cross and Resurrection justified all, it is up to the
particular individual to accept and to continue to consent to that justification. In other
words, the person must consciously cooperate with the grace of justification. If a person
does not desire to be or stay justified it is highly unlikely that God will continue to
justify him. Most men come to the Faith like Zacchaeus and Cornelius, “after
searching and begging,”2 not like St. Paul.
Yet even St. Paul, with his inner man totally transformed, was not
justified without his consent and continued cooperation with grace. Thus, God does not
continue “to justify you without your willing it.”
In essence, Augustine says that man cannot justify himself lest
“something you were doing would be better than what God did,” which cannot be.
Nor can a person, do anything for his salvation apart from grace. Yet a person can say yea
or nay to accepting and continually consenting to grace. Thus, we must cooperate with
grace or lose it.
What St. Augustine does not explain clearly here is that justification
is not a one time event, nor is it static. People can and do fall in and out of grace with
God, sometimes many times, over a lifetime. St. Augustine is really speaking about three
different graces of justification: the initial event, the Redemption by which all are
justified: external justification; two, the initial event in each person’s life
whereby they are made just, usually Baptism; and three, the ongoing process of
justification that lasts throughout one’s lifetime on earth.
One thing is clear: one cannot continually be justified in the eyes of
God, without continually accepting the choices that are for God’s greater glory, not
ours, in order to be sanctified. Thus, justification is made up of the disposition of
acceptance; acceptance of Divine Revelation. “But to those who did accept him he gave
power to become children of God, to those who believe in his name...” (Jn 1:12).
Therefore, the obverse is also true: if you do not accept God you cannot be saved,
“He came to what was his own, but his own people did not accept him” (Jn 1:11).
The Indwelling of the Holy Spirit
Yet many people hear the word of God and do not “keep it”
much less even seriously listen to it. “They may look but not see, and hear but not
understand” (Lk 8:10). So the question arises: exactly how is one justified? Or, more
correctly, by whom is one justified?
The Holy Spirit is operative interiorly to give healing power to the
medicine which is applied externally, for, otherwise, no preaching of the truth is of any
avail. Even though God makes use of one of His obedient creatures, as when He speaks in
human guise to our ears—whether to the ears of the body or to the kind of ears we
have in sleep—it is only by His interior grace that He moves and rules our mind.3
“You are more interior to me than my inmost self.”4 Merely
hearing the word or reading Scripture “is of no avail” unless the Holy Spirit
has already prepared one to accept it. “For it is God, for his own loving purpose,
who puts the will and the action into you” (Phil 2:13). Moreover, “What do you
possess that you have not received? But if you have received it why are you boasting as if
you did not receive it”? ( 1 Cor 4:7); it is pure gratuitousness on God’s part.
Back to the main point, interior grace precedes faith. It is impossible
to believe without having heard, yet it is impossible to believe unless the Holy Spirit is
already working in you preparing you to believe what you will hear, lest the words fall on
deaf ears or barren soil. Thus, “How shall they believe without a preacher?” (Rm
10:14) is only half the equation. In the opening chapter of The Confessions, St. Augustine
asks nearly the same questions as St. Paul in Romans Chapter 10. St. Augustine concludes
the chapter by asking in prayer:
Lord, let me seek you by calling upon you, and let me call upon you by believing in you, for you have been preached to us. Lord, my faith calls upon you, that faith which you have given to me, which you have breathed into me by the Incarnation of your Son and through the ministry of your preacher [St. Ambrose].5
Notice St. Augustine does not say: “Lord, I will call upon you...I will seek you...” but he asks the Lord to let him call upon Him and to continually be permitted to call upon Him, so he will increase in belief and because that belief in itself is purely gratuitous grace. For it is “that faith which you have given to me.” And to get more one must humbly, continually ask. For this is what God wants: for us to put His wants in front of ours, since He knows best what is good for His children:
Or what man is there among you, who, if his son asks him for bread, will hand him a stone; or if he asks for a fish, will hand him a serpent? Therefore, if you, evil as you are, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him (Mt 7:9-11).
Also, what is it that has been “breathed into” St.
Augustine “by the Incarnation” except the Holy Spirit? “Unless I go, the
Advocate will not come to you” (Jn 16:7). “The Spirit of Truth” who
“will lead you to the whole truth” (Jn 16:13).
In the same Chapter One of The Confessions, in perhaps the most famous
line, St. Augustine tells us that God first arouses in us the desire, before we can take
joy in Him. “You arouse him [man] to take joy in praising you, for you have made us
for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.”6 Therefore, we do
not even have the desire to seek God, unless He first arouses in us that desire. Through
our praise we do not “arouse God” but He arouses us to praise Him in the first
place. He prepares our wills first, before we have any inkling of what He is doing. It is
usually only in hindsight that any of us, even the greatest saints, can see and realize
“the finger of God” at work in us. Like in the parable of the Prodigal son, God
the Father sees us coming home to Him “along way off,” long before we are even
aware of it. Later on, much to our amazement and delight, we find out that all along it
has been Him who has been guiding us, in ways unknown to our inmost selves. For, “You
are more interior to me than my inmost self.” Once we awaken to the realization, the
rest of our life on earth is “restless” until our hearts rest in God.
The Interior Struggle: Grace is True Freedom
Then why do not all men desire God? Assuming for the moment we are
talking strictly about adults past the age of reason, they do not desire God because they
consciously reject Him. In other words, He gave them the opportunity yet people chose
their selfish needs instead. He aroused them, but they did not feel like being aroused,
but preferred to remain asleep in the dreamlike state of selfishness. They preferred the
creature to the Creator, a tragic absurdity. They chose themselves instead of God.
Thus, sin is a turning away from God, choosing self-will, not
God’s will. According to St. Augustine, it is not possible to choose to do the Good,
to our Eternal Benefit, without God’s constant help. Thus, grace transforms sinners
into saints by giving people the ability to have freedom from sin:
And since no one is able to will unless he is incited and called either intrinsically where no man sees, or extrinsically by the sound of the word or by some visible signs, it is shown that God operates even the will itself in us. For to that supper which, in the Gospel, the Lord says has been prepared, not all those who were called were willing to come, nor would those who came have been able to come if they had not been called. Therefore those who came must not attribute it to themselves; for having been called, they came; and those who willed not to come must not attribute it to others but to themselves alone, because they were called, and in free will they could have come.7
Thus, the will is free, free floating, neutral if you will. Freedom,
on the other hand, is not located in making the choice of action. It is the result of the
choice. Grace becomes the more attractive alternative for those who are graced to choose
it. It does not hinder or obligate the will, which is enmeshed in sin, but gives it the
resolve and power to carry out the choices that will set it free from sin: freedom from
sin. And, it is all God’s doing: “It is He who will free you from the snare of
the fowler who seeks to destroy you” (Ps 91:3). And, “If the Son shall set you
free, you shall be free indeed” (Jn 8:36).
There are four great Christian freedoms: freedom from sin, freedom from
the inclination to sin, freedom from death, and freedom from time. According to St.
Augustine, after the Fall, we lost all these freedoms except for the possibility of the
ever increasing freedom from sin. Thus, one can, by grace be weaned from grave sin to
venial sin to no sin, and perhaps no temptation, in regard to a given predilection to a
certain sin. Thus, a self-righteous, zealous murderer can be transformed into a St. Paul,
or a lecherous old man into a Saint Cyprian, or a confused young man into a Saint
Augustine.
For Saint Augustine grace provides an immediate spontaneous desire to
think and to do the Good. Too much deliberation for the lesser good is to already become
somewhat ensnared and risk sin. The first freedom is to be free from mortal sin.
When human beings begin to be free of these sins, they begin to raise their heads in the direction of freedom. The freedom they now have is only the beginning of freedom; it is not perfect freedom. “But why is it not perfect freedom?” someone may ask. Because “I experience in my members another law that is in conflict with the law of my mind” (Rm 7:23) ... There is partial freedom and partial slavery. Freedom is not yet total, not yet pure, not yet complete, because we are not yet in eternity... When will freedom be truly full and perfect? When all enmities cease; when “the last enemy, death, is overcome” (1 Cor 15:26). 8
Thus freedom, which is the result of grace actively and effectively
working in us, is a lifelong process of God doing for us what we could not do for
ourselves. Yet it also involves our cooperation.
Many raise the question with St. Augustine as to whether or not his
idea of grace in effect destroys the concept of freedom of choice. St. Augustine himself
answers this objection best:
Do we then “make void” freedom of choice through grace? “God forbid! yea, we establish” freedom of choice. As the law is not made void by faith, so freedom of choice is not made void but established by grace. Freedom of choice is necessary to the fulfilment of the law. But by the law comes knowledge of sin; by faith comes the obtaining of grace against sin; by grace comes the healing of the soul from sin’s sickness; by the healing of the soul comes freedom of choice; by freedom of choice comes love of righteousness; by the love of righteousness comes the working of the law. And thus, as the law is not made void but established by faith, since faith obtains the grace whereby the law may be fulfilled, so freedom of choice is not made void but established by grace, since grace heals the will whereby righteousness may be freely loved ... Why then must wretched men be bold to vaunt themselves either of their freedom of choice before they are made free, or of their own strength, if the freedom has been given them? Why will they not hear in the very words “freedom of choice” the meaning of liberty? ... How if they are slaves to sin, can they boast freedom of choice?9
Freedom for St. Augustine is the goal of our life; freedom from sin.
And grace is the vehicle.
Common sense helps explain why freedom of choice cannot be an absolute:
does one have the freedom to choose the parents that will bear one? the date one will be
born? the age one would be born unto? the souls that will share the earth concurrently?
the culture, religion, ideals, etc. one will be brought up in? much less the moment or the
means of death? What about the numbers of hairs on your head? or, increasing one’s
stature one cubit? Moreover, once a choice is made in a matter where one is free they are
no longer free to choose something else, but have to now assume the responsibility of
their choice. For instance, once one chooses to marry one person they are no longer free
to choose another. Therefore, freedom of choice, especially as an absolutist concept, is a
misnomer. It simply cannot be. Therefore, freedom of choice is merely a means to an end:
the four great Christian freedoms, which can only be experienced after one dies.
Nonetheless, “Augustine says all man have free will (freedom of choice) by nature,
but only the redeemed have true liberty, or freedom from sin, by grace.”10 Thus,
graces’ effects are God’s doing and our cooperation. For the issue of grace and
freedom it is both/and not either/or.
Divine Adoption
St. Augustine calls the grace by which we become “sons of God and
partakers in the kingdom of heaven” the grace of adoption. Thus, born with original
sin, we nonetheless have the capacity for Divine Revelation; a spiritual rebirth, totally
gratuitously given by the Good God to us in order that He might save us from self
destruction.
This is the grace of the New Testament, which lay hidden in the Old,
though there was no end of its being prophesied and foretold in veiled figures so that the
soul might recognize its God and, by God’s grace, be reborn to Him. This is truly a
spiritual birth, and therefore it is not of blood nor the will of man, nor the will of the
flesh, but of God. This is called adoption. For we were something before we became sons of
God, and received a benefit by which we became what we were not. One who is adopted is not
yet, before he is adopted, the son of him by whom he is adopted; nevertheless, he is at
that prior time one who can be adopted. And from this begetting by grace we distinguish
that Son, who, when He was the Son of God, came that He might become the Son of Man; and
He thereby enabled us, who were sons of men, to become sons of God.11
So, God became man that man might become God. We who were under the
indictment of sin, were pardoned through grace. We who were born tainted and wounded
became cleaned and healed. We who were born with a strong inclination and attraction
toward sin, became whole and delight in and love grace instead. Thus, this grace
accomplishes a real change in human beings, a transformation, rebirth, justification,
divinization, adoption and participation in the divine life.
Yet for St. Augustine all these “parts” or
“aspects” of grace were just different viewpoints, looking through a particular
side of the multifarious prism, attempting to glimpse the Eternal, Unchangeable Godhead,
however fleetingly. Nonetheless, all the different graces do form a cohesive whole for
Augustine:
If anything clearly emerges, it is that Augustine considers charity, the gift of the Spirit, to be the heart of grace as it is found in the new dispensation. Grace animates the personal life of love, the exchange of gift for Gift. Therein resides the essential Christian transformation of a person, a conversion to the love of God above all things and the love of all things in and for God, which results in a deification which Augustine equates with filiation toward God. If we have been made children of God (Jn 1:12), we have been made gods through the grace of adoption.12
Thus, it is through the grace of adoption the we receive the Gift of the indwelling of
the Holy Spirit. And it is through the Holy Spirit that all the virtues and gifts have
been given to us. “The charity of God is poured forth in our hearts by the Holy
Spirit who has been given to us” (Rm 5:5). Thus, the graces of God set us free from
sin, free to love. Therefore, grace allows us to love God back, since He has already loved
us. This love, meager in comparison, if indeed it can compare at all the Creator’s
love for us, is for St. Augustine, “the heart of grace.”
Love: the Heart of St. Augustine’s Theology of
Grace
For St. Augustine love is everything: the way, the means, the object
and the end of our lives. The first step is to know what to love, which is itself no small
grace:
If we love another man whom we believe righteous, we cannot but love the pattern itself which shows us what the righteous soul is, in order that we too might become righteous. Indeed, did we not love the pattern, we could have no love for the man; for our love for him is based upon the pattern: It is only that so long as we are not righteous our love of it is insufficient to make us righteous ...
Our conclusion is that love for the man who is believed righteous is based upon that pattern and truth which the lover perceives and apprehends in himself. But the love for the pattern and the truth itself cannot be based upon anything extraneous .... Accordingly our love for men must have their righteousness either as the cause or as the purpose of our love. In the same way a man’s own righteousness must be either cause or purpose of his love for himself: only so can he safely love his neighbor as himself. If his self-love has any other ground, it is an unrighteous self-love, for he will be loving himself so as to be unrighteous—and therefore to be evil, so that it will be no real self-love; for “he who loves iniquity, hates his own soul.”13
For St. Augustine the perfect pattern is Our Lord Jesus Christ. It
is based upon a deep, incessant desire all souls have for their Creator, but which only
few souls get in touch with. The further off one’s pattern of love is, the further
away from the mark one’s arrow will fall. For we are what we love. Therefore, let us
love the Good God and everything and everyone else for God.
St. Augustine equates love with the truth, as one leads to the other,
and the other back to the one:
The aim of true love is the life of righteousness in cleaving to the truth; and this means that nothing in this world should have any weight for us beside the love of men, which means the will that they may live righteously. That gives all the value to the readiness to die for our brethren, which the Lord Jesus Christ taught us by his example. There are two commandments on which hang all the Law and the Prophets: love of God and love of neighbor.14
To know the truth, then, means to love. And to be able to love in
the first place means to know and love the truth. For righteousness is truth and therefore
love; all of which can be summed up by seeking to imitate our Lord by obeying the two
great commandments: Love thy God with all the heart, soul, mind and strength and love thy
neighbor as thyself” (cf Mt 22:37-8, Mk 12:29-31).
As to the first love, love of God, St. Augustine teaches that He is
right here, right now, ever present and all-knowing. We have only to remove the prideful,
unrighteous aspects of ourselves and literally learn to get out of our own way. For if one
is not close to his Creator, guess who moved?
“God is love.” Why should we go speeding to the height of heaven and the nethermost parts of the earth, seeking for him who is with us, if we would but be with him? Let none say: “I do not know what I am to love.” Let him love his brother, and he will love that same love: he knows the love whereby he loves better than the brother whom he loves. God can be more known to him than his brother—really more known because more present; more known because more inward; more known because more sure. Embrace the love that is God: through love embrace God. He is the very love that links together in holy bond all good angels and all God’s servants, and unites them and us to one another and in obedience to himself. The more we are, clean from the cancer of pride, the more we are filled with love; and he who is filled with love is filled with God.15
Thus, we can even learn how to love God: by loving our brother. For
the love by which we love our brother is but a small taste of the very same love by which
we love our God. Therefore, take what you know about loving your brother and apply it to
God. You will see the smallness of your love and the largeness of His. And He will
literally open your heart and come live with you, while chiseling out the imperfections in
it. Then He will pour many new graces into it.
As for the love of one’s neighbor, St. Augustine teaches that it
is but a subsidiary yet necessary aspect of the love of God already at work in and through
the love by which we love our neighbors:
Remember the apostle John’s commendation of brotherly love: “Whosoever loves his brother abides in the light, and there is no cause of stumbling in him.” Evidently he has set the perfection of righteousness in the love of brother: he in whom there is no cause of stumbling is plainly perfect. Yet he seems to have said nothing of the love of God. The only explanation of this is that he means God to be comprehended in brotherly love itself. And a little later in the Epistle he says explicitly: “Beloved, let us love one another; for love is of God; and everyone that loves is born of God and knows God. He that loves not, has not known God; for God is love.” The train of thought makes it clear enough, that this same brotherly love (the love wherewith we love another) is being proclaimed with apostolic authority to be not only “of God,” but “God.” It is God, then that causes us to love our brother, when love causes us to do so; and the first object of our love must needs be that very love wherewith we love our brother.16
Therefore, the two commandments are not really separable. From one flows the other. And to do the other is to see the one. Thus, if one loved with ...
spiritual charity the brother whom his outward vision sees, he would see God, who is Charity itself, with the inward vision whereby God can be seen. Thus he who loves not the brother whom he sees cannot love God, whom he does not see just because God is the love which he lacks.17
Ultimately, St. Augustine looks at the Holy Trinity from this
position of loving thy neighbor and asks: “What does any friend love in his friend
but the soul? There too are the three: the lover, the loved, and love.”18
To share in this Love between the Three then is our goal and end. This
Love is grace par excellence for St. Augustine. And here on earth, those of us who are
graced to sip from this stream, no matter how meagerly or fruitfully, are beginning on
earth the endless journey toward God.
Summary
The cords by which God draws us through grace towards Eternal Life are
not harsh, but sweet and gentle. He is not the God of toughness but the God of love. He
attracts us by joy and delight, not only by pain and sorrow. In order for graced love to
be effective it must have a real, tangible attraction for our souls:
The drawing is the drawing that love does, a drawing by the cords of
the heart. It is akin to the attraction of sweets, the attraction of a pleasure. One is
drawn by delight. In Augustine’s mind, conversion is a transformation effected by a
delight into freedom, new life and new understanding. Powerless without grace, the will to
will is intrinsically transformed by delight into an effective and passionate love.
Delight is the gift of the Spirit and it marks the lives of those who are with God and
those who are on the way. “I delight in the law of God in my inmost self.”19
St. Augustine does not say that grace is irresistible, but that it is
very attractive in and of itself. In and of Itself it is the Creator. Thus, for St.
Augustine all grace comes from and leads us back to Him without whom nothing would exist.
He is grace; the beginning and the end, the Ultimate.
In The Spirit and the Letter St. Augustine sums up and connects all his
teaching on grace:
... the human will is divinely assisted to do the right in such manner that, besides man’s creation with the endowment of freedom to choose, and besides the teaching by which he is instructed how he ought to live, he receives the Holy Spirit, whereby there arises in his soul the delight in and the love of God, the supreme and changeless Good. This gift is here and now, while he walks by faith, not yet by sight: that having this as earnest of God’s free bounty, he may be fired in heart to cleave to his Creator, kindled in mind to come within the shining of the true light; and thus receive from the source of his being the only real well-being. Free choice alone, if the way of truth is hidden, avails for nothing but sin: and when the right action and the true aim has begun to appear clearly, there is still no doing, no devotion, no good life, unless it be also delighted in and loved. And that it may be loved, the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts, not by the free choice whose spring is in ourselves, but through the Holy Spirit which is given us.20
Thus, love conquers all. This ‘conquering’ is only made
possible through one’s truthful admission of powerlessness before God; by one’s
surrendering one’s desires for the Beloved. God will not be outdone in generosity:
grace.
In sum, St. Augustine teaches interior justification as well as
exterior, but to have just the exterior will not suffice, for the Holy Spirit has to
already be indwelling in the person for one to respond to preaching and/or Scripture in
the first place. This usually begins with baptism or a later conversion or re-conversion
experience. The Holy Spirit creates an attitude or interior disposition of acceptance
toward Divine Revelation. Therefore the will is moved to the good it was truly created
for, not that which moves one into sin. Thus, the will begins to move toward freedom:
freedom from the domination of sin. The will is attracted to do the good by delight and
joy and love. The grace whereby the Trinity comes and makes His home in us is called
Divine Adoption, definitively and historically accomplished through Our Lord’s Cross
and Redemption, out of love for us. For “God so loved the world that he sent his only
begotten son, that those who believe in him may not perish, but have life
everlasting” (Jn 3:16). Through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit we learn to do good
and avoid evil; love God and thy neighbor. Under grace, good actions are meritorious and
can help us gain Eternal Life.
Predestination not included, these tenets are the core essentials of
St. Augustine’s theology of grace. Confirmed by the Synod of Orange in 529 and again
in much greater detail in the Council of Trent in 1545-63, St. Augustine’s theology
of grace remains today the main staple of the Theology of grace for Catholicism.
Stephen N. Filippo is a teacher of Theology for the Archdiocese of New York at
Cathedral Prep Seminary in Rye, New York.
End Notes
1 William A. Jurgens. The Faith of the Early Fathers. Vol. III. Sermon
169. Liturgical Press: Collegeville, Minnesota, 1979, p.29.
2 Stephen J. Duffy. The Dynamics of Grace: Perspectives in Theological
Anthropology. Liturgical Press: Collegeville, Minnesota, 1993, p. 111.
3 Gerald G. Walsh, S.J. & others. tr. Part Four: The Development of
the Two Cities in City of God. New York: Image books, 1958, p. 331.
4 John K. Ryan, tr. Book III: Later Youth. in The Confessions of St.
Augustine. New York: Image Books, 1960, p. 84
5 Ibid., Book I: Childhood., p. 43.
6 Ibid., p. 43.
7 Op. Cit.,The Faith of the Early Fathers. Vol. IIII Eighty-Three
Diverse Questions. p. 42.
8 Agostino Trape, O.S.A. Saint Augustine: Man, Pastor, Mystic. New York:
Catholic Book Publishing Co., 1986, pp. 208-209.
9 John S. Burleigh. ed. & tr. The Spirit and the Letter. in
Augustine: Later Works. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1955, p.236.
10 Peter Kreft. “Is There such a thing as “Mere
Christianity”?: A Trialogue with C.S. Lewis, Martin Luther, & Thomas
Aquinas” in The New Oxford Review. July-August 1994, p. 12.
11 0p. Cit., The Faith of the Early Fathers. Vol. III. Letter of
Augustine to the Catechumen Honoratus. p. 7.
12 0p. Cit., The Dynamics of Grace: Perspectives in Theological
Anthropology. p. 82.
13 0p. Cit., The Trinity. in Augustine: Later Works. pp. 49-50.
14 Ibid., p. 50.
15 Ibid., p. 52.
16 Ibid., p.52-53.
17 Ibid., p.53.
18 Ibid., p.55.
19 0p. Cit., The Dynamics of Grace: Perspectives in Theological
Anthropology. p. 102.
20 0p. Cit., The Spirit and the Letter. in Augustine: Later Works,
pp. 197-198.
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