Augustine in His Own Words (continued)
Against the Pelagians 393
Christ the Pediatrician
After the tribunal, Marcellinus wrote Augustine, asking him to respond to Caelestius's assertions. Augustine replied with On the Merits and Forgiveness of Sins and On Infant Baptism. Note three points: First, Augustine did not initiate the controversy; his close friends and colleagues did. We need to appreciate to what degree Augustine's role was thrust upon him. Second, the controversy at this juncture was anti-Caelestian. The condemnation of Caelestius said nothing about Pelagius. Only in retrospect would Augustine see this as his first anti-Pelagian treatise. Third, while Caelestius took a stand on infants, Pelagius (at least in his surviving writings) shows no interest in them. This highlights what scholars now emphasize: Pelagianism is not a single, coherent body of ideas, even if Augustine treated it as such, but rather "a loose confederation of theologies taking their name, but not necessarily their inspiration, from the British moralist."45 In this initial work, Augustine focuses on two issues that came up during Caelestius's trial. The first is original sin and its implications for infant baptism. As Augustine sees it, the underlying yet central theological issue is Christology.46 To declare infants innocent implicitly denies that Christ is the one and only Savior of the world. Note how Augustine gives his stock image of Christ the Doctor a new twist: that Jesus is also a baby doctor, a pediatrician. From On the Merits and Forgiveness of Sins and On Infant Baptism, Book 1:
(18.23) Those people raise a question and seem to offer something worth considering and discussing: They say that little ones, newly born from their mothers' wombs, receive baptism not for the remission of sin, but in order that, through "spiritual procreation," they may be created in Christ and become partakers of the kingdom of heaven and, by this, children and "heirs of God, co-heirs with Christ" (Rom 8:17).47 Yet when one asks them whether those who are not baptized and not made co-heirs with Christ and partakers of the kingdom of heaven have the benefit of eternal salvation at the resurrection of the dead, they labor furiously but find no way out. After all, would any Christian allow it to be said that one can attain eternal salvation without being reborn in Christ? Christ willed that rebirth to take place through baptism when he established just such a sacrament for regenerating us for the hope of eternal salvation. For this reason, the Apostle said: "Not because of any righteous deeds we have done but according to His mercy, He saved us through the bath of rebirth" (Ti 3:5). . . . Who would dare claim that without
45. James Wetzel, "Snares of Truth: Augustine on Free Will and Predestination," in Dodaro and Lawless, Augustine and His Critics, 126.
46. Burns, Development, 96. 47. "Not for the remission of sin, but . . . partakers of the kingdom": Augustine is here quoting nearly word-for-word Rufinus's text. It is possible either that Augustine had the text or that Caelestius had quoted it in the documents that he formally submitted on the occasion of the ecclesiastical tribunal.
this rebirth infants are able to be saved, as if Christ had not died for them? For "Christ died for the ungodly" (Rom 5:6). But as for these infants, who, as is clear, have done nothing ungodly in their lives, if they are not held prisoner by any chain of ungodliness from the outset, originally, then how did He who died for the ungodly die for them? If they are not wounded by that disease of original sin, then why are they carried to Christ the Doctor, that is, carried by those running48 in pious fear so that these infants might receive the sacrament of eternal health and well-being? Otherwise, why would [those who bring them] not be told when they come to church: "Get these innocents out of here! It's not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick; Christ came to call not the righteous, but sinners"? Never was such nonsense said, never is it said, never will it be said, not ever in the Church of Christ.
(19.24) . . . The Doctor does indeed call infants—the Doctor who is not needed by the healthy but by the sick, the One who came to call to repentance not the just, but sinners (Lk 5:31-32). And since infants are as yet held debtbound by no sin from their own lives, then it must be the disease of original sin that is cured in them, cured by that grace of His which makes them healthy through the bath of rebirth. . . .
(22.33) Let us consent to and yield to the authority of Holy Scripture, which knows not how to deceive nor be deceived. And just as we believe that those not yet born have done nothing good or bad to make any discernible difference in what they merit, so let us not have the slightest doubt that all are under the sin which, through one man, entered into the world and has been passed on to all humanity (Rom 5:12), something from which only "the grace of God through our Lord Jesus Christ" (Rom 7:25) can liberate us.
(23.33) This medicinal coming [of Christ] is a deed done "not for the healthy but for the sick," because He "came to call not the righteous, but sinners" (Lk 5:31–32). Into His Kingdom, one will not enter unless one has been born again of water and of the Spirit (Jn 3:5), nor will one possess eternal life and well-being other than in His kingdom since those who have not eaten His flesh (Jn 6:54) and who have not believed in the Son will not have life (Jn 3:36), but the anger of God remains upon them. From this sin, from this sickness, from this anger of God, only the "Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world" (Jn 1:29) can deliver them; only the Doctor who came "not for the healthy but for the sick" (Lk 5:31); only the Savior of whom it was said to the
48. "Carried by those running": The Maurist edition has "those running" (currentium, PL 44:122), whereas Zycha, the editor of the critical edition, suggests "those caring" (curantium, CSEL 60:23). The Maurist version is correct: Augustine routinely speaks of mothers (and others) "running" with their infants to church to get them baptized. Given the high incidence of infant mortality in the ancient world, coupled with the North African conviction that there is no salvation outside of baptism, it is little wonder parents ran to church with dying babies in their arms.