Augustine in His Own Words (continued)
that person seek in us, His members, those merits which preceded our multiple rebirth. For that birth was not given to Christ as recompense, but rather was given so that He should be born of the Spirit and the Virgin, apart from all the bonds of sin. And likewise our being born again by water and the Spirit is not a recompense for any merit but is freely given to us. And if faith has led us to the bath of rebirth, we ought not for that reason to think that we have first given something to God so that our saving rebirth might be given to us in return. For the One who has made us believe in Christ is the One who made for us the Christ in whom we believe. He who made in human beings the beginning (principium) and the perfection of their faith in Jesus, made the man Jesus "the author (principem) and perfecter of faith" (Heb 12:2), for this is what He is called, as you know, in the Epistle to the Hebrews.102
Making Progress
Augustine recognized that his thinking on grace and on many other issues, both large and small, had shifted over time. At the very moment when he was responding to Prosper's and Hilary's concerns, he was also in the process of reviewing his vast output and his long career as an author and recording his reflections in his Reconsiderations. Here he reflects on his search. From The Gift of Perseverance:
(21.55) For at this moment I am writing a treatise in which I have begun to reconsider my works103 in order to show that I have not followed myself in all matters, but rather I think that, through the mercy of God, I have made progress in writing and did not begin at the point of perfection. For that matter, I would be speaking with more arrogance than truth if I were to say that even now, at my present age, I have arrived at perfection, in writing without any errors. But it makes a difference to what extent and in what matters one has erred, and how easily one corrects one's error, or with what obstinacy one attempts to defend it. Certainly there is high hope for a man, if the last day of this life finds him making such progress that whatever was lacking in his progress is supplied to him, and that he is judged as worthy to be perfected rather than punished.104
102. De praedestinatione sanctorum 15.30–31 (BA 24:252–56); my trans., based on Mourant and Collinge, FOTC 86:253–56. On this theme, see Réné Bernard, "La prédestination au Christ total selon saint Augustin," Recherches augustiniennes 3 (1965): 1–58; on its place within Augustine's broader Christology and theology of grace, see Hombert, Gloria Gratiae, 439–508.
103. "Reconsider my works": Augustine is referring to retr. 104. De dono perseverantiae 21.55 (BA 24:736); trans. Mourant and Collinge, FOTC 86:326.
Against the Pelagians 435
Conquered by the Grace of God
Augustine tells his correspondents that the turning point in his career had been his first work he wrote as a bishop, To Simplicianus, On Various Questions, in which his old mentor from Milan had asked him to wrestle with certain texts from Paul's Letters. From On the Predestination of the Saints:
(3.7) I did not think that faith was preceded by the grace of God, so that through it, it might be given to us that we might ask usefully. Except for the fact that we could not believe unless the proclamation of the truth had preceded, I thought that, once the Gospel was preached to us, our assent was our own doing and came to us from ourselves. This error of mine is sufficiently evident in some small works of mine written before my episcopate. Among these is that which you mentioned in your letters, that is, my Commentary on Statements in the Letter of Paul to the Romans. . . .
(4.8) I see those brothers of ours [in Marseilles] are now of that opinion, because they did not take the same care with which they read my books also to join me in my progress in them. For if they had taken such care, they would have discovered that this question is resolved in accordance with the truth of the divine Scriptures in the first of the two books which I addressed at the very beginning of my episcopate to Simplicianus of blessed memory, bishop of the Church of Milan and successor to blessed Ambrose. Unless perhaps they did not know of this work—in this case, see to it that they do know it. . . . In the second book of my Reconsiderations, what I have said is as follows:105
The first two books which I wrote as a bishop are addressed to Simplicianus, bishop of the Church in Milan, who succeeded the most blessed Ambrose. They deal with various questions. . . . The second question deals with the passage where the Apostle says: "Not only Sarah, but also Rebecca who conceived in one act of intercourse [two sons] of Isaac our father" (Rom 9:10), up to where he says, "Unless the Lord of Hosts had left us a posterity, we should have become as Sodom and should have been like Gomorrah" (Rom 9:29). In the solution of this question, I indeed labored in defense of the free choice of the human will, but the grace of God conquered, and only thus was I able to arrive at the point where I understood that the Apostle spoke with the clearest truth, "For who singles you out? Or what do you have that you have not received? And if you have received it, why do you glory as if you had not received it?" (1 Cor 4:7). . . .
105. "Second book of my Reconsiderations": He quotes here from retr. 2.1.1 (CCL 57:89–90).