The Doctors of the Church
Fra Filippo Lippi c. 1437
Accademina Albertina, Turin

Contents:
Introduction
Tradition I and the Doctrine of Salvation
One Baptism for the Forgiveness of Sins
The Council of Nicaea (325)
For us Men and for our Salvation
Augustine and Justification
Protestants and the Problem of the First Four Centuries
Conclusion

Introduction

Mathison endorses what he takes to be the Patristic and Reformation doctrine of authority, which he refers to as “Tradition I.” Under this theory, the Fathers and Reformers affirmed the primacy of Scripture, but not the primacy of the individual interpreter. He explains:

Tradition I asserts that Scripture is the sole source of revelation; that it is the only infallible, final and authoritative norm of doctrine and practice; that it is to be interpreted in and by the Church; and that it is to be interpreted according to the regula fidei . . . If ‘tradition” is understood as the regula fidei, then sola scriptura does not assume the Bible can be understood apart from “tradition.”¹

I dispute Mathison’s claim that the Fathers embraced only Tradition I. However, as a student of the Reformation I completely accept Mathison’s contention that the early Protestant theologians held a much higher view of Church and tradition than what is common among evangelicals today. In defense of his Eucharistic doctrine, for example, Luther could boldly proclaim:

The witness of the entire holy Christian church (even if we had nothing else) should be enough for us to maintain this doctrine and neither to listen to nor tolerate any sectarian objections. For it is dangerous and terrible to hear or believe anything contrary to the common witness, faith, and doctrine which the entire holy Christian church has maintained from the beginning until now—for more than 1500 years throughout all the world.²

The point I wish to examine in this post is the implication of this doctrine of authority for the chief article of the Reformation (Justification by Faith Alone, “JBFA”).

Tradition I and the Doctrine of Salvation

Mathison tells us to interpret Scripture in light of the 2^nd century regula fidei, which eventually found written expression in the ecumenical creeds of Nicaea (A.D., 325), Constantinople (A.D. 381) and Chalcedon (A.D. 451).³ He also gives favorable mention to the Apostles Creed, its predecessor the Old Roman Symbol, and to the Vincentian canon (quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus).⁴ We must discern if these sources shed any light on the Articulus stantis et cadentis ecclesiae (the article on which the Church stands or falls).

There are two articles in the creeds which bear upon our inquiry. In his account of the Rule, Irenaeus confesses that Christ “became incarnate for our salvation.”⁵ This phrase is retained in the Eastern creeds, and eventually is incorporated at Constantinople as the familiar “for us men and for our salvation, He came down from heaven.” The second article is the phrase “in the remission of sins” included in the Old Roman Symbol and the Apostles’ Creed. Cyprian (d. 257) knows the phrase as “remission of sins through the Church.”⁶ Constantinople, together with other Eastern Symbols, connects this article to baptism in the confession “one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.” The question before us is how these articles, common to Protestants, Catholics, and Orthodox alike, bear upon the principal dispute between Catholics and Protestants.

Mathison himself admits that Protestants cannot simply insist on the basis of Scripture that their interpretation of these articles is the correct one. That would be precisely the kind of private and partisan hermeneutics that he wishes to avoid. If Protestants wish to correct Roman “errors,” he argues, they must do so with reference to the Patristic testimony and the consensus of the Church:

Rome’s aberrations [sic] must be measured against the ancient rule of faith to which she claims adherence. Her errant doctrines and practices must be demonstrated to be inconsistent with these foundational doctrines. Unfortunately the difficult practical reality we face in the present state of the Church, with all of the division that has occurred, is that the Church has not spoken as a completely unified body since at least the eleventh century.⁷

Mathison seems to suggest that our disagreements over salvation cannot be resolved since “the Church has not spoken as a completely unified body since at least the eleventh century.” However, he seems to ignore the fact that each of our two articles was the subject of extensive discussion in antiquity and that something very like a consensus seems to have been reached in each case. Jaroslav Pelikan once remarked that the doctrine of the means of grace developed earlier than the doctrine of grace itself.⁸ For the sake of convenience, therefore, I shall begin with the article on “One Baptism for the Forgiveness of Sins.”

One Baptism for the Forgiveness of Sins

The greatest internal controversy over salvation in the early church dealt with the problem of post-baptismal sin. The earliest apologists taught a doctrine of Christian perfection that provided for the complete remission of sin in baptism, but that left little room for lapses thereafter.⁹ The practical challenges to this doctrine led shortly to allowing for but one instance of post-baptismal penance and absolution.¹⁰ Debate raged, however, about whether or not this penance could be allowed for any and all sins, or only for lesser faults. The most famous opponents in this debate were Tertullian and Pope Callistus (d. 223). The Pope held that absolution should be granted even to adulterers. This enraged the puritanical Tertullian, who eventually left the Catholic Church.¹¹

The conflict was revisited in the 3^rd century because of the Decian Persecution (249-251). The Church was wracked over what to do with the penitents who had lapsed during the persecution. There were three main positions. The rigorist camp held that repentance should not be permitted to the lapsed. Eventually, this position came to be associated with the Anti-Pope Novatian. There was a “popular” party (not in the sense of a numerical majority, but rather appealing to sentiments of popular devotion) which wished to grant absolution on the basis of the indulgence of the Martyrs and Confessors. Finally, there was the ecclesiastical party, most closely associated with St. Cyprian, that allowed repentance for the lapsed, but demanded that this be administered through the Bishop and not through the Martyrs and Confessors. It is to this conflict that we owe the ultimate consensus in the Church on the means of forgiveness. The letters and treatises of St. Cyprian are our primary witness to the conflict.

The theology of the dispute is not difficult to grasp, and there were remarkable areas of agreement even between the rival camps. All sides agreed that grave sins after baptism seriously imperiled one’s eternal salvation. All sides agreed that the Church, through her sacraments, is the normative means for obtaining forgiveness and grace. And between the popular and ecclesiastical parties, there was substantial agreement that the intercession of the martyrs and confessors was efficacious in reconciling the penitent to God and the Church. What emerged as the official theology, and what was endorsed in the Canons of the Nicaean Council, can be summarized as follows:

• Grave sin is incompatible with membership in the church.¹²
• There is no salvation outside the church. Perseverance in the Church is the only guarantor of salvation.¹³
• Readmission to fellowship in the Church after grave sin can be granted only after fitting penance.¹⁴
• Penance not only reconciles the believer to the Church, but also makes satisfaction to God for the offense of sin.¹⁵
• Granting absolution does not create an incentive to sin, because the threat of purgatory still provides an incentive for righteous living.¹⁶
• Absolution is the prerogative of the bishop, and this power is not limited to any particular class of sins.¹⁷
• Viaticum, understood as the sacrifice of Christ’s body and blood and presumed necessary for salvation, should be made available to penitents in danger of death.¹⁸
• The intercession of martyrs and confessors is efficacious in reconciling the sinner to God and the Church.¹⁹

Cyprian, himself, clearly sees this theology as embodied in the Creed:

But, moreover, the very interrogation which is put in baptism is a witness of the truth. For when we say, Do you believe in eternal life and remission of sins through the holy Church? we mean that remission of sins is not granted except in the Church, and that among heretics, where there is no Church, sins cannot be put away.²⁰

The Council of Nicaea (325)

The Arian controversy may have provided the occasion for the Council of Nicaea, but it did not exhaust the Council’s scope. Twenty canons have come down to us from the council and several of them treat the theology and practice of the Church’s liturgy and its penitential regime. They impose rules for excommunication, penance, and readmission to prayers and, ultimately, to communion. They provide instructions for reconciling the “Novatianists.” They also shed light on the Church’s Eucharistic theology, and its importance for understanding the doctrine of repentance and salvation. A few citations are in order.

Canon 13 is perhaps the most interesting. It addresses the case of those who have been excluded from communion while they do penance for sins. It reads as follows:

Concerning the departing, the ancient canonical law is still to be maintained, to wit, that, if any man be at the point of death, he must not be deprived of the last and most indispensable Viaticum. But, if any one should be restored to health again who has received the communion when his life was despaired of, let him remain among those who communicate in prayers only. But in general, and in the case of any dying person whatsoever asking to receive the Eucharist, let the Bishop, after examination made, give it him.²¹

The historian of the council, Eusebius of Caesarea, recounts a story from Dionysius of Alexandria that leaves little doubt about the significance of the canon:

There was with us a certain Serapion, an aged believer who had lived for a long time blamelessly, but had fallen in the trial. He besought often, but no one gave heed to him, because he had sacrificed. But he became sick, and for three successive days continued speechless and senseless. Having recovered somewhat on the fourth day he sent for his daughter’s son, and said, How long do you detain me, my child? I beseech you, make haste, and absolve me speedily. Call one of the presbyters to me. And when he had said this, he became again speechless. And the boy ran to the presbyter. But it was night and he was sick, and therefore unable to come. But as I had commanded that persons at the point of death, if they requested it, and especially if they had asked for it previously, should receive remission, that they might depart with a good hope, he gave the boy a small portion of the Eucharist, telling him to soak it and let the drops fall into the old man’s mouth. The boy returned with it, and as he drew near, before he entered, Serapion again arousing, said, ‘You have come, my child, and the presbyter could not come; but do quickly what he directed, and let me depart.’ Then the boy soaked it and dropped it into his mouth. And when he had swallowed a little, immediately he gave up the ghost. Is it not evident that he was preserved and his life continued till he was absolved, and, his sin having been blotted out, he could be acknowledged for the many good deeds which he had done?²²

Canon 18 addresses an unrelated issue, namely, the proper procedure for administering communion during the liturgy. However, the language is highly significant for understanding why viaticum was presumed necessary for salvation. It seems that some deacons were administering the sacrament to priests. The council fathers were outraged because “neither canon nor custom permits that they who have no right to offer should give the Body of Christ to them that do offer.”

Two points are worthy of note. First, the Council Fathers identified the Eucharist as “The Body of Christ.” Second, they recognized that the Eucharistic rite was a sacrifice. The word “offer” (Latin, offero; Greek, προσφέρω) is clearly a sacrificial term (compare Hebrews 10:11 in Greek and the Latin vulgate).

From the text of the creed, it is clear that the Nicene Fathers, like the Fathers of the 2^nd and 3^rd centuries, associated forgiveness with baptism. It is clear from the canons, moreover, that they followed St. Cyprian in their understanding of post-baptismal sin. They imposed penance on the lapsed as a condition for forgiveness and communion, and that they presumed that communion with the sacrifice of Christ’s Body and Blood was necessary for salvation.

For us Men and for our Salvation

How did the Church Fathers understand the phrase, “For us Men and for our Salvation?” As we have seen, this phrase enters the creeds of the Church very early, in the “Rule of Truth” proposed by Irenaeus in A.D. 190. The context here is the Gnostic denial that Jesus Christ was truly flesh, truly God, and truly one with the God of the Old Testament. Fortunately, Irenaeus wrote extensively about the work of redemption and the nature of salvation, and even if later theologians speculated freely about the atonement, they all share basic Irenaean ideas.²³

As early as A.D. 110 Ignatius of Antioch had written that the Eucharist was the “the medicine of immortality, and the antidote to prevent us from dying, but [which causes] that we should live forever in Jesus Christ,” and he castigated the Docetists “who confess not the Eucharist to be the flesh of our Saviour Jesus Christ.”²⁴ Ignatius’s statement that salvation is transmitted through contact with the Body of Christ is the first hint of what would later be called the “physical theory” of the atonement. Irenaeus will echo Ignatius, explaining simply that Jesus became “what we are, that He might bring us to be even what He is Himself.”²⁵ Athanasius, in turn, the chief proponent of Nicene Orthodoxy, will follow Irenaeus in the early fourth century with his famous phrase, “For He was made man that we might be made God.”²⁶

The rather simple idea shared by all these fathers is that union with Christ (through the sacraments) supernaturally transforms the believer. In the work of redemption, God was “perfecting man after the image and likeness of God.”²⁷ Irenaeus explains, “He furnished us . . . with salvation, so that what we had lost in Adam – namely, to be in the image and likeness of God – that we might recover in Jesus.”²⁸ To employ a more technical vocabulary, Irenaeus holds to an infusion rather than an imputation of righteousness.

Like the apologists, Irenaeus knows nothing of a salvation that leaves one simul iustus et peccator, nor does he know anything of justification by faith alone. On the contrary, He makes plain that God confers immortality “on the righteous, and holy, and those who have kept His commandments.”²⁹ He explains, “The Lord did not abrogate the natural [precepts] of the law, by which man is justified.” The moral demands of the New Covenant, for Irenaeus, are even greater than those of the old.³⁰

At the time of the Nicene Council, Athanasius will follow the exact same line of reasoning. Indeed, his interest in the Arian controversy was not purely speculative or metaphysical. It was profoundly soteriological.³¹ He insisted on the divinity of the Son precisely to guarantee this infusion of righteousness. In his Discourses against the Arians, the saint explains that a redemption that leaves man in actual sin is no redemption at all. He argues that God could have simply forgiven sin without imparting this moral renovation, but that would have been absurd:

If God had but spoken, because it was in His power, and so the curse had been undone, the power had been shown of Him who gave the word, but man had become such as Adam was before the transgression, having received grace from without, and not having it united to the body; (for he was such when he was placed in Paradise) nay, perhaps had become worse, because he had learned to transgress. Such then being his condition, had he been seduced by the serpent, there had been fresh need for God to give command and undo the curse; and thus the need had become interminable, and men had remained under guilt not less than before, as being enslaved to sin; and, ever sinning, would have ever needed one to pardon them, and had never become free, being in themselves flesh, and ever worsted by the Law because of the infirmity of the flesh.³²

Augustine and Justification

Until Augustine and the Pelagian controversy in the 5^th century, the Church Fathers rarely spoke of justification. Augustine was the first to articulate a comprehensive account of Christian salvation in terms of this Pauline concept. However, this does not mean that Augustine broke from earlier tradition. On the contrary, he took for granted the church’s liturgical, disciplinary, and sacramental tradition and he expressed his doctrines in light of that tradition.

Augustine knew of the Novatianists and he condemned them for denying “that the church can forgive all sins.”³³ Furthermore, in his Sermon to Catechumens on the Creed, Augustine explains the article “On the remission of sins” completely in light of the Church’s sacramental and liturgical tradition:

You have [this article of] the Creed perfectly in you when you receive Baptism . . . When you have been baptized, hold fast a good life in the commandments of God, that you may guard your Baptism even unto the end. . . For the sake of all sins was Baptism provided; for the sake of light sins, without which we cannot be, was prayer provided. . . Only, do not commit those things for which you must needs be separated from Christ’s body: which be far from you! For those whom you have seen doing penance, have committed heinous things, either adulteries or some enormous crimes: for these they do penance. Because if theirs had been light sins, to blot out these daily prayer would suffice. In three ways then are sins remitted in the Church; by Baptism, by prayer, by the greater humility of penance.³⁴

When Augustine does expound the meaning of justification, he does so in a way fully consistent with this tradition. He insists that faith alone does not save, and that those in the church who commit gross sins must “wash it away in penitence,” or “redeem it by almsgiving.”³⁵ Furthermore, Augustine defines justification as simply “being made just.” Once again, it is a question of infusion and not of imputation.³⁶

Protestants and the Problem of the First Four Centuries

The evidence that the early church fathers did not hold JBFA is fairly straightforward and uncontroversial. Leading Protestant historians have conceded this for well over a century. Thus, the Protestant McGrath can write, “The first centuries of the western theological tradition appear to be characterized by a ‘works-righteousness’ approach to justification . . . The pre-Augustinian theological tradition is practically of one voice in asserting the freedom of the human will . . . The Protestant understanding of the nature of justification thus represents a theological novum.”³⁷ T.F. Torrance similarly complains, “The plain fact is that the Church of the Apostolic Fathers has but a very feeble understanding of the great truths of the Gospel [sic].”³⁸ And finally, the legendary Harnack concludes: “The moralistic view, in which eternal life is the wages and reward of a perfect moral life . . . took the place of first importance at a very early period.”³⁹

How do Protestant apologists deal with the embarrassing absence of their chief article from the earliest years of the Christian tradition? McGrath, to take one example, suggests that this fact “has little theological significance today, given current thinking on the nature of the development of doctrine.”⁴⁰ Mathison seems to take a similar position. His book contains an extended discussion on whether or not the Roman Catholic communion can be considered a “true church.” It is astonishing that he never mentions the topic of justification in this context. This is in stark contrast to other Reformed apologists, like R.C. Sproul, who consider the doctrine the sine qua non of a “true church.”⁴¹

Mathison argues that by the rule of Tradition I, Protestants cannot simply anathematize Catholics for disagreeing with Protestant interpretations of Scripture (presumably including disagreements over the doctrine of justification). This would be an instance of the very kind of private theological opinion-mongering that he wishes to avoid. On the contrary, Mathison explains:

Rome has veered way off course doctrinally, but if Tradition I (sola scriptura) is true, then Rome’s interpretation cannot be measured only against another branch’s interpretation of Scripture . . . we cannot simply assert that our communion is the correct branch because our communion’s interpretation of Scripture comes closest to our interpretation of Scripture.⁴²

Mathison, like McGrath, seems to want to place JBFA within the category of disputed questions that were not settled by the early Church. Given that the Church today “does not speak with one voice,” (as Mathison sees it) this supposedly absolves him of the responsibility of proving JBFA on the basis of Tradition I.

I see two problems with the Mathison/McGrath approach. The first is that both writers dismiss the very substantial body of evidence that the early church did have a clear doctrine of salvation. It is true that no ecumenical council formally defined the doctrine of justification until Trent, but it is false to assert that the church lacked a consensus on the nature of redemption or the means of grace. The creeds and canons address these issues, and the fathers commented on the relevant articles. Although the Fathers rarely employed the term ‘justification,’ they wrote extensively on sin, forgiveness, redemption, and the conditions of eternal life.

The second problem with the Mathison/McGrath approach is that it leaves JBFA within the realm of private theological opinion, and not dogma. If I accept the Mathison/McGrath account of doctrinal development and authority, then there is no body competent to adjudicate the dispute between Catholics and Protestants over the nature of salvation. At best, JBFA is one possible interpretation of Scripture but clearly not one that can be demonstrated on the basis of Tradition I.

Conclusion

Keith Mathison has urged us to unite around the Ecumenical Creeds and the consensus of the Church (defined as all those who hold the Ecumenical Creeds). He claims that this gives the only authoritative interpretation of Scripture, the ultimate authority. In this post, I have asked whether or not this view of religious authority can contribute to our understanding of the Reformation doctrine of salvation.

When I consider the creeds, councils, and the regula fidei, I find that they are replete with soteriology. They address the nature of redemption and the means of grace. Moreover, they are situated in a historical context that is full of discussion of these issues. The Fathers of the Church explained the meaning of the creed, and ruled and legislated on the basis of that explanation.

The Fathers held that salvation is a moral renovation through union with the Body of Christ. They held that continuing sacramental communion with that Body is necessary for salvation. They held that baptism effects the remission of all past sins. They taught that post-baptismal sin threatens that salvation, and must be atoned for through penance. They held that faith without works cannot justify. They embodied these convictions in their canons, creeds, preaching, and discipline. Protestant historians have discovered this as well as Catholics.

Faced with this evidence, it seems to me, the Protestant who respects “Tradition I” has three choices. First, he can give up the Protestant doctrine of salvation, acknowledging that Tradition I does not support it. Second, he can attempt to argue (as Mathison seems to) that Tradition I is silent on JBFA. Unfortunately, this seems to be a case of special pleading and involves a very narrow and ad hoc construal of Tradition I. Furthermore, it commits the Protestant to the position that JBFA is at best private opinion and not dogma. Finally, he could try to demonstrate JBFA on the basis of Tradition I – a hard sell, I think.

1. Keith Mathison, The Shape of Sola Scriptura (Moscow, Idaho: Canon Press, 2001), 299.
2. WA 30iii, 552. Cited in Paul Althaus, The Theology of Martin Luther, trans. Robert C. Schultz (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1966), 334.
3. Mathison, Shape, 337.
4. Mathison , Shape, 26, 43-46.
5. Cited in John Leith, ed. Creeds of the Chruches: a Reader in Christian Doctrine from the Bible to the Present (Louisville: John Knox Press, 1982), 21.
6. Epistle 69.2. All citations from the Fathers taken from the Schaaf edition, publically available at http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/.
7. Mathison, Shape, 334.
8. Jaroslav Pelikan, Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (100-600) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971), 155.

9. Ignatius to the Ephesians 14:2 “No man who professes faith sins.”

   Tertullian, Apology 21: “Christians alone are without sin because they expect eternal punishment for sin.”

   Hermas 4.31.1-6: “For the one who has received forgiveness of sins ought never to sin again, but to live in purity.”

   2.12.3: “Now I say to you, If you do not keep them [the commandments], but neglect them, you will not be saved, nor your children, nor your house, since you have already determined for yourself that these commandments cannot be kept by man.”

   2 Clement :“What assurance do we have of entering the kingdom of God if we fail to keep our baptism pure and undefiled? Or who will be our advocate, if we are not found to have holy and righteous works?”

   Tertullian (On Repentance, 5): “That the repentance which, being shown us and commanded us through God’s grace, recalls us to grace with the Lord, when once learned and undertaken by us ought never afterward to be cancelled by repetition of sin.”

   Clement of Alexandria (Stromata 2:13): “He, then, who has received the forgiveness of sins ought to sin no more.”

   “If one should escape the superfluity of riches, and the difficulty they interpose in the way of life, and be able to enjoy the eternal good things; but should happen, either from ignorance or involuntary circumstances, after the seal and redemption, to fall into sins or transgressions so as to be quite carried away; such a man is entirely rejected by God. . . of past sins, then, God gives; but of future, each one gives to himself.”

   Justin Martyr (Apology, 61,65): I will also relate the manner in which we dedicated ourselves to God when we had been made new through Christ . . . As many as are persuaded and believe that what we teach and say is true, and undertake to be able to live accordingly, are instructed to pray and to entreat God with fasting, for the remission of their sins that are past, we praying and fasting with them. Then they are brought by us where there is water, and are regenerated in the same manner in which we were ourselves regenerated. For, in the name of God, the Father and Lord of the universe, and of our Saviour Jesus Christ, and of the Holy Spirit, they then receive the washing with water . . . [We] may obtain in the water the remission of sins formerly committed. [Emphasis mine] . . .

   But we, after we have thus washed him who has been convinced and has assented to our teaching, bring him to the place where those who are called brethren are assembled, in order that we may offer hearty prayers in common for ourselves and for the baptized [illuminated] person, and for all others in every place, that we may be counted worthy, now that we have learned the truth, by our works also to be found good citizens and keepers of the commandments, so that we may be saved with an everlasting salvation. [Emphasis mine].

10. Only one more opportunity

    Hermas : Mandate 4:31:1-6: “But the Lord, however, who is exceedingly merciful, had mercy on his creation and established this opportunity for repentance…But I am warning you,’ he said, ‘if, after this great and holy call, anyone is tempted by the devil and sins, he has one opportunity for repentance. But if he sins repeatedly and repents, it is of no use for such a person, for he will scarcely live.” Cited in R.A. Baker, “’Second Repentance’ in the Early Church:

    The Influence of The Shepherd of Hermas.” http://www.churchhistory101.com/docs/Hermas-2ndRepentance.pdf

    Tertullian (Penance 7,9): “Although the gate of forgiveness has been shut and fastened up with the bar of baptism, has permitted it still to stand somewhat open. In the vestibule He has stationed the second repentance for opening to such as knock: but now once for all, because now for the second time; but never more because the last time it had been in vain.” . . . “It commands (the penitent) to lie in sackcloth and ashes, to cover his body in mourning, to lay his spirit low in sorrows, to exchange for severe treatment the sins which he has committed; moreover, to know no food and drink but such as is plain—not for the stomach’s sake, to wit, but the soul’s; for the most part, however, to feed prayers on fastings, to groan, to weep and make outcries unto the Lord your God; to bow before the feet of the presbyters, and kneel to God’s dear ones; to enjoin on all the brethren to be ambassadors to bear his deprecatory supplication (before God). . . . stand in the stead of God’s indignation, and by temporal mortification (I will not say frustrate, but) expunge eternal punishments.”

    Clement (Strom. 2:13):” And the Lord, knowing the heart, and foreknowing the future, foresaw both the fickleness of man and the craft and subtlety of the devil from the first…Accordingly, being very merciful, He has vouchsafed, in the case of those who, though in faith, fall into any transgression, a second repentance; so that should any one be tempted after his calling, overcome by force and fraud, he may receive still a repentance.” Cited in Baker, “2^nd Repentance.”

11. Tertullian’s dispute with the Pope (On Purity, 19): “It is a fact that there are some sins which beset us every day and to which we all are tempted. For who will not, as it may chance, fall into unrighteous anger and continue this even beyond sundown, or even strike another or, out of easy habit, curse another, or swear rashly, or violate his pledged faith, or tell a lie through shame or the compulsion of circumstances? In the management of affairs, in the performance of duties, in commercial transactions, while eating, looking, listening — how often we are tempted!

    So much so that if there were no pardon in such cases, no one would be saved. For these sins, then, pardon is granted through Christ who intercedes with the Father. But there are also sins quite different from these, graver and deadly, which cannot be pardoned: murder, idolatry, injustice, apostasy, blasphemy; yes, and also adultery and fornication and any other violation of the temple of God. For these Christ will not intercede with the Father a second time.” Cited in Baker, “2^nd Repentance.”

    (On Modesty, 1): “In opposition to this (modesty), could I not have acted the dissembler? I hear that there has even been an edict set forth, and a peremptory one too. The Pontifex Maximus — that is, the bishop of bishops — issues an edict: I remit, to such as have discharged (the requirements of) repentance, the sins both of adultery and of fornication. O edict, on which cannot be inscribed, Good deed! And where shall this liberality be posted up? On the very spot, I suppose, on the very gates of the sensual appetites, beneath the very titles of the sensual appetites. There is the place for promulgating such repentance, where the delinquency itself shall haunt. There is the place to read the pardon, where entrance shall be made under the hope thereof. But it is in the church that this (edict) is read, and in the church that it is pronounced; and (the church) is a virgin! Far, far from Christ’s betrothed be such a proclamation! She, the true, the modest, the saintly, shall be free from stain even of her ears. She has none to whom to make such a promise; and if she have had, she does not make it; since even the earthly temple of God can sooner have been called by the Lord a den of robbers, than of adulterers and fornicators.”

12. Epistles, 9.
13. Epistles 51.17. See also his famous treatise De unitate ecclesiae, especially c.21-23.
14. Epistle 29.
15. De lapsis 16 says that penance appeases God for the offense of sin. See also Epistle 29.3: The lapsed “by due honour for God’s priest should draw forth upon themselves the divine mercy.” Epistle 51.18 “[God] will then ratify what shall have been here determined by us.”
16. Epistle 51.21: It is one thing to stand for pardon, another thing to attain to glory: it is one thing, when cast into prison, not to go out thence until one has paid the uttermost farthing; another thing at once to receive the wages of faith and courage. It is one thing, tortured by long suffering for sins, to becleansed and long purged by fire; another to have purged all sins by suffering. It is one thing, in fine, to be in suspense till the sentence ofGod at the day of judgment; another to be at once crowned by the Lord.”
17. Epistle 51.21.
18. Epistle 53: “should undergo a long and full repentance; and if the risk of sickness should be urgent, should receive peace on the very point of death. For it was not right, neither did the love of the Father nor divine mercy allow, that the Church should be closed to those that knock, or the help of the hope of salvation be denied to those who mourn and entreat, so that when they pass from this world, they should be dismissed to their Lord without communion and peace; since He Himself who gave the law, that things which were bound on earth should also be bound in heaven, allowed, moreover, that things might be loosed there which were here first loosed in the Church.”
19. De lapsis 17: “We believe, indeed, that the merits of martyrs and the works of the righteous are of great avail with the Judge.” See also Epistles 9,10,12,and 13.
20. Epistle 69.2.
21. For Greek and Latin texts and commentary, see Canons of Nicea.
22. Eccl. Hist., VI.44.
23. J.N.D. Kelly remarks, “Running through almost all the patristic attempts to explain the redemption there is one grand theme which, we suggest, provides the clue to the fathers’ understanding of the work of Christ. This is none other than the ancient idea of recapitulation which Irenaeus derived from Saint Paul.” Early Christian Doctrines (San Francisco: Harper, 1978), 376.
24. Ignatius’s letter to the Ephesians, 20, Letter to the Smyrneans, 7.
25. Book 5, preface.
26. De incarnatione, 54,3.
27. Ireneaus, Adv. Haer. 5.21.2.
28. Adv. Haer., 3.18.1.
29. Adv. Haer., 1.10.
30. Adv. Haer., 4.13.1.
31. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, 243, 284.
32. Discourses against the Arians, 2.21.68.
33. De agone christiano, 30.32.
34. C. 15-16.
35. Enchiridion, 67. For Augustine’s contention that faith without works does not justify, see also De Fide et Operibus, PL 40: 14.21.
36. De spiritu et littera, 15: “It is by God’s gift, through the help of the Spirit, that a man is justified . . . It is not, therefore, by the law, nor is it by their own will, that they are justified; but they are justified freely by His grace — not that it is wrought without our will; but our will is by the law shown to be weak, that grace may heal its infirmity; and that our healed will may fulfill the law.”

    (De spiritu et lit, 45): “For what else does the phrase being justified signify than being made righteous—by Him, of course, who justifies the ungodly man, that he may become a godly one instead?”

    (To Simplician 1.13): “Grace justifies so that he who is justified may live justly. Grace, therefore, comes first, then good works.” The translation is that of John H. S. Burleigh, Regius Professor of Ecclesiastical History, University of Edinburgh and was published in Augustine: Earlier Writings, Volume VI of the Library of Christian Classics (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1953.)

    (On grace and free will, 6.13): “Thus, it is necessary for a man that he should be not only justified when unrighteous by the grace of God—that is, be changed from unholiness to righteousness—when he is requited with good for his evil; but that, even after he has become justified by faith, grace should accompany him on his way, and he should lean upon it, lest he fall.

    (On grace and Free will, 6.15): “If, indeed, they so understand our merits as to acknowledge them, too, to be the gifts of God, then their opinion would not deserve reprobation . . . It is His own gifts that God crowns, not your merits,— if, at least, your merits are of your own self, not of Him. If, indeed, they are such, they are evil; and God does not crown them; but if they are good, they are God’s gifts . . . then, your good merits are God’s gifts, God does not crown your merits as your merits, but as His own gifts.”

37. McGrath, Iustitia Dei: A History of the Christian Doctrine of Justification (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 34,215.
38. T.F. Torrance, The Doctrine of Grace in the Apostolic Fathers (Edinburgh, 1948).
39. Adolph von Harnack, History of Dogma, trans. Neil Buchanan (London, 1894) ,I: 170.
40. McGrath, Iustitia, 218.
41. See R.C. Sproul’s book Faith Alone: The Evangelical Doctrine of Justification (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1999).
42. Mathison, Shape, 334.

Three years ago, a few friends of mine (including Sean Patrick of Called to Communion) were lamenting that there wasn’t a book that reexamined the Protestant claims about Saint Paul from a Catholic point of view. What we wanted was a book that demonstrated the “Catholic Perspective on Paul.” So I set to work on it. After three years, it’s finally finished and published…The Catholic Perspective on Paul.

If you’re looking for a complete and simple resource to equip you with the Catholic presentation of Paul’s view of salvation, faith and works, baptism, the Eucharist, the sacraments, the priesthood, celibacy, and redemptive suffering, then this new book is for you.

The Catholic Perspective on Paul intends to show once and for all that Saint Paul was thoroughly Catholic, and that Protestant and liberal prejudices against the Catholic perspective on Paul are unwarranted. If we read Paul in his words, we find none other than the great Catholic Apostle of Rome.

You can preview the book for free at amazon.com.

Please watch the book’s trailer on YouTube to get a feel for the book:

Both the new book on Saint Paul and my previous book The Crucified Rabbi: Judaism and the Origins of Catholic Christianity are available at amazon.com in paperback and Kindle formats. Please click here to view them.

Outline
I. What we know about St. Clement
II. St. Clement’s Soteriology
III. St. Clement Ecclesiology

I. What we know about St. Clement

We know St. Clement mostly through his letter to the Corinthian Church. But we also know about him through the later Church Fathers. St. Irenaeus (c. 130 – c. 200 AD) was a pupil of St. Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna.¹ St. Irenaeus later became a priest (presbyter) in Lyon under bishop Pothinus (c. 87 – 177), and around 177-178 St. Irenaeus was sent to St. Eleutherus (bishop of Rome from AD 175-189), to help bring some relief from the persecution under Marcus Aurelius.² St. Irenaeus spent significant time with the Church at Rome, later serving as bishop of Lyon from approximately AD 177 until the end of his life. In his work Adversus haeresis, St. Irenaeus writes the following concerning St. Clement and his letter to the Corinthians:

The blessed apostles, then, having founded and built up the Church, committed into the hands of Linus the office of the episcopate. Of this Linus, Paul makes mention in the Epistles to Timothy. To him succeeded Anacletus; and after him, in the third place from the apostles, Clement was allotted the bishopric. This man, as he had seen the blessed apostles, and had been conversant with them, might be said to have the preaching of the apostles still echoing [in his ears], and their traditions before his eyes. Nor was he alone [in this], for there were many still remaining who had received instructions from the apostles. In the time of this Clement, no small dissension having occurred among the brethren at Corinth, the Church in Rome despatched a most powerful letter to the Corinthians, exhorting them to peace, renewing their faith, and declaring the tradition which it had lately received from the apostles, proclaiming the one God, omnipotent, the Maker of heaven and earth, the Creator of man, who brought on the deluge, and called Abraham, who led the people from the land of Egypt, spoke with Moses, set forth the law, sent the prophets, and who has prepared fire for the devil and his angels. From this document, whosoever chooses to do so, may learn that He, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, was preached by the Churches, and may also understand the apostolical tradition of the Church, since this Epistle is of older date than these men who are now propagating falsehood, and who conjure into existence another god beyond the Creator and the Maker of all existing things. To this Clement there succeeded Evaristus. Alexander followed Evaristus; then, sixth from the apostles, Sixtus was appointed; after him, Telephorus, who was gloriously martyred; then Hyginus; after him, Pius; then after him, Anicetus. Soter having succeeded Anicetus, Eleutherius does now, in the twelfth place from the apostles, hold the inheritance of the episcopate. In this order, and by this succession, the ecclesiastical tradition from the apostles, and the preaching of the truth, have come down to us. And this is most abundant proof that there is one and the same vivifying faith, which has been preserved in the Church from the apostles until now, and handed down in truth. (Ad. haer. 3.3.3.) (emphases mine)

According to St. Irenaeus, St. Clement had conversed with the Apostles (i.e. Peter and Paul), and was bishop of the Church at Rome after St. Linus and St. Cletus. That is also attested to by the liturgy of the Church at Rome, which to this day preserves the name of “Clemens” after the names of ‘Linus’ and ‘Cletus’ in the litany of prayers, and these names follow directly after those of the Apostles. The recitation of these names in the Roman liturgy has been in place apparently since the second century.

Eusebius (AD 249 – 340 AD), in his History of the Church claims that St. Clement of Rome is the same Clement referred to by St. Paul in Philippians 4:3, where St. Paul writes, “I ask you also, who are a true co-worker, to help these women, for they have labored side by side with me in the gospel, together with Clement and the rest of my fellow workers, whose names are in the book of life.”³ Some have claimed that the Fortunatus referred to at the end of St. Clement’s letter to the Corinthians is the same Fortunatus referred to by St. Paul in 1 Corinthians 16:17. Eusebius refers to St. Clement’s letter to the Corinthians, writing:

There is extant an epistle of this Clement which is acknowledged to be genuine and is of considerable length and of remarkable merit. He wrote it in the name of the church of Rome to the church of Corinth, when a sedition had arisen in the latter church. We know that this epistle also has been publicly used in a great many churches both in former times and in our own. And of the fact that a sedition did take place in the church of Corinth at the time referred to Hegesippus is a trustworthy witness.⁴

Hegesippus (c. 110-180 AD), who visited various bishops during his travels, including the bishops of Corinth and Rome, is quoted by Eusebius as having appended some remarks to Clement’s Epistle to the Corinthians. These remarks indicate that the Church at Corinth remained pure in doctrine until Primus became bishop.⁵

The tradition has always and everywhere treated the letter of St. Clement to the Corinthians as from St. Clement of Rome. Dionysius the bishop of Corinth in AD 170 mentions St. Clement’s letter, and reports that it was still read in their Sunday gatherings.⁶ The letter was cited as St. Clement’s by St. Clement of Alexandria (d. c. 215) and by Origen (AD 185 – 254). Tertullian (c. 155 – c. 222), in his Prescription Against Heretics, claims that St. Clement was ordained by the Apostle Peter, as St. Polycarp was ordained by the the Apostle John.⁷

According to Eusebius, St. Clement was still the “head of the Roman community” in the first year of Trajan (i.e. AD 98).⁸ According to Eusebius, St. Clement “departed this life, yielding his office to Evarestus” in the third year of the Emperor Trajan (c. AD 100-1), having been “in charge of the teaching of the divine message for nine years in all.”⁹ St. Clement is therefore believed to have been the bishop of the Church at Rome from about the year AD 90-91 AD to about AD 100. The date of his letter to the Corinthians is not entirely certain, but traditionally it has been thought to come right after the persecution under Domitian, and thus around AD 96.

II. St. Clement’s Soteriology

What can we learn from St. Clement concerning soteriology? Some Protestants claim that St. Clement reveals a Protestant notion of justification by faith alone. They draw this from the following paragraph in St. Clement’s letter to the Corinthians:

Whosoever will candidly consider each particular, will recognise the greatness of the gifts which were given by him. For from him [i.e. Abraham] have sprung the priests and all the Levites who minister at the altar of God. From him also [was descended] our Lord Jesus Christ according to the flesh. (Romans 9:5) From him [arose] kings, princes, and rulers of the race of Judah. Nor are his other tribes in small glory, inasmuch as God had promised, “Your seed shall be as the stars of heaven.” All these, therefore, were highly honoured, and made great, not for their own sake, or for their own works, or for the righteousness which they wrought, but through the operation of His will. And we, too, being called by His will in Christ Jesus, are not justified by ourselves, nor by our own wisdom, or understanding, or godliness, or works which we have wrought in holiness of heart; but by that faith through which, from the beginning, Almighty God has justified all men; to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen. (St. Clement’s Epistle to the Corinthians, c. 32)

But there are two things that must be noted. First, St. Clement is here making the same claim St. Paul makes in Romans 4, that what made Abraham right with God was not works of the law, but faith. St. Clement is not in this paragraph speaking about growing in righteousness, but about being transferred from the state of sin into which we are born as a result of the sin of the first Adam, to the state of grace and to the adoption of the sons of God through the second Adam, Jesus Christ. St. Clement is saying here that justification (in this sense) is not by our own works or by the righteousness we have wrought or by our wisdom or our understanding or our godliness or by works we have done in holiness of heart, but by faith.¹⁰

The second thing that must be kept in mind is the nature of this faith by which are justified, whether it is living faith or dead faith. That is, is this a faith informed by the virtue of agape, or is it a faith not informed by the virtue of agape? In Catholic soteriology, agape is a virtue (i.e. habit) poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, as St. Paul says:

because the agape of God has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” [ὅτι ἡ ἀγάπη τοῦ θεοῦ ἐκκέχυται ἐν ταῖς καρδίαις ἡμῶν διὰ πνεύματος ἁγίου τοῦ δοθέντος ἡμῖν] (Romans 5:5)

In Catholic soteriology, only when faith is informed by the internal habit of agape in the soul is faith living faith, and hence justifying faith. The Council of Trent declared:

“For faith, unless hope and charity be added to it, neither unites man perfectly with Christ nor makes him a living member of His body. For which reason it is most truly said that faith without works is dead (James 2:17, 20) and of no profit, and in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth anything nor uncircumcision, but faith that worketh by charity. (Gal 5:6, 6:15)¹¹

If any one saith that men are justified either by the sole imputation of the justice of Christ, or by the sole remission of sins, to the exclusion of the grace and the charity which is poured forth in their hearts by the Holy Ghost, and is inherent in them; or even that the grace, whereby we are justified, is only the favour of God; let him be anathema.¹²

Likewise, in November of 2008, Pope Benedict said:

“For this reason Luther’s phrase: “faith alone” is true, if it is not opposed to faith in charity, in love.”

In other words, in Catholic soteriology we are already justified by faith alone (i.e. without works) if that faith is informed by the presence of the virtue of agape in the soul.

The saving faith of which St. Clement speaks is faith informed by agape, not faith uninformed by agape. We can see this in various places in his epistle. St. Clement writes:

On account of her faith and hospitality, Rahab the harlot was saved. (12)

Notice that it was not faith alone that saved her. The kind of faith that saved her was a faith working by agape. He continues:

Love unites us to God. Love covers a multitude of sins. Love bears all things, is long-suffering in all things. There is nothing base, nothing arrogant in love. Love admits of no schisms: love gives rise to no seditions: love does all things in harmony. By love have all the elect of God been made perfect; without love nothing is well-pleasing to God. (49)

For St. Clement the person without love is not united to God, and is therefore not justified. The person without love remains unforgiven. The person without love is not “well-pleasing to God”. So the person with faith alone, but lacking agape, is not justified.

St. Clement continues:

Blessed are we, beloved, if we keep the commandments of God in the harmony of love; that so through love our sins may be forgiven us. (50)

According to St. Clement, love is not merely an expression of gratitude that our sins are forgiven. Only by the presence of agape in us are our sins forgiven. Hence faith alone (so long as it is not informed by agape) does not justify.

St. Clement continues:

Abraham, styled “the friend,” was found faithful, inasmuch as he rendered obedience to the words of God.(10)

The faith of Abraham was a faith working through agape, not just mere faith.

St. Clement continues:

For what reason was our father Abraham blessed? Was it not because he wrought righteousness and truth through faith? (31)

For St. Clement the faith by which Abraham was blessed, was a faith informed by agape, and which thereby wrought righteousness. So these other places in St. Clement’s epistle explain how the passage in chapter 32 should be interpreted as referring to a faith informed by agape, not faith alone. This is also how St. Augustine understood justification by faith, as I recently showed here.¹³

Does St. Clement mean that it is faith alone that justifies, but that justifying faith is always accompanied by or followed by works of love? No, because faith-informed-by-agape is not identical to faith-followed-by-works. The whole point is what is inside the person. Yes, of course, what is inside will manifest itself outside, in our works. The person who claims to have faith but has no works, is deceiving himself. And what we do in exercising the grace and virtues that God has infused into our soul, leads to their growth in the soul. We cannot just kick back and rest in the presence of grace and virtues within. But, the important point is that faith and agape are virtues. They are supernaturally infused habits within the soul.

So the question is this: Why kind of faith justifies? Is it faith (i.e. the virtue) alone, or is it faith (i.e. the virtue) informed by agape (i.e. also a virtue). The Catholic answer is that the faith that justifies is a faith (i.e. the virtue in the soul) informed by agape (i.e. also a virtue in the soul). The Protestant answer is: faith alone [i.e. faith simpliciter, not faith-informed-by-agape] justifies, but this faith that justifies is always followed by agape and works.

If a person thinks of agape as fundamentally external or works (and misses the fact that agape is fundamentally a virtue), he would not accurately grasp the Catholic-Protestant disagreement. That is, if he thinks of agape only as an act (or only as an external act), he would conceive of faith-informed-by-agape as though it means faith-accompanied-by-good-works. But that is not what faith-informed-by-agape means, even though good works necessarily follows faith-informed-by-agape. The Catholic Church teaches that we are justified by living faith, and what makes faith living is agape (as a supernaturally infused virtue). What makes faith to be non-living, or dead, is the absence of agape (as a virtue). Dead faith does not justify; only living faith justifies.

Protestant theology tends not to give conceptual space to agape as a virtue, seeing it only as a work. Scott Clark, for example, denies that faith and agape are virtues. And that tends to lead to a misunderstanding on the part of Protestants, who think that when Catholics talk about faith-informed-by-agape, it means faith accompanied by works. If it meant that, then we could have no confidence that baptized babies who die before reaching an age in which they can do any works, could be saved. But, we believe that at baptism, the virtues of faith, hope, and agape are infused into the soul by the Holy Spirit, and therefore that the infant is justified at that very moment, because he now has faith-informed-by-agape, even though has not yet done a single good work.

So when St. Clement says the following:

Similarly we also, who by His will have been called in Christ Jesus, are not justified by ourselves or our own wisdom or understanding or godliness, nor by such deeds as we have done in holiness of heart, but by that faith through which Almighty God has justified all men since the beginning of time. Glory be to Him for ever and ever, amen.” (ch. 32)

The question is this: Is he talking about about living faith (i.e. faith informed by the virtue of agape), or is he talking about dead faith (i.e. faith where there is not the virtue of agape)? The evidence in the text points to the former, because he says:

Love unites us to God. Love covers a multitude of sins. Love bears all things, is long-suffering in all things. There is nothing base, nothing arrogant in love. Love admits of no schisms: love gives rise to no seditions: love does all things in harmony. By love have all the elect of God been made perfect; without love nothing is well-pleasing to God. (ch. 49)

If our faith was not informed by the virtue of agape, then it would follow (given what St. Clement says here) that such faith would not unite us to God and would not be pleasing to God. Only a faith informed by the virtue of agape unites us to God and is pleasing to God, and so therefore, we have good reason to believe that for St. Clement, “the faith through which Almighty God has justified all men since the beginning of time” is faith informed by the virtue of agape.

III. St. Clement’s Ecclesiology

What does St. Clement’s letter tell us about the Church. St. Clement opens his letter with this line: “The church of God which sojourns at Rome, to the church of God sojourning at Corinth.” Here we see the recognition of distinct [particular] Churches. There is a Church that sojourns at Rome, and there is a Church that sojourns at Corinth. Then he continues two lines later to address the Church at Corinth as “dear brethren.” These Churches then, are in some way related, within the universal Church.

The situation at the Church in Corinth was as follows. Members of the Church at Corinth had “consulted” the Church at Rome regarding a schism in the Church at Corinth. (c. 1) This schism, which St. Clement describes as a “shameful and detestable sedition,” involved the casting out by the laity (or some portion of them) of the elders (presbyters) of the Church at Corinth. Speaking to the laity at the Church at Corinth, St. Clement tells them that they had previously been “obedient to those who had the rule over you, and giving all fitting honour to the presbyters among you.” (c. 1) “Moreover, you were all distinguished by humility, and were in no respect puffed up with pride, but yielded obedience rather than extorted it, and were more willing to give than to receive.” … “Every kind of faction and schism was abominable in your sight.” (c. 2)

But, in their contentment and ease, they forsook their previous manner of living, and became puffed up and envious. (c. 3) He writes, “For this reason righteousness and peace are now far departed from you, inasmuch as every one abandons the fear of God, and is become blind in His faith, neither walks in the ordinances of His appointment, nor acts a part becoming a Christian, but walks after his own wicked lusts, resuming the practice of an unrighteous and ungodly envy, by which death itself entered into the world.” (c. 3) He shows that since the fall of Adam and Eve, many evils have arisen from this very root of envy. (c. 4) According to St. Clement, these very same evils are what led to the persecutions and martyrdoms of Peter and Paul, “the greatest and most righteous pillars [of the Church]“. (c. 5)

Who should the laity obey? St. Clement explains: “It is right and holy therefore, men and brethren, rather to obey God than to follow those who, through pride and sedition, have become the leaders of a detestable emulation.” (c. 14) The argument that St. Clement is constructing over the course of the entire epistle is that we follow God by following those authorities whom God has appointed, not those who rise up in sedition. We are not to follow those who make a rebellion, even if they do so claiming to be for peace. “Let us cleave, therefore, to those who cultivate peace with godliness, and not to those who hypocritically profess to desire it.” (c. 15)

He presents the examples of Christ, and the Old Testaments saints, in their humility and meekness. These are the examples we are supposed to emulate. “Thus the humility and godly submission of so great and illustrious men have rendered not only us, but also all the generations before us, better” (c. 19) We should be able to see this, he claims, from nature itself. God has established the whole universe in harmony and order. (c. 20) He wants all men to live in peace. And the Church likewise is set up by God in an ordered manner, to exist in the unity of a harmony (c. 37) so that if we follow that order in humility we will have peace and be to the world an example of humility like Christ and the Old Testament saints and Apostles. Therefore, we must not abandon the post that has been assigned to us in this divinely ordered body which is the Church. To do so is to go against God and the order He has set up through His wisdom and foresight. St. Clement writes:

“It is right, therefore, that we should not leave the post which His will has assigned us. Let us rather offend those men who are foolish, and inconsiderate, and lifted up, and who glory in the pride of their speech, than [offend] God. Let us reverence the Lord Jesus Christ, whose blood was given for us; let us esteem those who have the rule over us;” (c. 21)

There is an intimate connection between esteeming those who have rule over us, and reverencing Jesus Christ. To leave our post and take to ourselves an authority that does not belong to us is to offend God. St. Clement refers to those who set themselves against the will of God as God’s enemies. He writes, “But who are His enemies? All the wicked, and those who set themselves to oppose the will of God.” (c. 36)

All this first part of St. Clement’s letter is written to communicate the way in which God has set up the Church in an ordered, hierarchical way so that there will be peace and harmony, just as God created nature with an order so that all things move in harmony. St. Clement at this point (c. 37) discusses the organizational structure of an army, with its generals, prefects, commanders of a thousand, of a hundred, or of fifty. He points out that the army’s ability to function in an ordered way, and also the well-being of each soldier in the army, depends upon all of its members operating in accordance with their particular rank. (c. 37) Likewise, he draws an analogy between the Church and a living body. “Let us take our body for an example. The head is nothing without the feet, and the feet are nothing without the head; yea, the very smallest members of our body are necessary and useful to the whole body. But all work harmoniously together, and are under one common rule for the preservation of the whole body.” (c. 37) His point in drawing a comparison between the Church on the one hand, and an army and body on the other is that in the Church we all need each other, and we are part of a divinely ordered whole. For that reason we cannot divide from this whole or arrogate a role or rank within it that has not been given to us by Christ. This then gives us some insight into the relation of the Church sojourning at Rome and the Church sojourning at Corinth. They are each members of one Body, and one army. They are not a mere plurality or mere collection of independent entities; they are a unity — an organic Body, with different roles and different gifts.

St. Clement then appeals to the order of the Jewish priesthood, showing how God had appointed that offerings be made at certain times and at particular places by certain persons. He writes:

These things therefore being manifest to us, and since we look into the depths of the divine knowledge, it behooves us to do all things in [their proper] order, which the Lord has commanded us to perform at stated times. He has enjoined offerings [to be presented] and service to be performed [to Him], and that not thoughtlessly or irregularly, but at the appointed times and hours. Where and by whom He desires these things to be done, He Himself has fixed by His own supreme will, in order that all things, being piously done according to His good pleasure, may be acceptable unto Him. Those, therefore, who present their offerings at the appointed times, are accepted and blessed; for inasmuch as they follow the laws of the Lord, they sin not. For his own peculiar services are assigned to the high priest, and their own proper place is prescribed to the priests, and their own special ministrations devolve on the Levites. The layman is bound by the laws that pertain to laymen. (c. 40)

He is writing about doing all the things which the Lord (Jesus) has commanded us to do, and in speaking of “offerings” he is speaking of the Eucharist, which Christ commanded to be done in memory of Him. St. Clement explains that Christ has appointed certain people to present these offerings, at the appointed times and hours. Then he immediately makes a three-fold distinction in “peculiar services.” The high priest has his own peculiar duties, and the priests have their own proper place, and so do the Levites. And even the laymen have laws pertaining to them. So in describing the functioning of the Church, St. Clement lays out a three-fold distinction in Holy Orders, as something established by Christ. Christ established in His New Covenant three different Holy Orders: new high priests, new priests, and new Levites. And these clearly are referring to the three-fold division of bishop, priest, and deacon, with the bishop being the high priest of the Church in his city. Then he mentions the laymen. (This is the first time this term is used in the existing Christian literature.) The clear implication is that just as there was a hierarchical order in the Old Covenant, so likewise is there in the New Covenant. He is writing this to show those laymen who had rebelled against their presbyters that they were going against a divinely appointed authority.

Then in the very next paragraph he writes:

“Not in every place, brethren, are the daily sacrifices offered, or the peace-offerings, or the sin-offerings and the trespass-offerings, but in Jerusalem only. And even there they are not offered in any place, but only at the altar before the temple, that which is offered being first carefully examined by the high priest and the ministers already mentioned. Those, therefore, who do anything beyond that which is agreeable to His will, are punished with death. You see, brethren, that the greater the knowledge that has been vouchsafed to us, the greater also is the danger to which we are exposed.” (c. 41)

St. Clement here is clearly speaking of the Eucharist.¹⁴ The Christians knew of the prescription set up by the Apostles for following the Lord’s command to “Do this in remembrance of Me.” St. Clement is drawing a comparison (of similarity) between the order of Jewish worship and the order of worship commanded by Christ.¹⁵

St. Clement now arrives at the fundamental basis for the authority of the presbyters of the Church at Corinth:

The apostles have preached the gospel to us from the Lord Jesus Christ; Jesus Christ [has done so] from God. Christ therefore was sent forth by God, and the apostles by Christ. Both these appointments, then, were made in an orderly way, according to the will of God. Having therefore received their orders, and being fully assured by the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, and established in the word of God, with full assurance of the Holy Ghost, they went forth proclaiming that the kingdom of God was at hand. And thus preaching through countries and cities, they appointed the first fruits [of their labours], having first proved them by the Spirit, to be bishops and deacons of those who should afterwards believe. Nor was this any new thing, since indeed many ages before it was written concerning bishops and deacons. For thus says the Scripture in a certain place, I will appoint their bishops in righteousness, and their deacons in faith. (c. 42)

St. Clement first explains that by having received Christ’s authorization and commission, the preaching of the Apostles is a continuation of the preaching of Jesus, which was by the authorization and commission of God the Father. This authorization and commission means that one speaks for the other, and therefore that accepting the sending one requires accepting those he sends, while rejecting those he sends entails rejecting the one who sent them. Having that pattern as the basis for their own authorization, the Apostles then, by this same authority they had received, appointed men whom they had tested, to be bishops and deacons of those who would come to believe in Christ.

By saying that these offices of bishop and deacon are not new, St. Clement is connecting the Old and New Covenants. And that makes his earlier three-fold distinction between high priest, priest, and Levite more obviously relevant to the New Covenant order as well. He sets up an expectation of the difference between the bishop and presbyter, as equivalent in a way, to the difference between the high priest and the priest. According to St. Clement’s explanation, order (and orders) come from the top down. God the Father sent Jesus. Jesus in turn authorized and sent the Apostles. And the Apostles in turn authorized and ordained bishops and deacons. One does not take a ‘rank’ in the army (or body) of Christ by arrogating it to oneself, but by being called to do so by one having that authority. Only those having authority can give authority, because one cannot give what one does not have. The Church in its order imitates Christ who said, “My teaching is not mine, but His who sent me.”

St. Paul did this when he was dealing with a question of supreme importance: “I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you.” (1 Cor 11:23)¹⁶ St. Clement goes on in chapter 43 to say the following:

And what wonder is it if those in Christ who were entrusted with such a duty by God, appointed those [ministers] before mentioned, when the blessed Moses also, a faithful servant in all his house, noted down in the sacred books all the injunctions which were given him, and when the other prophets also followed him, bearing witness with one consent to the ordinances which he had appointed? For, when rivalry arose concerning the priesthood, and the tribes were contending among themselves as to which of them should be adorned with that glorious title, he commanded the twelve princes of the tribes to bring him their rods, each one being inscribed with the name of the tribe. And he took them and bound them [together], and sealed them with the rings of the princes of the tribes, and laid them up in the tabernacle of witness on the table of God. And having shut the doors of the tabernacle, he sealed the keys, as he had done the rods, and said to them, Men and brethren, the tribe whose rod shall blossom has God chosen to fulfil the office of the priesthood, and to minister unto Him. And when the morning was come, he assembled all Israel, six hundred thousand men, and showed the seals to the princes of the tribes, and opened the tabernacle of witness, and brought forth the rods. And the rod of Aaron was found not only to have blossomed, but to bear fruit upon it. What think ye, beloved? Did not Moses know beforehand that this would happen? Undoubtedly he knew; but he acted thus, that there might be no sedition in Israel, and that the name of the true and only God might be glorified; to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen. (emphases mine)

In this chapter St. Clement is showing that the order God provided to avert schism under Moses is present also in the New Covenant, through the apostolic succession — the appointment by the Apostles of the bishops and deacons discussed in chapter 42. He refers to the example of Moses, who had to deal with rivalry and contention concerning the priesthood and authority. St. Clement describes how Moses placed the twelve rods in the tabernacle, knowing all the while that Aaron’s rod would blossom. Moses did this not to learn which tribe ought to have the priesthood, but according to St. Clement, “he acted thus, that there might be no sedition in Israel.” In other words, Moses did this so that all the people would know who rightfully held the priesthood, and in this way would have no excuse for sedition. This leads to the key paragraph for our intention of learning what St. Clement has to say about the Church. He writes:

Our apostles also knew, through our Lord Jesus Christ, that there would be strife on account of the office of the episcopate. For this reason, therefore, inasmuch as they had obtained a perfect fore-knowledge of this, they appointed those [ministers] already mentioned, and afterwards gave instructions, that when these should fall asleep, other approved men should succeed them in their ministry. We are of opinion, therefore, that those appointed by them, or afterwards by other eminent men, with the consent of the whole church, and who have blamelessly served the flock of Christ, in a humble, peaceable, and disinterested spirit, and have for a long time possessed the good opinion of all, cannot be justly dismissed from the ministry. For our sin will not be small, if we eject from the episcopate those who have blamelessly and holily fulfilled its duties. Blessed are those presbyters who, having finished their course before now, have obtained a fruitful and perfect departure [from this world]; for they have no fear lest any one deprive them of the place now appointed them. But we see that you have removed some men of excellent behaviour from the ministry, which they fulfilled blamelessly and with honour. (c. 44)

St. Clement shows that the Apostles (whom St. Clement knew personally) likewise knew “with perfect foreknowledge” that there would be contention over authority in the Church, and especially over the office of the episcopate; they had been foretold of this by Jesus. So the Apostles did something that would show the people who had the rightful authority in the Church, and thus leave men without excuse with respect to sedition. According to St. Clement, in order to show the people who had the rightful authority in the Church, the Apostles publicly appointed bishops and deacons, so that everyone would know who were the rightful successors of the Apostles.

When they appointed bishops, they gave careful instructions regarding the continuation of the office, and how this was to be done. The Apostles instructed these bishops to do the same when they too approached death, so that “other approved men should succeed them [i.e. the first generation of bishops] in their ministry.” This is part of the Apostolic teaching, namely, how the episcopal office is to be perpetuated, so that contention and strife over the episcopate can be averted. The means by which it is to be averted is that ordination is only from bishop to bishop, for if laymen could ordain, then there would be unending contention over the episcopal office. Here we see the principle that underlies apostolic succession. Teaching and governing authority in the Church is given from the top-down, that is, from Christ, to the Apostles, and then to their successors. Of course the whole Church consents, or proposes candidates for ordination, but since no one can give what he does not have, those who have not received authorization from the apostles cannot give it.

Not only that, but in order to prevent sedition, these appointments, like Christ’s authorization of the Apostles, were made in an orderly way, because “all things must be done properly and in an orderly manner.” (1 Cor 14:40) By ordaining their successors in this public and orderly way, no one could claim ignorance of who was the rightful ruler, as a justification for sedition or schism. In this way strife is averted, for the leaders are approved (or proposed) by the governed, even though these leaders are authorized only by those already having authority. According to St. Clement, it is no small sin to rebel against those who were appointed and authorized according to the order laid down by Christ through the Apostles.

St. Clement lays open the source of their divisions, writing:

Why are there strifes, and tumults, and divisions, and schisms, and wars among you? Have we not [all] one God and one Christ? Is there not one Spirit of grace poured out upon us? And have we not one calling in Christ? Ephesians 4:4-6 Why do we divide and tear in pieces the members of Christ, and raise up strife against our own body, and have reached such a height of madness as to forget that we are members one of another? Romans 12:5 Remember the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, how He said, Woe to that man [by whom offences come]! It were better for him that he had never been born, than that he should cast a stumbling-block before one of my elect. Yea, it were better for him that a millstone should be hung about [his neck], and he should be sunk in the depths of the sea, than that he should cast a stumbling-block before one of my little ones. Your schism has subverted [the faith of] many, has discouraged many, has given rise to doubt in many, and has caused grief to us all. And still your sedition continues. (c. 46)

The damage done by schism, according to St. Clement, is very serious. It subverts the faith of many, discourages many, and gives rise to doubt in many, and causes grief to us all. The seriousness of this fault is thus treated by St. Clement as aptly described by Christ’s claim about it is better that a millstone be hung around the offender’s neck and that he be cast into the sea, than that he cast a stumbling-block before Christ’s little ones. I wonder whether we take seriously enough how much damage the various contemporary schisms in Christianity have done to the faith of many. If we realized that the millstone prescription applied to our present schisms, wouldn’t we be burning the midnight oil to be reconciled and reunited with each other?

According to St. Clement, the guilt of the Corinthian Church’s previous schism was lesser, because the persons followed then were Apostles [Cephas and Paul], and a man [i.e. Apollo] approved by the Apostles. “But now reflect who those are that have perverted you, and lessened the renown of your far-famed brotherly love. It is disgraceful, beloved, yea, highly disgraceful, and unworthy of your Christian profession, that such a thing should be heard of as that the most steadfast and ancient church of the Corinthians should, on account of one or two persons, engage in sedition against its presbyters. And this rumour has reached not only us, but those also who are unconnected with us; so that, through your infatuation, the name of the Lord is blasphemed, while danger is also brought upon yourselves.” (c. 47)

One of the things that has been handed down from the Apostles, claims St. Clement, is concord. True followers of Christ prefer to be blamed themselves rather than detract from the concord that has been handed down from the Apostles. (c. 51) This same attitude is expressed again in chapter 54 where St. Clement writes:

Who then among you is noble-minded? who compassionate? who full of love? Let him declare, If on my account sedition and disagreement and schisms have arisen, I will depart, I will go away whithersoever ye desire, and I will do whatever the majority commands; only let the flock of Christ live on terms of peace with the presbyters set over it. He that acts thus shall procure to himself great glory in the Lord; and every place will welcome him. (c. 54)

We are to rather be exiled than cause a sedition against the presbyters set over the Church. At this point, St. Clement moves to the imperative voice. First he urges those who instigated the sedition to submit to the rightful presbyters:

You therefore, who laid the foundation of this sedition, submit yourselves to the presbyters, and receive correction so as to repent, bending the knees of your hearts. Learn to be subject, laying aside the proud and arrogant self-confidence of your tongue. For it is better for you that you should occupy a humble but honourable place in the flock of Christ, than that, being highly exalted, you should be cast out from the hope of His people. (c. 57)

He has spoken throughout the whole letter about the good of obedience, meekness, humility, order and harmony. Now with authority he calls on those who have participated in the sedition to receive the counsel of the Church of Rome, and to observe the “ordinances and appointments given by God,” namely, the God-given authority of the Corinthian presbyters.

Let us, therefore, flee from the warning threats pronounced by Wisdom on the disobedient, and yield submission to His all-holy and glorious name, that we may stay our trust upon the most hallowed name of His majesty. Receive our counsel, and you shall be without repentance [i.e. have nothing to regret - BRC]. For, as God lives, and as the Lord Jesus Christ and the Holy Ghost live,— both the faith and hope of the elect, he who in lowliness of mind, with instant gentleness, and without repentance [i.e. without regret] – BRC] has observed the ordinances and appointments given by God — the same shall obtain a place and name in the number of those who are being saved through Jesus Christ, through whom is glory to Him for ever and ever. Amen. (c. 58)

St. Clement makes his strongest statement in chapter 59, when he says:

“If, however, any shall disobey the words spoken by Him through us, let them know that they will involve themselves in transgression and serious danger;” (c. 59)

St. Clement is claiming that God is speaking through him and the Church at Rome, and thus that for the Corinthians to disobey the words he is speaking to them is to disobey God. This principle, that God is acting through divinely ordained authorities, can be seen both in the civil authorities as well as the ecclesial authorities, as St. Clement breaks into prayer:

To our rulers and governors on the earth — to them You, Lord, gavest the power of the kingdom by Your glorious and ineffable might, to the end that we may know the glory and honour given to them by You and be subject to them, in nought resisting Your will; to them, Lord, give health, peace, concord, stability, that they may exercise the authority given to them without offence. For You, O heavenly Lord and King eternal, givest to the sons of men glory and honour and power over the things that are on the earth; do Thou, Lord, direct their counsel according to that which is good and well-pleasing in Your sight, that, devoutly in peace and meekness exercising the power given them by You, they may find You propitious. (c. 61)

All the examples to which St. Clement has appealed over the course of his letter have been aimed at showing the virtues of humility and obedience toward divinely appointed authorities. Thus he writes: “Right is it, therefore, to approach examples so good and so many, and submit the neck and fulfil the part of obedience, in order that, undisturbed by vain sedition, we may attain unto the goal set before us in truth wholly free from blame.” (c. 63)

Finally, in conclusion he says, “Send back speedily to us in peace and with joy these our messengers to you: Claudius Ephebus and Valerius Bito, with Fortunatus; that they may the sooner announce to us the peace and harmony we so earnestly desire and long for [among you], and that we may the more quickly rejoice over the good order re-established among you.” (c. 65) Here St. Clement urges the Corinthians to send back the Roman messengers with news of order having been re-established in the Church at Corinth.

St. Clement shows us that the solution to a schism is to locate the divinely established ecclesial authority, and submit to that authority, according to the order established by Christ. St. Clement gives an insight into the heart and mind of the Apostles regarding these things, because he still has, as St. Irenaeus says, “the preaching of the apostles … echoing [in his ears], and their traditions before his eyes.”

St. Clement, pray for us, that the many schisms that presently divide Christians would be overcome, and that all Christ’s followers would be brought into full and visible unity. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

1. a. See St. Irenaeus’s description of his personal knowledge of St. Polycarp in Ad haer. 3.3.4. According to St. Irenaeus, St. Polycarp “was not only taught by the Apostles, and lived in familiar intercourse with many that had seen Christ, but also received his appointment in Asia from the Apostles as Bishop in the Church of Smyrna.”
2. To see the letter commending St. Irenaeus to St. Eleutherus, see Eusebius, Historia Ecclesiastica, 5.4.
3. Historia Ecclesiastica, 3.4.. See also Historia Ecclesiastica, 3.15.
4. Historia Ecclesiastica, 3.16.
5. Historia Ecclesiastica, 4.22.
6. Eusebius quotes Dionysius’s letter in Historia Ecclesiastica, 4.23.
7. Liber de praescriptione haereticorum, c. 32.
8. See Historia Ecclesiastica, 3.21.
9. Historia Ecclesiastica, 3.34.
10. See Justification: The Catholic Church and the Judaizers in St. Paul’s Letter to the Galatians.
11. Session Six, Chapter 7.
12. Session Six, Canon XI.
13. See also here.
14. See St. Ignatius’s Letter to the Smyrnaeans, chapter 8.
15. There is no contradiction between what St. Clement is saying here (chapters 40-41) and what St. Paul says in Colossians 2:13-21 about Christians not needing to follow the Jewish ceremonial law.
16. Concerning the relation of Romans 10:15 to this passage see the relevant paragraph in C. Evidence from Scripture.

In referring to this analogy, my friend worded it differently than I’d ever heard. He said that in the Protestant view, Jesus makes a deposit into our “account.” I replied, “a Catholic could agree to that!”

In the traditional analogy, the ‘amount due’ is withdrawn from Christ’s account instead of the sinner. We can tweak the analogy. Surely it is not repugnant to say that Christ makes a deposit into our account and that the ‘amount due’ is truly withdrawn from our own account.

God will not forget where that merit came from. And grace is not cheapened by our participation. Miracles are actual: a sinner becomes righteous by the effects of Christ’s merit. Illusions are feigned miracles: a sinner putting on Christ as if he were righteous.

I think the analogy of Christ depositing His own merit into our account can work within Catholic soteriological framework. I would be interested in the Reformed reaction to such a realignment of the otherwise endeared analogy.

First I’d like to give a real world example of the argument that Rose mentioned, as it is used in contemporary Protestant/Catholic dialogue by a Reformed scholar critiquing the Catholic position on justification. In his article Are We Justified By Faith Alone? – What Still Divides Us: A Protestant & Roman Catholic Debate, Dr. Michael Horton, J. Gresham Machen Professor of Systematic Theology and Apologetics at Westminster Seminary California, writes:

The verbal ending of dikaiow is declarative; if the biblical writers intended by ‘justification’ a process of moral transformation, there is a perfectly good verbal ending for that sort of thing in Greek: adzo rather than ow. For instance, ‘to make holy’ is translated from the Greek verb, ‘hagiodzo,’ and this word is never rendered ‘to justify.’ When the biblical writers refer to justification, they use the declarative ending; when they refer to sanctification, they use the progressive ending. If it is good enough of a distinction for the biblical writers themselves, surely we should have not trouble with the Bible’s own language.

It’s not my purpose to address the issues of technical terminology and systematic soteriological constructions in the New Testament (justification vs. sanctification, ordo salutis, etc.). That will surely come along when Called to Communion publishes a full article on the doctrine of justification. Here I want to focus, as I stated in my first paragraph, on the verbal structure of the Greek word δικαιόω.  Contrary to Dr. Horton’s contention above, the Greek verb suffix -οω can be, and very often is, factitive, a fancy word for “making/causing something,” from the Latin facere, to make or do.  NB: throughout this article I use the words factitive, transformative and causal almost interchangeably as opposites of declarative.

In Herbert Smyth’s Greek Grammar, perhaps the definitive Greek grammar text, he provides in his section on contract verbs (verbs with an extra vowel in the suffix which cause a vowel contraction) eight examples of verbs ending in the -όω suffix. Of these eight verbs, seven can easily be construed as causative, factitive or transformative. All of these verbs follow the pattern in which the suffix has been added to an adjective or noun, indicating what kind of state the verb is producing in its object.

1) δουλόω, from the noun δοῦλος (slave), means “I enslave.”

2) ἐλευθερόω, from the adjective ἐλεύθερος (free), means “I set free.”

3) ζυγόω, from the noun ζυγόν (yoke), means “I yoke/put under the yoke.”

4) κυρόω, from the noun κῦρος (authority), means “I make valid.”

5) πολεμόω, from the noun πόλεμος (war), or perhaps from the adjectival noun πολέμιος

(enemy), means “I make an enemy of.”

6) στεφανόω, from the noun στέφανος (crown), means “I crown.”

7) ταπεινόω, from the adjective ταπεινός (low, humble), means “I humiliate.”

These are the examples given in Smyth’s Grammar, and they can be found here. Of course, they are not the only examples. Just off the top of my head I can think of two other examples:

I. πληρόω, from the adjective πληρής (full), means “I fill.”

II. λευκόω, from the adjective λευκός, means “I make white.”

Only one of Smyth’s eight examples of verbs with the -όω suffix has a meaning of “account” or “declare” the object to be the noun/adjective from which the verb is built.

ἀξιόω, “I think or deem worthy/fit/right,” from the adjective ἄξιος. It is the way we would say that we deem a person worthy of a thing, or we deem it right to do something. Thus it also comes to take a simple accusative object with the meaning “to honor.”

Lest anyone should assume that I am not accounting for the changes in the Greek language that took place during the Hellenistic period, let me make two further observations. First, Smyth is, I will admit, primarily a grammar of Attic (Classical) usage, but it does from to time include examples from archaic and Hellenistic literature, and it is not as if the words listed above disappeared after the 5th century B.C. Second, Mark Wilson, in his book Mastering New Testament Greek Vocabulary Through Semantic Domains, points out in his short prefatory remarks on Greek word construction, “Verbs expressing causation are formed with -όω, -αίνω, -ύνω, and -ίζω” (Wilson, 15). This has ramifications particularly relevant to Dr. Horton’s statements because it shows that Greek morphology does not prevent the speaker with a clear-cut choice between two options, one being declarative and the other transformational.  Dr. Horton writes that the authors could have simply used the -adzw suffix, but there are multiple suffixes that can perform this task, and -όω is one of them.  Even if we were to grant for the sake of argument that δικαιόω were like ἀξιόω above, one verb out of eight listed by Smyth, we would not be able to conclude that it does not imply that God declares something about us that is actually the case because of the specific way in which Christ’s work is applied to us. As far as I can tell, the sense of the ἀξιόω paradigm, if we are to take it as a paradigm rather than an exception to the pattern established by the other verbs, assumes that the object in question is, in the opinion of the verb’s subject, characterized by the adjective from which the verb is constructed. ἀξιόω means, “I think that the thing is actually worthy.” This is why the verb, as I mentioned above, comes to mean simply “I honor.” In short, at the very least, the lexical evidence does not support the claim that δικαιόω means justification by extra nos imputation rather than justification by infusion. As for the ways in which justification could be described in both transformative and declarative terms, I’ll leave that to the contributors who are better with systematic theology.

From this we can conclude that there is no lexical problem with translating δικαιόω causatively. It is built on the same pattern (noun/adjective + the -όω causative/factitive suffix) that governs all of the verbs listed above (its root being the adjective δίκαιος, “just”). If you search for δικαιόω at the Perseus Project’s online version of Liddell & Scott, the premier research dictionary of Ancient Greek, the simplified definition that you get in the search results is “to make just” ¹. It gives as its first example a passage from Pindar which reads, νόμος…δικαιῶν τὸ βιαιότατον, “law…justifying [reforming, making just] the most violent of men.” Here the context seems to be one of morally reforming the wrong-doer.

Something should also be said about the historical claim that Augustine and the other Latin Fathers misunderstood this biblical concept because the word had been wrongly translated as iustificare. This claim implies that those great saints, many of whom were not only scholars but were immersed in a living Greek-speaking environment, simply fudged this issue, and we now have superior lexical and exegetical tools to prove it. Augustine was admittedly not very good with Greek, if he knew it at all, but the same does not hold for Jerome, much less the Cappadocian Fathers. Let us turn back to Dr. Horton’s article²:

The Latin Vulgate, Jerome’s 4th century translation of the Scriptures, had been the official translation throughout the middle ages, and its integrity was generally assumed. But then came the Renaissance, a recovery of classical learning that included a return to the original Greek text of Scripture. As Oxford theologian Alister McGrath observes, the best example of the errors in the Latin Vulgate, corrected in tail end of the Renaissance, concerns its translation of the Greek word ‘dikaiosune,’ which means ‘to declare righteous.’ It is a legal term, a verdict. But the Latin Vulgate had translated ‘dikaiosune’ with the Latin word iustificare, which means ‘to make righteous.’ Erasmus and a host of classical scholars recognized that the Greek text required an understanding of justification that referred to a change in status rather than to a change in behavior or mode of being.

I do not know the substance of Erasmus’ or McGrath’s arguments but there is at least one very fundamental and objective reason why Dr. Horton’s application of their conclusions should be called into question: although Jerome’s translation was the first officially commissioned translation of the bible into Latin, many Latin translations had been completed, in part or in whole (it’s not quite clear), before he began in 382. The evidence for these translations exists in manuscripts and in quotations from the Church Fathers. The fragments that scholars have been able to collect has been assimilated into what is now known as the Vetus Latina or Old Latin bible, sometimes known as the Itala bible. In the database that I consulted for this post, full access to which is only available through a subscription that I fortunately possess through my university, I compared passages from the Vulgate and the Itala manuscripts. In every manuscript I consulted for various key passages in Romans, both the Itala manuscripts and Jerome used the verb iustificare. The same goes for the noun iustitia/δικαιοσύνη. Thus Jerome’s translation was not an intrusion that obscured the thought of older Greek Christians and threw the trajectory of the development of doctrine off course. On the contrary, it represents the continuation of a tradition of translation and theological reflection that shows us the common Latin understanding of δικαιόω from the earliest periods of Christianity.  Of course, one could certainly argue that every translator of the bible into Latin from the very beginning got this wrong, but if it can be established – and I think I have done so – that the Catholic understanding of δικαιόω is at least a possibility, then we can address the issue from more a more fundamental historical and ecclesiological perspective (see the links below).

I believe I have shown here that linguistics (Greek morphology), the lexicon and church history (all of it prior to the 16th century) do not in any way contradict the Catholic interpretation of δικαιόω. Thus there is no lexical or historical reason to reject iustificare (iustus + facere) as a reasonable Latin rendition. Consequently, the lexical and historical evidence supports the long tradition of Catholic theological use of the term, from the early Patristic period to our own. For more information on the other considerations relevant to this topic, see The Tradition and the Lexicon and St. Augustine on Law and Grace.

This post was written by David Pell.

1. http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/resolveform?type=exact&lookup=dikaiow〈=greek
2. I only keep drawing from Dr. Horton because he is a high profile Reformed theologian and this article raises all of the issues I wanted to address. Dr. Horton, from all that I know of him, is a great scholar and Christian gentleman. He has been involved in charitable dialogue with Catholics and was one of my favorite authors when I was a Presbyterian. Only with humility and respect do I reference and critique his writing in an article of my own.

T4G 2010 — Session 7 — Ligon Duncan from Together for the Gospel (T4G) on Vimeo.

In this seventy-two minute talk, Dr. Duncan seeks to answer the question: “Did the Fathers Know the Gospel?” Of course there is a good deal of overlap in the Reformed and Catholic doctrines concerning the gospel. But when Dr. Duncan says, “the gospel” he means the Reformed or Calvinistic or at least Protestant conception of the gospel, not the Catholic doctrine of the gospel as defined at the Council of Trent. One reason why he has to mean this is that the basis for the continued separation of Protestants from the Catholic Church is the claim by many Protestants (especially of the sort attending the “Together for the Gospel” conference) that what the Catholic Church teaches is not “the gospel,” and is incompatible with the [Reformed] gospel. So if present-day orthodox Catholics can affirm what the Church Fathers taught about the gospel, then it follows that the Fathers did not have the Reformed conception of the gospel.

Dr. Duncan’s answer to the question “Did the Fathers know the Gospel?” is a qualified ‘yes.’ He thinks they were not as clear as they could have been about the nature of the gospel, especially about things like imputation. But, he thinks that they did know the [Reformed] gospel. In his talk he presents six pieces of evidence from the early Church Fathers that they knew the [Reformed] gospel. He says a great deal in the first part of his talk about the importance of the early Church Fathers and about how to read them. Only in the fifty-sixth minute of his talk does he begin to present his six pieces of evidence that the Church Fathers knew the gospel. Dr. Duncan did his doctoral work in patristics, and we can assume that in picking six pieces of evidence that the Fathers knew the Reformed conception of the gospel, he would pick the strongest pieces of evidence available to make his case. But, as I show below, each piece of patristic evidence to which Dr. Duncan appeals is fully compatible with the Catholic doctrine concerning justification, as taught at the Council of Trent. And therefore these six pieces of evidence do not support the notion that the Church Fathers knew of or believed a Reformed conception of the gospel over or instead of the Catholic doctrine.

Six Pieces of Evidence
I. St. Clement, bishop of Rome
II. Epistle to Diognetus
III. St. Melito, bishop of Sardis
IV. St. Irenaeus, bishop of Lyon
V. St. Justin Martyr
VI. St. Hilary, bishop of Poitiers

Dr. Duncan’s first piece of evidence is from St. Clement, bishop of Rome. At 56’50″ into the video he quotes from the Epistle to the Corinthians by St. Clement of Rome:

On account of the love He bore us, Jesus Christ our Lord gave His blood for us by the will of God; His flesh for our flesh, and His soul for our souls. (Letter to the Corinthians, 49)

Can a Catholic affirm St. Clement’s statement? Most definitely. The Catholic Church believes and teaches that Christ freely gave His life as a sacrifice for us, to save us from our sins. Nothing about this statement from St. Clement supports the Reformed conception of the gospel over the Catholic teaching on the gospel. St. Clement’s statement is fully compatible with everything taught by the Council of Trent, and therefore it cannot justifiably be used to support the claim that the Church Fathers knew the Reformed conception of the gospel.

Dr. Duncan’s second piece of evidence is from the Epistle to Diognetus. The date for this epistle is not exactly certain, but it was most likely written in the second century, possibly the third. At 57’07″ into the video Dr. Duncan quotes from the ninth paragraph of the Epistle to Diognetus:

But when our wickedness had reached its height, and it had been clearly shown that its reward, punishment and death, was impending over us; and when the time had come which God had before appointed for manifesting His own kindness and power, how the one love of God, through exceeding regard for men, did not regard us with hatred, nor thrust us away, nor remember our iniquity against us, but showed great long-suffering, and bore with us, He Himself took on Him the burden of our iniquities, He gave His own Son as a ransom for us, the holy One for transgressors, the blameless One for the wicked, the righteous One for the unrighteous, the incorruptible One for the corruptible, the immortal One for those who are mortal. For what other thing was capable of covering our sins than His righteousness? By what other one was it possible that we, the wicked and ungodly, could be justified, than by the only Son of God? O sweet exchange! O unsearchable operation! O benefits surpassing all expectation! That the wickedness of many should be hid in a single righteous One, and that the righteousness of One should justify many transgressors! (Epistle to Diognetus, 9)

Can a Catholic affirm this quotation from the Epistle to Diognetus? Again, most definitely. That Christ became a ransom for us is taught not only by Scripture, but also by the Catholic Catechism, which reads:

The Scriptures had foretold this divine plan of salvation through the putting to death of “the righteous one, my Servant” as a mystery of universal redemption, that is, as the ransom that would free men from the slavery of sin. (CCC 601) … Consequently, St. Peter can formulate the apostolic faith in the divine plan of salvation in this way: “You were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your fathers. . . with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot. He was destined before the foundation of the world but was made manifest at the end of the times for your sake.” Man’s sins, following on original sin, are punishable by death. By sending his own Son in the form of a slave, in the form of a fallen humanity, on account of sin, God “made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” (CCC 602) The redemption won by Christ consists in this, that he came “to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mt 20:28), that is, he “loved [his own] to the end” (Jn 13:1), so that they might be “ransomed from the futile ways inherited from [their] fathers” (I Pt 1:18). (CCC 622)

When the author of the Epistle to Diognetus says that only Christ’s righteousness was capable of covering our sins, he means that only Christ’s righteousness could make atonement for our sins. The author is not talking about Christians being simul iustus et peccator or possessing Christ’s righteousness by way of an extra nos imputation. The author is writing about Christ’s sacrificial atonement. Christ is the perfect Lamb, and because He is perfect, only He could offer to the Father on our behalf the perfect sacrifice that atoned for our sins, procuring for us the grace by which our sins are removed. The author of the Epistle to Diognetus explains this when he speaks of our wickedness being “hid in a single righteous One.” That is the sense in which Christ’s righteousness was “capable of covering our sins,” through His work of sacrificial atonement offered to God, not through an imputation of righteousness that hides our underlying wickedness. Such a notion would have been entirely repugnant to the Fathers. The doctrine being taught by the author of the Epistle to Diognetus is that Christ took our sins on Himself as our priest and mediator. Our sins were hidden in Him not by imputation, but by mediation. Christ made atonement for them by becoming our sacrificial lamb, and offering Himself in self-sacrificial love to the Father on our behalf. He is both perfect priest and perfect sacrifice. Through His perfect sacrifice, we receive from Him the grace and agape by which we are justified. That is the nature of the “sweet exchange” to which he refers: Christ freely gave Himself up to the Father, suffering in His body and soul for our sins (see here), and we in return receive the infused grace and agape by which we are justified. So this selection from the Epistle to Diognetus is not evidence of even an implicit Reformed conception of the gospel, because it is fully compatible with the Catholic doctrine of redemption, and best understood as teaching the Catholic understanding of Christ’s redemptive work.

Dr. Duncan’s third piece of evidence is from St. Melito, bishop of Sardis. St. Melito died about A.D. 180. At 58’30″ in his talk, Dr. Duncan claims to be quoting from the Homily of the Pascha, given by St. Melito of Sardis in A.D. 167-68. Purporting to be quoting from St. Melito’s homily, Dr. Duncan says:

When our Lord arose from the place of the dead and trampled death under foot and bound the strong one and set men free, then the whole creation saw clearly that for man’s sake the Judge was condemned. In the place of Isaac the just a ram appeared for slaughter in order that Isaac might be liberated from his bonds, the slaughter of this animal redeemed Isaac from death. In like manner the Lord, being slain, saved us, being bound, He loosed us, being sacrificed, He redeemed us; He bought us back.

One problem is that this quotation is not found in St. Melito’s Homily of the Pascha. The first sentence is cobbled together from paragraphs 101-103 of the Homily, which looks like this:

He [i.e. Christ] rose up from the dead, and cried aloud with this voice: Who is he who contends with me? Let him stand in opposition to me. I set the condemned man free; I gave the dead man life; I raised up the one who had been entombed. Who is my opponent? I, He says, am the Christ. I am the one who destroyed death, and triumphed over the enemy, and trampled Hades under foot, and bound the strong one, and carried off man to the heights of heaven. I, He says, am the Christ. Therefore, come, all families of men, you who have been befouled with sins, and receive forgiveness for your sins. I am your forgiveness, I am the passover of your salvation, I am the lamb which was sacrificed for you, I am your ransom, I am your light, I am your saviour, I am your resurrection, I am your king, I am leading you up to the heights of heaven, I will show you the eternal Father, I will raise you up by my right hand. (101-103)

But the rest of the quotation Dr. Duncan attributes to St. Melito is not in St. Melito’s Homily of the Pascha.¹ Even so, can a Catholic affirm the quotation Dr. Duncan attributes to St. Melito? Again, most definitely, yes. Christ for our sake allowed Himself to be condemned by the Sanhedrin and by Pilate. Like Isaac, who was a type of Christ, Christ took our place, suffering death by the hands of men, that we might be redeemed from sin, death and the devil. Dr. Duncan is seemingly assuming that any notion of substitutionary atonement (or penal substitution) in the Church Fathers is evidence of a doctrine of extra nos imputation. But that is not a safe assumption. The Catholic Church teaches that in our place Christ freely bore the curse of sin, which is death, so that we might be raised to new life. In other words, there is a Catholic form of the doctrine of substitutionary atonement. Therefore, finding substitutionary atonement in the Fathers is not evidence of a Reformed conception of the gospel in the Fathers. In order to show that there is a Reformed conception of the gospel in what St. Melito says, Dr. Duncan would have to show that St. Melito is teaching something incompatible with the doctrine taught by the Council of Trent. But Dr. Duncan has not done that, and cannot do that, because what St. Melito says here is fully compatible with the teaching of the Council of Trent.

Dr. Duncan’s fourth piece of evidence is from St. Irenaeus, the bishop of Lyon during the latter part of the second century. At 59’11″ in the video Dr. Duncan claims that St. Irenaeus could remember the day when he was sitting at Smyrna under a man whom (according to Dr. Duncan) St. Irenaeus calls “a certain elder.” Dr. Duncan says, “It was probably Papias.” But St. Papias was the bishop of Hierapolis. St. Polycarp was the bishop of Smyrna when St. Irenaeus was a young man. St. Irenaeus himself tells us that it was St. Polycarp whom he saw as a young man, writing:

But Polycarp also was not only instructed by apostles, and conversed with many who had seen Christ, but was also, by apostles in Asia, appointed bishop of the Church in Smyrna, whom I also saw in my early youth, for he tarried [on earth] a very long time, and, when a very old man, gloriously and most nobly suffering martyrdom, departed this life, having always taught the things which he had learned from the apostles, and which the Church has handed down, and which alone are true. To these things all the Asiatic Churches testify, as do also those men who have succeeded Polycarp down to the present time,— a man who was of much greater weight, and a more steadfast witness of truth, than Valentinus, and Marcion, and the rest of the heretics. (Against Heresies, III.3.4)

Dr. Duncan then quotes the following passage from St. Irenaeus:

For doing away with [the effects of] that disobedience of man which had taken place at the beginning by the occasion of a tree, “He became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross;” (Philippians 2:8) rectifying that disobedience which had occurred by reason of a tree, through that obedience which was [wrought out] upon the tree [of the cross]. Now He would not have come to do away, by means of that same [image], the disobedience which had been incurred towards our Maker if He proclaimed another Father. But inasmuch as it was by these things that we disobeyed God, and did not give credit to His word, so was it also by these same that He brought in obedience and consent as respects His Word; by which things He clearly shows forth God Himself, whom indeed we had offended in the first Adam, when he did not perform His commandment. In the second Adam, however, we are reconciled, being made obedient even unto death. For we were debtors to none other but to Him whose commandment we had transgressed at the beginning. Now this being is the Creator (Demiurgus), who is, in respect of His love, the Father; but in respect of His power, He is Lord; and in respect of His wisdom, our Maker and Fashioner; by transgressing whose commandment we became His enemies. And therefore in the last times the Lord has restored us into friendship through His incarnation, having become “the Mediator between God and men;” (1 Timothy 2:5) propitiating indeed for us the Father against whom we had sinned, and cancelling (consolatus) our disobedience by His own obedience; conferring also upon us the gift of communion with, and subjection to, our Maker. (Against Heresies, V.16-17)

A Catholic can affirm everything that St. Irenaeus says here. Christ, by His perfect atonement, propitiates the Father against whom we had sinned, merits for us the grace which is the gift of communion with Him, and by infusion of this grace and agape, confers upon us loving subjection to the Father and the cancellation of our disobedience. All that a Catholic can and should gladly affirm, and therefore it is no evidence that St. Irenaeus knew of or believed the Reformed conception of the gospel. More problematic for Dr. Duncan’s claim is that St. Irenaeus explicitly taught the Catholic doctrine of justification by baptismal regeneration, a doctrine that, according to Wes White, is “incompatible with the Reformed system.”

Dr. Duncan’s fifth piece of evidence that the Fathers knew the gospel is from St. Justin Martyr, who was martyred about A.D. 165. At 61’28″ in his talk Dr. Duncan quotes from St. Justin Martyr. First he quotes from St. Justin’s Second Apology:

For I myself, too, when I was delighting in the doctrines of Plato, and heard the Christians slandered, and saw them fearless of death, and of all other-things which are counted fearful, perceived that it was impossible that they could be living in wickedness and pleasure. For what sensual or intemperate man, or who that counts it good to feast on human flesh, could welcome death that he might be deprived of his enjoyments, and would not rather continue always the present life, and attempt to escape the observation of the rulers; and much less would he denounce himself when the consequence would be death? (Second Apology, 12)

Then at 62’05″ he moves to St. Justin’s Dialogue with Trypho, and quotes St. Justin as an example of conversion, saying:

When he had spoken these and many other things, which there is no time for mentioning at present, he went away, bidding me attend to them; and I have not seen him since. But straightway a flame was kindled in my soul; and a love of the prophets, and of those men who are friends of Christ, possessed me; and while revolving his words in my mind, I found this philosophy alone to be safe and profitable. (Dialogue with Trypho, 8)

Again, everything that St. Justin says here a Catholic can affirm. There is nothing here a Catholic cannot affirm. So this cannot be evidence that St. Justin knew of or believed a Reformed conception of the gospel. Yet, problematic for Dr. Duncan’s thesis,  presumably Dr. Duncan denies St. Justin Martyr’s doctrine of justification, because St. Justin taught baptismal regeneration.

Dr. Duncan’s sixth and final piece of evidence is from St. Hilary, bishop of Poitiers. At 62’38″ in the video he claims that St. Hilary of Poitier:

was one of the Church Fathers prior to Augustine who highlighted the importance of justification by faith alone. And he did it by going to the gospels. He went, for instance, to the parable of the workers in the vineyard. And he used it as a case for illustrating that salvation is completely God’s gift (Matt. 20: 1–16). Despite the fact that some workers are hired at the eleventh hour of the day, they received the same wages as those who were hired in the morning. The remuneration for those hired last, Hilary says, demonstrates that it was not based on the merit but on grace. He says, Rather, ‘God has freely granted his grace to all through justification by faith.’

Here is what St. Hilary says in this passage about the parable in the gospel of Matthew:

When it began to get late, the workers of the evening hour were the first to obtain the payment as determined by a whole day’s work. Payment is certainly not derived from a gift because it was owed for work rendered, but God has freely granted his grace to everyone by the justification of faith … Thus [God] bestows the gift of grace by faith on those who believe, either first or last.

St. Hilary is here saying that the grace of justification by faith is given not according to merit, but gratuitously. In other words, it is not necessarily those Jews who worked so diligently to keep the law who received the grace of justification. Rather, in many cases it was Gentiles and sinners who were given the grace of repentance and new life. St. Hilary is not here saying that everyone in heaven is rewarded equally. He is not talking about rewards in heaven, but about receiving the gift of grace here in this life. And Catholics also affirm that we are justified by faith. Chapter eight of Session VI of the Council of Trent teaches:

But when the Apostle says that man is justified by faith and freely, [Rom 3:24; 5:1] these words are to be understood in that sense in which the uninterrupted unanimity of the Catholic Church has held and expressed them, namely, that we are therefore said to be justified by faith, because faith is the beginning of human salvation, the foundation and root of all justification, without which it is impossible to please God [Heb. 11:6] and to come to the fellowship of His sons; and we are therefore said to be justified gratuitously, because none of those things that precede justification, whether faith or works, merit the grace of justification.²

In short, a Catholic can fully affirm what the bishop of Poitiers says here.

At 63’50″ in the video Dr. Duncan quotes from D.H. Williams, who wrote:

It is historically important to note that Hilary is the first Christian theologian explicitly to have formulated what Paul left implicit by referring to God’s work of grace in the phrase, ‘fides sola iustificat:’ ‘Because faith alone justifies … publicans and prostitutes will be first in the kingdom of heaven’ (Mt. xxi.15). (“Justification By Faith: A Patristic Doctrine,” p. 660)

Here, in his commentary on the gospel of Matthew, St. Hilary is talking about the fact that the chief priests and scribes saw the wonderful things Jesus had done, and even saw the children in the Temple crying out “Hosanna to the Son of David,” and yet they became indignant with Jesus. (Matt 21:15) So there are two things to note. First, St. Hilary is here talking about coming to justification, not about the Christian life after regeneration. He is not saying that those who come to faith and continue to live as prostitutes are justified. He is talking about being translated from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of light. Second, by the context it is clear that St. Hilary is contrasting those persons in Matthew’s Gospel who believed Christ’s message, and those Jewish priests and scribes who rejected Christ’s message. So when St. Hilary says “faith alone justifies” the ‘alone’ is not unqualified; by ‘alone’ he is saying that coming to justification is not based on the degree to which one has kept the “works of the law.” In other words, justification is not merited by prior law-keeping; that’s what the ‘alone’ is excluding. By ‘alone’ here St. Hilary is not saying that justification is not by agape and not by baptism; he is excluding “works of the law” (done apart from grace) as means by which we merit justification. How do we know that he is not excluding baptism? Because in this same commentary on the gospel of Matthew, he writes:

When therefore, we are renewed in the laver of baptism through the power of the Word, we are separated from the sin and source of our origin (ab originis nostrae peccatis atque auctoribus), and when we have endured a sort of excision from the sword of God, we differ from the dispositions of our father and mother [e.g., Adam and Eve]. (Mt x.24)

And elsewhere St. Hilary clearly affirms a doctrine of baptismal regeneration that Dr. Duncan presumably rejects. Everything that Dr. Duncan quotes from St. Hilary can without inconsistency be affirmed by any orthodox Catholic because it is fully in agreement with what the Church later taught at the Council of Trent.

Then at 64’34″ in the video Dr. Duncan again quotes Williams, who wrote:

There is the strong possibility that Hilary’s commentary sparked or fuelled the revival of Pauline studies in the west during the last decades of the fourth century.

Then at 64’52″ Dr. Duncan adds:

And what did that set the table for? A man named Augustine. Just in time for him to engage a man named Pelagius. But it’s happening before Augustine; this is why I didn’t go to Augustine. It would be so easy to go to Augustine on justification. But I wanted you to see that before Augustine this stuff was already in the water.

The problem for Dr. Duncan is that St. Augustine’s doctrine of justification is no less Catholic than is St. Hilary’s, as I showed recently here. In short, nothing that Dr. Duncan quotes from the Church Fathers is contrary to the Catholic faith in the least bit. All six pieces of evidence he offers are fully Catholic, completely compatible with the doctrine of justification taught by the Council of Trent. And therefore it is misleading to claim that these patristic quotations are evidence that the Fathers in some nascent way “knew” or affirmed or would have affirmed, the Reformed conception of the gospel over that of the Catholic Church. Such a claim amounts to a proof-texting that attempts to read into the patristic writers a theology that is in no way there. If the reason Protestants cannot return to the Catholic Church is that the Catholic gospel is incompatible with  the Reformed conception of the gospel, and if present-day orthodox Catholics can without contradiction fully affirm the very best patristic evidence Dr. Duncan can find that the Church Fathers knew of the Reformed conception of the gospel, it follows that the Church Fathers did not know the Reformed gospel. My hope and prayer is that Dr. Duncan and other Protestants will see and acknowledge that the Church Fathers did not know or teach the Reformed conception of the gospel. Recognizing that the Reformed conception of the gospel is a theological novum (i.e. novelty) of the sixteenth century is a necessary step, in my opinion, for Reformed Protestants and Catholics to be reconciled in full communion.

1. St. Melito refers to Isaac in three places in his Homily. Here are all three places:

   Accordingly, if you desire to see the mystery of the Lord, pay close attention to Abel who likewise was put to death, to Isaac who likewise was bound hand and foot, to Joseph who likewise was sold, to Moses who likewise was exposed, to David who likewise was hunted down, to the prophets who likewise suffered because they were the Lord’s anointed. (para. 59)

   This one is the passover of our salvation. This is the one who patiently endured many things in many people: This is the one who was murdered in Abel, and bound as a sacrifice in Isaac, and exiled in Jacob, and sold in Joseph, and exposed in Moses, and sacrificed in the lamb, and hunted down in David, and dishonored in the prophets. (para. 69)

   the one who set in motion the stars of heaven, the one who caused those luminaries to shine, the one who made the angels in heaven, the one who established their thrones in that place, the one who by himself fashioned man upon the earth. This was the one who chose you, the one who guided you from Adam to Noah, from Noah to Abraham, from Abraham to Isaac and Jacob and the Twelve Patriarchs. (para. 83)

   Not one of these is anything like the second part of the quotation Dr. Duncan attributed to St. Melito.

2. See here.

Outline
I. Overview of the Reformed and Catholic positions on Law and Grace
II. St. Augustine on Law and Grace
A. On Continence (A.D. 395)
B. Contra Faustum (A.D. 397-398)
C. On Merit and the Forgiveness of Sins (A.D. 412)
D. On the Spirit and the Letter (A.D. 412)
E. On Nature and Grace (A.D. 415)
F. On Man’s Perfection in Righteousness (A.D. 415)
G. Expositions on the Psalms (A.D. 396-420)
H. On the Proceedings of Pelagius (A.D. 417)
I. Tractate 25 on the Gospel of John (A.D. 406-430)
J. On the Grace of Christ and on Original Sin (A.D. 418)
K. City of God (A.D. 413-427)
L. Against Two Letters of the Pelagians (A.D. 420)
M. On Grace and Free Will (A.D. 426-427)
III. Conclusion

I. Overview of the Reformed and Catholic positions on Law and Grace

Before turning to St. Augustine, consider briefly the Reformed and Catholic doctrines concerning the relation of law and grace. According to Reformed theology, justification is by an extra nos (i.e. outside of us) imputation of the obedience of Christ. In other words, God justifies us by counting us as righteous not because of any righteousness infused into us, but by crediting Christ’s righteousness to our account, and crediting Him with our sins. God counts Christ’s suffering and death as punishment for our sins, and God counts Christ’s perfect obedience as our obedience. By this double imputation, nothing we do can bring us into condemnation.¹ That is what it means, in Reformed theology, to be no longer under law, but under grace. The law remains normative and binding on believers as a guide to living correctly, but no one who has been justified by grace through faith can be condemned by the law, nor justified by law-keeping. Believers are not under the law for justification or condemnation; they are under grace. Grace and law are, in that respect, mutually exclusive.

According to Catholic doctrine, justification is by an infusion of sanctifying grace and agape. God does not count-us-as-righteous-even-though-internally-we-are-unrighteous; by infusing grace and agape into our hearts at the moment of regeneration He instantly makes us righteous. God does not count (or impute) our sins against us (Rom 4:8), not by leaving us with a wicked sinful heart and merely overlooking our sins, but by mercifully transforming our heart through the infusion of sanctifying grace and agape such that there is no mortal sin to overlook. The person with agape in his heart is in friendship with God, and thus is righteous before God. When Abraham chose to believe God’s promise (Rom 4:3), this act not only showed that Abraham had a faith working through agape and thus was in friendship with God, but it also deepened that friendship, and so God counted it to him as righteousness. Agape fulfills the law (Rom 10:8-10), because agape is the spirit of the law. Without agape, no one is righteous in His sight. But through Christ agape is poured out into our hearts by the Holy Spirit (Rom 5:5). By this agape in our hearts, we walk in newness of life; this infused grace and agape produces the “obedience of faith” of which St. Paul speaks (Rom 1:5, 16:26). This infused grace and agape is the gift of righteousness (Rom 5:17) by which we have been “freed from sin and made slaves of righteousness” (Rom 6:18,22). By this gift we are made “doers of the Law” (Rom 2:13), such that the requirement of the Law is “fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit,” (Rom 8:4). By this gift we subject ourselves to the law of God (Rom 8:7). By this gift of infused sanctifying grace and agape, our spirit is made alive (Rom 8:10) and the law is written on our hearts (cf. Rom 2:28-29), truly in our hearts (Rom 10:8, 10), as the prophet Jeremiah prophesied long ago concerning the New Covenant (Jeremiah 31:33-34). So according to the Catholic doctrine regarding law and grace, by the infusion of sanctifying grace we receive the gift of agape by which we truly fulfill the law. Here, grace and law are not mutually exclusive; grace orients us to God in divine love such that we fulfill the law, and are truly justified in our hearts.

II. St. Augustine on Law and Grace

Below I have laid out in chronological order selections from various works in which St. Augustine addresses either directly or indirectly the relation of law and grace. Of course I have not here included everything St. Augustine wrote about the relation of law and grace. But I think what I have included is sufficiently extensive that it accurately presents his position, over the spread of the last thirty five years of his life, and especially during and after his opposition to the Pelagians. Regarding this particular subject of the relation between law and grace, I see no change in his position during those thirty-five years. In my opinion, the four most important works of St. Augustine relevant to this question are “On the Spirit and the Letter,” “On Nature and Grace,” “On the Grace of Christ and on Original Sin,” and “Against Two Letters of the Pelagians.”

On Continence (A.D. 395)

But whoso through the Law have come to know [the evil of his lusts], (“For through the Law is the knowledge of sin,” and, “Lust,” says he, “I knew not, unless the Law should say, You shall not lust after,”) and yet are overcome by their assault, because they live under the Law, whereby what is good is commanded, but not also given: they live not under Grace, which gives through the Holy Spirit what is commanded through the Law: unto these the Law therefore entered, that in them the offense might abound. (On Continence, 7)

Here St. Augustine describes those who are “under the Law” as those who know the Law (in contrast to those who do not know the Law), but are overcome by their evil lusts because they do not have the grace through the Holy Spirit to do what is commanded by the Law. That is what he means by “whereby what is good is commanded, but not also given.” The law shows us what is commanded, but does not provide the power to obey it. But grace through the Holy Spirit gives us precisely this power, to do what is commanded by the law.

Contra Faustum (A.D. 397-398)

So also the Jews, of whom all these things are a figure, if they had been content, instead of being turbulent, and had acknowledged the time of salvation through the pardon of sins by grace … they would in confession have referred their sin to themselves, saying to the Physician, as it is written in the Psalm, “I said, Lord, be merciful to me; heal my soul, for I have sinned against You.” And being made free by the hope of grace, they [i.e. the Jews] would have ruled over sin as long as it continued in their mortal body. But now, being ignorant of God’s righteousness, and wishing to establish a righteousness of their own, proud of the works of the law, instead of being humbled on account of their sins, they have not been content; and in subjection to sin reigning in their mortal body, so as to make them obey it in the lusts thereof, they have stumbled on the stone of stumbling, and have been inflamed with hatred against him whose works they grieved to see accepted by God. The man who was born blind, and had been made to see, said to them, “We know that God hears not sinners; but if any man serve Him, and do His will, him He hears;” (John 9:31) as if he had said, God regards not the sacrifice of Cain, but he regards the sacrifice of Abel. Abel, the younger brother, is killed by the elder brother; Christ, the head of the younger people, is killed by the elder people of the Jews. Abel dies in the field; Christ dies on Calvary. (Bk 12)

St. Augustine here explains that the Jews did not accept the Physician from whom they were to seek healing for their souls. Because they preferred to establish a righteousness of their own by the works of the law, rather than receive by grace and mercy the righteousness that comes from Christ, they remain in subjection to sin reigning in their mortal body. Then in Book 19 he writes:

[F]rom the words, “I came not to destroy the law, but to fulfill it” we are not to understand that Christ by His precepts filled up what was wanting in the law; but that what the literal command failed in doing from the pride and disobedience of men, is accomplished by grace in those who are brought to repentance and humility. The fulfillment is not in additional words, but in acts of obedience. So the apostle says “Faith works by love;” (Gal 5:6) and again, “He that loves another has fulfilled the law.” (Rom 13:8) This love, by which also the righteousness of the law can be fulfilled was bestowed in its significance by Christ in His coming, through the Spirit which He sent according to His promise; and therefore He said, “I came not to destroy the law, but to fulfill it.” This is the New Testament in which the promise of the kingdom of heaven is made to this love; which was typified in the Old Testament, suitably to the times of that dispensation. So Christ says again; “A new commandment I give unto you, that you love one another.” (John 13:34) … Since, then, all these excellent precepts of the Lord, which Faustus tries to prove to be contrary to the old books of the Hebrews, are found in these very books, the only sense in which the Lord came not to destroy the law, but to fulfill it, is this, that besides the fulfillment of the prophetic types, which are set aside by their actual accomplishment, the precepts also, in which the law is holy, and just, and good, are fulfilled in us, not by the oldness of the letter which commands, and increases the offense of the proud by the additional guilt of transgression, but by the newness of the Spirit, who aids us, and by the obedience of the humble, through the saving grace which sets us free. (Book 19)

Here St. Augustine is teaching about the role of grace in relation to the law. In what sense did Christ come to fulfill the law? The law by itself, says St. Augustine, was powerless to bring about righteousness in men, because of our prideful, disobedient hearts. But the law is accomplished in us by the grace that comes from Christ, in those who (by grace) are brought to repentance and humility. How is the law fulfilled by grace? Not by an extra nos imputation of Christ’s righteousness, but by “acts of obedience,” faith working through love, and thus fulfilling the law. In other words, the way in which Christ fulfills the law is not by imputing an extra nos righteousness to us, but by infusing us with grace and agape such that we fulfill the law in the newness of the Spirit, and not by an external compulsion, i.e. fear of punishment or desire for earthly reward.

On Merit and the Forgiveness of Sins (A.D. 412)

His grace works within us our illumination and justification, by that operation concerning which the same preacher of His [name] says: “Neither is he that plants anything, nor he that waters, but God that gives the increase.” (1 Cor 3:7) For by this grace He engrafts into His body even baptized infants, who certainly have not yet become able to imitate any one. As therefore He, in whom all are made alive, besides offering Himself as an example of righteousness to those who imitate Him, gives also to those who believe in Him the hidden grace of His Spirit, which He secretly infuses even into infants …. We read, indeed, of those being justified in Christ who believe in Him, by reason of the secret communion and inspiration of that spiritual grace which makes everyone who cleaves to the Lord “one spirit” with Him (1 Cor 6:17) (Bk I, chapters 10-11)

St. Augustine explains here that we are justified by God’s grace working within us. Even the infant is justified at baptism when God infuses the “hidden grace of the Spirit.” We are justified not by a divine stipulation that imputes an alien righteousness to our account, but by a divine communion of a spiritual grace that makes us one spirit with God. But extra nos imputation does not make us one spirit with God; it simply exchanges what is in our respective accounts. Only an infusion of grace and agape into our hearts can make us “one spirit” with Him, for only then do we share the same heart with God.

Observe also what follows. Having said, “In which all have sinned,” he at once added, “For until the law, sin was in the world.” (Rom 5:13) This means that sin could not be taken away even by the law, which entered that sin might the more abound, (Rom 5:20) whether it be the law of nature, under which every man when arrived at years of discretion only proceeds to add his own sins to original sin, or that very law which Moses gave to the people. … This reign of death is only destroyed in any man by the Saviour’s grace, which wrought even in the saints of the olden time, all of whom, though previous to the coming of Christ in the flesh, yet lived in relation to His assisting grace, not to the letter of the law, which only knew how to command, but not to help them. In the Old Testament, indeed, that was hidden (conformably to the perfectly just dispensation of the times) which is now revealed in the New Testament. Therefore “death reigned from Adam unto Moses,” in all who were not assisted by the grace of Christ, that in them the kingdom of death might be destroyed (Bk 1, chapters 12-13)

The law could not take away sin, and so death reigned, even under the law. But this reign of death is destroyed by the Savior’s grace, which was “wrought” even in the saints who lived prior to the coming of Christ. The letter of the law knew only how to command, but not to help keep the law. By the law alone those Old Testament saints could not have been righteous. Only through the “assisting grace” that came from Christ’s sacrifice were the saints of the Old Testament able to keep the law and be righteous.

On the Spirit and the Letter (A.D. 412)

“By the law there shall no flesh be justified in the sight of God.” (Rom 3:20) This may indeed be possible before men, but not before Him who looks into our very heart and inmost will, where He sees that, although the man who fears the law keeps a certain precept, he would nevertheless rather do another thing if he were permitted. (chapter 14)

By the law alone, no one can be justified in God’s sight. Other men might think that some particular man is perfect by the law alone, but God, who looks at the heart, sees that in this man (who does not have the grace of God in his heart), he keeps the law (externally) only out of fear. This man would rather act contrary to the law if he could get away with doing so. In other words, the man without grace does not love God’s law. Only by grace can a man love the law, love to do what it enjoins, and so truly fulfill it.

“Being justified freely by His grace.” (Rom 3:24) It is not, therefore, by the law, nor is it by their own will, that they are justified; but they are justified freely by His grace—not that it is wrought without our will; but our will is by the law shown to be weak, that grace may heal its infirmity; and that our healed will may fulfil the law, not by compact under the law, nor yet in the absence of law. (chapter 15)

Here St. Augustine explains that it is not by the law that we are justified, or by our own will, but by God’s grace. The law shows our will to be weak, but grace heals the will’s infirmity, so that our healed will “may fulfill the law.”

For in this letter of mine we have not undertaken to expound this epistle [i.e. Romans], but only mainly on its authority, to demonstrate, so far as we are able, that we are assisted by divine aid towards the achievement of righteousness — not merely because God has given us a law full of good and holy precepts, but because our very will without which we cannot do any good thing, is assisted and elevated by the importation of the Spirit of grace, without which help mere teaching is “the letter that kills,” (2 Cor 3:6) forasmuch as it rather holds them guilty of transgression, than justifies the ungodly. (chapter 20)

St. Augustine is explaining in this work that St. Paul, in Romans, teaches that we are assisted by divine aid toward the achievement of righteousness, because by the “importation” (i.e. infusion) of the Spirit of grace, our will is assisted and elevated to God. Without this help, the law kills. But by this grace the law is fulfilled in us as we, with this infused divine aid, live out faith working in agape.

And so it is the very law of works itself which says, “You shall not covet;” because thereby comes the knowledge of sin. Now I wish to know, if anybody will dare to tell me, whether the law of faith does not say to us, “You shall not covet”? For if it does not say so to us, what reason is there why we, who are placed under it, should not sin in safety and with impunity? Indeed, this is just what those people thought the apostle meant, of whom he writes: “Even as some affirm that we say, Let us do evil, that good may come; whose damnation is just.” (Rom 3:8) If, on the contrary, it too says to us, “You shall not covet” (even as numerous passages in the gospels and epistles so often testify and urge), then why is not this law also called the law of works? For it by no means follows that, because it retains not the “works” of the ancient sacraments — even circumcision and the other ceremonies, — it therefore has no “works” in its own sacraments, which are adapted to the present age; unless, indeed, the question was about sacramental works, when mention was made of the law, just because by it is the knowledge of sin, and therefore nobody is justified by it, so that it is not by it that boasting is excluded, but by the law of faith, whereby the just man lives. But is there not by it too the knowledge of sin, when even it says, “You shall not covet?” (chapter 21)

Here St. Augustine contrasts the law of works and the law of faith. He asks whether the law of faith also contains the law of works. Some people mistakenly thought that the law of faith did not contain the law of works; these are the people who thought that under grace they could say, “let us do evil that good may come.” St. Augustine shows that while the law of faith does not retain the ceremonial works of the Law of Moses, the law of faith does retain the moral law.²

What the difference between them [i.e. the law of works and the law of faith] is, I will briefly explain. What the law of works enjoins by menace, that the law of faith secures by faith. The one [i.e. the law of works] says, “You shall not covet;” (Ex 20:17) the other [i.e. the law of faith] says, “When I perceived that nobody could be continent, except God gave it to him; and that this was the very point of wisdom, to know whose gift she was; I approached unto the Lord, and I besought Him.” (Wisdom 8:21) This indeed is the very wisdom which is called piety, in which is worshipped “the Father of lights, from whom is every best giving and perfect gift.” (James 1:17) This worship, however, consists in the sacrifice of praise and giving of thanks, so that the worshipper of God boasts not in himself, but in Him. (2 Cor 10:17) Accordingly, by the law of works, God says to us, Do what I command you; but by the law of faith we say to God, Give me what You command. Now this is the reason why the law gives its command — to admonish us what faith ought to do, that is, that he to whom the command is given, if he is as yet unable to perform it, may know what to ask for; but if he has at once the ability, and complies with the command, he ought also to be aware from whose gift the ability comes. (chapter 22)

The law of works (i.e. the covenant made through Moses) exerts its normative force by way of threatened punishment. The law of faith, by contrast, works from the inside, from the heart. Brought low by the law, the person grasps his inability, humbles himself before God, and asks God to give him the grace to do what He commands. Now pride is done away, because one’s law-keeping is no longer by one’s own strength, but by the gift of God. Yet neither does the law of faith do away with the law of works, but fulfills it, because the person living by the faith that works through love keeps the law. When St. Augustine describes the prayer of the person of faith as “Give me what You command” he is not talking about an extra nos imputed righteousness. He is talking about the grace to keep the commandments. And God gives generously to the one who asks for His grace, such that by this divine aid he “complies with the command,” and therefore cannot boast, as though he did this himself. The position St. Augustine is describing is not Pelagianism (wherein grace is reduced either to nature or to the law), but neither is it Calvinism (wherein by extra nos imputation Christ replaces us such that our law-keeping no longer pertains to our justification or condemnation).

In chapters 23-25 St. Augustine explains that by the law St. Paul does not just mean circumcision and animal sacrifices, but even the Decalogue. Then he writes:

Does not its [i.e. 2 Cor 3:3-9] whole scope amount to this, that the letter which forbids sin fails to give man life, but rather “kills,” by increasing concupiscence, and aggravating sinfulness by transgression, unless indeed grace liberates us by the law of faith, which is in Christ Jesus, when His love is “shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost, which is given to us?” (Rom 5:5) (chapter 25)

The reason why the letter “kills” (2 Cor 3:6) is because without grace, the law makes transgression worse. The law is powerless to enable man to keep it, and be righteous. But grace liberates us from that bondage, by the law of faith, when the Holy Spirit pours out agape into our hearts. The infusion of agape liberates us from bondage by enabling us to fulfill the law.

It is evident, then, that the oldness of the letter, in the absence of the newness of the spirit, instead of freeing us from sin, rather makes us guilty by the knowledge of sin. Whence it is written in another part of Scripture, “He that increases knowledge, increases sorrow,” (Ecclesiastes 1:18) — not that the law is itself evil, but because the commandment has its good in the demonstration of the letter, not in the assistance of the spirit; and if this commandment is kept from the fear of punishment and not from the love of righteousness, it is servilely kept, not freely, and therefore it is not kept at all. For no fruit is good which does not grow from the root of love. If, however, that faith be present which works by love, (Gal 5:6) then one begins to delight in the law of God after the inward man, (Rom 7:22) and this delight is the gift of the spirit, not of the letter; even though there is another law in our members still warring against the law of the mind, until the old state is changed, and passes into that newness which increases from day to day in the inward man, while the grace of God is liberating us from the body of this death through Jesus Christ our Lord. (chapter 26)

The Law, without the Spirit, makes us more guilty; the Law does not provide the assistance of grace by which to keep the Law. Those who externally keep the commandments only for fear of punishment, are not truly keeping the commandments. But if the faith that works through agape is present, then the person delights in the law of God in the inner man. The other law to which he refers here (“in our members”) is the law of concupiscence, i.e. the disordered desires of the lower appetites.

“Now the Lord is that Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.” (2 Cor 3:17) Now this Spirit of God, by whose gift we are justified, whence it comes to pass that we delight not to sin — in which is liberty; even as, when we are without this Spirit, we delight to sin — in which is slavery, from the works of which we must abstain; — this Holy Spirit, through whom love is shed abroad in our hearts, which is the fulfilment of the law, is designated in the gospel as “the finger of God.” (Luke 11:20) Is it not because those very tables of the law were written by the finger of God, that the Spirit of God by whom we are sanctified is also the finger of God, in order that, living by faith, we may do good works through love? (chapter 28)

Notice that he says that it is by the gift of the Spirit that we are justified. What is this gift of the Spirit? It is the grace and agape that has been poured out into our hearts by the Holy Spirit (Rom 5:5). The Spirit of God is the “finger of God” who writes the law on our hearts, not on stony tablets as with Moses on Mt. Sinai. But in the previous chapter he wrote, “it was not for nothing that the nation was commanded on that day (i.e. the Sabbath) to abstain from all servile work, by which sin is signified; but because not to commit sin belongs to sanctification, that is, to God’s gift through the Holy Spirit.” (chapter 27) For St. Augustine, the gift of the Spirit by which we are sanctified is the very same gift of the Spirit by which we are justified, because to be justified and to be sanctified are the very same thing. Only according to an extra nos conception of imputation could justification and sanctification be distinct. But when justification is by the infusion of agape, sanctification and justification are one and the same. And for St. Augustine, justification is by the infusion of grace and agape.

There [i.e. on Mt. Sinai] the law was given outwardly, so that the unrighteous might be terrified; here it was given inwardly, so that they might be justified. (Acts 2:1-47) For this, “You shall not commit adultery, You shall not kill, You shall not covet; and if there be any other commandment,” — such, of course, as was written on those tables — “it is briefly comprehended,” says he, “in this saying, namely, You shall love your neighbour as yourself. Love works no ill to his neighbour: therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.” (Rom 13:9-10) Now this was not written on the tables of stone, but “is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost, which is given unto us.” (Rom 5:5) God’s law, therefore, is love. “To it the carnal mind is not subject, neither indeed can be;” (Rom 8:7) but when the works of love are written on tables to alarm the carnal mind, there arises the law of works and “the letter which kills” the transgressor; but when love itself is shed abroad in the hearts of believers, then we have the law of faith, and the spirit which gives life to him that loves. (chapter29)

St. Augustine is very clear here concerning the difference between the law of works and the law of faith. At Mt. Sinai, the law was given outwardly, being written on tablets of stone. Because it was given outwardly, it provoked fear; the carnal mind cannot be subject to the law, and so to the carnal mind (i.e. the mind without the Spirit) the letter of the law kills. But in the New Covenant, the law is given inwardly, so that we might be justified. God’s law, says St. Augustine, “is love.” We are justified by an infusion of grace by the Holy Spirit, such that agape is poured out into our hearts.³ This infusion of agape is what is meant by writing the law on our hearts. By this agape we fulfill the law, because love is the fulfilling of the law. This is how we are justified, as he goes on to say:

“Forasmuch,” says he, “as you are manifestly declared to be the epistle of Christ ministered by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables of the heart.” (2 Cor 3:3) See how he shows that the one is written without [i.e. outside] man, that it may alarm him from without; the other within man himself, that it may justify him from within. He speaks of the “fleshy tables of the heart,” not of the carnal mind, but of a living agent possessing sensation, in comparison with a stone, which is senseless. The assertion which he subsequently makes — that “the children of Israel could not look steadfastly on the end of the face of Moses,” and that he accordingly spoke to them through a veil, (2 Cor 3:13) — signifies that the letter of the law justifies no man, but that rather a veil is placed on the reading of the Old Testament, until it shall be turned to Christ, and the veil be removed — in other words, until it shall be turned to grace, and be understood that from Him accrues to us the justification, whereby we do what He commands. (chapter 30)

We are justified when the Spirit writes the law within in hearts, i.e. when agape is infused into us. From Christ accrues to us the justification where we do what He commands. Again, notice that for St. Augustine, there is no extra nos imputation, or any distinction between justification and sanctification; we are justified by the infusion of agape, such that we do what He commands.

Now, since, as he says in another passage, “the law was added because of transgression,” (Gal 3:19) meaning the law which is written externally to man, he therefore designates it both as “the ministration of death,” (2 Cor 3:7) and “the ministration of condemnation;” (2 Cor 3:9) but the other, that is, the law of the New Testament, he calls “the ministration of the Spirit” (2 Cor 3:8) and “the ministration of righteousness,” (2 Cor 3:9) because through the Spirit we work righteousness, and are delivered from the condemnation due to transgression. The one, therefore, vanishes away, the other abides; for the terrifying schoolmaster will be dispensed with, when love has succeeded to fear. Now “where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.” (2 Cor 3:17) (chapter 31)

The New Testament is the “ministry of righteousness” because through the Spirit we work righteousness, and thereby are delivered from the condemnation due to transgression. Our deliverance is not that Christ fulfills the law in our place and then imputes His obedience to us, but that by His work He merited for us the grace of the Spirit whereby we are empowered through agape to work righteousness and so no longer fear the condemnation of the law.

Let no Christian then stray from this faith, which alone is the Christian one; nor let any one, when he has been made to feel ashamed to say that we become righteous through our own selves, without the grace of God working this in us — because he sees, when such an allegation is made, how unable pious believers are to endure it — resort to any subterfuge on this point, by affirming that the reason why we cannot become righteous without the operation of God’s grace is this, that He gave the law, He instituted its teaching, He commanded its precepts of good. For there is no doubt that, without His assisting grace, the law is “the letter which kills;” but when the life-giving spirit is present, the law causes that to be loved as written within, which it once caused to be feared as written without. (chapter 32)

This righteousness of the New Covenant that is by the infusion of agape into our hearts, is not from us, but from the grace of God working this in us. This grace causes that to be loved within (i.e. the law) which was feared without when it was written on stone tablets.

Nevertheless, it is not by that law that the ungodly are made righteous, but by grace; and this change is effected by the life-giving Spirit, without whom the letter kills…. The law was therefore given, in order that grace might be sought; grace was given, in order that the law might be fulfilled. Now it was not through any fault of its own that the law was not fulfilled, but by the fault of the carnal mind; and this fault was to be demonstrated by the law, and healed by grace. (chapter 34)

Grace was given not in the sense that Christ fulfilled the law so that we don’t have to fulfill it for our justification, but precisely so that “the law might be fulfilled” in us whose weak wills have been healed by the grace that was won for us by Christ and has now been infused into our hearts.

It is then on account of the offense of the old man, which was by no means healed by the letter which commanded and threatened, that it is called the old covenant; whereas the other is called the new covenant, because of the newness of the spirit, which heals the new man of the fault of the old. Then consider what follows, and see in how clear a light the fact is placed, that men who bare faith are unwilling to trust in themselves: “Because,” says he, “this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, says the Lord, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts.” (Jer 31:33) See how similarly the apostle states it in the passage we have already quoted: “Not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables of the heart,” (2 Cor 3:3) because “not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God.” (2 Cor 3:3) And I apprehend that the apostle [i.e. Paul] in this passage had no other reason for mentioning “the New Testament” (“who has made us able ministers of the New Testament; not of the letter, but of the spirit”), than because he had an eye to the words of the prophet, when he said “Not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables of the heart,” inasmuch as in the prophet it runs: “I will write it in their hearts.” (Jer 31:33)

What then is God’s law written by God Himself in the hearts of men, but the very presence of the Holy Spirit, who is “the finger of God,” and by whose presence is shed abroad in our hearts the love which is the fulfilling of the law, (Rom 13:10) and the end of the commandment? (1 Tim 1:5) Now the promises of the Old Testament are earthly; and yet (with the exception of the sacramental ordinances which were the shadow of things to come, such as circumcision, the Sabbath and other observances of days, and the ceremonies of certain meats, and the complicated ritual of sacrifices and sacred things which suited “the oldness” of the carnal law and its slavish yoke) it contains such precepts of righteousness as we are even now taught to observe, which were especially expressly drawn out on the two tables without figure or shadow: for instance, “You shall not commit adultery,” “You shall do no murder,” “You shall not covet,” “and whatsoever other commandment is briefly comprehended in the saying, You shall love your neighbour as yourself.” (Rom 13:9) Nevertheless, whereas as in the said Testament earthly and temporal promises are, as I have said, recited, and these are goods of this corruptible flesh (although they prefigure those heavenly and everlasting blessings which belong to the New Testament), what is now promised is a good for the heart itself, a good for the mind, a good of the spirit, that is, an intellectual good; since it is said, “I will put my law in their inward parts, and in their hearts will I write them,” (Jer 31:33) — by which He signified that men would not fear the law which alarmed them externally, but would love the very righteousness of the law which dwelt inwardly in their hearts. (chapters 35-36)

Here he first shows that St. Paul understood the New Covenant as the fulfillment of Jeremiah’s prophesy regarding the law being written on our hearts. The Old Covenant could not heal the heart; but under the New Covenant, our hearts are healed. They are healed by the Spirit of God, who renews us by indwelling us and infusing into our hearts the agape by which the law is fulfilled in us, love being the goal (i.e. telos) of the commandment. The sacramental ordinances of the Old Covenant (e.g. circumcision, Sabbath, etc.) are done away by the New Covenant. But the moral law summarized in the Decalogue is still imperative for Christians. By the infusion of agape into our hearts we are caused to love the very righteousness of the law written within us by the Spirit.

As then the law of works, which was written on the tables of stone, and its reward, the land of promise, which the house of the carnal Israel after their liberation from Egypt received, belonged to the old testament, so the law of faith, written on the heart, and its reward, the beatific vision which the house of the spiritual Israel, when delivered from the present world, shall perceive, belong to the new testament. (chapter 41)

The law of works was written on tablets of stone, and had an earthly reward, but the law of faith is written on the heart by the Spirit, and has a heavenly reward, namely, the beatific vision.

When the prophet [i.e. Jeremiah] promised a new covenant, not according to the covenant which had been formerly made with the people of Israel when liberated from Egypt, he said nothing about a change in the sacrifices or any sacred ordinances, although such change, too, was without doubt to follow, as we see in fact that it did follow, even as the same prophetic scripture testifies in many other passages; but he simply called attention to this difference, that God would impress His laws on the mind of those who belonged to this covenant, and would write them in their hearts, (Jer 31:32-33) whence the apostle drew his conclusion — “not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables of the heart;” (2 Cor 3:3) and that the eternal recompense of this righteousness was not the land out of which were driven the Amorites and Hittites, and other nations who dwelt there, Joshua 12 but God Himself, “to whom it is good to hold fast,” in order that God’s good that they love, may be the God Himself whom they love, between whom and men nothing but sin produces separation; and this is remitted only by grace. Accordingly, after saying, “For all shall know me, from the least to the greatest of them,” He instantly added, “For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.” (Jer 31:34) By the law of works, then, the Lord says, “You shall not covet:” (Ex 20:17) but by the law of faith He says, “Without me you can do nothing;” (John 15:5) for He was treating of good works, even the fruit of the vine-branches. It is therefore apparent what difference there is between the old covenant and the new — that in the former the law is written on tables, while in the latter on hearts; so that what in the one alarms from without, in the other delights from within; and in the former man becomes a transgressor through the letter that kills, in the other a lover through the life-giving spirit. We must therefore avoid saying, that the way in which God assists us to work righteousness, and “works in us both to will and to do of His good pleasure,” (Philippians 2:13) is by externally addressing to our faculties precepts of holiness; for He gives His increase internally, (1 Cor 3:7) by shedding love abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost, which is given to us. (Rom 5:5) (chapter 42)

Under the Old Covenant, man becomes a transgressor because the law is written outside of us, on tablets of stone; under the New Covenant, man becomes a “lover,” because the law is written within us, on the heart. This is the way in which God “assists us to work righteousness.”

If therefore the apostle, when he mentioned that the Gentiles do by nature the things contained in the law, and have the work of the law written in their hearts, (Rom 2:14-15) intended those to be understood who believed in Christ — who do not come to the faith like the Jews, through a precedent law, — there is no good reason why we should endeavour to distinguish them from those to whom the Lord by the prophet promises the new covenant, telling them that He will write His laws in their hearts, (Jer 32:32) inasmuch as they too, by the grafting which he says had been made of the wild olive, belong to the self-same olive-tree, (Rom 11:24) — in other words, to the same people of God. … For thus do they become of the house of Israel, when their uncircumcision is accounted circumcision, by the fact that they do not exhibit the righteousness of the law by the excision of the flesh, but keep it by the charity of the heart. “If,” says he, “the uncircumcision keep the righteousness of the law, shall not his uncircumcision be counted for circumcision?” (Rom 2:26) And therefore in the house of the true Israel, in which is no guile, they are partakers of the new testament, since God puts His laws into their mind, and writes them in their hearts with his own finger, the Holy Ghost, by whom is shed abroad in them the love (Rom 5:5) which is the fulfilling of the law. (Rom 13:10) (chapter 46)

St. Augustine takes the persons described in Romans 2 to be Gentiles who believe in Christ, and fulfilments of Jeremiah’s prophecy. They are partakers of the New Covenant, and God has written His law on their hearts by His own finger, i.e. the Holy Spirit, by whom agape has been poured out into their hearts, such that they fulfill the law.

Nor ought it to disturb us that the apostle described them as doing that which is contained in the law “by nature,” — not by the Spirit of God, not by faith, not by grace. For it is the Spirit of grace that does it, in order to restore in us the image of God, in which we were naturally created. (Gen 1:27) Sin, indeed, is contrary to nature, and it is grace that heals it — on which account the prayer is offered to God, “Be merciful unto me: heal my soul; for I have sinned against You.” Therefore it is by nature that men do the things which are contained in the law; (Rom 2:14) for they who do not, fail to do so by reason of their sinful defect. In consequence of this sinfulness, the law of God is erased out of their hearts; and therefore, when, the sin being healed, it is written there, the prescriptions of the law are done “by nature,” — not that by nature grace is denied, but rather by grace nature is repaired. For “by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin, and so death passed upon all men; in which all have sinned;” (Rom 5:12) wherefore “there is no difference: they all come short of the glory of God, being justified freely by His grace.” (Rom 3:22-24) By this grace there is written on the renewed inner man that righteousness which sin had blotted out; and this mercy comes upon the human race through our Lord Jesus Christ. (chapter 47)

Here St. Augustine explains that when St. Paul says (in Rom 2:14) that Christian Gentiles do “by nature” what is contained in the law, he means a nature healed by grace and infused with agape.

[T]hat wide difference will not be disturbed, which separates the new covenant from the old, and which lies in the fact that by the new covenant the law of God is written in the hearts of believers, whereas in the old it was inscribed on tables of stone. For this writing in the heart is effected by renovation, although it had not been completely blotted out by the old nature. For just as that image of God is renewed in the mind of believers by the new testament, which impiety had not quite abolished (for there had remained undoubtedly that which the soul of man cannot be except it be rational), so also the law of God, which had not been wholly blotted out there by unrighteousness, is certainly written thereon, renewed by grace. Now in the Jews the law which was written on tables could not effect this new inscription, which is justification, but only transgression. (chapter 48)

Notice again that St. Augustine defines justification as the writing of the law on the heart. Under the Old Covenant, the law could not effect justification but only transgression, because the law was written on stone tablets. But in the New Covenant, this “new inscription” of the law on the hearts is our justification; we are made righteous by an infusion of grace and agape.

[T]he grace of God was promised to the new testament even by the prophet, and that this grace was definitively announced to take this shape — God’s laws were to be written in men’s hearts; and they were to arrive at such a knowledge of God, that they were not each one to teach his neighbour and brother, saying, Know the Lord; for all were to know Him, from the least to the greatest of them. (Jer 31:33-34) This is the gift of the Holy Ghost, by which love is shed abroad in our hearts, (Rom 5:5) — not, indeed, any kind of love, but the love of God, “out of a pure heart, and a good conscience, and an unfeigned faith,” (1 Tim 1:5) by means of which the just man, while living in this pilgrim state, is led on, after the stages of “the glass,” and “the enigma,” and “what is in part,” to the actual vision, that, face to face, he may know even as he is known. (chapter 49)

Here again St. Augustine describes the New Covenant as fulfilling Jeremiah’s prophesy, such that the law is written on our hearts by the gift of the Holy Spirit, which is agape, and by which we have a pure heart. Through this gift of agape, we are led on through this life, to the beatific vision in the life to come. The beatific vision (i.e. seeing God as He is) is the reward of the pure heart, as Jesus explained in the Beatitudes.

For the Gentiles, which followed not after righteousness, have attained to righteousness, even the righteousness which is by faith, (Rom 9:30) — by obtaining it of God, not by assuming it of themselves. But Israel, which followed after the law of righteousness, has not attained to the law of righteousness. And why? Because they sought it not by faith, but as it were by works (Rom 9:31-32) — in other words, working it out as it were by themselves, not believing that it is God who works within them. For it is God which works in us both to will and to do of His own good pleasure. (Philippians 2:13) And hereby they stumbled at the stumbling-stone. (Rom 9:32) For what he said, not by faith, but as it were by works, (Rom 9:32) he most clearly explained in the following words: “They, being ignorant of God’s righteousness, and going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God. For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believes.” (Rom 10:3-4) Then are we still in doubt what are those works of the law by which a man is not justified, if he believes them to be his own works, as it were, without the help and gift of God, which is by the faith of Jesus Christ? And do we suppose that they are circumcision and the other like ordinances, because some such things in other passages are read concerning these sacramental rites too? In this place, however, it is certainly not circumcision which they wanted to establish as their own righteousness, because God established this by prescribing it Himself. Nor is it possible for us to understand this statement, of those works concerning which the Lord says to them, You reject the commandment of God, that you may keep your own tradition; (Mark 7:9) because, as the apostle says, Israel, which followed after the law of righteousness, has not attained to the law of righteousness. (Rom 9:31) He did not say, Which followed after their own traditions, framing them and relying on them. This then is the sole distinction, that the very precept, “You shall not covet,” (Ex 20:17) and God’s other good and holy commandments, they attributed to themselves; whereas, that man may keep them, God must work in him through faith in Jesus Christ, who is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believes. (Rom 10:4) That is to say, every one who is incorporated into Him and made a member of His body, is able, by His giving the increase within, to work righteousness. It is of such a man’s works that Christ Himself has said, “Without me you can do nothing.” (John 15:5) (chapter 50)

Here St. Augustine explains the difference between seeking to attain righteousness by faith, and seeking to attain righteousness by works. Seeking to attain righteousness by works means to work it out as if were by our own effort, and not by the grace of God working within us. The righteousness of God is the righteousness that comes from Christ, by the Holy Spirit working with us, infusing grace and agape into us. The “works of the law” that cannot save us are not only the sacramental ordinances of the Old Covenant, says St. Augustine. All good works, if we believe them to be our own and accomplished not by the help of God working within us, cannot justify us or save us. The works of the law (under the Old Covenant) could not save because without grace man cannot keep them; insofar as we attribute our good works to our own strength, we are seeking to establish our own righteousness, and not receiving the righteousness of God that comes to us from Christ by faith and baptism.

The righteousness of the law is proposed in these terms — that whosoever shall do it shall live in it; and the purpose is, that when each has discovered his own weakness, he may not by his own strength, nor by the letter of the law (which cannot be done), but by faith, conciliating the Justifier, attain, and do, and live in it. For the work in which he who does it shall live, is not done except by one who is justified. His justification, however, is obtained by faith; and concerning faith it is written, “Say not in your heart, Who shall ascend into heaven? (that is, to bring down Christ therefrom;) or, Who shall descend into the deep? (that is, to bring up Christ again from the dead.) But what says it? The word is near you, even in your mouth, and in your heart: that is (says he), the word of faith which we preach: That if you shall confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus, and shall believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you shall be saved.” (Rom 10:6-9) As far as he is saved, so far is he righteous. For by this faith we believe that God will raise even us from the dead — even now in the spirit, that we may in this present world live soberly, righteously, and godly in the renewal of His grace; and by and by in our flesh, which shall rise again to immortality, which indeed is the reward of the Spirit, who precedes it by a resurrection which is appropriate to Himself — that is, by justification. “For we are buried with Christ by baptism unto death, that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.” (Rom 6:4) By faith, therefore, in Jesus Christ we obtain salvation — both in so far as it is begun within us in reality, and in so far as its perfection is waited for in hope; “for whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved.” “How abundant,” says the Psalmist, “is the multitude of Your goodness, O Lord, which You have laid up for them that fear You, and hast perfected for them that hope in You!” By the law we fear God; by faith we hope in God: but from those who fear punishment grace is hidden. And the soul which labours under this fear, since it has not conquered its evil concupiscence, and from which this fear, like a harsh master, has not departed — let it flee by faith for refuge to the mercy of God, that He may give it what He commands, and may, by inspiring into it the sweetness of His grace through His Holy Spirit, cause the soul to delight more in what He teaches it, than it delights in what opposes His instruction. In this manner it is that the great abundance of His sweetness — that is, the law of faith — His love which is in our hearts, and shed abroad, is perfected in them that hope in Him, that good may be wrought by the soul, healed not by the fear of punishment, but by the love of righteousness. (chapter 51)

St. Augustine here says that while apart from grace we cannot keep the law, by faith through grace we attain, do, and live in the law, conciliating the Justifier. Under the Old Covenant, the law brought fear of punishment. The soul which knows the law but has not conquered its evil concupiscence labors under this fear. But the soul that flees for refuge to the mercy of God receives from God the gift of grace by which he may do what God commands. St. Augustine describes this gift as God inspiring in us the sweetness of His grace through His Holy Spirit, by which we are caused to delight more in what He teaches, than in what opposes His teaching. What is this sweetness of grace? It is His love “shed abroad” (i.e. infused) into our hearts; this is the law of faith by which the soul is healed so that it loves righteousness. This is not justification by extra nos imputation in which Christ fulfills the law in our place and then His obedience is imputed to our account. The justification St. Augustine describes is justification by the infusion of grace and agape by which the law is fulfilled in us, not only outside-of-us-but-imputed-to-our-account.

Do we then by grace make void free will? God forbid! Nay, rather we establish free will. For even as the law by faith, so free will by grace, is not made void, but established. (Rom 3:31) For neither is the law fulfilled except by free will; but by the law is the knowledge of sin, by faith the acquisition of grace against sin, by grace the healing of the soul from the disease of sin, by the health of the soul freedom of will, by free will the love of righteousness, by love of righteousness the accomplishment of the law. Accordingly, as the law is not made void, but is established through faith, since faith procures grace whereby the law is fulfilled; so free will is not made void through grace, but is established, since grace cures the will whereby righteousness is freely loved. (chapter 52)

Just as the law is not made void by grace, so free will is not made void by grace. By the law comes the knowledge of sin; by faith comes the acquisition of grace by which the soul is healed from the disease of sin. By this grace we receive the love of righteousness by which the law is accomplished in us. Faith (prior to baptism) procures the grace (through baptism) whereby the law is fulfilled in us, because grace cures the will, enabling us freely to love righteousness.

But there is yet another distinction to be observed — since they who are under the law both attempt to work their own righteousness through fear of punishment, and fail to do God’s righteousness, because this is accomplished by the love to which only what is lawful is pleasing, and never by the fear which is forced to have in its work the thing which is lawful, although it has something else in its will which would prefer, if it were only possible, that to be lawful which is not lawful. These persons also believe in God; for if they had no faith in Him at all, neither would they of course have any dread of the penalty of His law. This, however, is not the faith which the apostle commends. He says: “You have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but you have received the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father.” (Rom 8:15) The fear, then, of which we speak is slavish; and therefore, even though there be in it a belief in the Lord, yet righteousness is not loved by it, but condemnation is feared. God’s children, however, exclaim, “Abba, Father,” (chapter 56)

Here too St. Augustine contrasts the person under the law of works, and the person under the law of faith. Both persons believe in God. But the person who works out of fear of punishment, and not out of love of righteousness, does not have saving faith; such a person is in bondage to the law, living in fear and condemnation. But the persons having saving faith take delight in God’s law. As sons by adoption we freely obey our Father’s law out of love, not fear.

On Nature and Grace (A.D. 415)

“For Christ is the end [i.e. telos, purpose] of the law for righteousness to every one that believes.” (Rom 10:4) This righteousness of God, therefore, lies not in the commandment of the law, which excites fear, but in the aid afforded by the grace of Christ, to which alone the fear of the law, as of a schoolmaster, (Gal 3:24) usefully conducts. (chapter 1)

How do we attain the righteousness of God? Not by an extra nos imputation in which Christ’s obedience is credited to our account, but by a grace that gives aid in keeping God’s law. This is what is meant by Christ being the end or goal of the law. The law, like a schoolmaster, conducts us to Christ, by showing us that by our own power we cannot keep the law. The solution to this weakness is the grace that comes from Christ, by which we are enabled through agape to fulfill the law.

He [i.e. Pelagius] of course does not notice the Scriptures of the New Testament, wherein we learn that the intention of the law in its censure is this, that, by reason of the transgressions which men commit, they may flee for refuge to the grace of the Lord, who has pity upon them — “the schoolmaster” (Gal 3:24) “shutting them up unto the same faith which should afterwards be revealed;” (Gal 3:23) that by it their transgressions may be forgiven, and then not again be committed, by God’s assisting grace. (chapter 13)

Grace is not only for the forgiveness of transgressions, but also assists us such that these transgressions may not again be committed.

This is the faith to which the commandments drive us, in order that the law may prescribe our duty and faith accomplish it. (chapter 17)

The law prescribes our duty, but cannot empower us to keep it. So the law drives us to Christ, and faith accomplishes the law, because this faith is faith informed by agape, through which the law is fulfilled (Rom 13:10).

But what I want to hear from him [i.e. Pelagius], if I can, is about those who live according to the Spirit, and who on this account are not, in a certain sense, in the flesh, even while they still live here — whether they, by God’s grace, live according to the Spirit, or are sufficient for themselves, natural capability having been bestowed on them when they were created, and their own proper will besides. Whereas the fulfilling of the law is nothing else than love; (Rom 13:10) and God’s love is shed abroad in our hearts, not by our own selves, but by the Holy Ghost which is given to us. (Rom 5:5) (chapter 18)

St. Augustine’s debate with Pelagius was not about whether the law of God is fulfilled in us, but whether the law is fulfilled in us by our created nature or by the love of God infused into our hearts by the Holy Spirit.

God, however, whenever He — through “the one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus” — spiritually heals the sick or raises the dead, that is, justifies the ungodly, and when He has brought him to perfect health, in other words, to the fullness of life and righteousness, does not forsake, if He is not forsaken, in order that life may be passed in constant piety and righteousness. (chapter 29)

Justification, for St. Augustine, is a spiritual healing of the soul, restoring to the soul the life of God, in order that the believer may live in “constant piety and righteousness.”

They who in a great degree have curbed this sin [i.e. concupiscence], that is, this appetite of a corrupt affection, so as not to obey its desires, nor to yield their members to it as instruments of unrighteousness, (Rom 6:13) have fairly deserved to be called righteous persons, and this by the help of the grace of God. Since, however, sin often stole over them in very small matters, and when they were off their guard, they were both righteous, and at the same time not sinless. To conclude, if there was in righteous Abel that love of God whereby alone he is truly righteous who is righteous, to enable him, and to lay him under a moral obligation, to advance in holiness, still in whatever degree he fell short therein was of sin. (chapter 45)

This is an enlightening statement by St. Augustine, because he is explaining how believers can be simultaneously both righteous and yet not sinless. He does not explain this by appealing to simultaneous extra nos imputation and intra nos damnable sin. Rather, he is teaching that though we are righteous only by the infusion of agape, nevertheless sin is of two sorts, mortal and venial. Venial sin does not destroy agape. So the person who commits only venial sin retains agape, and is thereby nevertheless righteous, and yet will be perfected in righteousness (i.e. no longer subject to concupiscence and no longer able to sin) in the life to come. Yet a person who has agape is not anything less than 100% righteous. Growth in love does not necessarily imply anything less than 100% level; growth in love increases the ‘size’ of the ‘container,’ so to speak.

I do not much care about expressing a definite opinion on the question, whether in the present life there ever have been, or now are, or ever can be, any persons who have had, or are having, or are to have, the love of God so perfectly as to admit of no addition to it (for nothing short of this amounts to a most true, full, and perfect righteousness). (chapter 49)

Again, for St. Augustine, the debate with Pelagius was not whether any persons so perfectly loved God that they could not more perfectly love God. St. Augustine didn’t want to assume that God had never (or would never) grant such grace to a person during this present life. The disagreement with Pelagius was about whether the righteousness we have in the New Covenant is by grace or by our own natural power.

“If you be led of the Spirit, you are no longer under the law.” (Gal 5:18) For that man is under the law, who, from fear of the punishment which the law threatens, and not from any love for righteousness, obliges himself to abstain from the work of sin, without being as yet free and removed from the desire of sinning. For it is in his very will that he is guilty, whereby he would prefer, if it were possible, that what he dreads should not exist, in order that he might freely do what he secretly desires. Therefore he says, “If you be led of the Spirit, you are not under the law,” — even the law which inspires fear, but gives not love. For this “love is shed abroad in our hearts,” not by the letter of the law, but “by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us.” (Rom 5:5) This is the law of liberty, not of bondage; being the law of love, not of fear; and concerning it the Apostle James says: “Whoso looks into the perfect law of liberty.” (James 1:25) Whence he, too, no longer indeed felt terrified by God’s law as a slave, but delighted in it in the inward man, although still seeing another law in his members warring against the law of his mind. Accordingly he here says: “If you be led of the Spirit, you are not under the law.” So far, indeed, as any man is led by the Spirit, he is not under the law; because, so far as he rejoices in the law of God, he lives not in fear of the law, since “fear has torment,” (1 John 4:18) not joy and delight. (chapter 67)

What does it mean to be “under the law”? According to St. Augustine, it means to be attempting to keep the law out of fear of punishment and not from love of righteousness. Even if such a person keeps the law externally, he is guilty in his heart because in his heart he loves something contrary to God’s law. However, when a man receives from Christ the gift of grace and agape and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, then he loves the law and is led by the Spirit. Such a man is no longer “under the law” in the sense of condemnation; he is free to fulfill the law out of love and delight.

St. Ambrose, however, really opposes those who say that man cannot exist without sin in the present life. For, in order to support his statement, he avails himself of the instance of Zacharias and Elisabeth, because they are mentioned as “having walked in all the commandments and ordinances” of the law “blameless.” Well, but does he for all that deny that it was by God’s grace that they did this through our Lord Jesus Christ? It was undoubtedly by such faith in Him that holy men lived of old, even before His death. It is He who sends the Holy Ghost that is given to us, through whom that love is shed abroad in our hearts whereby alone whosoever are righteous are righteous. (chapter 74)

Pelagius had appealed to the writings of St. Ambrose, to justify his [Pelagius's] own claim that man can live without sin in this life. St. Augustine notes that the issue is whether those whom Scripture referred to as righteous or blameless before Christ were righteous or blameless through their own strength and works or through the grace of God. St. Augustine, who had been baptized and catechized by St. Ambrose, knew that for St. Ambrose, even those like Zacharias and Elisabeth who were called blameless, were righteous by faith, and so were righteous by the infusion of agape in their hearts by the Holy Spirit. Only by such infusion is anyone righteous, says St. Augustine, thus ruling out righteousness by extra nos imputation.

But “the precepts of the law are very good,” if we use them lawfully. Indeed, by the very fact (of which we have the firmest conviction) “that the just and good God could not possibly have enjoined impossibilities,” we are admonished both what to do in easy paths and what to ask for when they are difficult. Now all things are easy for love to effect, to which (and which alone) “Christ’s burden is light,” (Matt 11:30) — or rather, it is itself alone the burden which is light. Accordingly it is said, “And His commandments are not grievous;” (1 John 5:3) so that whoever finds them grievous must regard the inspired statement about their “not being grievous” as having been capable of only this meaning, that there may be a state of heart to which they are not burdensome, and he must pray for that disposition which he at present wants, so as to be able to fulfil all that is commanded him. And this is the purport of what is said to Israel in Deuteronomy, if understood in a godly, sacred, and spiritual sense, since the apostle, after quoting the passage, “The word is near you, even in your mouth and in your heart” (and, as the verse also has it, in your hands, for in man’s heart are his spiritual hands), adds in explanation, “This is the word of faith which we preach.” (Rom 10:8) No man, therefore, who “returns to the Lord his God,” as he is there commanded, “with all his heart and with all his soul,” (Deut 30:2) will find God’s commandment “grievous.” How, indeed, can it be grievous, when it is the precept of love? Either, therefore, a man has not love, and then it is grievous; or he has love, and then it is not grievous. But he possesses love if he does what is there enjoined on Israel, by returning to the Lord his God with all his heart and with all his soul. “A new commandment,” says He, “do I give unto you, that you love one another;” (John 13:34) and “He that loves his neighbour has fulfilled the law;” (Rom 13:8) and again, “Love is the fulfilling of the law.” (Rom 13:10) In accordance with these sayings is that passage, “Had they trodden good paths, they would have found, indeed, the ways of righteousness easy.” (Prov 2:20) How then is it written, “Because of the words of Your lips, I have kept the paths of difficulty,” except it be that both statements are true: These paths are paths of difficulty to fear; but to love they are easy? (Chapter 83)

St. Augustine says that we have the firmest conviction that “the just and good God could not possibly have enjoined impossibilities.” The law is not burdensome or grievous to those who have received grace and agape from God. And if we find it burdensome we must pray for grace so as to be able to fulfil all that is commanded us. Without grace we cannot keep the law. But in order to be righteous, we must keep the law. So in order to be righteous we need the grace of God by which, through the infusion of agape, we may walk in righteousness without fear.

Inchoate love, therefore, is inchoate holiness; advanced love is advanced holiness; great love is great holiness; “perfect love is perfect holiness,” — but this “love is out of a pure heart, and of a good conscience, and of faith unfeigned,” (1 Tim 1:5) “which in this life is then the greatest, when life itself is condemned in comparison with it.” I wonder, however, whether it has not a soil in which to grow after it has quitted this mortal life! But in what place and at what time soever it shall reach that state of absolute perfection, which shall admit of no increase, it is certainly not “shed abroad in our hearts” by any energies either of the nature or the volition that are within us, but “by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us,” (Rom 5:5) and which both helps our infirmity and co-operates with our strength. For it is itself indeed the grace of God, through our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, appertains eternity, and all goodness, for ever and ever. Amen. (chapter 84)

Here again we see that for St. Augustine, there is no distinction between justification and sanctification. Justification, as he has said above, is by the infusion of agape. Here he explains that holiness (i.e. sanctification) is agape. This agape is infused into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, who helps our weakness and co-operates with our strength, so that we may walk in righteousness.

On Man’s Perfection in Righteousness (A.D. 415)

Our answer to this is, that sin can be avoided, if our corrupted nature be healed by God’s grace, through our Lord Jesus Christ. … Full righteousness, therefore, will only then be reached, when fullness of health is attained; and this fullness of health shall be when there is fullness of love, for “love is the fulfilling of the law;” (Rom 13:10) and then shall come fullness of love, when “we shall see Him even as He is.” (1 John 3:2) Nor will any addition to love be possible more, when faith shall have reached the fruition of sight. (chapters 2-3)

According to St. Augustine, sin can be avoided by grace. Grace does not replace the law; the law is fulfilled in us by the grace that heals our weak wills. Perfection in righteousness comes only with perfection in love, when there can be no more addition to love (i.e. growth in love); this comes in the beatific vision.

“The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law;” (1 Cor 15:35-36) because the law by prohibiting sin only increases the desire for it, unless the Holy Ghost spreads abroad that love, which shall then be full and perfect, when we shall see face to face. (chapter 6)

For St. Augustine there is not an absolute opposition between law and grace. The law without grace only increases transgressions, and drives us to grace. But the grace that we receive from God is the infusion of agape by which the law is fulfilled in us. There is, of course, an opposition between law-without-grace, and law-fulfilled-through-the-assistance-of-grace. But there is no absolute opposition or incompatibility between law and grace. The law points to our need for grace, and grace enables us to fulfill the law.

“Blessed is the man to whom the Lord imputes not sin.” (Rom 4:8) Now He does not impute it to those who say to Him in faith, “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.” (Matt 6:12) And justly does He withhold this imputation, because that is just which He says: “With what measure you mete, it shall be measured to you again.” (Matt 7:2) That, however, is sin in which there is either not the love which ought to be, or where the love is less than it ought to be, (chapter 6)

What does it mean that God does not impute sin? A man who is truly contrite and repentant has living faith and therefore, because he seeks mercy and grace from God, God gives him mercy, not counting his past sins against him. Faith is not proud before God, but humble before God, seeking mercy. And therefore to the one seeking mercy, mercy is shown. By grace God does not treat us as our sins deserve, but grants to us the agape whereby we are made righteous.

But who can be ignorant of the fact that, since the generic commandment is love (for “the end of the commandment is love,” (1 Tim 1:8) and “love is the fulfilling of the law” Rom 13:10), whatever is accomplished by the operation of love, and not of fear, is not grievous? They, however, are oppressed by the commandments of God, who try to fulfil them by fearing. “But perfect love casts out fear;” (1 John 4:18) and, in respect of the burden of the commandment, it not only takes off the pressure of its heavy weight, but it actually lifts it up as if on wings. (chapter 10)

Here again St. Augustine distinguishes between the burdensome or grievous nature of the law-without-assisting-grace, and the ease of fulfilling the law through the infused love that comes by grace.

“[T]he law was added because of transgression, until the seed should come to whom the promise was made.” (Gal 3:19) “It entered, therefore, that the offense might abound; but where sin abounded, grace did much more abound.” (Rom 5:20) In other words, That man might receive commandments, trusting as he did in his own resources, and that, failing in these and becoming a transgressor, he might ask for a deliverer and a saviour; and that the fear of the law might humble him, and bring him, as a schoolmaster, to faith and grace. (chapter 19)

According to St. Augustine, the law was given from Moses until Christ, to prepare mankind for Christ, by making us to know and see our transgressions as transgressions, so that we might ask God for a deliverer, thereby leading us to faith and grace.

We run, therefore, whenever we make advance; and our wholeness runs with us in our advance (just as a sore is said to run when the wound is in process of a sound and careful treatment), in order that we may be in every respect perfect, without any infirmity of sin whatever — a result which God not only wishes, but even causes and helps us to accomplish. And this God’s grace does, in co-operation with ourselves, through Jesus Christ our Lord, as well by commandments, sacraments, and examples, as by His Holy Spirit also; through whom there is hiddenly shed abroad in our hearts (Rom 5:5) that love, “which makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered,” (Rom 8:26) until wholeness and salvation be perfected in us, and God be manifested to us as He will be seen in His eternal truth. (chapter 20)

St. Augustine is here opposing Pelagius, who believed that we could be sinless simply because God wills that we not sin. St. Augustine agrees that God wants us to be without sin, but argues here that for us to be without sin, God must help us by His grace. God’s grace, by co-operating with us, causes and helps us to accomplish being “without any infirmity of sin whatever,” and this result cannot be attained without God’s grace.

Expositions on the Psalms (A.D. 396-420)

Through this entire season, when men lived according to the body, “death reigned,” as the Apostle says, “even over those that had not sinned.” Now it reigned “after the similitude of Adam’s transgression,” (Rom 5:14) as the same Apostle says; for it must be taken of the period up to Moses, up to which time the works of the law, that is, those sacraments of carnal observance, held even those bound, for the sake of a certain mystery, who were subject to the One God. But from the coming of the Lord, from whom there was a transition from the circumcision of the flesh to the circumcision of the heart, the call was made, that man should live according to the soul, that is, according to the inner man, who is also called the “new man” (Col 3:10) by reason of the new birth and the renewing of spiritual conversation. (Exposition on Psalm 6)

Here St. Augustine explains three periods. First he mentions the period from Adam to Moses. Then with Moses came the time of the “works of the law” (i.e. those sacraments of carnal observance) which bound those who were subject to the one God. Then came the time of Christ. With Christ came a transition from circumcision of the flesh, to circumcision of the heart, and living according to the inner man (or “new man”) by way of the new birth. In none of the three periods is the moral law done away. But only by grace has any man been able to live according to the Spirit, and not according to the flesh.

Now if a Gentile uncircumcised man comes to us, about to believe in Christ, we give him baptism, and do not call him back to those works of the Law. And if a Jew asks us why we do that, we sound from the rock, we say, This Peter did, this Paul did: from the midst of the rocks we give our voice. But that rock, Peter himself, that great mountain, when he prayed and saw that vision, was watered from above. (Exposition on Psalm 104)

St. Augustine here again uses the term “works of the law” to refer to the sacramental ordinances of the Old Covenant. The Church does not call Christians to those works of the law, by the teaching and example of the Apostles. But all Christians are enjoined to keep the moral law, by the grace of God.

On the Proceedings of Pelagius (A.D. 417)

The mass of the members of Christ, who are scattered abroad everywhere, being ignorant of the very profound and complicated contents of the law, are commended by the piety of simple faith and unfailing hope in God, and sincere love. Endowed with such gifts, they trust that by the grace of God they may be purged from their sins through our Lord Jesus Christ. (chapter 3)

St. Augustine points out that among Christians all over the world, there are so many who do not know all the profound and complicated content of the moral law. And yet endowed by the gifts of faith, hope and love, they trust that by the grace of God they may be purged from their sins. By infused grace and the law written on their hearts by the Holy Spirit, they are enabled to know and do what the law commands, such that their sins may be purged. This again is a fulfillment of Jeremiah’s prophecy (Jer 31:34). Under the Old Covenant, the law was complicated and required teachers to explain it; but under the New Covenant, by the infusion of agape, each man knows how to fulfill the law, because he knows how to love.

After all the charges were duly recited, and Pelagius had met them by his answers, the fourteen bishops of the province of Palestine pronounced him, in accordance with his answers, free from the perversity of this heresy; while yet without hesitation condemning the heresy itself. They approved indeed of his answer to the objections, that “a man is assisted by a knowledge of the law, towards not sinning; even as it is written, ‘He has given them a law for a help;’” but yet they disapproved of this knowledge of the law being that grace of God concerning which the Scripture says: “Who shall deliver me from the body of this death? The grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord.” (Rom 7:24-25) (chapter 62)

The grace of God, according to St. Augustine and the bishops of Palestine, is not knowledge of the law, contra Pelagius. Knowledge of the law was had by all those under the Old Covenant, and yet it could not deliver them. The grace of God assists us not as knowledge, but by infusing agape within us, and thus enabling us to do what we know.

Tractate 25 on the Gospel of John (A.D. 406-430)

Faith is indeed distinguished from works, even as the apostle says, “that a man is justified by faith without the works of the law:” (Rom 3:28) there are works which appear good, without faith in Christ; but they are not good, because they are not referred to that end in which works are good; “for Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believes.” (Rom 10:4) For that reason, He wills not to distinguish faith from work, but declared faith itself to be work. For it is that same faith that works by love. (Gal 5:6) Nor did He say, This is your work; but, “This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He has sent;” so that he who glories, may glory in the Lord.

There is a sense in which faith is rightly distinguished from works, because there are two different kinds of works. There are works that “appear good” but do not refer to Christ, i.e. do not have love of Christ as their source and end or goal. But there are other works that are truly good, because they have love of Christ as their source and goal. Faith is of the latter sort of work, because faith works by love, and has Christ as its source and goal.

On the Grace of Christ and on Original Sin (A.D. 418)

Hence, then, it is clear that he [i.e. Pelagius] acknowledges that grace whereby God points out and reveals to us what we are bound to do; but not that whereby He endows and assists us to act, since the knowledge of the law, unless it be accompanied by the assistance of grace, rather avails for producing the transgression of the commandment. “Where there is no law,” says the apostle, “there is no transgression;” (Rom 4:15) and again: “I had not known lust except the law had said, You shall not covet.” (Rom 7:7) Therefore so far are the law and grace from being the same thing, that the law is not only unprofitable, but it is absolutely prejudicial, unless grace assists it; and the utility of the law may be shown by this, that it obliges all whom it proves guilty of transgression to betake themselves to grace for deliverance and help to overcome their evil lusts. For it rather commands than assists; it discovers disease, but does not heal it; nay, the malady that is not healed is rather aggravated by it, so that the cure of grace is more earnestly and anxiously sought for, inasmuch as “The letter kills, but the spirit gives life.” (2 Cor 3:6) “For if there had been a law given which could have given life, verily righteousness should have been by the law.” (Gal 3:21) To what extent, however, the law gives assistance, the apostle informs us when he says immediately afterwards: “The Scripture has concluded all under sin, that the promise by faith of Jesus Christ might be given to them that believe.” (Gal 3:22) Wherefore, says the apostle, “the law was our schoolmaster in Christ Jesus.” (Gal 3:24) Now this very thing is serviceable to proud men, to be more firmly and manifestly “concluded under sin,” so that none may presumptuously endeavour to accomplish their justification by means of free will as if by their own resources; but rather “that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God. Because by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in His sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin.

But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets.” (Rom 3:19-21) How then manifested without the law, if witnessed by the law? For this very reason the phrase is not, “manifested without the law,” but “the righteousness without the law,” because it is “the righteousness of God;” that is, the righteousness which we have not from the law, but from God — not the righteousness, indeed, which by reason of His commanding it, causes us fear through our knowledge of it; but rather the righteousness which by reason of His bestowing it, is held fast and maintained by us through our loving it — “so that he that glories, let him glory in the Lord.” (1 Cor 1:31) (chapter 9)

Here St. Augustine first explains that Pelagius’ position is that grace is that whereby God points out and reveals to us what we are to do. In other words, Pelagius reduces grace to law. But, teaches St. Augustine, the law is powerless to bring about righteousness, without assisting grace. Rather, the addition of the law increases transgressions, and in that way is a schoolmaster, leading us to the mercy and grace of Christ. What then does it mean, that now the “righteousness of God without the law is manifested”? Of course the righteousness of God is witnessed by the law, not only because the sacramental ordinances of the law all pointed to Christ and the New Covenant, but also because the law commands that we love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength, and our neighbor as ourselves. But the righteous of God “without the law” is manifested in the New Covenant in the sense that this righteousness is a divine gift received through faith and the sacrament of baptism. This not a righteous acquired from ourselves by law-keeping, but is a righteousness that is given from above. This is the supernatural grace and agape that is infused into our hearts by the Holy Spirit. Because this righteousness has been given to us by God, we hold it fast and maintain it not out of fear, but through loving it.

What object, then, can this man [i.e. Pelagius] gain by accounting the law and the teaching to be the grace whereby we are helped to work righteousness? For, in order that it may help much, it must help us to feel our need of grace. No man, indeed, is able to fulfil the law through the law. “Love is the fulfilling of the law.” (Rom 13:10) And the love of God is not shed abroad in our hearts by the law, but by the Holy Ghost, which is given unto us. (Rom 5:5) Grace, therefore, is pointed at by the law, in order that the law may be fulfilled by grace. (chapter 10)

Contra Pelagius, the only way the law (apart from grace) helps us work righteousness, is by helping us recognize our need for grace. No man is able to fulfil the law through the law. But, through the infusion of agape into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, the law may be fulfilled in us, by grace.

By such grace it is effected, not only that we discover what ought to be done, but also that we do what we have discovered—not only that we believe what ought to be loved, but also that we love what we have believed. (Chapter 13)

That statement well summarizes St. Augustine’s understanding of the relation of law and grace. Pelagius would reduce grace to law. But according to St. Augustine, while by the law we discover what ought to be done, by grace we are enabled to do what the law commands.

If this grace is to be called “teaching,” let it at any rate be so called in such wise that God may be believed to infuse it, along with an ineffable sweetness, more deeply and more internally, not only by their agency who plant and water from without, but likewise by His own too who ministers in secret His own increase — in such a way, that He not only exhibits truth, but likewise imparts love. For it is thus that God teaches those who have been called according to His purpose, giving them simultaneously both to know what they ought to do, and to do what they know. Accordingly, the apostle thus speaks to the Thessalonians: “As touching love of the brethren, you need not that I write unto you; for you yourselves are taught of God to love one another.” (1 Thess 4:9) And then, by way of proving that they had been taught of God, he subjoined: “And indeed you do it towards all the brethren which are in all Macedonia.” (1 Thess 4:10) As if the surest sign that you have been taught of God, is that you put into practice what you have been taught. Of that character are all who are called according to God’s purpose, as it is written in the prophets: “They shall be all taught of God.” The man, however, who has learned what ought to be done, but does it not, has not as yet been “taught of God” according to grace, but only according to the law, — not according to the spirit, but only according to the letter. Although there are many who appear to do what the law commands, through fear of punishment, not through love of righteousness; and such righteousness as this the apostle calls “his own which is after the law,” — a thing as it were commanded, not given. When, indeed, it has been given, it is not called our own righteousness, but God’s; because it becomes our own only so that we have it from God. These are the apostle’s words: “That I may be found in Him, not having my own righteousness which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ the righteousness which is of God by faith.” (Philippians 3:9) So great, then, is the difference between the law and grace, that although the law is undoubtedly of God, yet the righteousness which is “of the law” is not “of God,” but the righteousness which is consummated by grace is “of God.” The one is designated “the righteousness of the law,” because it is done through fear of the curse of the law; while the other is called “the righteousness of God,” because it is bestowed through the beneficence of His grace, so that it is not a terrible but a pleasant commandment, according to the prayer in the psalm: “Good are You, O Lord, therefore in Your goodness teach me Your righteousness;” that is, that I may not be compelled like a slave to live under the law with fear of punishment; but rather in the freedom of love may be delighted to live with law as my companion. When the freeman keeps a commandment, he does it readily. And whosoever learns his duty in this spirit, does everything that he has learned ought to be done. (chapter 14)

Against Pelagius, St. Augustine teaches that grace is not merely teaching, but something that God “infuses” into us, imparting love into our hearts, so that we may do what we know ought to be done. The person who has learned what ought to be done, but does not do it, has not yet been taught by grace, but only by law. Then St. Augustine again contrasts the person who appears externally (to man) to keep the law but does so out of fear, with that person who keeps the law through love of righteousness. The righteousness of the former person is commanded, but not given to him. Such a righteousness cannot save. But the righteousness of the person who keeps the law out of love of righteousness is given from above. This is the difference between the righteousness of the law, and the righteousness which is by grace. The righteousness which is of the law is from below, but the righteousness which is by grace is from above, because it is bestowed by grace through the sacrament of faith. By this grace we keep the law not out of fear, but in the freedom of love, “delighted to live with law as my companion,” as St. Augustine says.

That love, however, which is a virtue, comes to us from God, not from ourselves, according to the testimony of Scripture, which says: “Love is of God; and every one that loves is born of God, and knows God: for God is love.” (1 John 4:7-8) It is on the principle of this love that one can best understand the passage, “Whosoever is born of God does not commit sin;” (1 John 3:9) as well as the sentence, “And he cannot sin.” Because the love according to which we are born of God “does not behave itself unseemly,” and “thinks no evil.” (1 Cor 13:5) Therefore, whenever a man sins, it is not according to love: but it is according to cupidity that he commits sin; and following such a disposition, he is not born of God. (chapter 22)

There is a natural love that we can have for others even apart from grace, but the sort of love within us by which we are right before God is a supernatural love, infused into our soul by Holy Spirit. The one who is born of God is infused with divine love. And because love does not behave unseemly and thinks no evil, therefore the one infused with divine love does not sin (mortally). Mortal sin and agape are mutually exclusive. That is why the Apostle John says, “And he cannot sin.” He means, so long as he retains agape, he cannot sin [mortally]. But if he turns against agape, then he sins [mortally], and then nothing he does is ordered to God or pleasing to God, because it is not done out of love for God. St. Augustine explains:

And what good could we possibly do if we possessed no love? Or how could we help doing good if we have love? For although God’s commandment appears sometimes to be kept by those who do not love Him, but only fear Him; yet where there is no love, no good work is imputed, nor is there any good work, rightly so called; because “whatsoever is not of faith is sin,” (Rom 14:23) and “faith works by love.” (Gal 5:6) Hence also that grace of God, whereby “His love is shed abroad in our hearts through the Holy Ghost, which is given unto us,” (Rom 5:5) must be so confessed by the man who would make a true confession, as to show his undoubting belief that nothing whatever in the way of goodness pertaining to godliness and real holiness can be accomplished without it. (chapter 27)

Here too we see why agape and mortal sin are mutually exclusive. If we possessed no agape we could do nothing pleasing to God. And so long as we are retaining agape, then our lives are ordered toward God and are pleasing to God, because they are lived out of love for Him. Those persons who seem to keep the law, but who do not have agape, are not pleasing to God, because they are acting out of fear, not love. Their ‘good work’ is not truly good, and that is why God does not “impute” it as good. This is why, without agape, every act is sin — not because it is necessarily a violation of the second table of the law, but because it involves a rejection of God’s grace and a refusal to love God and others for God’s sake. Without grace, nothing whatever in the way of goodness pertaining to godliness (not just goodness unqualified, but goodness pertaining to godliness) can be accomplished.

For Pelagius, grace was given to us so that we could “more easily” do that which God has commanded us to do. According to Pelagius, even without grace we could keep the law by the power of our free will, but grace makes keeping the law easier. Concerning Pelagius’ doctrine St. Augustine wrote:

Now, expunge the phrase “more easily,” and you leave not only a full, but also a sound sense, if it be regarded as meaning simply this: “That men may accomplish through grace what they are commanded to do by free will.” The addition of the words “more easily,” however, tacitly suggests the possibility of accomplishing good works even without the grace of God. But such a meaning is disallowed by Him who says, “Without me you can do nothing.” (John 15:5) (Bk I, chapter 30)

St. Augustine’s argument is that grace is not given to make it easier for us to keep the law; without grace we could not truly keep the law, because without grace even the law-keeping we could do would be without agape, and hence only external. Pelagius reduced grace to the divine teaching both in the example of Christ’s life and the knowledge of divine revelation concerning God’s law. St. Augustine described Pelagius’ conception of grace, writing, “the assistance which is rendered by grace, for the purpose of helping our natural capacity, consists [for Pelagius] of nothing else than the law and the teaching.” (Bk 1, chapter 45) St. Augustine recognized that grace is not divinely revealed knowledge, either of the law or of the life and work of Christ. For St. Augustine, God infuses grace into our hearts so that we, out of love, might fulfill the law and thus live in righteousness.

[I]f, I repeat, he [i.e. Pelagius] thus consents to hold with us that even the volition and the action are assisted by God, and so assisted that we can neither will nor do any good thing without such help; if, too, he believes that this is that very grace of God through our Lord Jesus Christ which makes us righteous through His righteousness, and not our own, so that our true righteousness is that which we have of Him — then, so far as I can judge, there will remain no further controversy between us concerning the assistance we have from the grace of God. (chapter 52)

According to St. Augustine, the disagreement with Pelagius could be resolved, if Pelagius would agree that the volitions and action of Christians in our good works are so assisted by God that we can neither will nor do any good thing without that divine assistance. This divine assistance to our will and actions, claims St. Augustine, is that very grace which makes us righteous through Christ’s righteousness. St. Augustine is not teaching extra nos imputation of Christ’s righteousness; He is teaching that the righteousness of Christ is given to us as an assisting grace and virtue infused into our hearts by which our volition and action are empowered and enabled through agape to live righteously.

The Apostle Paul, indeed, has told us that he was “blameless, as touching the righteousness which is of the law;” (Philippians 3:6) and it was in respect of the same law that Zacharias also lived a blameless life. This righteousness, however, the apostle counted as “dung” and “loss,” in comparison with the righteousness which is the object of our hope, (Philippians 3:8) and which we ought to “hunger and thirst after,” (Matt 5:6) in order that hereafter we may be satisfied with the vision thereof, enjoying it now by faith, so long as “the just do live by faith.” (Rom 1:17) (chapter 53)

We need to distinguish here between (a) external righteousness, whereby someone seems to other men to be without blame before the law, and (b) true righteousness, whether had by saints under the New Covenant or the saints who lived prior to the coming of Christ. Mere external righteousness is worthless with respect to heaven; it cannot bring men to heaven. But the true righteousness by which alone a man may enter heaven has always been by grace, through infused faith, hope, and agape, even among those who were saved under the Old Covenant.

Now, since we have already prolonged this work too far in treating of the assistance of the divine grace towards our justification, by which God co-operates in all things for good with those who love Him, (Rom 8:28) and whom He first loved (1 John 4:19) — giving to them that He might receive from them: we must commence another treatise …. (Bk 1, chapter 55)

Notice here that St. Augustine speaks of “the assistance of the divine grace towards our justification” and that by this assistance God’s co-operates with us in all things for our good. This is not a notion of grace as mere favor. St. Augustine’s conception of grace here is one of divine assistance, in our hearts, so that we may walk in the love that fulfills the law, and be justified.

Death indeed reigned from Adam until Moses, (Rom 5:14) because it was not possible even for the law given through Moses to overcome it: it was not given, in fact, as something able to give life; (Gal 3:21) but as something that ought to show those that were dead and for whom grace was needed to give them life, that they were not only prostrated under the propagation and domination of sin, but also convicted by the additional guilt of breaking the law itself: not in order that any one might perish who in the mercy of God understood this even in that early age; but that, destined though he was to punishment, owing to the dominion of death, and manifested, too, as guilty through his own violation of the law, he might seek God’s help, and so where sin abounded, grace might much more abound, (Rom 5:20) even the grace which alone delivers from the body of this death. (Rom 7:24-25)

Yet, notwithstanding this, although not even the law which Moses gave was able to liberate any man from the dominion of death, there were even then, too, at the time of the law, men of God who were not living under the terror and conviction and punishment of the law, but under the delight and healing and liberation of grace. Some there were who said, I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me; and, There is no rest in my bones, by reason of my sins; and, Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit in my inward parts; and, Stablish me with Your directing Spirit; and, Take not Your Holy Spirit from me. There were some, again, who said: I believed, therefore have I spoken. For they too were cleansed with the self-same faith with which we ourselves are. Whence the apostle also says: We having the same spirit of faith, according as it is written, I believe, and therefore have I spoken; we also believe, and therefore speak. (2 Cor 4:13) Out of very faith was it said, Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call His name Emmanuel, (Isaiah 7:14) which is, being interpreted, God with us. (Matt 1:23) Out of very faith too was it said concerning Him: As a bridegroom He comes out of His chamber; as a giant did He exult to run His course. His going forth is from the extremity of heaven, and His circuit runs to the other end of heaven; and no one is hidden from His heat. Out of very faith, again, was it said to Him: Your throne, O God, is for ever and ever; a sceptre of righteousness is the sceptre of Your kingdom. You have loved righteousness, and hated iniquity; therefore God, Your God, has anointed You with the oil of gladness above Your fellows. By the self-same Spirit of faith were all these things foreseen by them as to happen, whereby they are believed by us as having happened. They, indeed, who were able in faithful love to foretell these things to us were not themselves partakers of them.

The Apostle Peter says, Why do you tempt God to put a yoke upon the neck of the disciples, which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear? But we believe that through the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ we shall be saved, even as they. (Acts 15:10-11) Now on what principle does he make this statement, if it be not because even they were saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and not the law of Moses, from which comes not the cure, but only the knowledge of sin? (Rom 3:20) Now, however, the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets. (Rom 3:21) If, therefore, it is now manifested, it even then existed, but it was hidden. This concealment was symbolized by the veil of the temple. When Christ was dying, this veil was rent asunder, (Matt 27:51) to signify the full revelation of Him. Even of old, therefore there existed among the people of God this grace of the one Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus; but like the rain in the fleece which God sets apart for His inheritance, not of debt, but of His own will, it was latently present, but is now patently visible among all nations as its floor, the fleece being dry — in other words, the Jewish people having become reprobate. (Judges 6:36-40) (Bk II, chapter 29)

First he explains that the law could not give life, but was given to show the people that they were dead in their sins, and needed help from God in order to attain eternal life. Then he points out that even under the Old Covenant there were men who were not living under the terror of the law but under the delight and healing and liberation of grace, with faith in the coming Messiah. Drawing from St. Peter’s statement in Acts 15, St. Augustine shows that anyone in the Old Covenant who was saved, was saved by the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and not the law of Moses. This righteousness that is by faith was hidden in the law, but now is fully manifest through Christ.

City of God (A.D. 413-427)

And, indeed, this is already sin, to desire those things which the law of God forbids, and to abstain from them through fear of punishment, not through love of righteousness. (Bk XIV.10)

It is sin, explains St. Augustine, to abstain from what the law of God forbids, through fear of punishment, and not through love of righteousness. This distinction between fear of punishment and love of righteousness summarizes for St. Augustine the difference between the law of works, and the law of faith.

Against Two Letters of the Pelagians (A.D. 420)

“They say,” says he [i.e. Pelagius], “that the saints in the Old Testament were not without sins — that is that they were not free from crimes even by amendment, but they were seized by death in their guilt.” Nay, I say that either before the law, or in the time of the Old Testament, they were freed from sins — not by their own power, because “cursed is every one that has put his hope in man,” (Jer 17:5) and without any doubt those are under this curse whom also the sacred Psalm notifies, “who trust in their own strength;” nor by the old covenant which genders to bondage, (Gal 4:24) although it was divinely given by the grace of a sure dispensation; nor by that law itself, holy and just and good as it was, where it is written, “You shall not covet,” (Ex 20:7) since it was not given as being able to give life, but it was added for the sake of transgression until the seed should come to whom the promise was made; but I say that they were freed by the blood of the Redeemer Himself, who is the one Mediator of God and man, the man Christ Jesus. (1 Tim 2:5) (Bk I, 12)

Here St. Augustine clarifies his position in response to an accusation by Pelagius. Pelagius construes St. Augustine’s position as being that the saints of the Old Testament were guilty of crimes even after repentance, and died in their guilt. St. Augustine explains that the saints of the Old Testament were freed from sins, yet not by their own power, or by the law, but by the grace that comes through the blood of Christ.

And again: “Where is boasting? It is excluded. By what law? Of works? No; but by the law of faith. Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the works of the law.” (Rom 3:27) … With these and such like testimonies that teacher of the Gentiles showed with sufficient evidence that the law could not take away sin, but rather increased it, and that grace takes it away; since the law knew how to command, to which command weakness gives way, while grace knows to assist, whereby love is infused. And lest any one, on account of these testimonies, should reproach the law, and contend that it is evil, the apostle, seeing what might occur to those who ill understand it, himself proposed to himself the same question. “What shall we say, then?” said he. “Is the law sin? Far from it. But I did not know sin except by the law.” (Rom 7:7) He had already said before, “For by the law is the knowledge of sin.” It is not, therefore, the taking away, but the knowledge of sin. (Bk 1, 13)

The law could not take away sin, but only increased it, because it did not have the power to overcome sin. But grace takes away sin, by assisting the will, by the “infusion” of agape. St. Augustine is clearly not teaching extra nos imputation, but rather justification by infusion of grace and agape.

And here, indeed, they ought at least to concede that “in the law no one is justified,” as the same apostle says elsewhere; but that the law avails for the knowledge of sin, and for the transgression of the law itself, so that sin, being known and increased, grace may be sought for through faith. (Bk 1, 14)

The law cannot justify; the law gives knowledge of sin, and increases transgression, so that we may seek for grace through faith, to overcome sin and keep the [moral] law.

Nor let us be disturbed by what he wrote to the Philippians: “Touching the righteousness which is in the law, one who is without blame.” (Phil 3:6) For he could be within in evil affections a transgressor of the law, and yet fulfil the open works of the law, either by the fear of men or of God Himself; but by terror of punishment, not by love and delight in righteousness. For it is one thing to do good with the will of doing good, and another thing to be so inclined by the will to do evil, that one would actually do it if it could be allowed without punishment. For thus assuredly he is sinning within in his will itself, who abstains from sin not by will but by fear. And knowing himself to have been such in these his internal affections, before the grace of God which is through Jesus Christ our Lord, the apostle elsewhere confesses this very plainly. For writing to the Ephesians, he says: “And you, though you were dead in your trespasses and sins, wherein sometime you walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of that spirit that now works in the children of disobedience, in whom also we all at one time had our conversation in the lusts of our flesh, doing the will of our flesh and our affections, and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others also: but God, who is rich in mercy, for His great love wherewith He loved us even when we were dead in sins, quickened us together with Christ, by whose grace we are saved.” Again to Titus he says: “For we ourselves also were sometime foolish and unbelieving, erring, serving various lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful, and holding one another in hatred.” Such was Saul when he says that he was, touching the righteousness which is in the law, without reproach. For that he had not pressed on in the law, and changed his character so as to be without reproach after this hateful life, he plainly shows in what follows, when he says that he was not changed from these evils except by the grace of the Saviour. For adding also this very thing, here as well as to the Ephesians, he says: “But when the kindness and love of God our Saviour shone forth, not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and of the renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom He shed on us most abundantly, through Jesus Christ our Saviour, that being justified by His grace we should be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life.” (Bk 1, 15)

Pelagius was using St. Paul’s claim that he was blameless as to the righteousness which is in the Law, to argue that it is possible to keep the Law perfectly. St. Augustine responds by distinguishing between external law-keeping wherein the heart still loves evil but is only acting out of fear of punishment, and doing what is right out of love of righteousness. Before his conversion, St. Paul (as Saul) was blameless in the former sense, but not in the latter sense. Though externally he was blameless with respect to the Law, internally he was dead in his sins. Then St. Augustine shows how Saul received the grace of true righteousness, through the “washing of regeneration,” i.e. through baptism, wherein his sins were washed away. (Acts 22:16)

“Now, then, it is no more I that do it.” For to this belongs what he says subsequently also: “There is, therefore, now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus.” And because I do not see how a man under the law should say, “I delight in the law of God after the inward man;” since this very delight in good, by which, moreover, he does not consent to evil, not from fear of penalty, but from love of righteousness (for this is meant by “delighting”), can only be attributed to grace. (Bk 1, 22)

Again we see here what it means to be “under the law,” according to St. Augustine. For St. Augustine no one “under the law” would delight in the law of God after the inward man. In other words, to be “under the law” is not to have infused grace and agape. The internal love of righteousness can only be attributed to infused grace. Therefore, being “under the law” is incompatible with being under grace, because the former means not having infused grace and the latter means having infused grace. This also explains why, for St. Augustine, a Christian can be obligated to fulfill the law, and not be “under the law.” Because a Christian through baptism has infused grace, he is not “under the law,” even though he remains obligated to fulfill the law (through agape) for his justification before God on the Day of Judgment.

And it is He to whom is faithfully and truthfully sung, “For You have prevented [i.e. gone before] him with the blessings of sweetness.” And what is here more fitly understood than that very desire of good of which we are speaking? For good begins then to be longed for when it has begun to grow sweet. But when good is done by the fear of penalty, not by the love of righteousness, good is not yet well done. Nor is that done in the heart which seems to be done in the act when a man would rather not do it if he could evade it with impunity. Therefore the “blessing of sweetness” is God’s grace, by which is caused in us that what He prescribes to us delights us, and we desire it — that is, we love it; in which if God does not precede us, not only is it not perfected, but it is not even begun, from us. (Bk II, 21)

Here too St. Augustine contrasts external righteous in the sense of seeming to other men to keep the law, with true righteousness wherein one loves righteousness, delights in it and desires it. In order for a man to love righteous, God must go before with the “blessing of sweetness,” i.e. with grace in the inner man. Without that grace, the person who keeps the law externally does so out of fear of penalty. Such a man is not keeping the law in his heart, whereas the man who by grace loves righteousness in his heart, is keeping the law first in his heart, and so also in his life.

They [i.e. the Pelagians] declare “that we say that the law of the Old Testament was given not for the end that it might justify the obedient, but rather that it might become the cause of greater sin.” Certainly, they do not understand what we say concerning the law; because we say what the apostle says, whom they do not understand. For who can say that they are not justified who are obedient to the law, when, unless they were justified, they could not be obedient? But we say, that by the law is effected that what God wills to be done is heard, but that by grace is effected that the law is obeyed. “For not the hearers of the law,” says the apostle, “are just before God, but the doers of the law shall be justified.” (Rom 2:13) Therefore the law makes hearers of righteousness, grace makes doers. “For what was impossible to the law,” says the same apostle, “in that it was weak through the flesh, God sent His Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin condemned sin in the flesh: that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.” (Rom 8:3-4) This is what we say — let them pray that they may one day understand it, and not dispute so as never to understand it. For it is impossible that the law should be fulfilled by the flesh, that is, by carnal presumption, in which the proud, who are ignorant of the righteousness of God — that is, which is of God to man, that he may be righteous — and desirous of establishing their own righteousness — as if by their own will, unassisted from above, the law could be fulfilled — are not subjected to the righteousness of God. (Rom 10:3) Therefore the righteousness of the law is fulfilled in them who walk not according to the flesh — that is, according to man, ignorant of the righteousness of God and desirous of establishing his own — but walk according to the Spirit. But who walks according to the Spirit, except whosoever is led by the Spirit of God? “For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are the sons of God.” (Rom 8:14) Therefore “the letter kills, but the Spirit makes alive.” (2 Cor 3:6) And the letter is not evil because it kills; but it convicts the wicked of transgression. “For the law is holy, and the commandment holy and just and good. Was, then,” says he, “that which is good made death unto me? By no means; but sin, that it might appear sin, worked death in me by that which is good, that it might become above measure a sinner or a sin by the commandment.” (Rom 7:12-13) This is what is the meaning of “the letter kills.” “For the sting of death is sin, but the strength of sin is the law;” (1 Cor 15:56) because by the prohibition it increases the desires of sin, and thence slays a man unless grace by coming to his assistance makes him alive. (Bk III, chapter 2)

The Pelagians accused the Catholics of saying that the law was given to be the cause of greater sin. In response, first St. Augustine stipulates as undisputed that whoever is truly obedient to the law is justified. Then he explains that the law makes its hearers aware of what God wills to be done, but only by grace are persons enabled to obey the law. He quotes St. Paul in Romans 8, writing, “For what was impossible to the law, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sent His Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin condemned sin in the flesh: that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.” (Rom 8:3-4) According to St. Augustine, while the law could not effect law-keeping, God sent His Son to condemn sin in the flesh, so that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. In other words, the gospel, according to St. Augustine, is not about an extra nos imputation of Christ’s obedience or replacing our obligation to fulfill the law, but about Christ securing for us through His passion and death the infused grace so that we can fulfill the law, something the law by itself was powerless to do.

Therefore they are not children of the freewoman who have accepted the law of the letter, whereby they can be shown to be not only sinners, but moreover transgressors; but they who have received the Spirit of grace, whereby the law itself, holy and just and good, may be fulfilled. (Bk III, chapter 3)

Those who have accepted the law of the letter, and thus rejected the righteousness from above that is by grace, are transgressors inwardly, even if they conform to the law outwardly. But those who have received the Spirit of grace are children of the freewoman, and fulfill in their lives the holy, just, and good law.

And there are innumerable passages with which the divine writings are filled, which alternately, either in exultation over God’s benefits or in lamentation over our own evils, are uttered by children of God by faith as long as they are still children of this world in respect of the weakness of this life; whom, nevertheless, God distinguishes from the children of the devil, not only by the laver of regeneration, but moreover by the righteousness of that faith which works by love, because the just lives by faith. (Bk III, chapter 5)

What kind of faith is being referred to when the Apostle says that the “just lives by faith”? He is referring to the faith that works by love, i.e. faith-informed-by-agape. Without infused agape, the faith present is not a faith that works by love, and is therefore not the kind of faith that justifies. Hence in this way justification depends upon the infusion of agape.

But those belong to the old testament, “which genders from Mount Sinai to bondage,” which is Agar, who, when they have received a law which is holy and just and good, think that the letter can suffice them for life; and do not seek the divine mercy, so as they may become doers of the law, but, being ignorant of the righteousness of God, and wishing to establish their own righteousness, are not subject to the righteousness of God. Of this kind was that multitude which murmured against God in the wilderness, and made an idol; and that multitude which even in the very land of promise committed fornication after strange gods. But this multitude, even in the old testament itself, was strongly rebuked. They, moreover, whoever they were at that time who followed after those earthly promises alone which God promises there, and who were ignorant of that which those promises signify under the new testament, and who kept God’s commandments with the desire of gaining and with the fear of losing those promises — certainly did not observe them, but only seemed to themselves to observe. For there was no faith in them that worked by love, but earthly cupidity and carnal fear. But he who thus fulfils the commandments beyond a doubt fulfils them unwillingly, and then does not do them in his heart; for he would rather not do them at all, if in respect of those things which he desires and fears he might be allowed to neglect them with impunity. And thus, in the will itself within him, he is guilty; and it is here that God, who gives the command, looks. Such were the children of the earthly Jerusalem, concerning which the apostle says, “For she is in bondage with her children,” (Gal 4:25) and belongs to the old testament “which genders to bondage from Mount Sinai, which is Agar.” Of that same kind were they who crucified the Lord, and continued in the same unbelief. Thence there are still their children in the great multitude of the Jews, although now the new testament as it was prophesied is made plain and confirmed by the blood of Christ; and the gospel is made known from the river where He was baptized and began His teachings, even to the ends of the earth. And these Jews, according to the prophecies which they read, are dispersed everywhere over all the earth, that even from their writings may not be wanting a testimony to Christian truth. (Bk III, chapter 9)

According to St. Augustine, those persons belong to the old covenant, who, when they receive the law, think that they can keep it by their own power, and do not seek the mercy and grace of God “so as they may become doers of the law.” Persons belonging to the New Covenant do seek the mercy and grace of God, and do become doers of the law. Persons who by law-keeping seek earthly promises, do not truly keep God’s law, because they do not do so at the level of the heart. Such persons do not have in their hearts the faith that works by love. They follow the law externally, and ultimately unwillingly, because they would rather not keep them, if they could do so without penalty. And for this reason such persons are guilty before God, who looks at the heart.

Because, with the exception of the sacraments of the old books, which were only enjoined for the sake of their significance (although in them also, since they are to be spiritually understood, the law is rightly called spiritual), the other matters certainly which pertain to piety and to good living must not be referred by any interpretation to some significancy, but are to be done absolutely as they are spoken. Assuredly no one will doubt that that law of God was necessary not alone for that people at that time, but also is now necessary for us for the right ordering of our life. For if Christ took away from us that very heavy yoke of many observances, so that we are not circumcised according to the flesh, we do not immolate victims of the cattle, we do not rest even from necessary works on the Sabbath, retaining the seventh in the revolution of the days, and other things of this kind; but keep them as spiritually understood, and, the symbolizing shadows being removed, are watchful in the light of those things which are signified by them; shall we therefore say, that when it is written that whoever finds another man’s property of any kind that has been lost, should return it to him who has lost it, (Lev 6:3) it does not pertain to us? And many other like things whereby people learn to live piously and uprightly? And especially the Decalogue itself, which is contained in those two tables of stone, apart from the carnal observance of the Sabbath, which signifies spiritual sanctification and rest? For who can say that Christians ought not to be observant to serve the one God with religious obedience, not to worship an idol, not to take the name of the Lord in vain, to honour one’s parents, not to commit adulteries, murders, thefts, false witness, not to covet another man’s wife, or anything at all that belongs to another man? Who is so impious as to say that he does not keep those precepts of the law because he is a Christian, and is established not under the law, but under grace? (Bk III, chapter 10)

The sacraments of the Old Covenant (e.g. circumcision, animal sacrifices, etc.) were enjoined because of what they signified typologically, to be fulfilled by Christ in the New Covenant. But the moral laws (especially the Decalogue) are not to be construed as foreshadows, but “are to be done [i.e. obeyed] absolutely as they are spoken.” St. Augustine takes it was undisputed that the Decalogue remains necessary for Christians for the “right ordering of our life.” Christ took away the heavy yoke of all the ceremonial observances of the Old Covenant, but according to St. Augustine conformity to the Decalogue remains absolutely obligatory for all Christians. St. Augustine states, “Who is so impious as to say that he does not keep those precepts of the law because he is a Christian, and is established not under the law, but under grace?” But many Reformed Christians, while not claiming that there is no use for the law, do claim that because we are not under law, but under grace, therefore our justification and salvation do not depend on our degree of obedience or disobedience to the Decalogue.

But there is plainly this great difference, that they who are established under the law, whom the letter kills, do these things either with the desire of gaining, or with the fear of losing earthly happiness; and that thus they do not truly do them, since fleshly desire, by which sin is rather bartered or increased, is not healed by desire of another kind. These pertain to the old testament, which genders to bondage; because carnal fear and desire make them servants, gospel faith and hope and love do not make them children. But they who are placed under grace, whom the Spirit quickens, do these things of faith which works by love in the hope of good things, not carnal but spiritual, not earthly but heavenly, not temporal but eternal; especially believing on the Mediator, by whom they do not doubt but that a Spirit of grace is ministered to them, so that they may do these things well, and that they may be pardoned when they sin. These pertain to the new testament, are the children of promise, and are regenerated by God the Father and a free mother. Of this kind were all the righteous men of old, and Moses himself, the minister of the old testament, the heir of the new — because of the faith whereby we live, of one and the same they lived, believing the incarnation, passion, and resurrection of Christ as future, which we believe as already accomplished — even until John the Baptist himself, as it were a certain limit of the old dispensation, who, signifying that the Mediator Himself would come, not with any shadow of the future or allegorical intimation, or with any prophetical announcement, but pointing Him out with his finger, said: “Behold the Lamb of God; behold Him who takes away the sin of the world.” (John 1:29) (Bk III, chapter 11)

Those who are under the law, conform to the law externally with the desire of gaining earthly happiness or the fear of losing earthly happiness. They do not have their hope fixed on heaven. So they do not truly fulfill the law, because the spirit of the law is agape which is ordered to God, whereas those who keep the law out of desire for earthly goods are motivated by the flesh (i.e. cupidity), and hence do not conform to the spirit of the law. But those under grace are made alive by the Spirit, and fulfill the law by the outworking of faith-informed-by-agape, i.e. a faith working by love oriented toward heaven. By this grace they not only “do these things [acts of obedience to the law] well,” they also are pardoned when they sin. This is the grace whereby not only all of the New Covenant are brought to eternal life, but also whereby those saved under the Old Covenants were brought to eternal life. Those saints of the Old Testament believed by faith in what was promised but not yet revealed, namely, the coming of Christ; they too received the infusion of agape by the Holy Spirit.

Because the old testament was revealed through Moses, by whom the holy and just and good law was given, whereby should be brought about not the doing away but the knowledge of sin — by which the proud might be convicted who were desirous of establishing their own righteousness, as if they had no need of divine help, and being made guilty of the letter, might flee to the Spirit of grace, not to be justified by their own righteousness, but by that of God — that is, by the righteousness which was given to them of God. For as the same apostle says, “By the law is the knowledge of sin. But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and by the prophets.” (Rom 3:20-21) Because the law, by the very fact that in it no man is justified, affords a witness to the righteousness of God. For that in the law no man is justified before God is manifest, because “the just by faith lives.” (Gal 3:11) Thus, therefore, although the law does not justify the wicked when he is convicted of transgression, it sends to the God who justifies, and thus affords a testimony to the righteousness of God…. In the time, then, of the old testament, we say that the Holy Spirit, in those who even then were the children of promise according to Isaac, was not only an assistant, which these men think is sufficient for their opinion, but also a bestower of virtue; and this they deny, attributing it rather to their free will, in contradiction to those fathers who knew how to cry unto God with truthful piety, “I will love You, O Lord, my strength.” (Bk III, chapter 13)

The law was not to effect righteousness, but to bring a knowledge of the righteousness of God and man’s weakness in relation to it, and thus humble the proud, that they might be convicted of their sinfulness, and turn to the mercy and grace of God for a righteousness that is not from themselves, but from God as a gift. By the law without grace, no man is justified before God, who sees the heart. But the law “sends to the God who justifies” men who by the law are caused to see their weakness before the law. What is this grace given to us by which we are righteous? The Holy Spirit does not only assist us in the inner man, He is the “bestower of virtue.” That is, he infuses the virtues of faith, hope, and agape. It is this infusion that the Pelagians denied, because they believed that they did not need supernatural grace in order to keep the law. Only by the assistance of the Holy Spirit and the infusion of these virtues were the saints of old able to cry unto God, “I will love You, O Lord, my strength.”

Our faith — that is, the catholic faith — distinguishes the righteous from the unrighteous not by the law of works, but by that of faith, because the just by faith lives. By which distinction it results that the man who leads his life without murder, without theft, without false-witness, without coveting other men’s goods, giving due honour to his parents, chaste even to continence from all carnal intercourse whatever, even conjugal, most liberal in almsgiving, most patient of injuries; who not only does not deprive another of his goods, but does not even ask again for what has been taken away from himself; or who has even sold all his own property and appropriated it to the poor, and possesses nothing which belongs to him as his own — with such a character as this, laudable as it seems to be, if he has not a true and catholic faith in God, must yet depart from this life to condemnation. But another, who has good works from a right faith which works by love, maintains his continency in the honesty of wedlock, although he does not, like the other, well refrain altogether, but pays and repays the debt of carnal connection, and has intercourse not only for the sake of offspring, but also for the sake of pleasure, although only with his wife, which the apostle allows to those that are married as pardonable; — does not receive injuries with so much patience, but is raised into anger with the desire of vengeance, although, in order that he may say, “As we also forgive our debtors,” forgives when he is asked — possesses personal property, giving thence indeed some alms, but not as the former so liberally; — does not take away what belongs to another, but, although by ecclesiastical, not by civil judgment, yet contends for his own: certainly this man, who seems so inferior in morals to the former, on account of the right faith which he has in God, by which he lives, and according to which in all his wrong-doings he accuses himself, and in all his good works praises God, giving to himself the shame, to God the glory, and receiving from Him both forgiveness of sins and love of right deeds — shall be delivered for this life, and depart to be received into the company of those who shall reign with Christ. Wherefore, if not on account of faith? Which, although without works it saves no man (for it is not a reprobate faith, since it works by love), yet by it even sins are loosed, because the just by faith lives; but without it, even those things which seem good works are turned into sins: “For everything which is not of faith is sin.” (Rom 14:23) And it is brought about, on account of this great difference, that although with no possibility of doubt a persevering integrity of virginity is preferable to conjugal chastity, yet a woman even twice married, if she be a catholic, is preferred to a professed virgin that is a heretic; nor is she in such wise preferred because this one is better in God’s kingdom, but because the other is not there at all. Now the former, indeed, whom we have described as being of better morals, if a true faith be his, surpasses the second one, although both will be in heaven; yet if the faith be wanting to him, he is so surpassed by him that he himself is not there at all. (Bk III, chapter 14)

Here St. Augustine contrasts two kinds of persons. The former kind of person lives a life of supererogatory goodness, but does not have the faith that works by love. The latter kind of person has faith that works by love, and therefore lives according to the law, but does not live a supererogatory life. St. Augustine explains that the former person departs this life condemned and does not enter heaven, while the latter person attains eternal life. But, if both persons had faith working by love, then the person living the life of supererogatory goodness would surpass (in glory in heaven) the one who had faith but who did not live a life of supererogatory goodness.

Since, then, all righteous men, both the more ancient and the apostles, lived from a right faith which is in Christ Jesus our Lord; and had with their faith morals so holy, that although they might not be of such perfect virtue in this life as that which should be after this life, yet whatever of sin might creep in from human infirmity might be constantly done away by the piety of their faith itself: it results from this that, in comparison with the wicked whom God will condemn, it must be said that these were “righteous,” since by their pious faith they were so far removed into the opposite of those wicked men that the apostle cries out, “What part has he that believes with an infidel?” (2 Cor 6:14) (Bk III, chapter 15)

What St. Augustine says here presupposes the distinction between mortal and venial sin. Those who live by faith, even when they sin venially (and so retain agape), are ‘covered’ by the piety of their living faith, i.e. by the presence of agape by which they remain in friendship with God. St. Augustine is not saying that no matter what they do they remain in friendship with God, as though believers have extra nos imputation of Christ’s obedience. The wicked do not have faith working by agape, but the righteous, even when they sin venially, retain agape. Therefore, even when believers sin venially, they are, in comparison with the wicked (who do not have faith informed by agape), righteous.

But here the grace of God gives the desire of keeping His commandments; and if anything in these commandments is less perfectly observed, He forgives it on account of what we say in prayer, as well “Your will be done,” as “Forgive us our debts.” Here, then, it is prescribed that we sin not; there, the reward is that we cannot sin. Here, the precept is that we obey not the desires of sin; there, the reward that we have no desires of sin. (Bk III, chapter 17)

Here in this life, according to St. Augustine, it is divinely prescribed that we sin not. In heaven our reward will be that we cannot sin. Here we are commanded not to obey the concupiscent desire to sin. In heaven our reward will be that we have no concupiscent desire to sin. In this life the concupiscent desire to sin is not removed, but in this life by the grace of God the desire to keep God’s commandments is infused. And if we sin venially, God forgives it as we confess it and ask for His forgiveness.

Therefore the blessed Paul casts away those past attainments of his righteousness, as “losses” and “dung,” that “he may win Christ and be found in Him, not having his own righteousness, which is of the law.” Wherefore his own, if it is of the law? For that law is the law of God. Who has denied this, save Marcion and Manicheus, and such like pests? Since, then, that is the law of God, he says it is “his own” righteousness “which is of the law;” and this righteousness of his own he would not have, but cast it forth as “dung.” Why so, except because it is this which I have above demonstrated, that those are under the law who, being ignorant of the righteousness of God, and going about to establish their own, are not subject to the righteousness of God? (Rom 10:3) For they think that, by the strength of their own will, they will fulfil the commands of the law; and wrapped up in their pride, they are not converted to assisting grace. Thus the letter kills (2 Cor 3:6) them either openly, as being guilty to themselves, by not doing what the law commands; or by thinking that they do it, although they do it not with spiritual love, which is of God. Thus they remain either plainly wicked or deceitfully righteous — manifestly cut off in open unrighteousness, or foolishly elated in fallacious righteousness. And by this means — marvellous indeed, but yet true — the righteousness of the law is not fulfilled by the righteousness which is in the law, or by the law, but by that which is in the Spirit of grace. Because the righteousness of the law is fulfilled in those, as it is written, who walk not according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. But, according to the righteousness which is in the law, the apostle says that he was blameless in the flesh, not in the Spirit; and he says that the righteousness which is of the law was his, not God’s. It must be understood, therefore, that the righteousness of the law is not fulfilled according to the righteousness which is in the law or of the law, that is, according to the righteousness of man, but according to the righteousness which is in the Spirit of grace, therefore according to the righteousness of God, that is, which man has from God. Which may be thus more clearly and briefly stated: That the righteousness of the law is not fulfilled when the law commands, and man as it were of his own strength obeys; but when the Spirit aids, and man’s free will, but freed by the grace of God, performs. Therefore the righteousness of the law is to command what is pleasing to God, to forbid what is displeasing; but the righteousness in the law is to obey the letter, and beyond it to seek for no assistance of God for holy living. For when he had said, “Not having my own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is by the faith of Christ,” he added, “Which is from God.” That, therefore, is itself the righteousness of God, being ignorant of which the proud go about to establish their own; for it is not called the righteousness of God because by it God is righteous, but because man has it from God. (Bk III, chapter 20)

What does it mean to be under the law? It means to think that by one’s own strength of will one can fulfil the commands of the law. This is just what the Pelagians believed, and thus for St. Augustine they were putting themselves back under the law. By thinking that one can, through one’s own strength, keep the law, one falls into the sin of pride, and is not converted to assisting grace from God. Because even if they externally keep the law, they do not do it with spiritual love (i.e. agape), which is from God, and so they remain in a state of unrighteousness that St. Augustine describes as “foolishly elated in fallacious righteousness.” Paradoxically, those who attempt to establish through the law a righteousness of their own, do not fulfill the righteousness which is in the law, because the righteousness hidden in the law is fulfilled only by those who walk not according to the flesh (man), but according to the Spirit (i.e. the infusion of grace by the Spirit). That’s why St. Augustine says that “the righteousness of the law is not fulfilled according to the righteousness which is in the law or of the law, that is, according to the righteousness of man, but according to the righteousness which is in the Spirit of grace.” The righteousness of the law is fulfilled only in those who by the grace from God assisting the freed will, perform the law, not in those who attempt to accomplish the law by their own will power. Why is it called the “righteousness of God”? Not because by it God is righteous, but because man receives it from God, by grace.

Further, if in this life, as no religious person doubts, the more we love God, so much the more righteous we certainly are, who can doubt that pious and true righteousness will then be perfected when the love of God shall be perfect? Then the law, therefore, shall be fulfilled; so that nothing at all is wanting to it, of which law, according to the apostle, the fulfilling is Love. (Bk III, chapter 21)

Since love is the fulfillment of the law, and since in this life we can continue to grow in love, therefore we continue to grow in the fulfillment of the law through love. The perfect fulfillment of the law in us will take place in heaven, when our love will be perfect, unable to be lost or deficient, such that both mortal and venial sin will be impossible.

“For many walk, of whom I have spoken often, and now tell you even weeping, whose end is destruction,” (Philippians 3:16) and the rest. These are the very ones of whom, in the beginning, he had said, “Beware of dogs, beware of evil workers,” and what follows. Therefore all are enemies of the cross of Christ who, going about to establish their own righteousness, which is of the law, — that is, where only the letter commands, and the Spirit does not fulfill — are not subject to the law of God. For if they who are of the law be heirs, faith is made an empty thing. “If righteousness is by the law, then Christ has died in vain: then is the offense of the cross done away.” And thus those are enemies of the cross of Christ who say that righteousness is by the law, to which it belongs to command, not to assist. But the grace of God through Jesus Christ the Lord in the Holy Spirit helps our infirmity. (Bk III, chapter 22)

According to St. Augustine, those persons are enemies of the cross who say that righteousness comes by the law, because if righteousness comes by the law, then Christ died in vain. But, writes St. Augustine, it belongs to the law to command, not to assist. The grace of God through Jesus Christ helps our infirmity not by imputing Christ’s obedience to us, but by empowering our will through the infusion of agape.

Wherefore he who lives according to the righteousness which is in the law, without the faith of the grace of Christ, as the apostle declares that he lived blameless, must be accounted to have no true righteousness; not because the law is not true and holy, but because to wish to obey the letter which commands, without the Spirit of God which quickens, as if of the strength of free will, is not true righteousness. But the righteousness according to which the righteous man lives by faith, since man has it from God by the Spirit of grace, is true righteousness. (Bk III, chapter 23)

Persons who live according to the law but without the faith of the grace of Christ have no true righteousness, because their desire to keep the law is not out of agape but for some carnal desire, because such a desire is for the sake of oneself by oneself, and not out of love for God, by the help of God.

And the law, holy and just and good, is neither grace itself, nor is anything rightly done by it without grace; because the law is not given that it may give life, but it was added because of transgression, that it might conclude all persons convicted under sin, and that the promise by faith of Jesus Christ might be given to them that believe. (Gal 3:22) (Bk III, chapter 24)

The law is good, but it was not given to provide salvation in itself, but that it might show all men that they are sinners in need of God’s mercy, and that they cannot keep God’s law without grace. In this way, the law is a tutor to lead us to Christ.

Moreover, in that we say that the law, holy and just and good, was given not for the justification of the wicked, but for the conviction of the proud, for the sake of transgressions, — this is, on the one hand, opposed to the Manicheans, in that according to the apostle the law is praised; and on the other opposed to the Pelagians, in that, in accordance with the apostle, no one is justified by the law; and therefore, for the sake of making alive those whom the letter has killed, that is, whom the law, enjoining good, makes guilty by transgressions, the Spirit of grace freely brings aid. (Bk III, chapter 25)

St. Augustine explains that the Catholic position is opposed on both sides by the Manicheans, who rejected the law, and by the Pelagians, who reduced grace to the law. The Catholic doctrine neither rejects the law nor reduces grace to law. Rather, according to Catholic doctrine the law is good and holy, because it commands what is good and holy. Yet the law does not provide for its fulfillment. The Spirit of grace, which is not the law, but is that which we receive as a gift through baptism, aids us in keeping the law. And in this way, the Catholic doctrine is neither Manichean nor Pelagian, but steers a middle course between them.

Once more, in the praise of the law, what advantage is it to them [i.e. Pelagians] that, in opposition to the Manicheans, they say the truth when they wish to bring men from that view to this which they hold falsely against the Catholics? For they say, “We confess that even the old law, according to the apostle, is holy and just and good, and that this could confer eternal life on those that kept its commandments, and lived righteously by faith, like the prophets and patriarchs, and all the saints.” By which words, very craftily expressed, they praise the law in opposition to grace; for certainly that law, although just and holy and good, could not confer eternal life on all those men of God, but the faith which is in Christ. For this faith works by love, not according to the letter which kills, but according to the Spirit which makes alive, to which grace of God the law, as it were a schoolmaster, leads by deterring from transgression, that so that might be conferred upon man which it could not itself confer. For to those words of theirs in which they say “that the law was able to confer eternal life on the prophets and patriarchs, and all saints who kept its commandments,” the apostle replies, “If righteousness be by the law, then has Christ died in vain.” (Gal 2:21) “If the inheritance be by the law, then is it no more of promise.” (Gal 3:18) “If they which are of the law be heirs, faith is made void, and the promise is made of none effect.” (Rom 4:14) “But that no man is justified by the law in the sight of God, is evident: for, The just by faith lives.” (Gal 3:11) “But the law is not of faith: but The man that does them shall live in them.” (Gal 3:12) Which testimony, quoted by the apostle from the law, is understood in respect of temporal life, in respect of the fear of losing which, men were in the habit of doing the works of the law, not of faith; because the transgressors of the law were commanded by the same law to be put to death by the people. Or, if it must be understood more highly, that “He who does these things shall live in them” was written in reference to eternal life; the power of the law is so expressed that the weakness of man in himself, itself failing to do what the law commands, might seek help from the grace of God rather of faith, seeing that by His mercy even faith itself is bestowed. Because faith is thus possessed, according as God has given to every one the measure of faith. (Rom 12:3) For if men have it not of themselves, but men receive the Spirit of power and of love and of continence, whence that very same teacher of the Gentiles says, “For we have not received the spirit of fear, but of power, and of love, and of continence,” (2 Tim 1:7) — assuredly also the Spirit of faith is received, of which he says, “Having also the same Spirit of faith.” (2 Cor 4:13) Truly, then, says the law, “He who does these things shall live in them.” But in order to do these things, and live in them, there is necessary not law which ordains this, but faith which obtains this. Which faith, however, that it may deserve to receive these things, is itself given freely. (Bk IV, chapter 10)

Here St. Augustine takes issue with the Pelagians, who commended the old law as being able to “confer eternal life on those that kept its commandments, and lived righteously by faith.” St. Augustine agrees that the law is holy, just and good, but explains that the law could not confer eternal life; only the faith which is in Christ and which works by love according to the Spirit, could confer eternal life. This grace leads to eternal life not by an extra nos imputation of Christ’s obedience, by “by deterring from transgression,” something the law by itself cannot do. St. Augustine then explains how to interpret St. Paul’s statements about the law, and especially about St. Paul’s statement, “The man that does them shall live in them.” (Gal 3:12) According to St. Augustine, this can be understood in two complementary ways. In one way, it means that those who, without the faith that comes through grace, keep the law [externally] out of desire for earthly rewards or fear of punishment, have their minds set on things of this temporal life. Because, as Jesus said, where your treasure is there also will your heart be, so those who keep the law [externally] for the sake of temporal things do not have the eternal life of heaven, but have only temporal life. But, in a higher way, this verse shows that he who truly wishes to keep the law will be led to seek mercy, and hence to the faith that comes by the grace of Christ. So the one who does the law’s precepts shall live in them, because through them he is led to faith, and through faith he has eternal life.

But those enemies of grace never endeavour to lay more secret snares for more vehement opposition to that same grace than when they praise the law, which, without doubt, is worthy to be praised. Because, by their different modes of speaking, and by variety of words in all their arguments, they wish the law to be understood as “grace” — that, to wit, we may have from the Lord God the help of knowledge, whereby we may know those things which have to be done — not the inspiration of love, that, when known, we may do them with a holy love, which is properly grace. For the knowledge of the law without love puffs up, does not edify, according to the same apostle, who most openly says, “Knowledge puffs up, but love edifies.” (1 Cor 8:1) Which saying is like to that in which it is said, “The letter kills, the spirit makes alive.” (2 Cor 3:6) For “Knowledge puffs up,” corresponds to “The letter kills:” and, “Love edifies,” to “The spirit makes alive;” because “the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who is given unto us.” (Rom 5:5) Therefore the knowledge of the law makes a proud transgressor; but, by the gift of charity, he delights to be a doer of the law. (Bk IV, chapter 11)

The Pelagians praise the law, but reduce grace to law, as that help by which we may attain salvation, whereas in actuality, grace is not merely the knowledge of right and wrong but provides the “inspiration of love” so that we may keep the laws with a holy love. Knowledge without love leads only to pride, not eternal life. But love edifies. By the love poured out into our hearts by the Holy Spirit (Rom 5:5) we, by this gift of charity, delight to be doers of the law. Pelagius was right to praise the law, but wrong to reduce grace to the law. Grace is not merely the provision of knowledge (about the law or about the gospel); grace infused into us transforms us, making us alive with the life of God, and being one in spirit with Him, delighting in His law.

On Grace and Free Will (A.D. 426-427)

Let us, however, read, and by the Lord’s help understand, what the apostle tells us: “Because by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in His sight; for by the law is the knowledge of sin.” (Rom 3:20) Observe, he says “the knowledge,” not “the destruction,” of sin. But when a man knows sin, and grace does not help him to avoid what he knows, undoubtedly the law works wrath. And this the apostle explicitly says in another passage. His words are: “The law works wrath.” (Rom 4:15) The reason of this statement lies in the fact that God’s wrath is greater in the case of the transgressor who by the law knows sin, and yet commits it; such a man is thus a transgressor of the law, even as the apostle says in another sentence, “For where no law is, there is no transgression.” (Rom 4:15) It is in accordance with this principle that he elsewhere says, “That we may serve in newness of spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter;” (Rom 7:6) wishing the law to be here understood by “the oldness of the letter,” and what else by “newness of spirit” than grace?(chapter 22)

Here St. Augustine, around the age of seventy, explains that the law does not destroy sin, but only provides the knowledge of sin. Without grace, therefore, the law works wrath, because it increases the transgression, by making those who violate it more culpable, because where there is no law there is no transgression. But we who have received grace serve in newness of spirit, because by the infusion of grace and agape our spirit has been made to share in the life of God.

As many, therefore, as are led by their own spirit, trusting in their own virtue, with the addition merely of the law’s assistance, without the help of grace, are not the sons of God. Such are they of whom the same apostle speaks as “being ignorant of God’s righteousness, and wishing to establish their own righteousness, who have not submitted themselves to the righteousness of God.” (Rom 10:3) He said this of the Jews, who in their self-assumption rejected grace, and therefore did not believe in Christ. Their own righteousness, indeed, he says, they wish to establish; and this righteousness is of the law, — not that the law was established by themselves, but that they had constituted their righteousness in the law which is of God, when they supposed themselves able to fulfil that law by their own strength, ignorant of God’s righteousness — not indeed that by which God is Himself righteous, but that which man has from God. (chapter 24)

Who are those “under the law”? They are those who trust in their own virtue or power to keep the law, and so seek to establish a righteousness of their own. St. Augustine explains that St. Paul was referring to those Jews who had not believed in Christ. They were ignorant not only of Christ, but of the righteousness which is from above, received by faith through the sacrament of baptism which Christ Himself established to be the means by which the Spirit of grace is infused into the hearts of men. St. Augustine continues:

And that you may know that he designated as theirs the righteousness which is of the law, and as God’s that which man receives from God, hear what he says in another passage, when speaking of Christ: “For whose sake I counted all things not only as loss, but I deemed them to be dung, that I might win Christ, and be found in Him — not having my own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, which is of God.” (Philippians 3:8-9) Now what does he mean by “not having my own righteousness, which is of the law,” when the law is really not his at all, but God’s, — except this, that he called it his own righteousness, although it was of the law, because he thought he could fulfil the law by his own will, without the aid of grace which is through faith in Christ? Wherefore, after saying, “Not having my own righteousness, which is of the law,” he immediately subjoined, “But that which is through the faith of Christ, which is of God.” This is what they were ignorant of, of whom he says, “Being ignorant of God’s righteousness,” — that is, the righteousness which is of God (for it is given not by the letter, which kills, but by the life-giving Spirit), “and wishing to establish their own righteousness,” which he expressly described as the righteousness of the law, when he said, “Not having my own righteousness, which is of the law;” they were not subject to the righteousness of God — in other words, they submitted not themselves to the grace of God. For they were under the law, not under grace, and therefore sin had dominion over them, from which a man is not freed by the law, but by grace. On which account he elsewhere says, “For sin shall not have dominion over you; because you are not under the law, but under grace.” (Rom 6:14) Not that the law is evil; but because they are under its power, whom it makes guilty by imposing commandments, not by aiding. It is by grace that any one is a doer of the law; and without this grace, he who is placed under the law will be only a hearer of the law. To such persons he addresses these words: “You who are justified by the law are fallen from grace.” (Gal 5:4) (chapter 24)

Here St. Augustine explains what St. Paul means in saying speaking of his “own righteousness, which is of the law.” It was his own because he thought he could fulfill it by his own will, without the aid of grace which is through faith in Jesus Christ. The righteousness which is by faith is the righteousness of God, not given by the letter of the law, but given by the Spirit, through the sacraments. But the righteousness which comes from ourselves is not subject to the righteousness of God. That is, in pride it resists and rejects the righteousness of God, because it does not wish to humble itself, and admits its entire worthlessness before God. Law-keeping without grace is a righteousness of our own that St. Paul describes as “dung.” Without grace, sin has dominion over us, and so we are in bondage to the law. But by grace we are freed from the law, not in the sense of not being obligated to keep it for the sake of our justification and salvation, but freed from being unable to keep it. By grace we are freed from the dominion of sin. That is, by the infusion of grace and agape into our hearts, we are able to keep the law, and no longer powerless to keep from breaking the law. Those persons are under the power of the law, says St. Augustine, who by the law know what is required of them, but have not been given the power to keep the law. Grace aids us internally, so that we become doers of the law, not just hearers. Without grace, anyone who is placed under the law will be only a hearer of the law, not a doer of the law.

III. Conclusion

What St. Augustine says here about the relation of grace and law could not be preached today in PCA or OPC congregations; they would consider it heretical for allegedly confusing law and gospel. But St. Augustine’s account of the relation of grace and law is fully compatible if not organically identical with what we find in the Catholic Catechism. Consider again the difference between the Catholic and Reformed positions, as I summarized them at the beginning of this post. According to Reformed theology, justification is by God’s extra nos imputation of the obedience of Christ. By contrast, for St. Augustine, justification is by the infusion of grace and the theological virtues of faith, hope, and particularly agape. In Reformed theology, because of its notion of justification by imputed righteousness, being under grace means that our justification (or condemnation) does not depend on our law-keeping. Even though we grievously sin against all God’s commands and never keep any of them, God imputes to our account the obedience of Christ in our place, so that before Him we are as though we had never sinned. All we have to do is accept this gift with a believing heart.⁴ According to this position, our good works, even under grace, are “imperfect and stained with sin.”⁵ Even under grace “there is no sin so small, but it deserves damnation,”⁶ and even the most holy among us sin daily in thought, word, and deed. But God demands an entirely perfect righteousness, which only Christ has. Therefore, we can be saved only by the extra nos imputation of Christ’s righteousness. The Belgic Confession reads:

Therefore to say that Christ is not enough but that something else is needed as well is a most enormous blasphemy against God — for it would then follow that Jesus Christ is only half a Savior. And therefore we justly say with Paul that we are justified by faith alone or by faith apart from works.

That conclusion does not follow, because the Confession goes on to acknowledge that faith is necessary. And conceding the need for faith does not constitute a blasphemy against God. So the question concerns the means by which the grace of Christ  is communicated to us, what are the senses in which we attain Christ (both in this life and the next) and how we are to attain Christ. But the quotation indicates the reasoning underlying the Reformed notion that our justification is by faith alone, and through the extra nos imputation of Christ’s obedience.

By contrast, for St. Augustine (and the Catholic Church), being under grace does not mean that our justification (or condemnation) does not depend on our law-keeping. Rather, being under grace means having received grace from God into our hearts, and the infused virtues of faith, hope, and agape such that with this divine help we are enabled to keep the law, it being written on our hearts. This is what it means to walk in the newness of the Spirit. For St. Augustine, by the gift of infused grace and agape, the law is fulfilled in us, because agape fulfills the law. By grace we are enabled to love the law, and not be hearers only, but doers of the law. Grace does not take away our obligation to fulfill the law; it does not mean that Christ fulfills the law so that we do not have to do so. Rather, grace enables to us to keep the law, and so truly fulfill the law, not by extra nos imputation nor, like Pelagius, by ourselves without grace, but through grace by God working in us to will and to do what is pleasing in His sight, i.e. living in accordance with His royal law. The Reformed conception of grace is in this respect a weaker conception of grace, because such grace is unable to make us capable of fulfilling the law. But St. Augustine’s (and the Catholic Church’s) doctrine of grace is a more powerful or higher view of grace, because for St. Augustin grace is the power of God in us enabling us to keep the law and so be truly well-pleasing in His sight.

This overview of St. Augustine’s soteriology indicates that Benjamin Warfield was mistaken when he claimed that the Reformation was the triumph of Augustine’s soteriology over his ecclesiology. The early Protestants not only departed from St. Augustine’s ecclesiology, but also from his soteriology.

1. There are objections to this Reformed doctrine of imputation. I cannot address them in this post, but roughly they go like this. If at the moment of imputation nothing is actually transferred from Christ to me, and from me to Christ, but rather, God merely no longer sees things as they actually are, i.e. He stops seeing Christ as righteous and me as guilty, and starts seeing Christ as guilty and me as righteous (even though in actuality nothing in Christ or me has changed), then there is no difference between ‘real imputation’ and imputation as legal fiction. In other words, if extra nos imputation were simply a legal fiction, there would be nothing different about it. Another objection goes like this. My account before God is an account of my heart. Because God is omniscient and Truth, He cannot lie or be deceived. Whatever He speaks is true. So if my heart is evil, then my account before God must be that my heart is evil. God cannot call what is evil good, without changing it from evil to good, lest He be a liar. Likewise, if Christ’s heart is good, then His account before God must be that His heart is good. God cannot without lying say that Christ’s account is evil, when Christ’s heart is good, without making Christ’s heart evil. So if at the moment of extra nos imputation nothing changes in me, and nothing changes in Christ, then when God changes my account from evil to good, but without changing my heart from evil to good, this entails that God is lying about me. Likewise, when God changes Christ’s account from good to evil, without changing Christ’s heart from good to evil, this entails that God is lying about Christ. But God cannot lie. Therefore extra nos imputation is impossible.
2. For St. Augustine, the moral law (i.e. the Decalogue) is not just a helpful guide under grace, bu is the divinely required way of righteousness. No one who lives in violation of the moral law can be saved, unless he repent.
3. St. Augustine cites this verse (Rom 5:5) repeatedly, along with Rom 13:9-10, in which St. Paul teaches that love is the fulfillment of the law.
4. Heidelberg Catechism, Q. 60
5. Heidelberg Catechism, Q.62.
6. Westminster Confession of Faith XV.4

Rules of Engagement

I give considerable weight to the noble traditions that have sustained the church throughout the years.

– Tom Wright

N.T. Wright is justly famous for his historical scholarship, particularly with regard to Christian origins in the cultural milieu of Second Temple Judaism. This scholarship is the basis for his doctrine of justification. This doctrine (or “reading”), like Wright’s theology in general, does not exactly conform to any traditional, confessional, or systematic brand of theology. If you know anything about Wright’s own ecclesial communion, you might conclude that this is only so much as to say that Wright is an Anglican. And he is. But it would also be true to say, as Wright himself has said, that his fundamental doctrinal orientation is biblicist. He often avows his intention of being as consistent as possible (more consistent than his Reformed critics) with the Protestant principle of sola scriptura. Interestingly enough, given the consternation his work has caused among conservative Protestants, the means by which Wright’s doctrine is derived are impeccably Protestant, near and dear to every pastor and professor who upholds the sanctity and sufficiency of “historical-grammatical” exegesis.

It is in that light that we must understand quotes such as the one at the beginning of this section. For Wright, the “weight” of the Church’s tradition is measured by his own interpretation of Sacred Scripture. That is the definition of a biblicist. (The implications of this sort of individualism, which turns out to be endemic to confessional as well as other varieties of Protestantism, have been discussed by Bryan Cross and Neal Judisch in the article, “Solo Scriptura, Sola Scriptura, and the Question of Interpretive Authority.”) In keeping with his fundamental rule of engagement, Wright presumes that his scholarship can and has (on some points) trumped Church doctrine–on either a Catholic or a Protestant rendering of “Church.” That’s a bold posture, though far from unprecedented. At the very least it should not go unremarked. In fact, Wright himself often remarks on this aspect of his work, reminding his sometimes indignant interlocutors that he, like Luther, will not bow to any tradition, not even the traditional Protestant doctrine of justification.

Three Perspectives on Paul

Wright unfolds his doctrine of justification by means of an extended reading, epitomized in this book, of the Epistles of Paul. In addition to re-presenting the results of his academic inquiries, the purpose of this book is to compare and contrast his own understanding of justification with traditional Protestantism and (more obliquely) Catholicism. Wright’s biblical-theological project is therefore a moment in the history of doctrine, as well as a scholarly endeavor in its own right. Whether we like it or not, Wright’s Pauline project is necessarily related to the ongoing debate between Catholics and (classical) Protestants over the nature of justification. Justification: God’s Plan and Paul’s Vision, acknowledges this relationship and offers an alternative view, which is at some points complementary, and at others contradictory, to both Catholicism and traditional Reformed Protestantism. What follows is an effort to gain the general doctrinal bearings, by way of describing the gist of the three perspectives on justification and offering a rudimentary critique of Wright’s reading.

1. The Catholic Church’s doctrine of justification is presented in terms of God’s forgiveness, actual renewal, and progressive transformation of human beings, whereby we are given to participate in the life of God (eternal life), thereby becoming what we cannot become by nature, that is, children of God (Council of Trent, Session VI., Chapters 4, 7, 10). This participation is based upon the love of God the Father, which love is “humanized” in his only-begotten Son who died for our sins and was raised for our justification, in whom all kinds of people are made part of a new humanity (God’s family), constituted by divine love, which is “poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit” (Romans 5:5). In concise, theological terms, the Catholic Church teaches that regeneration, sanctification, and incorporation into the Body of Christ are essential aspects of justification, such that the latter cannot be defined in legal, extrinsic, and individualistic terms alone (Ibid., Canon 11). The rationale for this realist understanding of justification is as follows: God speaks only truth. His speech is not merely constitutive (in the legal sense), it is creative (in the ontological sense). Justification is analogous to creation in that God’s word makes something (righteousness) where before there was nothing (unrighteousness). This particular speech-act, justification, considered as a categorical proposition (X is Y), has an obvious and appropriate term in one who by that very act has been made just. The inward reality of regeneration, union with Christ in the indwelling Holy Spirit, makes it unnecessary to relegate the predicate “just” to something extrinsic to the justified. In the language of Sacred Scripture, we are justified by faith in Christ; in him, we become the righteousness of God.

2. Reformed Protestantism has traditionally denied that regeneration is an essential aspect of justification (Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter 11.1). Rather, Protestants have defined justification as a legal action, which, although referring to man, nevertheless does not correspond to anything in man. Instead, God the Father declares that an unrighteous individual is righteous, and therefore acquits this individual of all charges of wrongdoing. This declaration is not considered to be unjust, however, precisely because Jesus Christ has become the sinner’s substitute, such that Jesus, an innocent and righteous man, was made the object of divine retribution, rather than the actually guilty party. God the Father imputed our sins to his Son, and then waged retribution against him, thereby discharging himself of the obligation to punish sinners (Ibid., 11.3). The actual righteousness of the Son, in turn, is imputed to elect sinners, whereby they are, in a legal and extrinsic sense, reconciled to God. In view of these arrangements, God overlooks their sinful condition. An actual renewal of the sinner, whereby he is cleansed and given to participate in the divine life, having the love of God poured into his heart by the Holy Spirit, is considered to form no part whatsoever of justification. The rationale for this nominalist understanding of justification is as follows: The Greek verb form, dikaiow (“justify”), is often used in courtroom or other legal, contract/covenant-making settings. It is therefore appropriate to understand the speech-act of justification in a legal (constitutive), rather than a real or ontological (creative), sense. A judge’s declaration does not cause an ontological change in the defendant, and that declaration can be legally binding even if it does not correspond to the defendant’s actual condition. Furthermore, God’s declaration of justification simply cannot refer to the defendant’s actual condition, since in this life no one except Christ is actually righteous. (For a response to these arguments, see this post and this post.)

3. N.T. Wright’s over-arching thesis is the biblical-theological claim that the structure of justification is essentially “covenantal,” as attested by St. Paul’s writings, especially in Romans and Galatians. Thus, St. Paul invokes Abraham, not merely as an example of faith, but because the Abrahamic covenant is the indispensable context for understanding God’s plan of justification by faith in Christ. For Wright, justification by faith in Christ is not so much a doctrine as a story, more specifically, the climatic moment in the Abraham story. The significance of justification by faith is that, in Christ, God has finally fulfilled his promise to Abraham that in him “all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” As applied to individuals, the initial decree of justification grants one the legal status of belonging to God’s covenant people. This decree doesn’t have anything to do with the moral virtue of an individual, whether that virtue be imputed or infused. Whereas the Protestant tradition reads “the righteousness of God” as that moral quality or property of God whereby he himself is righteous, and “justification” as the imputation of that divine righteousness to sinners, Wright reads these as, respectively, God’s faithfulness to his covenant with Abraham, and the inclusion of whoever has faith in Jesus in the family of Abraham (cf. Galatians 3:26-29).

This new perspective on Paul’s doctrine of justification has been lauded, and chided, for its similarity to (or at least compatibility with) the Catholic doctrine. However, Wright’s teaching is at critical points much more akin to the classical Protestant doctrine. Perhaps due to his emphasis on the historical narrative of justification, Wright’s brand of covenant theology, for all of its Catholic-friendly moments, falls short of the “covenantal realism” that characterizes the Catholic Faith. In defining justification, Wright exchanges one purely extrinsic definition, imputation of alien moral righteousness, for another, namely, change of social status. For classical Protestants, justification is a matter of being legally declared “not guilty.” For Wright, justification is primarily about getting one’s citizenship papers officially stamped. Thus, his analysis of justification, every bit as much as the traditional Protestant analysis, is marked by a kind of legalism, such that the dynamics of the courtroom dominate within the covenant. Wright’s construal is not, however, as open to the charge of legal fiction as is the traditional Protestant model of justification, since God is not, on Wright’s model, declaring anyone to be morally righteous.

From a Catholic point of view, one problem with Wright’s doctrine of justification is that it favors a naturalistic, political reading of covenant membership over a supernatural, familial model. That is, when Wright comes to discuss incorporation into the people of God, i.e., covenant membership, i.e., justification, he shies away from speaking of spiritual rebirth into the divine family, despite the familial, realistic, and transformational language running through the relevant passages. Catholicism is perfectly comfortable with reading “justification” as covenant membership, but the Church’s covenant theology is enriched by her doctrine the sacraments, which are understood as supernatural bonds of kinship. Justification does involve becoming a member of God’s covenant people, and this does have legal ramifications. But this “becoming a covenant member,” our adoption into the divine family, is not merely a mundane change of status. By faith in Christ, through the grace of the sacraments, we really become, and are therefore rightly regarded as, children of God, partakers of the divine nature.

The Baptism of the Neophytes
Masaccio (c. 1426-27)
Cappella Brancacci, Santa Maria del Carmine, Florence

Outline
I. Introduction
II. Church Fathers on Baptism
A. Second Century
B. Third Century
C. Fourth Century
D. Fifth Century
E. Sixth Century
III. Scripture on Baptism

I. Introduction

The only sacrament mentioned by name in the Creed is baptism. We confess in the Creed: “I believe in one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.” Because Protestants and Catholics share the same Trinitarian baptism, we share a certain real but imperfect unity. But baptism is also a point of disagreement not only between Protestants and Catholics, but also between various Protestant traditions. The Catholic Church has always believed and taught that the grace by which we are born again comes to us through the sacrament of baptism. A small percentage of Protestants agree with the Catholic Church that through baptism we are regenerated with the life of God, cleansed of all our sins, and brought into the Kingdom of God. But many other Protestants think that justification is not through baptism, but by “faith alone,” or by some kind of “sinner’s prayer.” Some Protestants believe that baptism is only a symbol, something not to be done until a person is old enough to understand the gospel for himself. Other Protestants believe that baptism is like circumcision in the Abrahamic covenant, not efficacious for rebirth and the reception of the grace of divine life but only a ‘confirmation’ or ‘seal’ of faith through which one is brought into the New Covenant family.

One way that we resolve these disagreements about what baptism is and what it does, is to consider what the Church Fathers believed and taught about baptism. Here I am only focusing on what the Church Fathers say about the relation between baptism and regeneration. I have kept my commentary to a minimum, providing only needed explanatory notes. After examining what the Church Fathers say about this subject, I then offer a brief summary of the New Testament teaching regarding the relation of baptism and regeneration.

II. Church Fathers on Baptism
A. Second Century Fathers

Here is a selection from the eleventh chapter of the Epistle of Barnabas (A.D. 130) describing baptism:

“This means that we go down into the water full of sins and foulness, and we come up bearing fruit in our hearts, fear and hope in Jesus and in the Spirit.”

Baptism is here described as immediately removing sins and producing immediate fruit in the heart. The notion that baptism bears immediate fruit in the heart implies that baptism regenerates the baptized person.

Here is a selection from chapter 16 of the ninth Similitude of the Shepherd of Hermas (early second century):

They were obliged,” he answered, “to ascend through water in order that they might be made alive; for, unless they laid aside the deadness of their life, they could not in any other way enter into the kingdom of God. … For,” he continued, “before a man bears the name of the Son of God he is dead; but when he receives the seal he lays aside his deadness, and obtains life. The seal, then, is the water: they descend into the water dead, and they arise alive. And to them, accordingly, was this seal preached, and they made use of it that they might enter into the kingdom of God.” (Shepherd of Hermas)

Just as in the Epistle of Barnabas, the candidate is described as going into the water dead, and coming out alive. Not only that, but through baptism we are said to enter into the kingdom of God.

Next, is the well known figure of St. Justin Martyr (c. 100-165). Here are some selections from his First Apology:

“I will also relate the manner in which we dedicated ourselves to God when we had been made new through Christ; lest, if we omit this, we seem to be unfair in the explanation we are making. As many as are persuaded and believe that what we teach and say is true, and undertake to be able to live accordingly, are instructed to pray and to entreat God with fasting, for the remission of their sins that are past, we praying and fasting with them. They then are brought by us where there is water, and are regenerated in the same manner in which we were ourselves regenerated. For, in the name of God, the Father and Lord of the universe, and of our Saviour Jesus Christ, and of the Holy Spirit, they then receive the washing with water. . . . The reason for this we have received from the Apostles.” (Chapter 61)

And this food is called among us Εὐχαριστία [the Eucharist], of which no one is allowed to partake but the man who believes that the things which we teach are true, and who has been washed with the washing that is for the remission of sins, and unto regeneration, and who is so living as Christ has enjoined. (Chapter 66)

Notice that Justin Martyr, writing about fifty years after the death of the Apostle John, claims that they received from the Apostles the doctrine that through baptism they receive “remission of sins that are past” [i.e. prior to baptism], and through baptism they are “regenerated” in the same manner that all Christians were regenerated (i.e. by baptism).

In his Dialogue with Trypho the Jew, St. Justin contrasts Christian baptism with the Jewish baptism, writing:

By reason, therefore, of this laver of repentance and knowledge of God, which has been ordained on account of the transgression of God’s people, as Isaiah cries, we have believed, and testify that that very baptism which he announced is alone able to purify those who have repented; and this is the water of life. But the cisterns which you have dug for yourselves are broken and profitless to you. For what is the use of that baptism which cleanses the flesh and body alone? (ch. 14)

This [Jewish] circumcision is not, however, necessary for all men, but for you [Jews] alone, in order that, as I have already said, you may suffer these things which you now justly suffer. Nor do we receive that useless baptism of cisterns, for it has nothing to do with this baptism of life. Wherefore also God has announced that you have forsaken Him, the living fountain, and dug for yourselves broken cisterns which can hold no water. Even you, who are the circumcised according to the flesh, have need of our circumcision; but we, having the latter, do not require the former. ( ch. 19)

As, then, circumcision began with Abraham, and the Sabbath and sacrifices and offerings and feasts with Moses, and it has been proved they were enjoined on account of the hardness of your people’s heart, so it was necessary, in accordance with the Father’s will, that they should have an end in Him who was born of a virgin, of the family of Abraham and tribe of Judah, and of David; in Christ the Son of God, who was proclaimed as about to come to all the world, to be the everlasting law and the everlasting covenant, even as the forementioned prophecies show. And we, who have approached God through Him, have received not carnal, but spiritual circumcision, which Enoch and those like him observed. And we have received it through baptism, since we were sinners, by God’s mercy; and all men may equally obtain it. (ch. 43)

When the Fathers speak of the “laver” or the “laver of “repentance” or the “laver of regeneration,” they are speaking of baptism. Here, St. Justin is contrasting Christian baptism with Jewish baptisms. According to St. Justin, Christians receive spiritual circumcision through baptism.

Next consider the following quotation from St. Theophilus bishop of Antioch from 169-182:

On the fifth day [of creation] the living creatures which proceed from the waters were produced, through which also is revealed the manifold wisdom of God in these things; for who could count their multitude and very various kinds? Moreover, the things proceeding from the waters were blessed by God, that this also might be a sign of men’s being destined to receive repentance and remission of sins, through the water and laver of regeneration, — as many as come to the truth, and are born again, and receive blessing from God. (To Autolycus, Bk II)

Next consider the second century bishop of Lyon, St. Irenaeus (b. 115-130, d. around 200 AD). In his work titled Against Heresies, he writes,

And when we come to refute them [i.e. those heretics], we shall show in its fitting-place, that this class of men have been instigated by Satan to a denial of that baptism which is regeneration to God, and thus to a renunciation of the whole [Christian] faith. (A.H., I.21)

And again, giving to the disciples the power of regeneration into God, He said to them, “Go and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.” (Matthew 28:19) … “The Lord also promised to send the Comforter, who should join us to God (St. John. 16:7). For as a compacted lump of dough cannot be formed of dry wheat without fluid matter, nor can a loaf possess unity, so, in like manner, neither could we, being many be made one in Christ Jesus without the water from heaven. And as dry earth does not bring forth unless it receive moisture, in like manner we also, being originally a dry tree, could never have brought forth fruit unto life without the voluntary rain from above. For our bodies have received unity among themselves by means of that laver which leads to incorruption; but our souls by means of the Spirit. Wherefore both are necessary, since both contribute towards the life of God.” (A.H., III.17)

Notice that we are “joined to God”, made “one in Christ” [that is, believers are made into one body, Christ's Body] by the “the water from heaven,” by which we are made alive (i.e. regenerated) in order to bring forth fruit unto life. For St. Irenaeus, to be joined to Christ is to be joined to His Mystical Body (the Church) through baptism. St. Irenaeus calls baptism that “laver which leads to incorruption.” Through baptism our physical bodies are protected from eternal corruption, and our souls, by the power of the Holy Spirit working through the baptismal water, are made participants in the life of God. In Book Five of Against Heresies, he writes:

And inasmuch as man, with respect to that formation which, was after Adam, having fallen into transgression, needed the laver of regeneration, [the Lord] said to him [upon whom He had conferred sight], after He had smeared his eyes with the clay, “Go to Siloam, and wash;” John 9:7 thus restoring to him both [his perfect] confirmation, and that regeneration which takes place by means of the laver. And for this reason when he was washed he came seeing, that he might both know Him who had fashioned him, and that man might learn [to know] Him who has conferred upon him life. (A.H., V.15)

St. Irenaeus says elsewhere:

“Now, this is what faith does for us, as the elders, the disciples of the apostles, have handed down to us. First of all, it admonishes us to remember that we have received baptism for the remission of sins in the name of God the Father, and in the name of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who became incarnate and died and raised, and in the Holy Spirit of God; and that this baptism is the seal of eternal life and is rebirth unto God, that we be no more children of mortal men, but of the eternal everlasting God; and that the eternal and everlasting One is God, and is above all creatures, and that all things whatsoever are subject to Him; and that what is subject to Him was all made by Him; so that God is not ruler and Lord of what is another’s, but of His own, and all things are God’s; that God, therefore, is the Almighty, and all things whatsoever are from God.” (The Proof of Apostolic Preaching)

Notice that St. Irenaus says that the Christians receive baptism “for the remission of sins.” There can be no justification without the forgiveness of sins. And hence if baptism is for the forgiveness of sins, then it is through baptism that we are justified. In one of the fragments, St. Irenaeus writes:

“And dipped himself,” says [the Scripture], “seven times in Jordan.” (2 Kings 5:14) It was not for nothing that Naaman of old, when suffering from leprosy, was purified upon his being baptized, but [it served] as an indication to us. For as we are lepers in sin, we are made clean, by means of the sacred water and the invocation of the Lord, from our old transgressions; being spiritually regenerated as new-born babes, even as the Lord has declared: “Unless a man be born again through water and the Spirit, he shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.” (John 3:5) (Fragments, 34)

B. Third Century Fathers

Next consider St. Clement of Alexandria (d. 215), in The Paedagogus ([Christ] the Educator):

Is it, then, that [Christ] was made perfect only in the sense of being washed, and that He was consecrated by the descent of the Holy Spirit? Such is the case. The same also takes place in our case, whose exemplar Christ became. Being baptized, we are illuminated; illuminated, we become sons; being made sons, we are made perfect; being made perfect, we are made immortal. “I,” says He, “have said that you are gods, and all sons of the Highest.” This work is variously called grace, and illumination, and perfection, and washing: washing, by which we cleanse away our sins; grace, by which the penalties accruing to transgressions are remitted; and illumination, by which that holy light of salvation is beheld, that is, by which we see God clearly. Finally, we call it ‘perfection’ as needing nothing further, for what more does he need who possesses the knowledge of God? It would indeed be out of place to call something that was not fully perfect a gift of God.” …

For what ignorance has bound ill, is by knowledge loosed well; those bonds are with all speed slackened by human faith and divine grace, our transgressions being taken away by one Pœonian medicine, the baptism of the Word. We are washed from all our sins, and are no longer entangled in evil. This is the one grace of illumination, that our characters are not the same as before our washing. And since knowledge springs up with illumination, shedding its beams around the mind, the moment we hear, we who were untaught become disciples. Does this, I ask, take place on the advent of this instruction? You cannot tell the time. For instruction leads to faith, and faith with baptism is trained by the Holy Spirit.

In the same way, therefore, we also, repenting of our sins, renouncing our iniquities, purified by baptism, speed back to the eternal light, children to the Father. (Book I, Chapter 6)

In chapter 12 of Book I, St. Clement writes:

He Himself formed man of the dust, and regenerated him by water; and made him grow by his Spirit; and trained him by His word to adoption and salvation, directing him by sacred precepts; in order that, transforming earth-born man into a holy and heavenly being by His advent, He might fulfil to the utmost that divine utterance, “Let Us make man in Our own image and likeness.” (Genesis 1:26) And, in truth, Christ became the perfect realization of what God spoke; and the rest of humanity is conceived as being created merely in His image. (Paedagogus, Bk I, Chapter 12)

In the next chapter he writes:

the transparent Word, by whom the flesh, regenerated by water, becomes precious. (Paedagogus, Chapter 13)

St. Clement teaches that in baptism we are cleansed, i.e. completely purified from our sins.

It ought to be known, then, that those who fall into sin after baptism are those who are subjected to discipline; for the deeds done before [baptism] are remitted, and those done after are purged. (Stromata, IV.24)

In baptism all the sins committed prior to baptism are remitted. But baptism cannot be repeated. So confession, prayer and penance are for sins committed after baptism. Elsewhere he writes:

For it is said, “Put on him the best robe,” which was his the moment he obtained baptism. I mean the glory of baptism, the remission of sins, and the communication of the other blessings, which he obtained immediately he had touched the font. (Fragments, Parable of the Prodigal Son)

Next consider Tertullian (c. 160- c. 240) in his work “On Baptism.” (written between 200 and 206):²

“Happy is the sacrament of our water, in that, by washing away the sins of our early blindness, we are set free, [and admitted] into eternal life! … But we, little fishes, after the example of our ΙΧΘΥΣ Jesus Christ, are born in water, nor have we safety in any other way than by permanently abiding in [that] water.” (chapter 1)

All waters, therefore, in virtue of the pristine privilege of their origin, do, after invocation of God, attain the sacramental power of sanctification; for the Spirit immediately supervenes from the heavens, and rests over the waters, sanctifying them from Himself; and being thus sanctified, they imbibe at the same time the power of sanctifying. Albeit the similitude may be admitted to be suitable to the simple act; that, since we are defiled by sins, as it were by dirt, we should be washed from those stains in waters. But as sins do not show themselves in our flesh (inasmuch as no one carries on his skin the spot of idolatry, or fornication, or fraud), so persons of that kind are foul in the spirit, which is the author of the sin; for the spirit is lord, the flesh servant. Yet they each mutually share the guilt: the spirit, on the ground of command; the flesh, of subservience. Therefore, after the waters have been in a manner endued with medicinal virtue through the intervention of the angel, the spirit is corporeally washed in the waters, and the flesh is in the same spiritually cleansed. (chapter 4)

And thus, when the grace of God advanced to higher degrees among men, (John 1:16-17) an accession of efficacy was granted to the waters and to the angel [who stirred the waters]. They who were wont to remedy bodily defects, now heal the spirit; they who used to work temporal salvation now renew eternal; they who did set free but once in the year, now save peoples in a body daily, death being done away through ablution of sins. The guilt being removed, of course the penalty is removed too. Thus man will be restored for God to His “likeness,” who in days bygone had been conformed to “the image” of God; (the “image” is counted (to be) in his form: the “likeness” in his eternity:) for he receives again that Spirit of God which he had then first received from His afflatus, but had afterward lost through sin. (chapter 5)

Thus, too, in our case, the unction [the anointing oil given in confirmation] runs carnally, (i.e. on the body,) but profits spiritually; in the same way as the act of baptism itself too is carnal, in that we are plunged in water, but the effect spiritual, in that we are freed from sins. (chapter 7)

And thus it was with the selfsame “baptism of John” that His disciples used to baptize, as ministers, with which John before had baptized as forerunner. Let none think it was with some other, because no other exists, except that of Christ subsequently; which at that time, of course, could not be given by His disciples, inasmuch as the glory of the Lord had not yet been fully attained, nor the efficacy of the font established through the passion and the resurrection; because neither can our death see dissolution except by the Lord’s passion, nor our life be restored without His resurrection. (chapter 11)

“When, however, the prescript is laid down that ‘without baptism, salvation is attainable by none’ (chiefly on the ground of that declaration of the Lord, who says, ‘Unless one be born of water, he has not life’ [Jn. 3:5]” (chapter 12)

Here, then, those miscreants provoke questions. And so they say, “Baptism is not necessary for them to whom faith is sufficient; for withal, Abraham pleased God by a sacrament of no water, but of faith.” But in all cases it is the later things which have a conclusive force, and the subsequent which prevail over the antecedent. Grant that, in days gone by, there was salvation by means of bare faith, before the passion and resurrection of the Lord. But now that faith has been enlarged, and has become a faith which believes in His nativity, passion, and resurrection, there has been an amplification added to the sacrament, viz., the sealing act of baptism; the clothing, in some sense, of the faith which before was bare, and which cannot exist now without its proper law. For the law of baptizing has been imposed, and the formula prescribed: “Go,” He says, “teach the nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” The comparison with this law of that definition, “Unless a man have been reborn of water and Spirit, he shall not enter into the kingdom of the heavens,” has tied faith to the necessity of baptism. Accordingly, all thereafter who became believers used to be baptized. Then it was, too, that Paul, when he believed, was baptized; and this is the meaning of the precept which the Lord had given him when smitten with the plague of loss of sight, saying, “Arise, and enter Damascus; there shall be demonstrated to you what you ought to do,” to wit— be baptized, which was the only thing lacking to him. (chapter 13)

They who are about to enter baptism ought to pray with repeated prayers, fasts, and bendings of the knee, and vigils all the night through, and with the confession of all bygone sins, that they may express the meaning even of the baptism of John: “They were baptized,” says (the Scripture), “confessing their own sins.” To us it is matter for thankfulness if we do now publicly confess our iniquities or our turpitudes: for we do at the same time both make satisfaction for our former sins, by mortification of our flesh and spirit, and lay beforehand the foundation of defences against the temptations which will closely follow. … Therefore, blessed ones [i.e. Catechumens], whom the grace of God awaits, when you ascend from that most sacred font of your new birth, and spread your hands for the first time in the house of your mother, together with your brethren, ask from the Father, ask from the Lord, that His own specialties of grace and distributions of gifts (1 Corinthians 12:4-12) may be supplied you. (Chapter 20)

Notice in the quotation from chapter 1 that Tertullian says that baptism washes away our sins, sets us free (from sin), and admits us into eternal life. In the second quotation he describes how the Spirit supervenes over the water, to work in us in baptism. His comment about the angel is a reference to the Gospel of John chapter 5 verses 2-4. This account is viewed by the Fathers as a prefiguring of baptism. In the quotation from chapter 7 we see the general view of the sacraments; they involve a physical principle, but the Holy Spirit operates spiritually through them. In the quotation from chapter 12, we see that Tertullian, like all the fathers, sees John 3:5 as teaching about baptism.

In chapter eight of his work titled “On the Resurrection of the Flesh,” Tertullian writes:

“[T]he flesh is the very condition on which salvation hinges. And since the soul is, in consequence of its salvation, chosen to the service of God, it is the flesh which actually renders it capable of such service. The flesh, indeed, is washed, in order that the soul may be cleansed; the flesh is anointed, that the soul may be consecrated; the flesh is signed (with the cross), that the soul too may be fortified; the flesh is shadowed with the imposition of hands, that the soul also maybe illuminated by the Spirit; the flesh feeds on the body and blood of Christ, that the soul likewise may fatten on its God. They cannot then be separated in their recompense, when they are united in their service.”

He goes into the other sacraments here, but with regard to baptism, notice that the soul is cleansed by the washing of the flesh with water.

St. Hippolytus of Rome, (d. 236), in his “Discourse on the Holy Theophany,” writes:

The Father of immortality sent the immortal Son and Word into the world, who came to man in order to wash him with water and the Spirit; and He, begetting us again to incorruption of soul and body, breathed into us the breath (spirit) of life, and endued us with an incorruptible panoply. If, therefore, man has become immortal, he will also be God. And if he is made God by water and the Holy Spirit after the regeneration of the laver he is found to be also joint-heir with Christ after the resurrection from the dead. Wherefore I preach to this effect: Come, all you kindreds of the nations, to the immortality of the baptism. I bring good tidings of life to you who tarry in the darkness of ignorance. Come into liberty from slavery, into a kingdom from tyranny, into incorruption from corruption. And how, says one, shall we come? How? By water and the Holy Ghost. This is the water in conjunction with the Spirit, by which paradise is watered, by which the earth is enriched, by which plants grow, by which animals multiply, and (to sum up the whole in a single word) by which man is begotten again and endued with life, in which also Christ was baptized, and in which the Spirit descended in the form of a dove.

This is the Spirit that at the beginning “moved upon the waters;” by whom the world moves; by whom creation consists, and all things have life; who also wrought mightily in the prophets, and descended in flight upon Christ. This is the Spirit that was given to the apostles in the form of fiery tongues. This is the Spirit that David sought when he said, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.” Of this Spirit Gabriel also spoke to the Virgin, “The Holy Ghost shall come upon you, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow you.” By this Spirit Peter spoke that blessed word, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” By this Spirit the rock of the Church was established. This is the Spirit, the Comforter, that is sent because of you, that He may show you to be the Son of God.

Come then, be begotten again, O man, into the adoption of God. And how? Says one. If you practise adultery no more, and commit not murder, and serve not idols; if you are not overmastered by pleasure; if you do not suffer the feeling of pride to rule you; if you clean off the filthiness of impurity, and put off the burden of sin; if you cast off the armour of the devil, and put on the breastplate of faith, even as Isaiah says, “Wash, and seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, and plead for the widow. And come and let us reason together, says the Lord. Though your sins be as scarlet, I shall make them white as snow; and though they be like crimson, I shall make them white as wool. And if you be willing, and hear my voice, you shall eat the good of the land.” Do you see, beloved, how the prophet spoke beforetime of the purifying power of baptism? For he who comes down in faith to the laver of regeneration, and renounces the devil, and joins himself to Christ; who denies the enemy, and makes the confession that Christ is God; who puts off the bondage, and puts on the adoption,— he comes up from the baptism brilliant as the sun, flashing forth the beams of righteousness, and, which is indeed the chief thing, he returns a son of God and joint-heir with Christ. (Discourse on the Holy Theophany)

In another work he writes:

For her [i.e. the Church's] prow is the east, and her stern is the west, and her hold is the south, and her tillers are the two Testaments; and the ropes that stretch around her are the love of Christ, which binds the Church; and the net which she bears with her is the laver of the regeneration which renews the believing, whence too are these glories. (On Christ and Anti-Christ, para. 59)

Next consider a selection from Origen (185 – 254):

We next remark in passing that the baptism of John was inferior to the baptism of Jesus which was given through His disciples. Those persons in the Acts (Acts 19:2) who were baptized to John’s baptism and who had not heard if there was any Holy Ghost are baptized over again by the Apostle. Regeneration did not take place with John, but with Jesus through His disciples it does so, and what is called the laver of regeneration takes place with renewal of the Spirit. (Commentary on John, Bk VI.17)

Next consider St. Cyprian (c. 200 – 258), bishop of Carthage, in his First Epistle (To Donatus), he writes:

While I was still lying in darkness and gloomy night, wavering hither and thither, tossed about on the foam of this boastful age, and uncertain of my wandering steps, knowing nothing of my real life, and remote from truth and light, I used to regard it as a difficult matter, and especially as difficult in respect of my character at that time, that a man should be capable of being born again — a truth which the divine mercy had announced for my salvation, and that a man quickened to a new life in the laver of saving water should be able to put off what he had previously been; and, although retaining all his bodily structure, should be himself changed in heart and soul. (section 3)

For as I myself was held in bonds by the innumerable errors of my previous life, from which I did not believe that I could by possibility be delivered, so I was disposed to acquiesce in my clinging vices; and because I despaired of better things, I used to indulge my sins as if they were actually parts of me, and indigenous to me. But after that, by the help of the water of new birth, the stain of former years had been washed away, and a light from above, serene and pure, had been infused into my reconciled heart, after that, by the agency of the Spirit breathed from heaven, a second birth had restored me to a new man; then, in a wondrous manner, doubtful things at once began to assure themselves to me, hidden things to be revealed, dark things to be enlightened, what before had seemed difficult began to suggest a means of accomplishment, what had been thought impossible, to be capable of being achieved; so that I was enabled to acknowledge that what previously, being born of the flesh, had been living in the practice of sins, was of the earth earthly, but had now begun to be of God, and was animated by the Spirit of holiness. (section 4)

In his Fifty-first Epistle, he writes:

But I wonder that some are so obstinate as to think that repentance is not to be granted to the lapsed, or to suppose that pardon is to be denied to the penitent, when it is written, “Remember whence you are fallen, and repent, and do the first works,” (Revelation 2:5) which certainly is said to him who evidently has fallen, and whom the Lord exhorts to rise up again by his works, because it is written, “Alms do deliver from death,” Tobit 4:10 and not, assuredly, from that death which once the blood of Christ extinguished, and from which the saving grace of baptism and of our Redeemer has delivered us, but from that which subsequently creeps in through sins. (Epistle 51.22)

In his Fifty-fourth Epistle, he writes:

The highest degree of happiness is, not to sin; the second, to acknowledge our sins. In the former, innocence flows pure and unstained to preserve us; in the latter, there comes a medicine to heal us. Both of these they have lost by offending God, both because the grace is lost which is received from the sanctification of baptism, and repentance comes not to their help, whereby the sin is healed. (Epistle 54.13)

In his Fifty-eighth Epistle he writes:

“[H]ow much rather ought we to shrink from hindering an infant, who, being lately born, has not sinned, except in that, being born after the flesh according to Adam, he has contracted the contagion of the ancient death at its earliest birth, who approaches the more easily on this very account to the reception of forgiveness of sins, that to him are remitted, not his own sins, but the sins of another.” (Epistle 58)

St. Cyprian is teaching here in this last quotation that in infant baptism, the infant receives forgiveness of original sin. In his sixty-second Epistle, St. Cyprian writes:

“If any man thirst, let him come and drink. He that believes in me, as the Scripture says, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.” And that it might be more evident that the Lord is speaking there, not of the cup, but of baptism, the Scripture adds, saying, “But this spoke He of the Spirit, which they that believe in Him should receive.” For by baptism the Holy Spirit is received; and thus by those who are baptized, and have attained to the Holy Spirit, is attained the drinking of the Lord’s cup. And let it disturb no one, that when the divine Scripture speaks of baptism, it says that we thirst and drink, since the Lord also in the Gospel says, “Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness; ” (Matthew 5:6) because what is received with a greedy and thirsting desire is drunk more fully and plentifully. As also, in another place, the Lord speaks to the Samaritan woman, saying, “Whosoever drinks of this water shall thirst again; but whosoever drinks of the water that I shall give him, shall not thirst for ever.” (John 4:13-14) By which is also signified the very baptism of saving water, which indeed is once received, and is not again repeated. But the cup of the Lord is always both thirsted for and drunk in the Church. (Epistle 62)

In his seventy-third Epistle, St. Cyprian argued that baptism among the heretics was no baptism at all, and therefore that when such heretics were later received into the Catholic Church, they should be baptized. St. Cyprian was wrong about the invalidity of baptism among the heretics, but his reasoning shows what the Church believed about the nature of baptism. He writes:

Moreover, it is silly to say, that although the second birth is spiritual, by which we are born in Christ through the laver of regeneration, one may be born spiritually among the heretics, where they say that the Spirit is not. For water alone is not able to cleanse away sins, and to sanctify a man, unless he have also the Holy Spirit. Wherefore it is necessary that they [the heretics] should grant the Holy Spirit to be there, where they say that baptism is; or else there is no baptism where the Holy Spirit is not, because there cannot be baptism without the Spirit. (section 5)

But what a thing it is, to assert and contend that they who are not born in the Church can be the sons of God! For the blessed apostle sets forth and proves that baptism is that wherein the old man dies and the new man is born, saying, “He saved us by the washing of regeneration.” [Titus 3:5] But if regeneration is in the washing, that is, in baptism, how can heresy, which is not the spouse of Christ, generate sons to God by Christ? For it is the Church alone which, conjoined and united with Christ, spiritually bears sons; as the same apostle again says, “Christ loved the Church, and gave Himself for it, that He might sanctify it, cleansing it with the washing of water.” If, then, she is the beloved and spouse who alone is sanctified by Christ, and alone is cleansed by His washing, it is manifest that heresy, which is not the spouse of Christ, nor can be cleansed nor sanctified by His washing, cannot bear sons to God. (section 6)

But further, one is not born by the imposition of hands when he receives the Holy Ghost [in the sacrament of confirmation], but in baptism, that so, being already born, he may receive the Holy Spirit, even as it happened in the first man Adam. For first God formed him, and then breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. For the Spirit cannot be received, unless he who receives first have an existence. But as the birth of Christians is in baptism, while the generation and sanctification of baptism are with the spouse of Christ alone, who is able spiritually to conceive and to bear sons to God, where and of whom and to whom is he born, who is not a son of the Church, so as that he should have God as his Father, before he has had the Church for his Mother? (section 7)

In his seventy-fourth Epistle he writes on the same subject:

But if the baptism of heretics can have the regeneration of the second birth, those who are baptized among them must be counted not heretics, but children of God. For the second birth, which occurs in baptism, begets sons of God. … [Pope] Stephen, who announces that he holds by succession the throne of Peter, is stirred with no zeal against heretics, when he concedes to them, not a moderate, but the very greatest power of grace: so far as to say and assert that, by the sacrament of baptism, the filth of the old man is washed away by them, that they pardon the former mortal sins, that they make sons of God by heavenly regeneration, and renew to eternal life by the sanctification of the divine laver. … And this is observed among us, that whosoever dipped by them come to us are baptized among us as strangers and having obtained nothing, with the only and true baptism of the Catholic Church, and obtain the regeneration of the laver of life. (Epistle 74)

In his fourth Treatise, St. Cyprian writes:

After this we say, “Hallowed be Your name; “not that we wish for God that He may be hallowed by our prayers, but that we beseech of Him that His name may be hallowed in us. But by whom is God sanctified, since He Himself sanctifies? Well, because He says, “Be holy, even as I am holy,” (Leviticus 20:7) we ask and entreat, that we who were sanctified in baptism may continue in that which we have begun to be. And this we daily pray for; for we have need of daily sanctification, that we who daily fall away may wash out our sins by continual sanctification. And what the sanctification is which is conferred upon us by the condescension of God, the apostle declares, when he says, “neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, nor thieves, nor deceivers, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God. And such indeed were you; but you are washed; but you are justified; but you are sanctified in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by the Spirit of our God.” (1 Corinthians 6:9) He says that we are sanctified in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by the Spirit of our God. We pray that this sanctification may abide in us and because our Lord and Judge warns the man that was healed and quickened by Him, to sin no more lest a worse thing happen unto him, we make this supplication in our constant prayers, we ask this day and night, that the sanctification and quickening which is received from the grace of God may be preserved by His protection. (Treatise 4.12)

In his eighth Treatise, St. Cyprian writes:

The Holy Spirit speaks in the sacred Scriptures, and says, “By almsgiving and faith sins are purged.” Not assuredly those sins which had been previously contracted, for those are purged by the blood and sanctification of Christ. Moreover, He says again, “As water extinguishes fire, so almsgiving quenches sin.” (Sirach 3:30) Here also it is shown and proved, that as in the laver of saving water the fire of Gehenna is extinguished, so by almsgiving and works of righteousness the flame of sins is subdued. And because in baptism remission of sins is granted once for all, constant and ceaseless labour, following the likeness of baptism, once again bestows the mercy of God. The Lord teaches this also in the Gospel. For when the disciples were pointed out, as eating and not first washing their hands, He replied and said, “He that made that which is within, made also that which is without. But give alms, and behold all things are clean unto you; ” (Luke 11:41) teaching hereby and showing, that not the hands are to be washed, but the heart, and that the foulness from inside is to be done away rather than that from outside; but that he who shall have cleansed what is within has cleansed also that which is without; and that if the mind is cleansed, a man has begun to be clean also in skin and body. Further, admonishing, and showing whence we may be clean and purged, He added that alms must be given. He who is pitiful teaches and warns us that pity must be shown; and because He seeks to save those whom at a great cost He has redeemed, He teaches that those who, after the grace of baptism, have become foul, may once more be cleansed. (Treatise 8)

In his ninth Treatise he writes:

His immortality being in the meantime laid aside, He suffers Himself to become mortal, so that the guiltless may be put to death for the salvation of the guilty. The Lord is baptized by the servant; and He who is about to bestow remission of sins, does not Himself disdain to wash His body in the laver of regeneration. (Treatise 9)

In his tenth Treatise, he writes:

Let us, then, who in baptism have both died and been buried in respect of the carnal sins of the old man, who have risen again with Christ in the heavenly regeneration, both think upon and do the things which are Christ’s, even as the same apostle again teaches and counsels, saying: “The first man is of the dust of the earth; the second man is from heaven” (Treatise 10.14)

St. Gregory Thaumaturgus (213 – ca. 270) writes:

[S]ee John the Baptist as he baptizes One [i.e. Christ] who needs no baptism, and yet submits to the rite in order that He may bestow freely upon us the grace of baptism. Come, let us view the image of our regeneration, as it is emblematically presented in these waters. (On Christ’s Baptism)

In another work he writes:

He was baptized in Jordan, not as receiving any sanctification for Himself, but as gifting a participation in sanctification to others. (Twelve Topics on Faith, 12)

St. Pamphilus of Caesarea (d. 309), in his “Exposition on the Acts of the Apostles,” in which he summarizes the Acts of the Apostles, writes:

Of the divine descent of the Holy Ghost on the day of Pentecost which lighted on them who believed. In this we have also the instruction delivered by Peter, and passages from the prophets on the subject, and on the passion and resurrection and assumption of Christ, and the gift of the Holy Ghost; also of the faith of those present, and their salvation by baptism; and, further, of the unity of spirit pervading the believers and promoting the common good, and of the addition made to their number.

St. Methodius, bishop of Olympus (d. 311), in his Discourse on the Resurrection, writes:

For while the body still lives, before it has passed through death, sin must also live with it, as it has its roots concealed within us even though it be externally checked by the wounds inflicted by corrections and warnings; since, otherwise, it would not happen that we do wrong after baptism, as we should be entirely and absolutely free from sin. But now, even after believing, and after the time of being touched by the water of sanctification, we are oftentimes found in sin. For no one can boast of being so free from sin as not even to have an evil thought. So that it has come to pass that sin is now restrained and lulled to sleep by faith, so that it does not produce injurious fruits, but yet is not torn up by the roots. For the present we restrain its sprouts, such as evil imaginations, “test any root of bitterness springing up trouble” (Hebrews 12:15) us, not suffering its leaves to unclose and open into shoots; while the Word, like an axe, cuts at its roots which grow below. But hereafter the very thought of evil will disappear. (Discourse on the Resurrection)

In his Oration on Simeon and Anna, he writes:

Wherefore with divine wisdom did he, who had foreknowledge of these events, oppose the bringing in of the thankful Anna to the casting out of the ungrateful synagogue. Her very name also pre-signifies the Church, that by the grace of Christ and God is justified in baptism. For Anna is, by interpretation, grace. (Oration on Simeon and Anna, 12)

In the third Discourse of his “Banquet of the Ten Virgins,” he writes:

[I]t was for this cause that the Word, leaving His Father in heaven, came down to be “joined to His wife; ” (Ephesians 5:31) and slept in the trance of His passion, and willingly suffered death for her, that He might present the Church to Himself glorious and blameless, having cleansed her by the laver, (Ephesians 5:26-27) for the receiving of the spiritual and blessed seed, which is sown by Him who with whispers implants it in the depths of the mind; and is conceived and formed by the Church, as by a woman, so as to give birth and nourishment to virtue. For in this way, too, the command, “Increase and multiply,” Genesis 1:18 is duly fulfilled, the Church increasing daily in greatness and beauty and multitude, by the union and communion of the Word who now still comes down to us and falls into a trance by the memorial of His passion; for otherwise the Church could not conceive believers, and give them new birth by the laver of regeneration, unless Christ, emptying Himself for their sake, that He might be contained by them, as I said, through the recapitulation of His passion, should die again, coming down from heaven, and being “joined to His wife,” the Church, should provide for a certain power being taken from His own side, so that all who are built up in Him should grow up, even those who are born again by the laver, receiving of His bones and of His flesh, that is, of His holiness and of His glory. (Banquet of the Ten Virgins, Discourse 3)

In the eighth Discourse of the Ten Virgins, he writes:

Now the statement … denotes the faith of those who are cleansed from corruption in the laver of regeneration, …. Whence it is necessary that she [i.e. the Church] should stand upon the laver, bringing forth those who are washed in it. And in this way the power which she has in connection with the laver is called the moon, because the regenerate shine being renewed with a new ray, that is, a new light. (Banquet of the Ten Virgins, Discourse 8)

C. Fourth Century Fathers

Aphraates (280 – 367), a bishop in Syria, in his Sixth Demonstration, writes:

Therefore, my beloved, we also have received of the Spirit of Christ, and Christ dwells in us, as it is written that the Spirit said this through the mouth of the Prophet: I will dwell in them and will walk in them. Therefore let us prepare our temples for the Spirit of Christ, and let us not grieve it that it may not depart from us. Remember the warning that the Apostle gives us: Grieve not the Holy Spirit whereby you have been sealed unto the day of redemption. For from baptism do we receive the Spirit of Christ. For in that hour in which the priests invoke the Spirit, the heavens open and it descends and moves upon the waters. And those that are baptized are clothed in it; for the Spirit stays aloof from all that are born of the flesh, until they come to the new birth by water, and then they receive the Holy Spirit. For in the first birth they are born with an animal souls which is created within man and is not thereafter subject to death, as he said: Adam became a living soul. But in the second birth, that through baptism, they received the Holy Spirit from a particle of the Godhead, and it is not again subject to death. For when men die, the animal spirit is buried with the body, and sense is taken away from it, but the heavenly spirit that they receive goes according to its nature to Christ. And both these the Apostle has made known, for he said: The body is buried in animal wise, and rises again in spiritual wise. The Spirit goes back again to Christ according to its nature, for the Apostle said again: When we shall depart from the body we shall be with our Lord. For the Spirit of Christ, which the spiritual receive, goes to our Lord. And the animal spirit is buried in its nature, and sense is taken away from it. Whosoever guards the Spirit of Christ in purity, when it returns to Christ it thus addresses him: “The body into which I went, and which put me on from the water of the baptism, has kept me in holiness.” And the Holy Spirit will be earnest with Christ for the resurrection of that body which kept Him with purity, and the Spirit will request to be again conjoined to it that that body may rise up in glory. And whatever man there is that receives the Spirit from the water (of baptism) and grieves it, it departs from him until he dies, and returns according to its nature to Christ, and accuses that man of having grieved it.

Notice that according to Aphraates, we receive the Spirit in baptism.

St. Hilary of Poitiers (d. 368). In Book I of his work titled On the Trinity, St. Hilary writes:

My soul judged of Him as One Who, drawing us upward to partake of His own Divine nature, has loosened henceforth the bond of bodily observances Who, unlike the Symbolic Law, has initiated us into no rites of mutilating the flesh, but Whose purpose is that our spirit, circumcised from vice, should purify all the natural faculties of the body by abstinence from sin, that we being buried with His Death in Baptism may return to the life of eternity (since regeneration to life is death to the former life), and dying to our sins be born again to immortality, that even as He abandoned His immortality to die for us, so should we awaken from death to immortality with Him. (On the Trinity, Bk I)

In Book VIII of this same work he writes:

Again I ask, is the faith one or is there a second faith? One undoubtedly, and that on the authority of the Apostle himself, who proclaims one faith even as one Lord, and one baptism, and one hope, and one God. (Ephesians 4:4-5) If then it is through faith, that is, through the nature of one faith, that all are one, how is it that thou dost not understand a natural unity in the case of those who through the nature of one faith are one? For all were born again to innocence, to immortality, to the knowledge of God, to the faith of hope. And if these things cannot differ within themselves because there is both one hope and one God, as also there is one Lord and one baptism of regeneration; if these things are one rather by agreement than by nature, ascribe a unity of will to those also who have been born again into them. If, however, they have been begotten again into the nature of one life and eternity, then, inasmuch as their soul and heart are one, the unity of will fails to account for their case who are one by regeneration into the same nature. (On the Trinity, Bk VIII)

In Book IX of this same work he writes:

We are circumcised not with a fleshly circumcision but with the circumcision of Christ, that is, we are born again into a new man; for, being buried with Him in His baptism, we must die to the old man, because the regeneration of baptism has the force of resurrection. (On the Trinity, Bk IX)

In Book XII of this same work he writes:

Keep, I pray You, this my pious faith undefiled, and even till my spirit departs, grant that this may be the utterance of my convictions: so that I may ever hold fast that which I professed in the creed of my regeneration, when I was baptized in the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. (On the Trinity, Bk 12)

St. Ephraim of Syria (306 – 373). In his Homily on our Lord, St. Ephraim writes:

Therefore, because the Spirit was with the Son, He came to John to receive from him baptism, that He might mingle with the visible waters the invisible Spirit; that they whose bodies should feel the moistening of the water, their souls should feel the gift of the Spirit; that even as the bodies outwardly feel the pouring of the water upon them, so the souls inwardly may feel the pouring of the Spirit upon them. (Homily on our Lord)

Next consider St. Cyril (315-386), bishop of Jerusalem. In the Prologue to his Catechetical Lectures (i.e. lectures to Catechumens) he writes to the Catechumens:

Great is the Baptism that lies before you: a ransom to captives; a remission of offenses; a death of sin; a new-birth of the soul; a garment of light; a holy indissoluble seal; a chariot to heaven; the delight of Paradise; a welcome into the kingdom; the gift of adoption!

In his third Catechetical Lecture, he writes the following to the Catechumens:

Regard not the Laver as simple water, but rather regard the spiritual grace that is given with the water. For just as the offerings brought to the heathen altars, though simple in their nature, become defiled by the invocation of the idols, so contrariwise the simple water having received the invocation of the Holy Ghost, and of Christ, and of the Father, acquires a new power of holiness. For since man is of twofold nature, soul and body, the purification also is twofold, the one incorporeal for the incorporeal part, and the other bodily for the body: the water cleanses the body, and the Spirit seals the soul; that we may draw near unto God, having our heart sprinkled by the Spirit, and our body washed with pure water. When going down, therefore, into the water, think not of the bare element, but look for salvation by the power of the Holy Ghost: for without both you can not possibly be made perfect. It is not I that say this, but the Lord Jesus Christ, who has the power in this matter: for He says, Except a man be born anew (and He adds the words) of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. Neither does he that is baptized with water, but not found worthy of the Spirit, receive the grace in perfection; nor if a man be virtuous in his deeds, but receive not the seal by water, shall he enter into the kingdom of heaven. A bold saying, but not mine, for it is Jesus who has declared it: and here is the proof of the statement from Holy Scripture. Cornelius was a just man, who was honoured with a vision of Angels, and had set up his prayers and alms-deeds as a good memorial before God in heaven. Peter came, and the Spirit was poured out upon them that believed, and they spoke with other tongues, and prophesied: and after the grace of the Spirit the Scripture says that Peter commanded them to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ; in order that, the soul having been born again by faith, the body also might by the water partake of the grace. (sections 3-4)

If any man receive not Baptism, he has no salvation; except only Martyrs, who even without the water receive the kingdom. (section 10)

For you go down into the water, bearing your sins, but the invocation of grace, having sealed your soul, suffers you not afterwards to be swallowed up by the terrible dragon. Having gone down dead in sins, you come up quickened in righteousness. For if you have been united with the likeness of the Saviour’s death, you shall also be deemed worthy of His Resurrection. For as Jesus took upon Him the sins of the world, and died, that by putting sin to death He might rise again in righteousness; so thou by going down into the water, and being in a manner buried in the waters, as He was in the rock, art raised again walking in newness of life. (section 12)

In Lecture 18, he writes to the Catechumens, who are approaching the day of their baptism (i.e. the Easter vigil):

But now the holy day of the Passover is at hand, and you, beloved in Christ, are to be enlightened by the Laver of regeneration. You shall therefore again be taught what is requisite, if God so will; with how great devotion and order you must enter in when summoned, for what purpose each of the holy mysteries of Baptism is performed, and with what reverence and order you must go from Baptism to the Holy Altar of God, and enjoy its spiritual and heavenly mysteries; that your souls being previously enlightened by the word of doctrine, you may discover in each particular the greatness of the gifts bestowed on you by God. (Lecture 18)

In his Lecture 19, the first lecture given to the newly baptized believers in the time of mystatogy (i.e. between Easter and Pentecost), St. Cyril begins to explain to the new Catholics what happened to them at their baptism. He writes:

I have long been wishing, O true-born and dearly beloved children of the Church, to discourse to you concerning these spiritual and heavenly Mysteries; but since I well knew that seeing is far more persuasive than hearing, I waited for the present season; that finding you more open to the influence of my words from your present experience, I might lead you by the hand into the brighter and more fragrant meadow of the Paradise before us; especially as you have been made fit to receive the more sacred Mysteries, after having been found worthy of divine and life-giving Baptism. Since therefore it remains to set before you a table of the more perfect instructions, let us now teach you these things exactly, that you may know the effect wrought upon you on that evening of your baptism. … For our adversary the devil, as was just now read, as a roaring lion, walks about, seeking whom he may devour. (1 Peter 5:9) But though in former times death was mighty and devoured, at the holy Laver of regeneration God has wiped away every tear from off all faces. For you shall no more mourn, now that you have put off the old man; but you shall keep holy-day, clothed in the garment of salvation (Isaiah 61:10), even Jesus Christ.

He continues to explain the significance of the exorcism and vows that take place immediately prior to baptism. Then, in Lecture 20, he writes:

After these things, you were led to the holy pool of Divine Baptism, as Christ was carried from the Cross to the Sepulchre which is before our eyes. And each of you was asked, whether he believed in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, and you made that saving confession, and descended three times into the water, and ascended again; here also hinting by a symbol at the three days burial of Christ. For as our Saviour passed three days and three nights in the heart of the earth, so you also in your first ascent out of the water, represented the first day of Christ in the earth, and by your descent, the night; for as he who is in the night, no longer sees, but he who is in the day, remains in the light, so in the descent, as in the night, you saw nothing, but in ascending again you were as in the day. And at the self-same moment you were both dying and being born; and that Water of salvation was at once your grave and your mother. And what Solomon spoke of others will suit you also; for he said, in that case, There is a time to bear and a time to die (Ecclesiastes 3:2); but to you, in the reverse order, there was a time to die and a time to be born; and one and the same time effected both of these, and your birth went hand in hand with your death.

Next consider St. Basil the Great (329-379). In the tenth chapter of his De Spiritu Sancto (On the Holy Spirit) he writes:

Whence is it that we are Christians? Through our faith, would be the universal answer. And in what way are we saved? Plainly because we were regenerate through the grace given in our baptism. How else could we be? And after recognising that this salvation is established through the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost, shall we fling away “that form of doctrine” (Romans 6:17) which we received? Would it not rather be ground for great groaning if we are found now further off from our salvation “than when we first believed,” and deny now what we then received? …. For if to me my baptism was the beginning of life, and that day of regeneration the first of days, it is plain that the utterance uttered in the grace of adoption was the most honourable of all. Can I then, perverted by these men’s seductive words, abandon the tradition which guided me to the light, which bestowed on me the boon of the knowledge of God, whereby I, so long a foe by reason of sin, was made a child of God? But, for myself, I pray that with this confession I may depart hence to the Lord, and them I charge to preserve the faith secure until the day of Christ, and to keep the Spirit undivided from the Father and the Son, preserving, both in the confession of faith and in the doxology, the doctrine taught them at their baptism. (Chapter 10)

In the fifteenth chapter of this same work he writes:

For perfection of life the imitation of Christ is necessary, not only in the example of gentleness, lowliness, and long suffering set us in His life, but also of His actual death. So Paul, the imitator of Christ, says, “being made conformable unto his death; if by any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead.” How then are we made in the likeness of His death? In that we were buried with Him by baptism. What then is the manner of the burial? And what is the advantage resulting from the imitation? First of all, it is necessary that the continuity of the old life be cut. And this is impossible less a man be born again, according to the Lord’s word; for the regeneration, as indeed the name shows, is a beginning of a second life. So before beginning the second, it is necessary to put an end to the first. For just as in the case of runners who turn and take the second course, a kind of halt and pause intervenes between the movements in the opposite direction, so also in making a change in lives it seemed necessary for death to come as mediator between the two, ending all that goes before, and beginning all that comes after. How then do we achieve the descent into hell? By imitating, through baptism, the burial of Christ. For the bodies of the baptized are, as it were, buried in the water. Baptism then symbolically signifies the putting off of the works of the flesh; as the apostle says, you were “circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, in putting off the body of the sins of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ; buried with him in baptism.” And there is, as it were, a cleansing of the soul from the filth that has grown on it from the carnal mind, as it is written, “You shall wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.” On this account we do not, as is the fashion of the Jews, wash ourselves at each defilement, but own the baptism of salvation to be one. For there the death on behalf of the world is one, and one the resurrection of the dead, whereof baptism is a type. For this cause the Lord, who is the Dispenser of our life, gave us the covenant of baptism, containing a type of life and death, for the water fulfils the image of death, and the Spirit gives us the earnest of life. Hence it follows that the answer to our question why the water was associated with the Spirit is clear: the reason is because in baptism two ends were proposed; on the one hand, the destroying of the body of sin, that it may never bear fruit unto death; on the other hand, our living unto the Spirit, and having our fruit in holiness; the water receiving the body as in a tomb figures death, while the Spirit pours in the quickening power, renewing our souls from the deadness of sin unto their original life. This then is what it is to be born again of water and of the Spirit, the being made dead being effected in the water, while our life is wrought in us through the Spirit. In three immersions, then, and with three invocations, the great mystery of baptism is performed, to the end that the type of death may be fully figured, and that by the tradition of the divine knowledge the baptized may have their souls enlightened. It follows that if there is any grace in the water, it is not of the nature of the water, but of the presence of the Spirit. (Chapter 15)

St. Gregory of Nazianzus (325-389). In his eighteenth Oration, St. Gregory of Nazianzus describes his own father’s baptism:

After a short interval, wonder succeeded wonder. I will commend the account of it to the ears of the faithful, for to profane minds nothing that is good is trustworthy. He was approaching that regeneration by water and the Spirit, by which we confess to God the formation and completion of the Christlike man, and the transformation and reformation from the earthy to the Spirit. He was approaching the laver with warm desire and bright hope, after all the purgation possible, and a far greater purification of soul and body than that of the men who were to receive the tables from Moses. Their purification extended only to their dress, and a slight restriction of the belly, and a temporary continence. The whole of his past life had been a preparation for the enlightenment, and a preliminary purification making sure the gift, in order that perfection might be entrusted to purity, and that the blessing might incur no risk in a soul which was confident in its possession of the grace. (Oration 18)

In his thirty-fourth Oration, he writes:

For my part I revere also the Titles of the Word, which are so many, and so high and great, which even the demons respect. And I revere also the Equal Rank of the Holy Ghost; and I fear the threat pronounced against those who blaspheme Him. And blasphemy is not the reckoning Him God, but the severing Him from the Godhead. And here you must remark that That which is blasphemed is Lord, and That which is avenged is the Holy Ghost, evidently as Lord. I cannot bear to be unenlightened after my Enlightenment, by marking with a different stamp any of the Three into Whom I was baptized; and thus to be indeed buried in the water, and initiated not into Regeneration, but into death. (Oration 34)

In his fortieth Oration, he writes:

And as Christ the Giver of it is called by many various names, so too is this Gift, whether it is from the exceeding gladness of its nature (as those who are very fond of a thing take pleasure in using its name), or that the great variety of its benefits has reacted for us upon its names. We call it, the Gift, the Grace, Baptism, Unction, Illumination, the Clothing of Immortality, the Laver of Regeneration, the Seal, and everything that is honourable. We call it the Gift, because it is given to us in return for nothing on our part; Grace, because it is conferred even on debtors; Baptism, because sin is buried with it in the water; Unction, as Priestly and Royal, for such were they who were anointed; Illumination, because of its splendour; Clothing, because it hides our shame; the Laver, because it washes us; the Seal because it preserves us, and is moreover the indication of Dominion. In it the heavens rejoice; it is glorified by Angels, because of its kindred splendour. It is the image of the heavenly bliss. We long indeed to sing out its praises, but we cannot worthily do so. (Oration 40)

Next consider St. Gregory of Nyssa (c 335 – after 394), in his work titled “On the Baptism of Christ,” wherein he writes:

I for my part rejoice over both—over you that are initiated, because you are enriched with a great gift: over you that are uninitiated, because you have a fair expectation of hope— remission of what is to be accounted for, release from bondage, close relation to God, free boldness of speech, and in place of servile subjection equality with the angels. For these things, and all that follow from them, the grace of Baptism secures and conveys to us. …

But Christ, the repairer of his evil-doing, assumes manhood in its fullness, and saves man, and becomes the type and figure of us all, to sanctify the first-fruits of every action, and leave to His servants no doubt in their zeal for the tradition. Baptism, then, is a purification from sins, a remission of trespasses, a cause of renovation and regeneration. By regeneration, understand regeneration conceived in thought, not discerned by bodily sight. For we shall not, according to the Jew Nicodemus and his somewhat dull intelligence, change the old man into a child, nor shall we form anew him who is wrinkled and gray-headed to tenderness and youth, if we bring back the man again into his mother’s womb: but we do bring back, by royal grace, him who bears the scars of sin, and has grown old in evil habits, to the innocence of the babe. For as the child new-born is free from accusations and from penalties, so too the child of regeneration has nothing for which to answer, being released by royal bounty from accountability. And this gift it is not the water that bestows (for in that case it were a thing more exalted than all creation), but the command of God, and the visitation of the Spirit that comes sacramentally to set us free. But water serves to express the cleansing. For since we are wont by washing in water to render our body clean when it is soiled by dirt or mud, we therefore apply it also in the sacramental action, and display the spiritual brightness by that which is subject to our senses.

Let us however, if it seems well, persevere in enquiring more fully and more minutely concerning Baptism, starting, as from the fountain-head, from the Scriptural declaration, “Unless a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. ” Why are both named, and why is not the Spirit alone accounted sufficient for the completion of Baptism? Man, as we know full well, is compound, not simple: and therefore the cognate and similar medicines are assigned for healing to him who is twofold and conglomerate:— for his visible body, water, the sensible element—for his soul, which we cannot see, the Spirit invisible, invoked by faith, present unspeakably. For “the Spirit breathes where He wills, and you hear His voice, but canst not tell whence He comes or whither He goes.” He blesses the body that is baptized, and the water that baptizes. Despise not, therefore, the Divine laver, nor think lightly of it, as a common thing, on account of the use of water. For the power that operates is mighty, and wonderful are the things that are wrought thereby. For this holy altar, too, by which I stand, is stone, ordinary in its nature, nowise different from the other slabs of stone that build our houses and adorn our pavements; but seeing that it was consecrated to the service of God, and received the benediction, it is a holy table, an altar undefiled, no longer touched by the hands of all, but of the priests alone, and that with reverence. The bread again is at first common bread, but when the sacramental action consecrates it, it is called, and becomes, the Body of Christ. So with the sacramental oil; so with the wine: though before the benediction they are of little value, each of them, after the sanctification bestowed by the Spirit, has its several operation. The same power of the word, again, also makes the priest venerable and honourable, separated, by the new blessing bestowed upon him, from his community with the mass of men. While but yesterday he was one of the mass, one of the people, he is suddenly rendered a guide, a president, a teacher of righteousness, an instructor in hidden mysteries; and this he does without being at all changed in body or in form; but, while continuing to be in all appearance the man he was before, being, by some unseen power and grace, transformed in respect of his unseen soul to the higher condition.

And so there are many things, which if you consider you will see that their appearance is contemptible, but the things they accomplish are mighty: and this is especially the case when you collect from the ancient history instances cognate and similar to the subject of our inquiry. The rod of Moses was a hazel wand. And what is that, but common wood that every hand cuts and carries, and fashions to what use it chooses, and casts as it will into the fire? But when God was pleased to accomplish by that rod those wonders, lofty, and passing the power of language to express, the wood was changed into a serpent. And again, at another time, he smote the waters, and now made the water blood, now made to issue forth a countless brood of frogs: and again he divided the sea, severed to its depths without flowing together again. Likewise the mantle of one of the prophets, though it was but a goat’s skin, made Elisha renowned in the whole world. And the wood of the Cross is of saving efficacy for all men, though it is, as I am informed, a piece of a poor tree, less valuable than most trees are. So a bramble bush showed to Moses the manifestation of the presence of God: so the remains of Elisha raised a dead man to life; so clay gave sight to him that was blind from the womb. And all these things, though they were matter without soul or sense, were made the means for the performance of the great marvels wrought by them, when they received the power of God. Now by a similar train of reasoning, water also, though it is nothing else than water, renews the man to spiritual regeneration, when the grace from above hallows it. And if any one answers me again by raising a difficulty, with his questions and doubts, continually asking and inquiring how water and the sacramental act that is performed therein regenerate, I most justly reply to him, “Show me the mode of that generation which is after the flesh, and I will explain to you the power of regeneration in the soul.” (On the Baptism of Christ)

Later in this work, St. Gregory of Nyssa goes into a survey of the Old Testament types of baptism. He writes:

But when we are aware of his attacks, we ought to repeat to ourselves the apostolic words, “As many of us as were baptized into Christ were baptized into His death (Romans 6:3).” Now if we have been conformed to His death, sin henceforth in us is surely a corpse, pierced through by the javelin of Baptism, as that fornicator was thrust through by the zealous Phinehas.

In his “Great Catechism,” he writes:

The saving nature of Baptism depends on three things; Prayer, Water, and Faith. 1. It is shown how Prayer secures the Divine Presence. God is a God of truth; and He has promised to come (as Miracles prove that He has come already) if invoked in a particular way. 2. It is shown how the Deity gives life from water. In human generation, even without prayer, He gives life from a small beginning. In a higher generation He transforms matter, not into soul, but into spirit. 3. Human freedom, as evinced in faith and repentance, is also necessary to Regeneration. Being thrice dipped in the water is our earliest mortification; coming out of it is a forecast of the ease with which the pure shall rise in a blessed resurrection: the whole process is an imitation of Christ. (The Great Catechism)

[W]hen, I say, they have heard this and the like from us, and are besides instructed as to the process—namely that it is prayer and the invocation of heavenly grace, and water, and faith, by which the mystery of regeneration is accomplished—they still remain incredulous and have an eye only for the outward and visible, as if that which is operated corporeally concurred not with the fulfilment of God’s promise. How, they ask, can prayer and the invocation of Divine power over the water be the foundation of life in those who have been thus initiated? (The Great Catechism, part III [The Sacraments])

In his work titled “Against Eunomius,” he writes:

[T]o speak briefly, as there are in us three births, whereby human nature is quickened, one of the body, another in the sacrament of regeneration, another by that resurrection of the dead for which we look …. (Against Eunomius, Bk IV)

In his second Letter, he writes:

Since, then, in the case of those who are regenerate from death to eternal life, it is through the Holy Trinity that the life-giving power is bestowed on those who with faith are deemed worthy of the grace, and in like manner the grace is imperfect, if any one, whichever it be, of the names of the Holy Trinity be omitted in the saving baptism— for the sacrament of regeneration is not completed in the Son and the Father alone without the Spirit: nor is the perfect boon of life imparted to Baptism in the Father and the Spirit, if the name of the Son be suppressed: nor is the grace of that Resurrection accomplished in the Father and the Son, if the Spirit be left out: — for this reason we rest all our hope, and the persuasion of the salvation of our souls, upon the three Persons, recognized by these names …. (Letter 2)

Next consider St. Pacian (d. 391), bishop of Barcelona. In his sermon on Baptism, he writes:

Thus Christ continues in the Church through his priests, as the same Apostles says: In Christ, I have begotten you. And so, the seed of Christ, that is, the Spirit of God, brings forth the new man, nourished in the womb of his mother, welcomed at his birth at the font through the hands of the priests, while faith presides over the ceremony. Christ must, therefore, be received in order to beget, for the apostles John says: To all who received him he gave the power to become sons of God. But these things cannot be accomplished except by the sacrament of the font, the chrism and the priest. For sin is washed away by the waters of the font; the Holy Spirit is poured forth in the chrism; and we obtain both of these gifts through the hands and the mouth of the priest. Thus the whole man is reborn and renewed in Christ. … And so when we come to the sign of the Lord in the sacrament of baptism we are freed of these chains and liberated by the blood of Christ and by his name. Therefore, beloved, we are washed clean but once; we are freed only once; we are received into the immortal kingdom once and for all.