-----Original Message-----
From: Robert Schneider
To: asa@calvin.edu
Sent: 4/26/2002 5:27 PM
Subject: Freedom of the will (was Re: Bear sacrifice)
<<<Hi, if you all will "bear" with me, I'll continue to stay off the
original
subject ("Bear sacrifice") and do what I love to do, zero in on a
statement
in an earlier post and question it. This time it is Adrian's assertion
(below) that Augustine "stongly affirmed free will." I think that may
have
been true in his treatise on free will against the Manichaeans, but by
the
time he was wading in against Pelagius, I think he took a different
tack. In the latter writings he took the position that the individual will
is
oriented either toward good or evil, and if the latter it is so oriented
by the grace of God. >>>
AT: Although it is true that Augustine shifted to astringer opredestinarian
position later in his life becasue of Pelagius, he never gave up the
dialectic between predestination and free will, as is evident in his later
writings - Treatise on Gace and Free Will & Against Julian.
<<< Robert Evans (_Pelagius: Inquiries and Reappraisals_,
p.
89) sums up Augustine's change in these words:
"What we observe here is an instance of Augustine's shifting away
from an image of man as an autonomous chooser among moral
possibilities to an image of man as inescapably turned either toward
or away from God and as turned toward God only through the power of the
divine grace. The first image was relevant to his anti-Manichaean
polemic.
It is one of Augustine's weaknesses as a theologian that these
images are never satisfactorily related to one another.">>>
AT: See above.
<<< Finally, I want to say that I think the notion of double
predestination
is there in Augustine, and was picked up by Acquinas. Calvin took the
notion to its logical consequence.>>>
AT: This is news to me. Augustine & Aquinas supporting double
predestination? Can you please point me to the relevant works? Thanks!
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