Augustine of Hippo (354-430) was born to a Christian mother, Monica, in North Africa but didn’t become a Christian himself until after delving into philosophical Greek religions. He found that those religions were powerless to free him from sin. As he was struggling with his sins, he overheard a group of children singing “Take up and read.”
Having a copy of the New Testament nearby, he took up and read the verse “put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires” (Romans 13:14). He became a diligent student of the Scriptures and eventually the leader of the church in the city of Hippo (in present day Libya). He rose to defend the gospel against the moralizing attacks of a British monk named Pelagius. Pelagius was austere and strict. He was particularly offended by a prayer of Augustine which he heard repeated: “You command self-control; grant what You command and command what You will.”
In order to emphasize people's freedom to reform by their own will power, Pelagius taught that Adam's sin only affected himself (not his descendants) and so every child is free to obey God as Adam had been before his fall. Augustine responded that every person is “dead in their trespasses and sins” (Eph. 2:1); that we are depraved and lost. Augustine, saw Pelagius, rightly, as a threat to the gospel. He countered, if we are morally free not to sin, then why did Christ die for us? If we could save ourselves by our own self-determination, then there would be no need for Jesus to die for our sins. If Adam's sin only affected himself then it must be that Christ's death and resurrection were only for Himself. In other words, if Adam was only a bad example then Jesus is only a good example and we can save ourselves by self-effort. Besides, Paul had written, “the result of one trespass [of Adam] was condemnation for all men...” (Romans 5:18).
Depravity & Grace
Through faith in Christ, we are saved, but we cannot produce that faith by ourselves. Augustine said, based on the Bible, that of His great mercy, God had chosen some people to repent and reach out in faith to accept God's gift in Christ. Sadly, many of the teachings of Augustine were neglected during the “Dark Ages” prior to the Protestant Reformation. Augustine started his own order of monks: the Augustinian order. Later we will find an Augustinian monk playing a very important role in the rediscovery of the gospel.
For more on Augustine, see our lessons from John Piper:
Some of this article is an excerpt from an article originally published in Impact Magazine.
John B. Carpenter, Ph.D., is pastor of Covenant Reformed Baptist Church, in Danville, VA. and the author of Seven Pillars of a Biblical Church (Wipf and Stock, 2022).