continued:
Free Will Is A Faculty Of Our Nature
The Early Church, before Augustine, taught that free will was an essential element of our God given nature. That is, they taught that it was a faculty of our constitution, and that we abuse that faculty of free will when we choose to sin. They taught that all men have
the same nature in the sense that the faculty of free will is in the constitution of all.
Irenaeus said, “Forasmuch as
all men are of the same nature, having power to hold and to do that which is good, and having power again to lose it, and not to do what is right; before men of sense, (and how much more before God!) some… are justly accused, and receive condign punishment, because they refuse what is just and right.”
[25] Again Irenaeus said, “Those who do not do it [good] will receive the just judgment of God, because they had not worked good when they had it in their power to do so. But if some had been made by
nature bad, and others good, these latter would not be deserving of praise for being good, for they were created that way, nor would the former be reprehensible, for that is how they were made. However,
all men are of the same nature. They are all able to hold fast and to do what is good. On the other hand, they have the power to cast good from them and not to do it.”
[26]
Pelagius, who is historically known for teaching free will in the days of Augustine, was in perfect agreement with the Early Church on this point. He said, “In
all there is free-will equally
by nature…”
[27]
Origen said, “The Scriptures…emphasize the freedom of the will. They condemn those who sin, and approve those who do right… We are responsible for being bad and worthy of being cast outside. For it is not the
nature in us that is the cause of the evil; rather, it is the voluntary choice that works evil.”
[28] He also said, “the heretics introduce the doctrine of
different natures.”
[29]
There were two conflicting views of human nature during the days of the Early Church. The Christians believed that free will was a faculty of the nature of every man by virtue of his creation. Therefore the Early Christians viewed the sinfulness of man as being all together voluntary, caused by the freedom of their own wills. The Gnostics, on the other hand, believed that the human nature of each man was created so corrupt and ruined that mankind did not have the freedom to choose what was good. They viewed the actions of men as being caused by their natures. The Early Christians taught that it is not that some men choose evil because their nature is evil, while other men choose what was good because their natures were good, but that all men have the same nature, all having the faculty of free will in their constitution, and each man chooses by free will to be either good or evil in their moral character.
The errors of the Gnostics were continually rejected by the Early Church, but the Gnostics continued to try to penetrate the Church with their views. The Gnostics even wrote their own gospels, known as the Gnostic Gospels today, where they stole credible names like Mary and Thomas to try to give validity to their teachings.
While many of the attempts of the Gnostics to infiltrate the Church failed, and many of their views are widely rejected today, it seems that their particular view of human nature, free will, and the nature of sin has found wide acceptance in the Church today. While the view of the Early Church on human nature, free will, and sin is seldom held to or taught in our time.
continued :
Confronting an Ancient Error
It is my aim to “earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints” (
Jud. 1:3). It is my hope that this book will help return the Church, or at least a remnant in it, to the doctrines of Early Christianity on this point. The objective of this article is to confront and correct the Gnostic errors which have crept into the Church and to revive a very old Scriptural doctrine which was held universally by early Christianity in the days of its prime, but which has been largely forgotten overall by the Church ever since.
If all of the Early Christians believed in free will, we have to ask: what went wrong? When did this change and who changed it? The Apostle Paul said, “Now I beseech you, brethren, mark them which cause divisions and offenses contrary to the doctrine which ye have learned; and avoid them” (
Rom. 16:17). If the Church was so perfectly united for hundreds of years on this doctrine, when did the division occur and who brought it? Who lead the Church in its departure from Early Christianity? These are very important questions that few consider; yet, the answer is obvious enough in history.
It was not until the fourth century that Gnostic and Manichaean influence started to infiltrate the Christian Church, polluting it with their doctrines. Augustine, after saturating himself in Gnostic philosophy for many years, joined the Church and became a Bishop. He then began to contradict what the Church had always taught on human nature and the freedom of man’s will and taught in accordance with the Gnostic views of human nature and free will. The Church, through the influence of Augustine, began to embrace and teach the doctrine of natural inability.
It is an undisputed and known fact of history, admitted by Augustine’s admirers and supporters in their historical accounts of his life, that Augustine was influenced by, and a member of, the Manichaean Gnostic sect. John K. Ryan, in his introduction to “The Confessions of Saint Augustine” said, “The two great intellectual influences upon Augustine prior to his conversion were Manicheism and Greek Philosophy.”
[42] In their introduction to “The Confessions of Augustine,” John Gibb and William Montgomery said, “In the same year in which he read the Scriptures and was disappointed in them, Augustine joined the Manichaean sect…”
[43] They also said, “For nearly nine years Augustine was a Manichaean Auditor. At first he was a zealous partisan who contended publicly for his new faith, and did not hesitate to ridicule the doctrines of the Church and especially the Old Testament Scriptures…”
[44]
Remember that Manes, also known as Mani, was the founder of Manichaeism. That was the same man who Archelaus of the Early Church debated against on the topic of free will and inability. Augustine had been in Manichaeism for many years and studied the writings of Manes. Surprisingly, when Augustine first joined the Christian Church, he began teaching the freedom of the will when debating against the Manichaeans. He said, “We [Christians]…assert the liberty of the will, whereby our actions are rendered either moral or immoral, and keep it free from every bond of necessity
, on account of the righteous judgment of God.”
[45] He also said, “The religious mind… confesses… and maintains… that we do by our free will whatsoever we know and feel to be done by us only because we will it.”
[46] And he said, “we sin voluntarily and not by necessity.”
[47] But after refuting the Manichaeans and defending free will, when he was debating the Pelagians, Augustine unfortunately went back to the doctrine of total inability, as the Manichaeans had taught. Beausobre also noticed this change and noted that Augustine defended free will “so long as he had to do with the Manichaeans. But when he came to dispute with the Pelagians, he changed his system. Then he denied that kind of freedom which before he had defended; and, so far as I am able to judge, his sentiments no longer differed from theirs [the Manichaeans] concerning the servitude of the will. He ascribed the servitude to the corruption which original sin brought into our nature; whereas the Manichaeans ascribed it to an evil quality, eternally inherit in matter.”
[48] When Augustine forsook his position on free will, saying “I have tried hard to maintain the free choice of the human will, but the grace of God prevailed,”
[49] he began to influence the rest of the Church with the idea of natural inability, which view the Church did not previously believe at all. The doctrine of free will was soon replaced with the idea of a ruined, corrupt, sinful nature.
Regarding the doctrine of a sinful nature, Charles Finney said, “This doctrine is a stumbling-block both to the church and the world, infinitely dishonorable to God, and an abomination alike to God and the human intellect, and should be banished from every pulpit, and from every formula of doctrine, and from the world. It is a relic of heathen philosophy, and was foisted in among the doctrines of Christianity by Augustine, as everyone may know who will take the trouble to examine for himself.”
[50]
Harry Conn said, “Augustine, after studying the philosophy of Manes, the Persian philosopher, brought into the church from Manichaeism the doctrine of original sin.”
[51]
The corruption of our nature, or the loss of our free will, Augustine credited to the original sin of Adam. Augustine said that the “free choice of the will was present in that man who was the first to be formed… But after he sinned by that free will, we who have descended from his progeny have been plunged into necessity.”
[52] “By Adam’s transgression, the freedom of’ the human will has been completely lost.”
[53] “By the greatness of the first sin, we have lost the freewill to love God.” And finally he said, “by subverting the rectitude in which he was created, he is followed with the punishment of not being able to do right” and “the freedom to abstain from sin has been lost as a punishment of sin.”
[54]
Julian of Eclanum properly stated Augustine’s position when he said, “…by the sin of the first man, that is, of Adam, free will perished: and that no one has now the power of living well, but that all are constrained into sin by the necessity of their flesh…”
[55] In this teaching, that free will was lost and that men sin by necessity as opposed to abusing their liberty, Rev. Daniel R. Jennings said that Julian “sensed a carryover of Manichaean thought from Augustine into the Christian Church…”
[56] This is why Julian referred to the Augustinians as “Those Manichaeans…”
[57] George Pretyman said about Augustine, “He was in the early part of his life a Manichaean” but “some remains of it seem to have been still left upon his mind…”
[58]
By teaching that free will was lost and sin is the result of a defect in our nature, or the necessity of our corrupted constitution, Augustine was infiltrating the Church with Gnostic concepts and doctrines. Sin was no longer viewed as an ethical problem or a problem with how men use the faculty of their will. Rather, the problem of sin was now viewed as a metaphysical problem or as a fault in the faculty of the will itself.
Those who stood against the error of Augustinian Gnosticism, who accused Augustine of teaching Manichaeism and held unto the old ways and truths of early Christianity, were soon persecuted and condemned as heretics once Augustinianism was given civil and Church authority. The many bishops in the Church who denied that the original sin of Adam so corrupted human nature that free will was lost continued to teach that men were sinners by choice and not by constitution. As a result, they were ripped out of their pulpits, had their possessions confiscated, and were excommunicated by both state and church. The doctrine of free will that the Early Church taught was soon replaced with the Gnostic teaching of a necessitated will because of a corrupted, ruined, sinful nature. Augustinian theology was a massive departure from Early Christianity. Like Calvinism after it, Augustinianism used political and governmental force to silence any voice of opposition so that its doctrines could spread like a plague without challenge. Gnostic views, on this point, successfully crept into the Church.
There are major similarities and yet subtle differences between Augustinianism and Gnosticism. While the Gnostics said that man’s nature was sinful and corrupt and that man didn’t have a free will because man was created by an inferior god, Augustine agreed with the Gnostics that man’s nature was sinful and corrupt and that man did not have a free will, but he said that God made it that way on account of Adam’s sin. While the Gnostics said that flesh was sinful and therefore Christ did not have a flesh, Augustine said that concupiscence in the flesh was sinful and that this sin was hereditary or transmitted from parent to child through the physical passions of intercourse, but that Jesus avoided this hereditary sin by being conceived without physical passion and being born of a virgin. Therefore, Augustine agreed with the Gnostics in
principle, but he differed from them in
explanation. In this way, Augustinian theology was a modified Manichaeism or a semi-Gnosticism.
Consider the following facts:
- All of the Early Christians, before Augustine, believed in man’s free will and denied man’s natural inability.
- The Gnostics in the days of the Early Church believed in man’s natural inability and denied man’s free will.
- Augustine was a Gnostic for many years, in the Manichaeism sect, and converted to the Church out of Gnosticism.
- After joining the Church and being appointed a Bishop, Augustine began to deny the free will of man and to affirm the natural inability of man
- The Church, under Augustine’s influence, began to believe in the natural inability of man, which it never before held to, but which it formerly would refute.
What can we conclude by these facts except that when Augustine converted to Christianity out of Gnosticism, he brought with him some Gnostic doctrine? His views on human nature and free will were never held by the Early Church, but were held by the Gnostics. How can we possibly account for the fact that all of Christianity held to the freedom of the human will while only the Gnostic’s taught a corrupted and sinful nature, until Augustine joined the Christian Church out of Gnosticism? It seems abundantly clear that Augustine departed from the theology of the Early Church and remained in agreement with the Gnostics on the issue of human nature and free will. Church doctrine and theology has been infiltrated and polluted with Gnostic heresies. The Church went wrong at the time of Augustine. Christian theology violently crashed like a train, falling off the tracks, and has continued to charge and move forward on the wrong path and in the wrong direction ever since.
The greatest contributors to modern Christian theology have been Augustine, Luther, and Calvin. Augustine was influenced by Manichaean thought and Luther and Calvin were influenced by Augustinian thought. Therefore, it is no surprise that Augustine denied free will as the Manichaeans did, and Luther and Calvin denied free will as Augustine did. The Manichaeans influenced Augustine and Augustine in turn influenced Luther and Calvin.
‘Augustine himself. (A wonderful saint! As full of pride, passion, bitterness, censoriousness, and as foul-mouthed to all that contradicted him… When Augustine’s passions were heated, his wor…
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