Theological Term of the Week: Augustinianism

Augustinianism

The doctrinal view that after the fall, all humankind is corrupted by original sin, and this corrupted nature controls the human will and inclines it toward evil so that no person has ever or will ever take the first step toward a right relationship with God.

• From The Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter 6: 

  Of the Fall of Man, of Sin, and of the Punishment Thereof. 

   1. Our first parents, being seduced by the subtlety and temptation of Satan, sinned in eating the forbidden fruit. This their sin God was pleased, according to his wise and holy counsel, to permit, having purposed to order it to his own glory. 

   2. By this sin they fell from their original righteousness and communion with God, and so became dead in sin, and wholly defiled in all the faculties and parts of soul and body. 

   3. They being the root of all mankind, the guilt of this sin was imputed, and the same death in sin and corrupted nature conveyed to all their posterity descending from them by ordinary generation. 

   4. From this original corruption, whereby we are utterly indisposed, disabled, and made opposite to all good, and wholly inclined to all evil, do proceed all actual transgressions.

• From Total Depravity by Loraine Boettner: The Extent and Effects of Original Sin: 

  It is in this sense that man since the fall “is utterly indisposed, disabled, and made opposite to all good, and wholly inclined to all evil.” He possesses a fixed bias of the will against God, and instinctively and willingly turns to evil. He is an alien by birth, and a sinner by choice. The inability under which he labors is not an inability to exercise volitions, but an inability to be willing to exercise holy volitions… .  In matters pertaining to his salvation, the unregenerate man is not at liberty to choose between good and evil, but only to choose between greater and lesser evil, which is not properly free will. The fact that fallen man still has ability to do certain acts morally good in themselves does not prove that he can do acts meriting salvation, for his motives may be wholly wrong.Of the Fall of Man, of Sin, and of the Punishment Thereof. 

Learn more:

1. Theopedia: Augustinianism
2. Got Questions: What is Augustinianism?
3. C. Michael Patton: What happened at the Fall? Pelagianism and Augustinianism
4. A. A. Hodge: A Comparison of Systems: Pelagianism, Semi-Pelagianism and Augustinianism

Related terms:

• Pelagianism
• Semi-Pelagianism

Filed under Salvation

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