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Sovereign Joy and the God Who Satisfies: Augustine’s Vision | John Piper · Reformed Thinking

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Welcome back to Reform Thinking. Today we're doing a deep dive
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into the historical roots of grace, and we're really focusing
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on one single figure, a man whose presence just defines the
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landscape of Western theological and, well, even philosophical
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thought. We are examining St.
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Augustine of Hippo and his story, his his internal
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spiritual war and the theological conclusions that
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came out of it. They became the very starting
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point for some of the most critical doctrines of the 16th
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century reformers. Specifically, this liberating
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concept that one source calls his sovereign joy.
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That's it. So let's set the stage because
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understanding the world he lived in is, I think, just crucial.
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We're starting in the year 410 AD, and you have to try to
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visualize this year civilizational shock of this
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Rome, the city that was supposed to be eternal, the capital of
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the Western world. It hadn't been successfully
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sacked for almost 1000 years. And then the Gothic army led by
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Alaric just breaches its defenses that event.
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Well, it's signaled the collapse of the secure, ordered world.
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The Empire had been weakening for years, sure, but this felt
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like the end of history itself. We have the witness of Saint
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Jerome writing from Palestine at the time.
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And his despair just sums it all up.
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It does, he asks. If Rome can perish, what can be
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safe? That was the terror of the age.
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And Agustin was 55 years old when this catastrophe hit.
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He was already a Bishop in North Africa and he still had two
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decades of ministry left to live through this escalating chaos.
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And that anxiety, the anxiety of his age, it really fueled his
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greatest work, The City of God, which sought to give a
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theological framework for a world where the earthly order
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had proven hopelessly fragile. So our mission today is to
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follow Augustine's intellectual and spiritual path, how his
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well, his wrenching search for peace and truth led him to
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define the nature of God's grace.
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We're looking at the sources on his life and doctrine to see how
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his spiritual wrestling became the root of the Reformation's
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doctrine of grace, and crucially, how he saw salvation
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as the restoration of delight in God.
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What stands out when you look at the scope of Augustine's
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influence is this sweeping paradox.
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On the one hand, he's seen as one of the greatest fathers of
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the Roman Catholic Church. His concepts were later
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incorporated into the rulings of, say, the Council of Trent
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and Vatican 1 and Vatican 1. Yet at the same time, his
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theological system is the primary source material that
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defined the Reformation's break from that very structure.
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And this is where that concept of grace as superior delight
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helps to resolve that historical contradiction.
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You see, throughout the Reformation controversy, both
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sides appealed to his vast body of texts.
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Constantly. But the question was, which
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Augustine did they follow? The Reformers, Luther, Calvin,
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They focused on the later Augustine, the one who elevated
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God's complete initiating grace, the grace that gives us freedom
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by implanting a joy in God that overpowers the joy and sin.
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So you see the battle lines drawn very sharply in the
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history of doctrine. the Reformation wasn't really
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introducing a brand new idea, it was arguing for the proper
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reading of an ancient voice. It was arguing for the Augustan
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of the Confessions and the anti Pelagian writings.
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To appreciate the depth of Augustine's thought, we have to
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situate him in his world, which was one of just staggering
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political and spiritual upheaval.
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He lived between the shifting of entire civilizations.
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He was the Bishop of Hippo, a major coastal city in North
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Africa, from 396 AD serving for 34 years.
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He started his ministry in a relatively stable world.
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And it ended in the fire of invasion.
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Exactly. Yeah, his death occurred in 430
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AD. The sources note that the
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Vandals, an invading force of around 80,000 people, were at
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the very walls of Hippo. He was besieged.
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He was 76 years old. And when his friends quoted the
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biblical instruction to flee, he refused to leave.
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He refused. He saw himself as a soldier, a
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captain. He had this deep, palpable sense
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of pastoral responsibility. He said no one should dream of
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holding their ships so cheaply that the sailors, let alone the
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captain meaning himself, should desert her in a time of peril.
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He stayed ministering to his people and praying for the
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city's deliverance right up until his death.
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And during those decades, he was so much more than a shepherd of
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souls. He was the primary defender of
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the faith against major theological threats.
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He spent decades repairing what you could call the fences of
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orthodoxy, and in doing so created the vocabulary for
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Western theology for the next 1000 years.
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The major threats he battled, they really fall into 3
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theological categories that are crucial for understanding his
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doctrine of grace. The first one, which was deeply
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personal for him was Manichaism. This was the dualistic error.
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A gnostic sect from Persia. Augustine was intellectually and
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spiritually captivated by this group from the age of 19 to 28.
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And this is where his astonishing honesty in the
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confessions just comes through. Manicheism taught that evil came
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from a separate opposing Kingdom of darkness, Co eternal and
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equal in power to the Kingdom of light.
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Which provided Augustine with a very convenient psychological
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escape hatch from moral failure. Right.
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It let him externalize his sin, especially the intense sexual
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appetites he struggled with, he candidly admits, believing that
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it was not I who was sinning, but some other nature within me.
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He imagined these two antagonistic masses struggling
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for control. When he finally rejected this
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view, he replaced that dualistic cosmos with the biblical vision
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of 1 transcendent, singular God who is the creator of all and
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evil as just the privation or corruption of the good.
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Then the second major challenge was Donatism.
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This presented a deep Sacramento error, and it was rooted in a
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really painful history. The Donatists came out of the
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Diocletian persecution decades earlier, when Roman authorities
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demanded church leaders hand over the Bible for destruction.
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And those who gave over the Scriptures were called
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traditors, transgressors. The Donatists created what they
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called the Church of the Pure, arguing that if a Bishop had
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been a traditor or was otherwise a serious Sinner than any
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sacrament he performed baptism, ordination was null and void.
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The validity of the right depended entirely on the
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subjective purity of the minister.
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And this was an existential crisis for the Church.
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August encountered this by siding with the view that the
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validity of the sacrament comes from the office and, more to the
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point, from Christ's action alone.
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He said the water may be the same when a minister baptizes,
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but the grace is supplied by God, not the human minister.
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Augusta's position here was just groundbreaking.
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It solidified the institutional church's definition.
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It shifts the entire focus from the holiness of the man to the
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absolute sovereignty of the office and the act of God within
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it. Right.
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He reasoned that Christ is the true administrator of the
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sacraments. If the efficacy depended on the
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minister's character, no one could ever be certain of their
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baptism or their salvation. I mean, who can know the inner
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state of the minister's soul? Which?
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Brings us to the third and most defining theological struggle,
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Pelagianism, the grace error. Pelagius minimize the impact of
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original fin, asserting that human nature is fundamentally
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good and has the inherent moral ability to fulfill God's
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commands without needing essential preceding grace.
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And we absolutely have to return to this conflict later, because
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it is the direct counterpoint to His Sovereign Joy doctrine.
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Now consider the sheer scope of this man's intellectual output
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during all this conflict. Adolf Harnack called him the
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greatest man the church possessed between Paul the
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Apostle and Luther the Reformer. Christian History magazine just
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says that after Jesus and Paul, Augustine is the most
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influential figure in Christian history and his influence flowed
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into radically opposing religious movements.
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Think about that paradoxical legacy again.
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The sources confirm the Catholic Church cherishes him.
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The Council of Trent adopted his teaching on original sin and the
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necessity of grace, but the critical separation happened
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over how grace functions in justification.
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The Reformers, like Luther, who was an Augustinian monk, and
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Calvin who cited him thousands of times, They championed the
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Augustine who saw grace as entirely initiating and
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justifying the believer from outside by imputation.
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Where is the Catholic position generally focused on Augustine's
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teaching on grace? Is infused a supernatural habit
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poured into the soul to make it subjectively holy?
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The Reformers argued that the Pelagianism Augustine fought so
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hard against had gradually crept back into the Church through the
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scholastic tradition. They saw the Reformation as the
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triumph of Augustine's later full throated doctrine of grace
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over the subtle semi Pelagian view of human ability that had
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developed. It was Augustine versus the
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misinterpretation of Augustine. The man was so immense.
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His strength was in his ability to synthesize philosophy,
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psychology, theology. His writings were attractive to
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thinkers across centuries and some Aquinas, Luther, Pascal,
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even secular philosophers who admired his psychological
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insight. His writings total 5 million
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words. People trying to grasp his
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entire output often use the analogy that he is the
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Augustinian Alps. You may visit them, you may
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climb one peak, but you'll never escape them or see them entirely
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in this life. Benedict Grushel, a scholar of
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Augustine, mentioned this feeling of impossibility.
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He observed that even a deep, extensive study of one book of
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the Confessions reveals there's still so much more wisdom to
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extract. The sources advise that for
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anyone wanting to approach the Alps, they should start with the
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Confessions. It's the story of his early life
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and conversion. But for the grand theological
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system you have to look at the city of God and on the Trinity.
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To understand the origin of Augustine's revolutionary
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doctrine of grace, we have to examine the Crucible of his
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personal history, the moral and intellectual wrestling that
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forged his theology. Augustine was born in Thigast in
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modern Algeria in 354. His father, Patricius, was a
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Pagan who converted only just before his death, and
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Patricius's single focus for his son was education, specifically
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rhetoric. He wanted his son to have a
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fertile tongue and a successful career.
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A career focused on gratifying human vanity, Augustine's later
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writings reveal a distinct absence of warmth toward his
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father's priorities. He noted that Patricius took no
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trouble at all to see how I was growing in your sight.
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Oh God, or whether I was chased or not.
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The Father's care was entirely physical and career oriented.
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It was lacking any spiritual vision, and this absence of
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spiritual guidance likely shaped Augustine's subsequent silence
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concerning his father throughout his life's records.
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When he moved to Carthage at age 17 for three years of study, his
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mother, Monica, who was an earnest believer, warned him
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against the lore of sexual immorality.
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But Augustine admitted he found himself immediately in what he
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called a hissing cauldron of lust.
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He describes his motivations during this period with
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astonishing candor. He says he was inflamed with
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desire for a surfeit of Hell's pleasures.
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He admits he was driven by curiosity and malice.
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He writes. I was willing to steal, and
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steal I did, although I was not compelled by any lack.
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The story of stealing pears from a neighbor's tree just for the
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delight of lawlessness. He was thirsty for what he would
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later call suicidal pleasures. During his time as a
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schoolmaster, he took a concubine.
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He lived with her for 15 years and they had a son, Adi Odatis,
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whose name means given by God. Augustine was highly ambitious,
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focused on using his speaking skills for the unhallowed and
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inane purpose of gratifying human vanity.
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Then came the first great intellectual turning point.
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This happened when he was 19. While still immersed in that
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cauldron of Carthage, he encountered the works of the
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Roman statesman Cicero. Specifically, he read Cicero's
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dialogue Hortensius. And the sources stressed this
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reading arrested him not for its style, which was his profession,
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but for its content. Cicero exalted the quest for
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wisdom and truth above all physical pleasure and worldly
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ambition. This was a seismic shift, he
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says. It provided him with new hopes,
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it altered his outlook on life, and it profoundly changed his
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prayers. His heart began to throb with a
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bewildering passion for the wisdom of eternal truth.
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This reading redirected him towards seeking substance over
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style, and this was nine years before he embraced Christ.
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But it was absolutely necessary preparation.
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The next significant intellectual turn occurred after
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he moved from Rome to Milan to teach rhetoric.
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He was about 31 when he encountered the writings of
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Platinus and other Neoplatonists.
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This discovery is sometimes described as his second
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conversion because it successfully shifted his
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spiritual center of gravity away from Manichaeism.
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He absorbed the Platonic vision of reality, conceiving of God
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for the first time as utterly transcendent, spiritual and non
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physical. It helped him to conceive of
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truth as incorporeal and everlasting.
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But Platonism proved to be a spiritual dead end.
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He realized that while he had been given an intellectual
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picture of the divine, he was still morally powerless.
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He described his position perfectly in the Confessions.
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I had my back to the light, and my face was turned towards the
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things which it illumined so that my eyes were themselves in
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darkness. He had the philosophy, but he
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lacked the moral and spiritual capacity to live the transformed
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life it suggested. This led to the final, most
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crucial move from Platonism to the Apostle Paul, introduced
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largely through the public preaching of Bishop Ambrose in
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Milan. Ambrose was a gifted orator, and
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Augustine recounts hearing his preaching as dispensing the
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richness of your corn, the joy of your oil, and the sober
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intoxication of your wine. Augustine's Platonic mindset
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struggled fiercely with the biblical teaching that the Word
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was made flesh. Platonism generally maintained
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an aversion to matter and the world of sense.
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But listening to Ambrose week after week, he began to sense
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the truth of the Incarnation and its necessity.
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He realized he was far away from God, but he heard a voice
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speaking to his heart. I am the God who is Fray.
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Intellectual doubt was finally silenced.
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Yet this intellectual acceptance was not yet conversion.
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Here is where the crisis deepened and the central theme
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of his theology, the will, emerges.
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He writes with such anguish. I was astonished that although I
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now loved you, I did not persist in enjoyment of my God.
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He couldn't hold on to the spiritual satisfaction that came
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from contemplating God. And that phrase, enjoyment of my
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God, that is the epicenter of his theological revolution.
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He was drawn by God's beauty, but he was dragged away by his
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own weight and plunged back into worldly things.
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He had sensed the fragrance of the fair but was not yet able to
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eat it. The core battle was revealed.
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It wasn't intellectual anymore. It was fundamentally a crisis of
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the the will and of competing pleasures.
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He knew he was held back primarily by what he called the
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bonds of women's love, sexual lust.
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He articulated the battlefront clearly.
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How could he find the strength to enjoy God more than the
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sensual pleasures that enslaved him and he?
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Recognized that the strength he needed had to come from an
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external mediating source, Jesus Christ.
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This crisis set the stage for a heartbreaking display of his
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spiritual weakness. His mother, Monica had arrived
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and was arranging A suitable marriage for him.
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To prepare, he had to send away his beloved concubine of 15
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years. This separation, he says,
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crushed my heart to bleeding. The contubine, in contrast,
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vowed never to be with another man.
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And yet Augustine, trying to be good by his own will, was
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incapable of matching her moral resolve.
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He immediately took another mistress.
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It just illustrates how completely captive his will was
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to his desires, even when he knew the higher good and was
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striving for a life of chastity. That failure directly
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precipitated the garden crisis, which happened in late August of
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386. He was talking with his friend
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Olympius about the holiness and radical sacrifice of Anthony the
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monk, and Augustine was just stung by the comparison of his
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own bestial bondage to the freedom others had found in
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Christ. The struggle was fierce.
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He drove himself into the small garden attached to the house,
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describing it as a conflict where he was his own contestant.
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He was beside himself, frustrated, crying out.
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Why not now? Why not make an end to my ugly
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sins? At this moment, he was
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struggling to muster the willpower to cross that divide.
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In that moment of utter desperation he began to perceive
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the gains as far greater than the perceived losses.
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He saw the chaste beauty of countenance in all her serene,
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unsullied joy, beckoning him to crossover.
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And standing against her were the mere trifles that plucked at
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his garment of flesh, whispering.
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Are you going to dismiss us from this moment?
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We shall never be with you again, forever and ever.
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The battle came down to deciding which pleasure was superior,
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which was more satisfying. He flung himself under a fig
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tree, weeping, when he suddenly heard the sing song voice of a
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child repeating the refrain. Take it and read, take it and
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read. He realized this must be a
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divine command. He sees the book of Paul's
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epistles and read the first passage.
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His eyes fell upon Romans 13.13 to 14.
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And the verse was direct answer to his internal conflict.
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Not in reveling and drunkenness, not in lust and wantonness.
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Rather, arm yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ.
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Spend no more thought on nature and nature's appetites.
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He needed nothing more. He finished the sentence and in
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that instant, he said, it was as though the light of confidence
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flooded into my heart and all the darkness of doubt was
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dispelled. The war was won not by a sudden
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application of immense willpower, but by the reception
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of a superior new confidence and a transcendent joy that made the
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old desire seem flimsy and insignificant.
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Single radical moment in the Garden, where God's grace
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conquered sin by installing a superior delight, became the
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theological lens through which Augustine viewed the entire
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cosmos, and this is what led directly to his intense conflict
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with Pelagius. It's the ultimate test case for
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the doctrine of grace. Pelagius, who was active in
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Rome, was appalled by the implications of Augustine's
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position. Pelagius taught that grace may
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aid righteousness, but it is not necessary for that end.
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Right. Human nature is essentially fine
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after the Fall. It retains the full moral
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ability to obey God's commands if we simply set our minds to
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it. The crucial sticking point for
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Pelagius was Augustine's earlier prayer.
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Give me the grace, O Lord, to do as you command, and command me
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to do what you will. Pelagius saw this as a dismissal
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of human freedom and responsibility.
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I mean, if God must give the ability to obey, then our moral
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actions seem meaningless. Augustine didn't reach his final
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view quickly. He initially defended the
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freedom of the will in a way that Pelagius later quoted
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against him. But by the time he wrote the
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confessions and engaged in the Pelagian debates, his personal
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experience and his intense study at Paul has settled the matter.
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He concluded the grace of God prevailed.
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The very core of Augustinianism is captured in this concept.
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Grace is God's giving us a sovereign joy in God that
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triumphs over joy and sin. The grace that saves and sets us
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free is fundamentally A pleasurable grace.
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He describes the immediate change after the garden.
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How sweet all at once it was for me to be rid of those fruitless
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joys which I had once feared to lose.
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You drove them from me, You who are the true, the sovereign Joy.
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He saw that God not only drove out the old failing pleasures,
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but He took their place, being sweeter than all pleasure.
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The work of grace is the regeneration of our desires,
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where God reorders the springs of joy so that we love Him more
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than any worldly appetite. This reframes the very idea of
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love. For Agustin, loving God is
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always essentially a delighting in God.
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The Latin is fruit and if we love other things it is only for
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God's sake, meaning we use them or UTI.
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This introduces his famous doctrine of use and enjoyment.
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We are meant to enjoy God through finding our ultimate
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satisfaction and rest in Him alone.
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We are meant to use creation you to see and created things as
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tools or aids that point us toward enjoying God.
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He defined Caritas, love for God precisely as the motion of the
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soul toward the enjoyment of God for his own sake.
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Conversely, cupiditas, or unlawful desire, is the motion
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of the soul toward the enjoyment of something else, enjoying
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creation or self for the sake of something other than God.
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Sin, therefore, is not just breaking a rule, It is an error
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of desire, a corruption of logic.
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It's trying to enjoy something that was only created to be
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used. This is the basis of the
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corruption of the earthly city he describes in the city of God.
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It is a society built upon misplaced desires, a collective
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cupiditas. So the pursuit of happiness and
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delight is a universal human drive.
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Augustine saw that every man desires to be happy, and
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everything we desire is desired for that end alone.
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This pursuit governs the will. And here's the necessary
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theological point that opposed pelagianism.
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Since the will always follows the greatest perceived delight,
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it is not in our power to determine what that delight will
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be. After the fall, our internal
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delight mechanism is broken, leading us to prefer the lesser
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suicidal pleasures. Augustine asks who has the
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ability to make something that truly delights in Turn up, or to
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make himself take delight in what turns up?
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The capacity to find God superior must be given by God
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Himself. Therefore, converting grace is
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God giving us this sovereign, superior joy that triumphs over
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all other joys and effectively sways the will toward Him.
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The will remains free to move toward whatever delights at
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most, but God provides that overriding victorious delight.
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This leads to the start conclusion that absolutely
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rejects any remaining idea of human autonomy and salvation.
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A man's free will indeed avails for nothing except to sin, if he
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knows not the way of truth. And even once truth is known,
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unless he also takes delight in it and feels love for it, he
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cannot live rightly. And that delight that Karatas,
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he concluded, is supplied because God's love is shed
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abroad in our hearts, not through a pre-existing free will
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arising from ourselves, but through the Holy Ghost which is
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given to us. The power to will rightly is
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given with the mercy itself. This is why he insisted that the
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beginning of a goodwill is God's gift.
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This definition changes the very concept of freedom.
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For Augustine, freedom is not the autonomous will poised in
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equilibrium between good and evil, the capacity to choose or
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not choose righteousness. That was the Pelagian ideal.
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That equilibrium, that constant struggle of choice, is actually
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a sign of the disintegration of the will in a fallen world.
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True freedom is transcending that struggle.
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True freedom is reaching a state where you are so taken captive
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by the beauty of God and so overwhelmed by His superior
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satisfaction, that the very idea of contemplating a choice
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between Him and evil is no longer a real struggle.
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Ideal freedom is walking under the continual sway of sovereign
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joy in God. It is the ability not to send
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non posse pekar, which is the state of the Sancts in glory.
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The state of Adam before the fall was posse non pekkar, able
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not to sin. The state of fall in humanity is
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non posse non pekkar, not able not to sin.
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The purpose of grace is to restore us to true, unassailable
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freedom. So if sovereign joy is the
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theological foundation for salvation, what does that look
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like in the day, day-to-day existence of the Christian life?
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Augustine saw the whole Christian life as a holy desire,
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a relentless quest for the fullest joy in God.
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And since our love and delight must be given by God, we have to
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ask for it. Therefore, the primary remedy
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for spiritual coldness from the human side is prayer.
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It speaks volumes that all 350 pages of the confessions are
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written as a continuous, sustained prayer.
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Every sentence is addressed directly to God.
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This perfectly illustrates Augustine's absolute practical
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dependence on God for the awakening of love and the
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reordering of delight. He connected prayer directly to
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the pursuit of joy through the Gospel of John, specifically
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16.24. Ask and you will receive so that
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your joy may be made full. Prayer isn't just asking for
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things, it's the path to that fullness of sovereign joy.
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Augustine learned this posture of patient, desire driven prayer
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from his mother Monica, whose life provides a master class in
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seeking joy through petitions. She prayed tearfully for her
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unfaithful husband, Patricius, and saw him converted in his
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last days. And she prayed constantly for
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her son when he was entangled in manicism and lust, Augustine
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notes. She shed more tears over my
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spiritual death than other mothers shed for the bodily
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death of a son. Her tears were driven by an
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unshakable belief that God was the true, sufficient object of
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her Sonny's desires. There is that striking,
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instructive story of Augustine sailing away to Rome against her
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earnest wishes. She had begged God with tears to
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prevent his trip, believing Rome would only hasten his moral
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downfall. God, however, did not grant her
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specific request. And later she understood why God
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in His wisdom denied the lesser wish, preventing the voyage in
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order to grant the higher wish that was closest to her heart, a
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converted son. He allowed the trip but used it
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as the necessary circumstance for Augustine's eventual meeting
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with Ambrose and his conversion in Milan.
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When Augustine finally told her of his new life in Christ, she
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was jubilant, realizing God had granted her joy far fuller than
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her dearest wish. This profound parental
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experience shaped Augustine's own zeal in ministry.
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His driving passion as a Bishop was to help people
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intellectually see and spiritually feel the all
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satisfying supremacy of God. He insisted that happiness is to
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rejoice in you and for you and because of you.
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This is true happiness and there is no other.
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He used his extensive rhetorical training and poetic gifts to
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articulate what he loved when he loved God.
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He clarified that when he loves God, it is not the physical
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melody, the fragrance of spices or worldly embrace.
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He describes this in a famous passage.
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And yet when I love him, it is true that I love a light of a
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certain kind of voice, a perfume, a food and embrace.
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But they are of the kind that I love in my inner self, when my
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soul is bathed in light that is not bound by space.
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He uses the sensory vocabulary of pleasure and satisfaction to
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describe a superior spiritual reality that overwhelms the
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physical. Augustine's preaching style was
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a direct result of this delight. It was not detached scholarship.
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It was the outpouring of his own satisfaction in God.
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He explained to his congregation that he first went to feed
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himself from the Scripture so that he could then give them to
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eat. He found soul Food First, then
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shared it. And he explained that the very
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coherence and vitality of a speaker's message comes alive
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through the very joy we take and what we are speaking about.
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The truth of a theological claim is authenticated by the delight
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the speech experiences in it. This delight centered focus
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applied to his practical rule on avoiding idolatry in the world.
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He taught He loves the too little who loves anything
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together with thee, which he loves not for thy sake.
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He provides the classic analogy of a man giving his betrothed
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the ring. If she begins to love the beauty
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of the ring more wholeheartedly than the betrothed who crafted
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it and gave it to her, what does that say about the state of her
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love? The gift, whether it's beauty,
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talent, wealth or even intellectual brilliance, is
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meant to draw love to the giver, not terminate in itself.
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He acknowledged the world's Judy, the colors of the sea, the
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wonders of the human body, the intellectual heights of Pagan
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philosophy, but insisted they were mere consolations for
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unhappy, punished men. They are signposts, not the
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destination. They point to the superior joys
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found in God's presence. His instruction to the believer,
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then, is clear and concise. If the things of this world
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delight you, praise God for them, but turn your love away
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from them and give it to their Maker.
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The ultimate goal is always freeing God, allowing no
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secondary uter to become primary free.
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Now we return to the theological core.
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The contemporary critique cited in our sources is that much of
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the church today, even segments within Reformed circles, is
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subtly reverting to a form of practical Pelagianism.
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This happens when we forget that grace triumphs not just through
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legal declaration, but through the internal transforming work
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of superior joy. If we are truly dedicated to
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Augustine's legacy, we must recover this understanding of
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sovereign delight. This requires re examining our
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classical doctrines of salvation so that every aspect is viewed
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through the lens of Pakistanian satisfaction.
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That's essential. We must explicitly link
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Augustine's concept of superior delight to the core doctrines of
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the Reformation. Let's look at how the experience
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of sovereign joy restructures our understanding of the five
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points of Reformed theology. Let's start with total
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depravity. Augustine shows us that this is
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not simply that humanity is thoroughly bad.
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It is more acutely A profound spiritual blindness to divine
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beauty and a complete deadness to spiritual joy.
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Sin is the internal misalignment that causes us to choose what he
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called suicidal pleasures, lawless temporary satisfactions
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that in the end destroy the soul.
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We are spiritually bankrupt because we prefer low grade
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pleasures to infinite satisfaction.
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Next unconditional election. Augustine's view means that the
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entirety of our future joy in Jesus was planned for us before
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we ever existed. God chose the recipients of this
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ultimate satisfaction entirely on His own gracious terms, apart
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from any foreknowledge of merit or goodwill in them.
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Then limited atonement, or what is often called definite
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atonement. This doctrine, seen through
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Augustine's definition of grace, becomes the solid assurance that
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this indestructible joy in God is infallibly secured for the
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chosen recipients by the blood of the covenant.
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The price was paid precisely and completely to deliver the elect
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into this ultimate delight, ensuring their arrival at
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satisfaction. This flows directly into
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irresistible Grace. When viewed through Augustine,
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irresistible grace is not God dragging US against our will.
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It is the sovereign implanting of a superior, victorious
29:12
appetite. God doesn't drag us kicking and
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screaming. He makes himself so supremely
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desirable, so infinitely sweet, that the competing worldly joys
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lose their gravitational pull. It's the ultimate act of love.
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God ensuring we do not hold on to suicidal pleasures by giving
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us something infinitely better is an internal triumph of love,
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the sovereign superiority of new delights He implants, leading us
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to willingly choose Him because He is now the supreme object of
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our desires. And finally, the perseverance of
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the Saints. This doctrine becomes the
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ultimate guarantee. It's the assurance that God will
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continue His almighty work to keep us through all affliction
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and suffering in this life for an inheritance of pleasures at
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God's right hand forever, as promised in Psalm 16.11.
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The grace that began our delighting God is the grace that
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sustains it to eternity. Augustine's vision of salvation
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is rooted entirely in this framework.
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The true motivation that saves and sanctifies is the work of
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God deep beneath the human will to change the springs of joy so
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that we choose God over sex, money, food or fame.
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It is the giving of a compelling, triumphant joy that
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orders our life. This forces us to confront a
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challenging question for contemporary believers.
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Are we, despite our theological vocabulary, living lives that
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demonstrate we are in bondage to the world's transient pleasures?
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Television, sleep, money, human praise?
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Or does our daily life reflect the reality of God's supreme
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joy? Augustine provides the clear
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solution which is rooted in dependence.
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We must pray, O Lord, open my eyes to see the sovereign sight
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that in Your presence is fullness of joy, and at Your
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right hand are pleasures forevermore.
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We labor diligently in the Christian life, knowing that the
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grace that brings light is the grace that brings superior
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satisfaction. We have traced Augustine's life
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from the cauldron of Lust and Carthage, through the
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intellectual turns of Cicero and Platonism to his powerful
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conversion in the garden. This personal experience became
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the foundation for the theological system known as
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Sovereign Joy. Augustine's message is clear.
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Salvation is not attained by striving through sheer
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willpower, the error of Pelagianism.
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Rather, it happens by grace, working within, restructuring
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our delights so completely that we find God to be sweeter and
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more desirable than all temporary pleasure.
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This delight in God is the engine of all Christian living
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and the necessary root of historic Reformed concepts of
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grace. Augustine wrote.
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You made us for yourself, and our hearts find no peace till
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they rest in you. If this peace is the presence of
31:40
a profound happiness that only God can provide, what temporary,
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fruitless joys are still competing for your affection?
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And how might praying for a superior delight in God be the
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only way to finally be rid of them?
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Thank you for joining us for this deep dive.