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Augustine and Southern Baptists Part 4: Divine Determinism by Dr. Jim Gifford
Dr. Jim Gifford The third assumption in Augustine’s thinking is his experience, based on personal observation, that some humans are not saved. In his own life, Augustine observed that some babies die before being baptized. For Augustine, reconciliation to God in Christ is impossible without baptism. Not everyone who was baptized was ultimately saved, but baptism for him was a “condition sine qua non” for salvation. Therefore anyone who died without baptism likewise died without hope of salvation. Combined with his views of God’s unlimited power and humanity’s helplessness, Augustine reasoned that those who died without baptism were never elected to salvation in the first place. Here is precisely the point where Augustine, in order to hold his system of thought together, must resort to determinism. If a certain baby is among those whom God has elected for salvation, then God, in his providence, must work out her life details in space-time in order that she be baptized before death. If she were to die without baptism, she could not possibly be saved. Therefore God must determine temporal events in her life to guarantee her physical baptism and therefore seal her as one of the elect. Eugene Teselle summarizes Augustine’s answer to this dilemma well: This assumption that damnation can result from original sin alone and that deliverance from its guilt can come only through the administration of baptism subjects the destiny of the infant, at least, to the control of external circumstances, what Augustine’s opponents called fate and what…
2013-01-29 08:32:28
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