Shasta
Well-known member
While you say I have "made the error of reading modern views into ancient texts" you do not explain just whICH "modern views" I was attempting to introduce. The rest I am not sure about. Are you saying the ECFs views are anachonistic or that my understanding of their views is. The word "anachronistic" points to particular eras of time which is really irrelevant when it comes to Divine truth which, though, revealed in time are constant throughout time. Just because people can construct explanations as to why the earlier doctrines should be replaced by later ones (and print them in theological tomes) does not make the newer views theologically correct. In this case, the more ancient theology is not Reformed Doctrine, or that of Augustine but that of the ECFs.
Unless you are prepared to show me HOW these quotes have been taken out of context I am going to take your charge that I am "quote mining" as a mere gratuitous assertion. I did not just google those quotations the day before I posted them. I have been reading the ECFs for many years and am convinced that these quotes accurately reflect what these men believed. I could have included a lot more context to support that but for the sake of brevity I did not.
I know the occasion of the ECFs remarks. They were opposing the Gnostics. Particularly they were challenging their teaching on "predeterminism" and the "inability" of mankind to choose based on their total ruin. They used the scriptures to refute these beliefs to show how Gnosticism differed from the Faith. If this was their position, how could their beliefs possibly be congruent to a Christianized version of the same thing?
A Christianized version of predeterminism and inability historically was not taught until Augustine. Is it mere coincidence that he had been a Gnostic before his conversion? In his debates with Pelagius (who believed a human could find and follow God unassisted by the Holy Spirit) Augustine began to take a harder and harder line against freewill. Finally he retreated to his former position on total ruin, total inability and predestination. Eventually he inculcated these ideas into the mainstream Christianity. This is a matter of history that has been noted by many others for generations.
I would be committing The Genetic Fallacy if I tried to make something appear false merely by evoking Augustine's name (thus treating him like a boogey). I am not demonizing him. I think he got off track and I believe I have grounds for saying that. His background in Manichaeism, his philosophical temperament combined with his sloppy (allegorical) hermeneutic led him to import elements of his former cult belief system into the mainstream of Christian teaching, elements that had not been there before. The ECFs give us the picture of what the Church believed before this happened. Therefore their writings are instructive.
I do not think Calvin's views are wrong because he got them from Augustine, I think Augustine's views were unscriptural on their own merit and since Calvin co-opted his views from Augustine he was wrong too (not because of his association with Augustine) but for the same reasons Augustine's were wrong.
Given his background in the Catholic Church, it is understandable that Calvin would be predisposed to prefer Augustine doctrine to that of the ECFs. While the Catholic Church paid lip service to the ECFs they did not actually read them primarily because their works were written in Greek. Western clerics read Augustine because he wrote in Latin and because Augustine was one of the founders of Western Catholicism. Luther, who had been an Augustinian monk also picked up many ideas from the Bishop of Hippo.
Surely you are not taking the indefensible position that the ECFs believed the particular set of beliefs we now call "Reformed" doctrine (i.e.,TULIP). This is utterly not true. The citations I have made accurately reflect what the mainstream view that was had been taught for more than three hundred years starting in the First Century.
The question to be answered is, whether "reformed doctrine" represents the pristine teaching of the early church If it does, why did the earliest generations of orthodox teachers not only fail to repeat it but actively proclaim a message that was in many ways the total opposite of it? John Calvin knew the ECFs disagreed with Augustine. That is why he downplayed their significance.
