The theological position that since the fall, all people have been corrupted by original sin, and are unable to love God or follow his commands. It is only by God’s gracious work that anyone can truly obey God or excercise faith in him, so human salvation is a work of God from start to finish.
- 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 Outlines of Theology by A. A. Hodge, on the Augustinian view of grace:
If nevertheless man in his present state, wills and does good, it is merely the work of grace. It is an inward, secret, and wonderful operation of God upon man. It s a preceding as well as an accompanying work. By preceding grace, man attains faith, by which he comes to an insight of good, and by which power is given him to will the good. He needs cooperating grace for the performance of every individual good act. As man can do nothing without grace, so he can do nothing against it. It is irresistible. And as man by nature has no merit at all, no respect at all can be had to man’s moral disposition, in imparting grace, but God acts according to his own free will.
Learn more:
- Got Questions: What is Augustinianism?
- Matthew Barrett: The Battle of the Will, Part 1: Pelagius and Augustine
- Monergism: Comparing Pelagianism, Semi-Pelagianism, Arminianism, and Augustinianism
- A. A. Hodge: A Comparison of Systems: Pelagianism, Semipelagianism, and Augustinianism
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