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THE ORIGIN OF OSAS: (Once Saved Always Saved)

OSAS can easily be traced back to John Calvin (1509-1564) from of Dort under the description of the perseverance of the saints. But did you know that it, and other points of , can be traced more than one thousand years earlier to (354-430)?

This was the theme about which Augustine structured his thinking during the last half of his writing ministry. As he put it: whatsoever persons are through the riches of divine grace exempted from the original sentence of condemnation are undoubtedly brought to hear the , and when hearing they are caused to believe it, and are made likewise to endure to the end in the which works by love, and should they at any time to astray, they are recovered and set right again. (Here are Election and Eternal Security.)

As a consequence, Augustine wrote two treatises: the first was entitled on the of the Saints, and the second on the Gift of Perseverance. In the first, Augustine reaffirmed that Predestination is in no way based upon foreseen in the elect. All a man’s strivings in his own strength to achieve holiness of Life apart from the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit are in vain, and Augustine explained why this is so. In the second treatise Augustine explained why this is so. In the second treatise Augustine showed that the Perseverance of the saints, by which he meant (in modern terminology) the eternal security of the believer, is not dependent upon the good works of the individual believer which would result from his conversion, but entirely upon the constancy and unchangeableness of ’s elective choice.

Since Augustine this doctrine (the perseverance of the saints) has served as a theological frame work within which theologians have wrestled with the question of whether and how one remains in . Augustine introduced the idea of a donum perseverantiae: as a divine gift the perseverance of the saints in grace was certain. Calvin later championed the doctrine by affirming the perseverance of believers through the power and faithfulness of God. The Reformed confessions, in particular, the canons of Dort, emphatically espoused the perseverance of the saints by denying that they could totally or finally fall away.

Augustine’s specific teachings on perseverance, in part, are as follows: We are speaking of that perseverance by which one perseveres to the end. If this is given, one does persevere to the end: and if one does not persevere to the end, it was not given…since no one has perseverance to the end unless he does in fact perseveres to the end some evil will many arise in him so that he does not persevere to the end. This gift of God, therefore, can be obtained by supplication; but when it has been given, it cannot be lost by contumacy. The word “contumacy” means, stubborn perverseness or rebelliousness, willful and obstinate resistance or disobedience to authority.

See now how foreign to the truth it is to deny that perseverance to the end of this Life is a gift of God, since He Himself puts an end to this Life when He wills, and if He puts an end to it before and impending fall, He makes a man persevere to the end. But more marvelous and more evident to the faithful is the largesse of God’s goodness, in His giving this grace to infants in whom there is, at that age, no obedience to which it might be given. According to church history, then, the teaching of OSAS and basic Calvinism began with Aurelius Augustine of the 5th century! For example, the basic doctrines of the Calvinistic position had been vigorously defended by Augustine against during the 5th Century.

How then did John Calvin differ from Augustine in his influence on OSAS? In some quarters it is becoming popular to assert that the true Christian faith resolves itself into the system of thinking which has come to be known rightly or wrongly – as Calvinism. We are told that what we believe – if we believe as we should – is to be identified with teaching developed first by Saint Augustine and then more fully systemized by John Calvin.

As to the doctrines of the fall, of , the slavery of the human will, the sovereignty of saving grace, the of Hippo and the of are essentially agreed; the former (Augustine) has the merit of priority and originality; the latter (Calvin) is clearer, stronger, more logical and rigorous, and far superior as an exegete.

Church history declares Augustine was the originator and developer of OSAS and other related Calvinistic teachings, such as election, upon which it rests. John Calvin logically systemized Augustine’s theology.

Aurelius Augustine of Hippo (354-430) since election and OSAS can be traced back to Augustine of Hippo, the Doctor of Grace, one should naturally wonder who was he and what else did he teach. Was he sound in his understanding of scripture or was he in extreme doctrinal error? We especially need to know what he taught about salvation.

Let’s examine this and thereby we will be able to gauge his spiritual understanding. Before we examine this, here is some personal information about him. Augustine was born in 354 in Numidia. In 371, at 17 years of age, he went to Carthage to pursue more advanced rhetorical studies. In 372 he had a son named Adeodatus born of a concubine. In 374 he joined the Manichean sect but abandoned it in 383. He obtained a position as teacher of rhetoric in Milan in 383 and was much impressed by the preaching of Ambrose. In the autumn of 386 he retired to prepare himself for , which he received in April of 387.

For nearly 3 years Augustine lived a Monastic life at Tagaste. It was during this time that Adeodatus died. In 391 Augustine was ordained to the priesthood by Bishop Valerius of Hippo. Shortly before his death in 395, Valerius, along with Megalius of Calama and Primas of Numidia, consecrated Augustine co-bishop of Hippo, to which see Augustine succeeded in full in that same year. If I do not err this is the first record of what might be termed a co- adjutor bishop with right of succession.

Augustine’s teachings and Practices: Most people might be surprised to learn that Augustine did more than develop the basic teachings of Calvinism. As a catholic, he was also very influential in his own religion: Augustine, who himself belonged nine years to the Manichaean sect, and was wonderfully converted by the grace of God to the , without the slightest pressure from without…But in his discussion of how man is saved, Augustine so emphasized the church as a visible institution with the true , , and ministry that the Roman church considers him the Father of Roman ecclesiasticism.

No other father could have acted more beneficently on the Catholicism of the middle age… as administrator, preacher, controversialist, correspondent, and writher, Augustine worked to defend and spread the catholic religion.

Augustine was decidedly catholic in the doctrine of the church and of baptism, and in the cardinal points of the orthodoxy. To know the afore mentioned facts about Augustine will help us to better understand his specific teachings.

Augustine taught only Catholics will inherit eternal life Sara said: Cast out the bondwoman and her Son; for the son of a bondwoman shall not be heir with my son Isaac. And the church says: Cast out heresies and their children; for heretics shall not be heirs with Catholics. But why shall they not be heirs? Are they not born of ’s seed? And have they not the church’s Baptism? They do have Baptism; and it would make the seed of Abraham an heir, if pride did not exclude them from inheritance. By the same word. By the same you were born, but you will not come to the same inheritance of eternal life, unless you return to the catholic church.

Augustine Persecuted Heretics: Augustine’s afore-mentioned view Led to his persecution of heretics: After the proscription of the Donatists by Law in 412, Augustine added to his arguments justifying persecution the statement that coercion in this world would save the heretics from eternal punishment in the next.

No salvation outside the church, a doctrine preached by Augustine in 418 in his addressed to the people of the church of Caesarea (ch.6), implied right to convert forcibly or otherwise the church’s opponents. The precedents established in the Donatist controversy by Augustine passed into the armory of the catholic church through the middle ages and into times. The Albigensian of 1212 and 1226=1244 witnessed terrible massacres in centers such as Beziers and Carcassonne where the heresy flourished. In 1244 the defenders of the last Abigensian stronghold, Mont Segur, were burned alive by their victorious enemies. More than a century and a half later, in 1415, the same punishment was inflicted on at Prague.

As a Catholic theologian of the fifth century, we should not be too surprised by Augustine’s other views either: Baptismal : …he does not shrink from consigning unbaptized children to itself, though he softens to the utmost this frightful dogma, and reduces the damnation to the minimum of punishment or the privation of blessedness. St. Augustine expressly assigns all unbaptized children dying in infancy to eternal damnation… Augustine said that infants are regenerated by baptism apart from their faith. “Baptism, Penance and the Table of the Lord”

We are cleansed only once by Baptism; by prayer we are cleansed daily. But do not commit those on account of which you would have to be separated from the Body of Christ; perish the thought! For those who you see doing penance have committed crimes, either adultery or some other enormities: that is why they are doing penance. If their sins were light, daily prayer would suffice to blot them out. In the church, therefore, there are three ways in which sins are forgiven: in Baptism, in prayer, and in the greater humility of penance; yet, God does not forgive sins except to the baptized.

It is an excellent thing that the Punic Christians call Baptism itself nothing else but salvation, and the sacrament of Christ’s Body nothing else but Life. Whence does this derive, except from an ancient and, as I suppose, apostolic tradition, by which the churches of Christ hold inherently that without Baptism and participation at the table of the Lord it is impossible for any man to attain either to the Kingdom of God or to salvation and Life eternal? This is the witness of scripture too.

Penance and Reconciliation That if a man, accusing his wife of adultery, kills her, this , since it is finished and does not perdure in him, if it is committed by a catechumen, is absolved in Baptism; and, if it is done by one who is baptized, it is healed by Penance and reconciliation. Are we supposed to declare, then, that adultery, committed without doubt if another wife is taken while the adulterous spouse still lives, is not adultery?

“Mary, a Perpetual Virgin” Heretics called Antidicomarites are those who contradict the perpetual virginity of Mary, and affirm that after Christ was born she was joined as one with her husband. Please Note: according to Augustine’s description of a heretic from the above, multiple millions of Christians in our day would have been considered the same by him! Since he persecuted heretics partly because of a false interpretation of Luke 14:23, the same Christians in our day would have been persecuted by him, if they lived then under his influence. Dear reader if you are a real Christian, this would have also included you.

“Mary was Sinless” Augustine believed that the mother of the sinless Christ had never committed actual sin.

“” We read in the books of the Maccabees that sacrifice was offered for the dead. But even if it were found nowhere in the OT writings, the authority of the universal church which is clear on this point is of no small weight, where in the prayers of the priest poured forth to the Lord God at His altar the commendation of the dead has its place. The man who has cultivated that remote land and who has gotten his bread by his very great labor is able to suffer this labor to the end of this life. After this life, however, it is not necessary that he suffer. But the man who perhaps has not cultivated the land and has allowed it to be overrun with brambles has in this life the curse of his land on all his works, and after this life he will have either purgatorial fire or eternal punishment.

Though she had never read a line of St. Augustine, and probably never heard even his name, yet out of the unquenchable yearning of her heart and the ineradicable instincts of her , she knew his teaching, that there are some who have departed this life, not so bad as to be deemed unworthy of mercy, nor so good as to be immediate happiness.

One of the most touching incidents which have come down to us from the writings of the Fathers upon this subject is from the pen of St. Augustine, who lived in the beginning of the fifth century. This scholarly bishop relates that when his mother was dying, she made this last request of him: Lay this body anywhere; Let not the care of it in any way disturb you. This only I request of you, that you would remember me at the altar of the Lord, wherever you be.

The memory of that request drew from her son this fervent prayer: I therefore, O God of my heart, do now beseech thee for the sins of my mother. Hear me through the medicine of the wounds that hung upon the wood…May she, then, be in peach with her husband…And inspire, My Lord…thy servants my brethren, whom with voice and heart and pen I serve, that as many as shall read these words may remember at Thy altar, Monica, Thy servant…In this incident there is reflected the universal custom of the early church of praying for the dead as well as her belief in a state called purgatory. “The Millennium” …Many Christians do not agree with Augustine’s equation of the millennium with the present period of the church.

“Purgatory, Sacraments and the Millennium” In spite of these abiding values, Augustine brought some errors into the stream of Christian thought. He helped to develop the doctrine of purgatory with all its attendant evils. He so emphasized the value of the two sacraments that the doctrine of baptismal regeneration and sacramental grace were logical outcomes of his views. His interpretation of the Millennium as the era between the Incarnation and Second Advent of Christ in which the church would conquer the world led to the Roman emphasis on the church of Rome as the universal church destined to bring all within its fold and to the idea of .

“Augustine’s other Catholic Teachings” Augustine taught the elven books of the Apocrypha are part of the canon. Besides that, he also called the saints our intercessors and promoted the worship of Mary. Regarding the latter, we read:

He was the first to give a clear and fixed definition of the sacrament, as a visible sign of invisible grace, resting on divine appointment; but he knows nothing of the number seven; this was a much later enactment. In the doctrine of baptism, he is entirely catholic, though in logical contradiction with his dogma of predestination; but in the doctrine of the holy communion he stands, like his predecessors, and Cyprian, nearer to the Calvinistic “theory” of a spiritual presence and fruition of Christ’s body and blood. He also contributed to promote, at least in his later writings, the catholic faith of miracles, and the worship of Mary; though he exempts the virgin only from actual sin, not from original, and, with all his reverence for her, never calls her Mother of God.

Of all of his doctrinal errors, Aurelius Augustine was most importantly wrong about the foremost doctrine in all of scripture – how to be saved. Therefore, since Augustine’s salvation plan is no real plan of salvation at all, both it and Augustine himself would thereby be condemned under Gal. 1:89, by Paul:

But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let him be eternally condemned! As we have already said, so now I say again: If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let him be eternally condemned!

The implication of this scripture is that Calvin got the foundation of his teachings from an unsaved man who was therefore darkened in his spiritual understanding (Eph. 4:18)! Augustine, then, was spiritually incapable of correctly understanding scripture. This is the only conclusion to which we can come when we realize that the Bible is spiritually understood (Psa. 119:99, 100; Mt. 13:10-15; 11:25; Jn. 8:43; 1 Cor 2:13). From all of this it should be apparent how we must evaluate the following descriptions of him: …one of the most enlightened witnesses of the truth…

St. Augustine, the worthy successor of Paul… Between Paul and Luther, the church had no one of greater moral and spiritual stature than Augustine. One must also wonder how his writings could be so exalted by the Reformers: (Infact, John Calvin called Augustine:) …the best and most faithful witness of all antiquity…

Augustine’s Religious Influence Regarding Augustine’s catholic teachings in general, we read: Sir Robert Anderson, in The Bible or The Church, declares that nearly all the errors prevalent in Romanism can be traced back to Augustine. He says, The Roman church was molded by Augustine into the form it has ever since maintained. Of all the errors the later centuries developed in her teaching there is scarcely one that cannot be found in embryo in his writings.

Imagine, the real originator and developer of Calvinism was also the person who molded the Roman Catholic church! Nearly all the errors prevalent in Romanism can be traced back to Augustine. Primarily because of John Calvin, Augustine’s religious influence was not limited to Romanism:

Not only can nearly all the errors of Romanism be traced to Augustine, but as well, for the Reformation, as Warfield declared, was just the ultimate triumph of Augustine’s doctrine of grace over Augustine’s doctrine of the church. The reformed take his errors on election and the Roman Catholics his other heresies, although the Reformers had some of his Roman errors as well.

“John Calvin Systemized Catholic, Augustine’s Teachings.” Calvin was the systematized of Reformation doctrine. His best known and most representative work is the Institutes of the Christians religion. In this work and elsewhere, he refers to Augustine as the Holy Father.

The person John Calvin calls the Holy father and quotes far more frequently than all the Greek and Latin combined, taught a plan of salvation the made regeneration dependent upon water baptism. That same person also taught Purgatory, promoted Mary worship and said only Catholics will inherit eternal life. Because of Augustine’s teachings, some could only give a hearty Amen to the following statement made by an OSAS proponent who tries to distinguish between the perseverance of the saints and eternal security, the latter of which he contends for:

Augustine was wrong on baptism. He was wrong on philosophy. He was wrong on the church. He persecuted heretics. He was wrong on the sacraments and the nature of the Lord’s supper. He was also mistaken on the Millennium, , the Resurrection, eternal security, and : Why would anyone think he would be right-n election and predestination? One Must: wonder about John Calvin’s spirituality from all of this. Certainly, Calvin knew of these catholic teachings that Augustine embraced. How then could he so highly esteem him and his writings? Could it be that Calvin shut his eyes to Augustine’s false gospel because he liked the predestination teachings to which he held? No one will ever know for sure this side of the Judgement what the specific doctrinal attraction of OSAS taught a plan of salvation that would not bring salvation to all and John Calvin systemized and mad popular this man’s teachings that appealed to him!

PONDER THIS… Cyrilla, the Arian Bishop of Carthage, was a furious persecutor and a determined enemy to those Christians who professed the faith in its purity. He persuaded the King that he could never prosper in his undertakings, or enjoy his Kingdom in , while he suffered any of the orthodox Christians to practice their principles; and the Monarch, believing the prediction, sent for several of the most eminent Christians. He first attempted to draw them from their faith by flattery, and to bribe them by the promise of immediate worldly rewards; but they were firm and constant, declaring resolutely, We acknowledge but one Lord and one faith; you may therefore do whatever you please with our bodies, for it is better that we should suffer a few temporary pains the to endure everlasting misery. The King, being greatly exasperated at this remark, sent them to a dungeon, and ordered them to be out in irons. The keeper, however, suffered their friends to have access to them, by which they become daily more confirmed in their resolution of dying for the sake of their Redeemer. The King hearing of the indulgence they received, was exceedingly angry, and ordered these Christians to be put on board a vessel filled with combustible materials, and set on fire. The names of those who suffered by this cruel expedient were Rusticus, Severus, Liberatus, Rogatus, Servus, Septimus, and Boniface.

Obviously, those early Christians did not believe OSAS, for they knew it was yet possible for them to suffer everlasting misery which would be impossible otherwise.