THE ORIGIN OF OSAS: (Once Saved Always Saved) OSAS can easily be traced back to John Calvin (1509-1564) from Synod of Dort under the description of the perseverance of the saints. But did you know that it, and other points of Calvinism, can be traced more than one thousand years earlier to Augustine of Hippo (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 Gospel, and when hearing they are caused to believe it, and are made likewise to endure to the end in the faith 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 Predestination 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 merit 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 God’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 salvation. 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 Pelagius 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 total depravity, the slavery of the human will, the sovereignty of saving grace, the bishop of Hippo and the Pastor of Geneva 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 baptism, 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 catholic church, 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 creed, sacraments, 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 Latin 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 Abraham’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 Sacrament 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 sermon 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 reformation times. The Albigensian crusades 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 Jan Hus at Prague. As a Catholic theologian of the fifth century, we should not be too surprised by Augustine’s other views either: Baptismal Regeneration: …he does not shrink from consigning unbaptized children to damnation 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.