Saint Augustine: Protestant or Roman Catholic?

Añadido: 2026-05-11

[00:00:00]If Augustine were alive today, would he be Catholic or Protestant?

[00:00:05]Let's find out.

[00:00:17]>> [music] >> Well, in this video we're going to take a look at St. Augustine, the mammoth of the Christian faith. You know, if the church fathers were like the the woodlands, then Augustine is the redwood, the greatest, the biggest, second to none.

[00:00:32]All of us, whether we like it or not, whether we recognize it or not, are indebted to Augustine. He has shaped us more than any other church father. The categories we use, the ways we think about salvation, particularly in the Western church, are formed by his writings. And he's loved by Catholics and Protestants alike. But here's the question of this video.

[00:00:56]If Augustine were alive today, would he be Roman Catholic or would he be Protestant? Which church would he go to on Sunday? What I'm going to do is give you the two arguments and then tell you where I land at the end. And so, let's begin then with the Catholic position.

[00:01:14]And the place to look is the anti-Donatist writings.

[00:01:17]Who are the Donatists? Well, the Donatist controversy was a bit like the Novation crisis and they posed a pressing question for the Latin church.

[00:01:25]How could the church remain holy when its members sinned drastically during the persecution? So, think of little Johnny. Johnny's been a Christian for a few years and the great persecution arises and little Johnny is captured and he's facing the sword and they tell him "Recant of your faith in Christ." And little Johnny denies Christ. Eventually, the persecution falls away or fades away.

[00:01:50]What does the church do with little Johnny?

[00:01:53]Really, that's the question. And and what happened was believers sought restitution or restoration after falling. And so, the church faced the tension between giving purity uh sorry, giving mercy or being pure. And the Donatists ended up echoing the rigorism of the Novations. They said the church must be a community of the pure and the sacraments administered by compromised clergy were invalid.

[00:02:24]Now, to confront this challenge, the church turned to Augustine. For Augustine, the holiness of the church wasn't derived from the sinlessness of its members but from the sanctifying presence of Christ within her.

[00:02:36]See, Augustine maintained that Christ liberates humanity from guilt of sin and imparts the spirit who enables us to perform works of righteousness.

[00:02:46]And for Augustine, forgiveness is inseparable from faith and baptism into Christ.

[00:02:53]But here's the key.

[00:02:54]The reception of the Holy Spirit requires adherence to the great church.

[00:03:01]And so, outside of the great church, there can be no salvation.

[00:03:06]In his writings, Augustine says that communion with the church is a necessary condition for receiving the spirit and forgiveness.

[00:03:14]Augustine writes in On Baptism. He says, "Nor indeed were the prayers of the Gentile Cornelius unheard, nor did his alms lack acceptance. Nay, he was found worthy that an angel should be sent to him and that he should behold the messenger through whom he might assuredly have learned everything that was necessary without requiring that any man should come to him.

[00:03:34]But since all the good that he had in his prayers and alms could not benefit him unless he were incorporated in the church by the bond of Christian brotherhood and peace, he was ordered to send to Peter and through him learned Christ and being also baptized by his orders, he was joined by the tie of communion to the fellowship of Christians."

[00:03:56]And so, we can see that it's not enough to pray or to seek God. You needed to be connected to the church and that was the problem with the Donatists is they weren't. And by the church, Augustine means the great church. So, not the Donatist or the Novation splinter groups.

[00:04:14]And uh Augustine would say that if anyone rejects the church and separates in schism, they abandon the Holy Spirit.

[00:04:23]So, Augustine writes, "But in the different heretical bodies, if under the pressure of any persecution, they give their bodies without to be burned for the faith which, like us, they confess, yet because they do all these things apart from the church, not forbearing one another in love, nor endeavoring to keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace, in so much as they have not charity, they cannot attain to eternal salvation even with all those good things which profit them not."

[00:04:53]And so, Augustine's saying that even if a schismatic professes faith in Christ, even if he says, "Look, I believe in Jesus."

[00:05:00]He is outside the kingdom.

[00:05:02]And what's interesting is although baptism outside the visible bounds of the church remains valid, its efficacy, for Augustine, is only realized within the great church.

[00:05:13]Augustine famously writes, this is one of his famous sections. It says, "It is not indeed rightly given, but yet it is given.

[00:05:21]But as by reconciliation to unity, that begins to be profoundly possessed which was possessed to no profit in exclusion from unity, so by the same reconciliation, that begins to be profitable which without it was given to no profit."

[00:05:37]And so, for Augustine, baptism given by a schismatic bishop is a true baptism, but it's only salvifically profitable when the recipient is reconciled to the unity of the great church.

[00:05:49]And so, we can see then that the ecclesial controversy shaped Augustine's soteriology. It influenced how Augustine understood the benefits, the saving benefits of Christ.

[00:06:00]And if you want to say that Augustine is a Roman Catholic, then this is the angle that you take. Augustine's ecclesiocentric paradigm provided the foundation on which pretty much the Western church was built for centuries to come. It shaped its understanding of grace, sin, and redemption. And his concept of salvation is mediated through the visible church and her sacraments are central to her teaching.

[00:06:23]So, that's the Roman Catholic arguments.

[00:06:28]The Roman Catholic Augustine. But is there another narrative?

[00:06:31]Well, I believe there is. There is a Protestant Augustine, if you're allowed to say such things. Don't be mad at me in the comments. Uh this is the claim of B.B.

[00:06:39]Warfield who said this. He said the Reformation was the ultimate triumph of Augustine's doctrine of grace over Augustine's doctrine of the church.

[00:06:49]And so, for Warfield, we need to look at Augustine's works on grace and the best place to look are the anti-Pelagian writings. If you want to argue that that Augustine sounded more Protestant than Catholic, then this is the place to dig.

[00:07:02]And one pro argument is they come about 10 years after the Donatist writings and so, you could argue that this is a more mature Augustine and perhaps his theology has grown and adapted over time, which happens to all of us.

[00:07:17]So, let's have a look at at the his writing on nature and grace. Uh the context is a man named Pelagius. He's a turnip. Uh the great persecution is over and now people are living nominal lives and Pelagius believed in Christian perfectionism and that we have the ability within ourselves to choose what is good.

[00:07:37]See, for Pelagius, the baptized believer has a good nature, free from any struggle and you can freely live a sinless life.

[00:07:44]This is how Pelagius defines grace. Five things. Firstly, the capacity for us to be without sin.

[00:07:50]Secondly, the law of Moses.

[00:07:53]Thirdly, the forgiveness of sins.

[00:07:55]That one sounds better. Fourthly, the example of Christ. Fifth, the teachings of Christ. That's how he defines grace.

[00:08:02]I told you he's a turnip. And in the first seven chapters, Augustine says that we all deserve wrath since we've all sinned in Adam.

[00:08:10]And therefore, we can only be justified by faith in what Christ has done. So, listen to this. Augustine writes, "If justice is derived from human nature, then Christ died in vain.

[00:08:21]But if he did not die in vain, then human nature can in no way be justified and redeemed from the most righteous wrath of God, that is from punishment, unless through faith and the sacraments of the blood of Christ."

[00:08:35]And then he says this, "This grace of Christ then, is without which neither children nor adults can be saved, is given gratuitously and not for our merits. And for this reason, it is called grace."

[00:08:48]And so, for Augustine, Pelagius has it all back to front and completely upside down and wrong. He doesn't get it. For grace to be grace, it needs to be free.

[00:08:55]No merit, no work, no performance, all of Christ, all of faith, faith in the blood of Christ.

[00:09:03]And Augustine is keen to drum home the necessity of saving faith that he even says those who haven't heard the gospel are damned.

[00:09:10]And he's so convinced that you can only be saved through faith in Christ that he says, you know, if you're in a random tribe somewhere, then you don't know Christ and you're damned to hell.

[00:09:21]Why? Well, because we're all guilty in Adam. There's no neutral good person. We all sin in Adam and that it really is one of the main things that Augustine tackles throughout this book. Pelagius wants to argue that we can live a sinless life in our own strength.

[00:09:35]And in chapter 7 to 18, Augustine says, "No.

[00:09:39]The law brings us to our knees so we cry to God for grace." And it shows us that Augustine's working with a law-gospel distinction. He understands the difference and he doesn't collapse them like so many different traditions today.

[00:09:52]The law shows us our sin and humbles us and the gospel raises us to life in Christ. Have a listen to this. Augustine says, "Certainly he has not noticed those texts of the New Testaments in which we have learned that the purpose of the law in its accusation of us is that on account of transgressions people take refuge in the grace of the merciful Lord." And so the purpose of the law is to drive us to despair.

[00:10:17]And when we're in a place of despair, we flee to Christ for refuge. This is a Lutheran law-gospel distinction. I think Luther most likely got actually this distinction from Saint Augustine, this distinction between uh grace on the one hand, so gospel on the one hand, or promise on the one hand, and then the law and works.

[00:10:41]But how does all of this come about for Augustine? Faith in what? Everyone agrees in faith.

[00:10:47]But faith in what? Listen to this.

[00:10:49]It is the same faith which healed the just people of old.

[00:10:53]So Augustine, notice here by the way, he does not sever the Old and the New Testament like modern-day dispensationals.

[00:11:00]It is the same faith which healed the just people of old and which also heals us.

[00:11:05]That is faith in the mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus. Faith in his blood, faith in his cross, faith in his death and resurrection.

[00:11:16]On and on Augustine flies. On nature and grace is a beautiful book. I also recommend on the spirit and the letter, and also his work on predestination. They are fantastic reads, and they'll bless your soul.

[00:11:32]But which is it?

[00:11:34]If Augustine was to go to church today, or on a Sunday, what church would he enter?

[00:11:40]Is Augustine a Roman Catholic or is he a Protestant?

[00:11:45]The answer is, drum roll, it depends.

[00:11:50]It depends on one thing. That is whether you read his anti-Pelagian writings in light of the Donatist controversy, or if you see the anti-Pelagian writings as a changed and renewed Augustine.

[00:12:02]And of course the annoying answer is, we don't know.

[00:12:05]It's a good argument that the anti-Pelagian writings are later, and that sounds eerily similar to the voice of the Reformers when you read those writings. But it's also a good argument to say that Augustine never changed his view of the church and the way the church shapes his understanding of grace.

[00:12:21]And so just to be transparent, I'll lay my cards on the table, uh I've changed my mind a few times on this already. Each time I I I go back to it, I sort of pendulum swing to the other way, because both seem to be me to be convincing for different reasons.

[00:12:35]It's probable that Augustine's grasp of grace is shaped by his theology of the church, and that would make him sound more Roman, but I can also see how his language pushes in a Reformation direction as well.

[00:12:49]But what I'm more interested in is hearing your thoughts.

[00:12:52]I've tried to be as balanced as possible. I know I'm a Protestant, I can't avoid that bias, neither can you, uh but I've tried to read Augustine with as much balance as possible, and I've got to be honest, both sound convincing.

[00:13:05]Both sound convincing. I I do go back and forth time and time again. I'd love to hear what what you think, um but but I'd probably if you if you were to get me just to say, "What what do you what do you think right now? What do you believe?"

[00:13:18]I I'd probably lean 51% on the Roman Catholic side.

[00:13:25]I'm 1% more convinced that the the writings are in light of the Donatist controversy and therefore shape his understanding of grace.

[00:13:34]Um but let me know what you think. Um please hit like and subscribe. God bless you, and like Augustine or not like Augustine, Sola Fide.