Augustine wrote several books explaining in detail his controversial views in the final nine years (especially the final four years) of his life. In these books, he wrote several passages that deviated greatly from the balanced way that the great Orthodox Fathers and Teachers (before and after Augustine) dealt with the same doctrines. In these extreme and unbalanced passages, Augustine seemed to teach that: (1) All human beings of all time were present “in” Adam when he sinned and “were” Adam when he sinned. (2) All human beings (men, women, and children) deserve to spend eternity in hell because we are all guilty of the sin that we committed when we all "were" Adam. (3) God arbitrarily chooses to give grace to a select few human beings (whether they desire it or not) and only the chosen can be saved. (4) God abandons all the rest of humanity, the majority (even those who desire to be saved). They have no chance at salvation. (5) God does not will that all men be saved. Augustine explains away the teaching of Scripture that God “wills all men to be saved,” by claiming that it only means the predestined, who happen to come from all kinds of backgrounds. (6) God “predestinates” (determines beforehand), in an inscrutable (inexplicable, essentially arbitrary) way that only a select few individuals will be saved.
Some of Augustine’s more extreme and unbalanced passages include the following:
[]“we all were in that one man [Adam], since all of us were that one man who fell into sin through the woman” (Augustine, City of God 13.4).
[*]“[a] class of men that is predestinated to destruction” (Augustine, Man’s Perfection in Righteousness 13)
[]“to those whom He has predestinated to eternal death, He is also the most righteous awarder of punishment” (Augustine, The Soul and Its Origin 16)
[*]“Of the number of the elect and predestined, even those who have led the worst kind of life are led to repentance through the goodness of God.... The other mortals ... have been made vessels of wrath .... He leads none of them to the wholesome and spiritual repentance by which a man in Christ is reconciled to God .... all men [are] of the same mass of perdition and condemnation .... God through his merciful goodness leads some of them to repentance, and according to His judgment does not lead others” (Augustine, Against Julian 1.4.14).
[*]“He ‘wills all men to be saved’ [1 Tim 2:4] is said so that all the predestined may be understood by it, because every kind of man is among them” (Augustine, Admonition and Grace 44).
In contrast to Augustine's extreme few of the fall, which comes close to Calvinistic "total depravity," the Orthodox Fathers take a more balanced approach. “[W]e rejected/lost the divine likeness, but we did not destroy the image/icon [τὸ καθ’ ὁμοίωσιν εἶναι θείαν ἀποβαλόντες, τὸ κατ’ εἰκόνα οὐκ ἀπωλέσαμεν] {Gr.P.Chap. 39[PG.150:1148/Γ.Π.Σ.5:56–57/Sinkewicz1988:126–127]}. Many Fathers identify the "icon of God" (the imago Dei) in humanity specifically in our rationality and conscience which can choose to repent and seek God's grace. There is no arbitrary and irresistible "election" of only a select few, as in Calvinism and literal Augustinianism. There is no arbitrary and irresistible predestination to sin, death, and damnation as in Calvinism and literal Augustinianism.
The Byzantine Church did not venerate Augustine liturgically and his writings started to be read in the Slavic and Greek East much later, under heavy Western influence over the Eastern Churches (Peter Galadza, “The Liturgical Commemoration of Augustine in the Orthodox Church: An Ambiguous Lex Orandi for an Ambiguous Lex Credendi,” St Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 52.1 [2008]: 111–130, https://www.academia.edu/4835529/_The_L ... card=title; Karla Pollmann and Willemien Otten, eds., The Oxford Guide to the Historical Reception of Augustine [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013]).It is a well-documented fact that Bishop Augustine of Hippo became very extreme and stubborn in his final four years, when he wrote works like On Correction and Grace (De correptione et gratia, AD 426) and Unfinished Work Against Julian (Contra Julianum opus imperfectum, AD 428–430). Augustine essentially denies the clear teaching of Saint Paul (1 Tim. 2:4) and several later synods that God desires all human beings to be saved. Augustine unpatristically reinterpreted “all men” to mean merely people from “all kinds” of tribes, languages, stations in life, etc. Augustine (De correptione et gratia 44), writes, “He ‘wills all men to be saved’ [1 Tim. 2:4] is said so that all the predestined may be understood by it, because every kind of man is among them.” Augustine was rebuked, especially by the Orthodox monastics of Gaul, for this false, unpatristic interpretation. But he remained stubbornly in error until his repose. In another section of the same unfortunate treatise (De correptione et gratia 14), Augustine seems to come very close to the great Calvinist error of “irresistible grace” (Augustine referring to gratia as “indeclinabiliter et insuperabiliter,” rather than the later “gratia irresistibilis”), although some scholars do not interpret Augustine’s words at face value here and attempt to minimize the clear similarity to the error of “irresistible grace.” There are numerous other passages in which Augustine seems to affirm embryonic versions of four of the five Calvinist TULIP errors: total depravity (lack of free will), unconditional (arbitrary) election, irresistible (coercive) grace, and perseverance of the saints (coercive grace denying human free will).
A strict Augustinian notion of double predestination (with arbitrary predestination to damnation) was rejected by numerous synods of bishops in the West: Synod of Arles (AD 473; Synodal Statement written by Saint Faustus of Riez), Synod of Lyon (circa AD 474), Second Synod of Orange (begun July 3, AD 529, under the presidency of Archbishop Caesarius of Arles), Synod of Mainz (AD 848), [First] Synod of Quiercy (AD 849), [Second] Synod of Quiercy (May, AD 853, under the presidency of Archbishop Hincmar of Reims), Synod of Valence (January 8, AD 855, presided over by Bishop Remegius of Lyon), Synod of Langres (AD 859), and Synod of Toul (AD 860). None of these synods condemned Augustine by name, and some were even influenced by his writings, but they all rejected some of his extreme statements on predestination.
Bishop Augustine of Hippo Regius can be a hindrance to finding the patristic consensus on soteriology. Augustine did not retract his proto-Calvinist errors in his book entitled Retractationes (meaning “reviews,” more than “retractions”), but stubbornly doubled down on them in his final two years, when he was writing Contra Julianum opus imperfectum, his enormously long and extreme and unfinished final work. He rebuffed the repeated warnings of the Orthodox monastics of Gaul. Pope Vigilius later took a one-sided position against these critics. Vigilius was unfair to the Orthodox monastics of Gaul. The pope was seeking to stamp out discussion of Augustine’s obvious one-sidedness. Vigilius was seeking to increase blind obedience to the Roman see.
The consensus of the Fathers is what we should seek to uphold, over and above the idiosyncrasies of any one ecclesiastical writer. The consensus of the Fathers on these soteriological issues is represented with more balance by Saints Gregory of Nyssa, John Chrysostom, John Cassian, and the holy (Augustine-critical) bishops and monks of Gaul, not by Augustine. The western synods (mentioned above) do not uphold Augustine’s distorted soteriological language. Yes, Saints Photius and Nicodemus were so scandalized by some of Augustine’s writings that they put forward their personal speculations that there “must” have been interpolations. There is absolutely no evidence of any relevant interpolations that any Eastern or Western scholar has ever found in Augustine’s corpus. I looked carefully at the Fifth Synod (Greek, English, Latin): Augustine is not proclaimed a saint or Universal Teacher of pure Orthodoxy, despite what Saint Justinian may have written or what the Latin (not the Greek) manuscripts of the synodal Sentence may say.
The tradition of the Orthodox Churches of the East was not to venerate Augustine liturgically even though he was equally and possibly more famous and influential than Saint Leo the Great and Saint Gregory the Great. The fact that Saints Patrick, Vincent, and others were not venerated in the East is because they were not well known. Augustine was not venerated in the East due to God’s providence, not lack of knowledge about his existence. The primary sources, the expert scholarship, and the dominant liturgical tradition of the Orthodox Church does not uphold Augustine’s one-sided approach to soteriology or his liturgical veneration in the East. We can call him “holy” as we sometimes do Theophilus of Alexandria or Theodoret of Cyrrhus (who both made great errors) or any Orthodox bishop (“Holy Master, bless”) or any Orthodox priest (“Holy Father, bless”), but it is best to maintain tradition and not venerate Augustine of Hippo Regius with liturgical hymns in the Menaion as a teacher of pure Orthodoxy. He was not pure, but made grievous errors, as is widely admitted, including even by Father Seraphim Rose, Metropolitan Emeritus Chrysostomos of Etna, Vladimir Moss, and other defenders of veneration. I am advocating nothing innovative at all here, simply the tradition of the Orthodox Church that 1) recognizes serious errors in Augustine’s writings and (2) does not venerate him liturgically.
