Contrary to what Ken Wilson, Leighton Flowers and the Soteriology101 crowd would have you believe, the scholars that Wilson cite in his works don’t all agree with Wilson that views they don’t like from Augustine (such as predestination unto salvation and faith is a gift of God), originated in the early church from the post-411 AD later Augustine out of his alleged return to Manicheanism, Gnosticism or whatever other pagan charges they want to throw at him and by extension Augustinians like us. In fact, scholars (in the same exact works that Wilson referred to) can be cited saying the exact opposite. Wilson, Flowers and their crowd are gaslighting people there.
One such church history scholar on Augustine is Stephen Cooper. Wilson referenced on page 37 of his Foundation of Augustinian-Calvinism book to state:
“Augustine was baptized into Christianity in 386 CE by his spiritual father, Ambrose, bishop of Milan. The early Augustine gradually moved away from Neoplatonic and Manichaean ideas to embrace the Christian theology of his time. A decade later Augustine discovered God's grace apart from the merit of human works after reading the commentaries of Victorinus and then Jerome on Galatians.”
What Wilson stated there (per his footnote, taken from Cooper’s work on Marius Victorinus) in regards to Victorinus and Jerome being influential on early Augustine (prior to 412 AD) was true. But he made some key omissions in regards to how influential Victorinus was on Augustine, so that he can claim no fathers prior to the later Augustine (after 411 AD) held fo the views that will be presented from Victorinus as pointed out by Stephen Cooper.
In writing the introductory chapters to Marius Victorinus’ Commentary on Galatians, Cooper had this to say on Victorinus’ influence on Augustine in regards to election, grace, and freewill in chapter 5:
“The tacit assumption here is that only God can furnish the good will through election. His Romans commentary in all likelihood discussed the transformation of the human will into a good will by the grace of God. Schmid may well have been right that Victorious set out the issue without experiencing it deeply as a personal problem or offering a definitive solution. Augustine, at any rate, would come to reflect deeply upon this in Ad Simplicianum and the Confessions. But even if Victorinus did not match the profundity of the bishop of Hippo on this question, Schmid's notion that Victorious conceived faith as `Vernunftglaube' is difficult to support, particularly in the face of those passages where the commentator carefully qualifies that the knowledge attained in faith is made possible by the Holy Spirit. Inspired by the Holy Spirit, the `Spirit of the Son' which is sent into them, believers can call God `Abba, Father'. This implies a knowledge of God which is given-as Victorinus carefully states-by Christ and the Spirit.”
He elaborated on Victorinus’ view of predestination that Augustine would later affirm (contrary to Wilson’s assertions that all pre-Augustine fathers, including Victorinus, rejected this) in regards to it being the effectual cause of our conversion:
“Victorinus never says that the predestining of souls involves divine consultation of their future righteousness; rather, whatever holiness souls come to possess is clearly stated to be the result of God's predestination.”
And again here:
“Yet, as other scholars from Gore to Harnack have noted, `a definite approach to Augustine's doctrine can be ascertained in the West in the second half of the fourth century. I quote Schindler's further remarks at length here, because they present the best summary of the parallels between Augustine and Victorinus on the issues under discussion: What is now of relevance to Augustine's position is that it was thus not something completely new in the history of Latin theology. Marius Victorinus had around the middle of the fourth century already spoken of justification from faith and against all works-righteousness; he had already taught an unalloyed predestination and activity of God prior to and in our will.”
Note that Cooper stated due to Victorinus being prior to Augustine and already teaching “an unalloyed predestination and activity of God prior to and in our will,” Augustine’s position was “thus not something completely new in the history of Latin theology.” That refutes the claim that all the scholars that Wilson cited are in agreement with him that Augustine’s views on this matter originated in the church with him from his various pagan past.
Also contrary to Wilson’s claims on Victorinus holding to faith is a gift of God was in figurative terms and really did not refer to initial faith, but God offering the opportunity for free choice of man to decide for Christ, Cooper wrote:
“So although to believe really is up to us (as Victorinus is not shy about stating elsewhere), it is also clear that our ability to believe is a gift not merely in the sense-as we find in Pelagius' comments on this same verse-of God furnishing the soul's created capacity and the external events which which elicit faith. Faith, although it is genuinely a human response, tends to be depicted by Victorinus as a response to God's spiritual persuasion.”
In contrast, Wilson (on pages 208-209 of his dissertation book) Augustine’s Conversion from Traditional Free Choice to “Non-free Free Will” claimed that fathers like Victorinus held to faith as a gift only as God giving an opportunity to freely choose or reject Christ (while ironically questioning Augustine’s integrity, a repeated theme in the dissertation that itself lacked integrity):
“Jerome (Comm. Eph.1.2.8-10), Victorinus (Ep. P. Eph.1.2.9), and John Chrysostom (Hom. Hen.12; cf. Hom. Thess.4.1-3)- all contemporaries and all believing traditional free choice- had written on Eph 2.8-10 with God ‘gifting faith,’ in a figurative sense, not Divine Unilateral Predetermination of Individual’s Eternal Destinies. With these notable Christians expressing ‘faith as God’s gift’ (meaning opportunity for salvation through free choice and wiling good), Augustine was handed invaluable figurative language. It allowed him not only to honestly assert belief in initial faith as God’s hit in 396 CE, but to later (412) transform the figurative to a literal novel theology of Christianized DUPIED, while claiming he remained within the regula fidei.”
Cooper and Wilson are not in agreement on Victorinus as rejecting predestination unto salvation and faith is a gift of God merely as an opportunity to make free choice for Christ in similar vein as Pelagian beliefs.
Let’s see what Marius Victorinus’ commentary on Philippians, chapter 1, verse 29 wrote:
“It was therefore within his purpose that he gave to us the gift of trusting in him. This was an incomparable gift. It is only by faith in him that we are blessed with so great a reward. We are to believe in such a way as to be ready to suffer for him.”
Regardless of what Wilson, Flowers and what their neo-semi-Pelagian Provisionist movement are trying to push, it is no wonder then that Stephen Cooper (citing other scholars that agreed with him on this) treated Victorinus as “Augustine before Augustine”:
“Gore's suggestion that there was a `closer connection than has been yet noticed between him and St. Augustine' was taken up by Adolph von Harnack. As he expressed the point in his Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte, `we are astonished to find him a perfect Christian Neoplatonist, and an Augustine before Augustine'. Harnack made Gore's claim central to his evaluation of the importance of Victorinus' Paul commentaries to the history of Christian doctrine: `No-one before Augustine emphasized justification from faith and recognized the meaning of faith so energetically.”
Here we stand.
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