Journal: Westminster Theological Journal
Volume: WTJ 83:1 (Spring 2021)
Article: The Development Of Augustine’s Views On Free Will And Grace, And The Conflicting Claims To Consistency Therewith By John Owen And John Goodwin
Author: Benedict Bird

WTJ 83:1 (Spring 2021) p. 73

The Development Of Augustine’s Views On Free Will And Grace, And The Conflicting Claims To Consistency Therewith
By John Owen And John Goodwin

Benedict Bird

Benedict Bird is currently completing a PhD dissertation on the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints according to John Owen, at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge.

This article charts a seven-step diachronic progression in Augustine’s thinking on the freedom of the will. His thinking developed between his conversion and his death as he grappled first with the Manichees, then the Pelagians, then the semi-Pelagians. Other studies have tended to focus on one or two of these steps as representing his “turning point,” or have presented one or other of them as his definitive position. Such studies have sometimes then been used as the basis for unwarranted claims to Augustine’s endorsement or, conversely, the rejection of his teaching as being simplistically deterministic and thence “problematic” or even “dangerous.” By examining the progression, we may see more clearly what he was affirming and rejecting. Free-will is affirmed, but not in a liberty-of-indifference sense. Absolute determinism, fatalism, and human passivity are rejected. Salvation requires the wholly-gracious work of each person of the Trinity, effectually restoring the human will such that a man will freely and infallibly choose to cease his rebellion against God, to believe, and to persevere. The claims to alignment with Augustine’s thinking, made in the seventeenth century by both John Owen and his Arminian interlocutor John Goodwin, are considered. Goodwin’s claims are found wanting; Owen’s are upheld.

John Owen (1616–1683) and his Arminian interlocutor John Goodwin (c. 1594–1665) claimed that their teaching on the freedom of the human will was consistent with that taught by Augustine. According to Goodwin, Augustine consistently taught that “both sin and well-doing are in the power or liberty of the will,” and that God’s grace, though necessary, was only adjutive and never compulsive.1 Hence, infers Goodwin, “all things duly considered …

WTJ 83:1 (Spring 2021) p. 74

the difference between [Augustine and Pelagius] was very little, if any at all.”2 On the basis of this understanding of man’s free will, he says that Augustine “abounded in that Faith, which beleeveth a Possibility of the Saints declining, and that unto death.”3 In contrast, Owen believed that Augustine taught that fallen man’s condition was non posse non peccare; that God’s grace was neither merely ...