Matthew Johnson wrote:
> In article ,
lsenders{at}hotmail.com
>
> >>
> >Again, one must distinquish between his earlier work and his later
> >work.
>
> But you yourself consistently REFUSE to do this. Haven't you even
looked at the
> date yet for the work of his I consistently quote? It was written
during the
> last 4 years of his life. I ahve NOT confused his earlier opinions.
>
Okay, now keep this thought in mind.  . . .

>  I am talking about a view clearly enunciated in his _later_
> writings, written within the last four years of his life.
> Stop throwing up elaborate smoke-screens. You are not very good at
it.
>
later writtings.  Okay.  Now hold that thought.  Later writings more
clearly reveal a greater separation from Greek thought.  But if he is
separating himself more and more from the Greek thought forms, what is
he now advocating as the criteron of truth?

> >The whole point is that even Augustinian theology has a depth of
> >weakness which was not expunged from Christian theological
> >presuppositional thinking until the Reformation pinned the ears back
on
> >the Latin (and Eastern) Churches as to the depravity of man as
taught
> >sola scriptura.
>
> But this NEVER happened! What the 'Reformation' pinned on the CHurch
was
> neo-manicheanism, NOT CHristianity at all!
>
Interesting analysis. But to conclude such you have to use early
Augustinian logic not that of his later work.
>
> >This is why the EOC is like the RCC in that it
> >presupposes man's autonomy and authority.
>
> No, that is not why. The EOC and RCC are NOT identical on this issue,
but the
> very great similarity is because even the RCC understands our common
heritage
> better than you do.
>
Like the RCC, the EOC views everything as "process."  In so doing, it
limits God.  It limits both His knowledge and His providence.  It does
so by its equivocation concerning the will of man.  This is also why it
will not bend the knee to not only the finality of the crucifixion of
Christ, to the finality of the justification of the believer, the
finality of the glorification of the believer, but also the finality of
Christ's scripturalization of revelation.  Both compromise the biblical
doctrine of creation with its presupposition of the analogy of being.
Both hold that man exists between pure actuality and pure potentiality
of being.  There, therefore, a continuity of being between man and God.
 Man may increase in his participation of God as a pure act.  It is
synthetical thinking, not the biblical mandate of anathetical thinking.


Like the Romanist, there is a synthesis between the Aristotelian idea
of analogy of being and the biblical idea of God as Creator and man as
creature.  As such, man is free.  But for those not intimate with the
full breadth of this, this does not merely mean that man is not
ethically as corrupt as the Reformed position maintains he is.  It
means this, to be sure, but it also means that man is to some extent
metaphysically ultimate -the result of the fall.  He partakes in
ultimate being.  His will is therefore of the same sort as the divine
will.  Man's will can initiate that which is wholly new thus
necessitating that, in point of fact, God is not in control of whatever
comes to pass.  Man determines in part what the ultimate issue of
history will be.  God never controls man, in the final sense.

Now, let's address Augustine's later position on the authority of the
Scriptures.

If one reads Augustine's writings chronologically, and if one is
somewhat knowledgeable of the Greek schools of thought, it is evident
that Augustine gradually weaned himself of Greek logic in his
apologies.  This is, so it seems to me, primarily because he gradually
accepts or understands the meaning of scriptural record of a historical
creation vs the image of a moving eternity.  Time is no longer an
aspect of pure, self-existent contingency.  Gradually he came to see
the vanity of seeking to understand the nature of time by the Greek
principle of rationality.  He comes to the point where he realizes that
only in the Triune God of the Scriptures can he have true truth of "the
one and only and true God."  His final criterion is the truth revealed
in the Scriptures -alone.  His "two cities" amply defends this point.
There are two kids of people and they are mutually exclusive in their
principles, which also reveal a maturation is his understanding of the
depravity of the "common human nature."  All men are "bound
together by
a certain fellowship of our common nature." [Confessions 18:2]

Thus, it is only those who by grace have received true faith and
therefore true virtue in their hearts will enter eternal blessedness.
"But, on the other hand, they who do not belong to this city of God
shall inherit eternal misery, which is also called the second death,
because the soul shall then be separated from God its life, and
therefore cannot be said to live, and the body shall be subjected to
eternal pains." [19:28]

And so Augustine's philosophy of history comes to rest in the
_Scriptural_ record.  By faith alone on the Scriptural record can the
apologist come to accept the existence of the Triune God.  Only via the
Scriptures can the redemptive work of Christ and His Spirit in history
be known and accepted.  Only via the Scriptures can we know and accept
the fact that we are creatures and sinners before a Creator God.  By
faith alone can we understand the progress of history to be that of
conflict between Christ and Satan.  "Let those skeptics who refuse to
credit the dine writings give me, if they can, a rational account of
them."  [21:5]  That is, let skeptics give an account of the redemptive
work of Christ via general revelation alone as viewed by the
rationalization of the autonomous man.  In the Bible alone does man
read of the miracles of redemption.  Accept then the Bible and with it
the record of the redemption of God or explain all things in terms of
yourself as man. [11:17]

As opposed to his earlier work, Augustine comes to a mature, though not
complete, realization that the natural was designed for the miraculous
redemptive work _in_one_plan.  It is God who is in control of ALL
things, including events.  Man is not autonomous.  Man is not so free
that he can, via his supposed "human uplift society" bring himself
closer to God, either individually or corporately.  Based upon human
autonomy, the Church slips from the City of God back into the City of
the World.  Emphasizing the free-will of man independent of the
sovereign control of God is to replace the doctrine of freedom "in
Christ" with the doctrine of freedom without Christ.  To refuse sola
scriptura is lead the church back into the hopeless morass of
non-biblical speculation, back into the thought forms of early
Augustinianism.

> > "in that day you shall surely die," meant, in effect,
that when man
> >sinned, he committed suicide.
>
> But Adam kept on living. So you are still missing the point of this
verse.
>
Man died spiritually and died physically.  Both are at once already and
not yet.  Spiritually man became immediately alienated from God, as
being ushered out of Eden and the advent of blood sacrifice illustrate.
 It is also not yet in that if man remains in his "common nature" he
will inherit eternal damnation.  Physically, man died in that he never
partook of the Tree of Life.  By grace, he did not immediately die
according to the kindness and forebearance and patience. . . of God
leading to repentance.  [Rom 2:4]

The greatest death that man can suffer is the loss of
fellowship/revelation with God.  This he suffered at the fall.  Man's
only hope lies in the Scripture's testimony of the redemptive offer of
God via the work of Christ.

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