Tag: Augustine

Ancient Interpretations (Romans 10:9–13)

When studying a passage, I enjoy reading commentaries, word studies, and other research materials. Yet, I’ve learned to also consult Christians who lived closer to the time of Jesus than the scholars and commentators who give us great work. Neither the early church leaders nor modern scholars are always right, but it doesn’t mean they didn’t get anything right.

Some good neighbors instruct a person to be saved using Romans 10:9–13, and they even use this passage and say, “Invite Jesus into your heart,” or, “Pray the sinner’s prayer.” Allow me to say that I don’t question a person’s sincerity in their beliefs. As the late Antonin Scalia once said, “I attack ideas. I don’t attack people. Some very good people have some very bad ideas.” Neither the sinner’s prayer nor asking Jesus into your heart is in the Bible. This notion can be traced back to Billy Graham popularizing it in his crusades.

Historian Thomas Kidd traces it back to Anglo-American Puritans in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The Puritan devotional writer John Flavel spoke of those who heard the gospel but would “receive not Christ into their hearts.” Thomas Boston, a Scottish Calvinist, encouraged Christians to take communion to receive “Christ into their hearts.” Benjamin Colman wrote in the early eighteenth century that Christians should “receive Christ into their hearts and hold him forth in their lives.” The phraseology became more and more formalized as time passed.

How should this passage be interpreted? Let’s ask some ancient Christians. While many have commentaries on this passage, I want to introduce you to Augustine. Augustine lived from the middle of the fourth century into the fifth century. He was a rather worldly fellow until he heard the preaching of Ambrose of Milan. Ambrose communicated the gospel in a way that appealed to Augustine because the sinner was also a philosopher and very intelligent. Most of the preachers he heard preached so simply that it turned him away, but Ambrose helped him. Later on, Augustine would become the bishop of Hippo (now Algeria). Western civilization owes a lot to Augustine. He lived to see the fall of the Roman Empire, and his writings have shaped much of Western civilization.

In his writing entitled The Christian Life, Augustine writes, “This condition is fulfilled at the time of baptism when faith and profession of faith are all that is demanded for one to be baptized.” Just as we do today, we ask for their confession before baptizing someone. They confess that they believe that Jesus is the Son of God. We also see it in verses such as Acts 2:21, 9:14, 22:16, and 1 Corinthians 1:2 in one form or another.

“Predestination”

Whenever you hear the word “predestined,” it’s essential to ask the user to define the term. Some people understand it concerning a person’s life is predetermined by God. This would remove any personal accountability, or it should, from the person’s actions. After all, God predetermined it, so why should we pay for it? I believe Romans 8:29 gives us a clearer picture of predestination than anything. 

For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren. (NKJV)

Alternate translations are also helpful. 

Because those he knew in advance he then marked out in advance as being in conformity to the image of his Son, so that he might be firstborn among many brothers. (DBH trans.)

Those foreknew, you see, he also marked out in advance to be shaped according to the model of the image of his son, so that he might be the firstborn of a large family (NTW trans.)

Both David Bentley Hart and N. T. Wright substitute “marked out in advance” for “predestined.” The Greek term proorizo is elsewhere translated as “determined before” (Acts 4:28) and “ordained before” (1 Cor. 2:7). “Marked out in advance” is a suitable translation because it leaves out the element of “destiny.” 

Nevertheless, the order of the passage places God’s foreknowledge at the beginning. This speaks to God’s omniscience at the front of what follows (cf. 1 John 3:20; Heb. 4:13; Is. 49:9–10). Just because God knows ahead of time doesn’t mean that He causes the outcome. He can work within it, but He doesn’t drive it. Some may think it a contradiction that God knows everything ahead of time because then we reflect on passages where God is said to have repented, regretted, or even changed His mind. The former two seem as if He was caught off guard by what occurred and, therefore, regretted it (cf. Gen. 6:6–7; 1 Sam. 15:10–11). I believe the biblical authors meant to convey that God can lament a situation despite knowing about it ahead of time. People whose loved ones are dying do all they can to prepare for the inevitable, but they still cry when the loved one passes away. They knew it was coming, but that fact doesn’t halt the emotion they feel upon its actual happening. When we study passages that say that God changed His mind (Exod. 32:14; 2 Sam. 24:15–16), we are forced to grapple with passages that speak of His unchanging nature (Num. 23:19; Mal. 3:6). Once more, the authors aren’t conveying that God didn’t know something but that He knew at what point He would change. These are not contradicting premises. 

Because God foreknows, He “predestines” it to be. For those of us who are Christians, God knew we’d be amenable to the gospel. Because of this foreknowledge, He determined that we would be conformed to the image of His Son. Our volition hasn’t been violated, and God hasn’t determined ahead of time that we would obey. He just knew it would happen, so He set things in motion to accomplish what He knew would occur (Rom. 8:30). I contend that predestination should be understood through the paradigm of God’s foreknowledge. We omit God’s foreknowledge if we don’t read it this way and take Ephesians 1:5, 11 as the paradigm. Paul wrote that God “chose” (v. 4) us and “purposed” (v. 9, cf. 11), which one could understand as Calvinists do. A synthesis of both passages is vital and should be understood together.