A Theology of Grace in Six Controversies (Interventions) by Edward T. Oakes

Author:Edward T. Oakes
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.
Published: 2016-05-10T16:00:00+00:00

This factor of solidarity in salvation as well as sin is largely missing in Augustine, at least when he was tangling with the Pelagians.62 But that very lack is what transforms baptism into a kind of celestial life-insurance policy, of relevance to the individual alone, which would then lose its monetary value, so to speak, if the non-baptized were to be admitted into heaven. Thus, a kind of binary logic takes over, whereby the believer comes to feel “cheated” if others get in ahead of him, as if St. Peter were standing at the Pearly Gates checking for baptismal certificates like some Manhattan night-club bouncer assigned to weed out the lowly bridge-and-tunnel crowd from New Jersey while the beautiful people are inside with their Botox souls dancing the night away. But that was Augustine’s logic, which George Dyer explains in this unsparing description of his position:

Augustine had employed his formidable scriptural armament to exclude children from eternal life and from the kingdom of God; . . . and so in language that was largely scriptural he painted a chilling description of the future life of the unbaptized child. He must face the judgment of God, said Augustine; he is a vessel of wrath, a vessel of contumely, and the judgment of God is upon him. Baptism is the only thing that can deliver him from the kingdom of death and the power of the devil. If no one frees him from the grasp of the devil, what wonder is it that he must suffer in flames with Satan? There can be no doubt about the matter, the saint concludes, he must go into eternal fire with the devil.63

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