Luther and Calvin Wrong about Augustine Being Orthodox

prolife-incrementalism.jpgChristians taught free will for the first 300 years of the church. Oxford professor of historical theology Alister McGrath, an Augustinian sympathizer, nonetheless admits that "The pre-Augustinian theological tradition is practically of one voice in asserting the freedom of the human will." And Marston and Forster in their classic God's Strategy in Human History show that early Christian leaders taught free will and rejected the heresy that denied genuine free will. Determinism was taught by the pagan Sumerians, Babylonians, Greeks, Gnostics, Neoplatonists, Stoics, etc., whereas genuine free will was taught in the first centuries of the church by Christian leaders in Alexandria, Antioch, Athens, Carthage, Jerusalem, Lycia, Nyssa, Rome, and Sicca. Some of the early Christian authors who taught genuine free will were Justin Martyr, Irenaeus of Gaul, Athenagoras of Athens, Theophilus of Antioch, Tatian of Syria, Clement of Alexandria, Bardaisan of Syria, Tertullian of Carthage, Origen, Novatian of Rome, Methodius of Olympus, Arnobius of Sicca, Cyril of Jerusalem, Gregory of Nyssa, John Chrysostom, and Jerome. Oh yeah, and on today's program, Bob mentions how we improved on the latest graphic from AHA's Russell Hunter. (See also Wrong about Augustine, Part 2.)