Whereas Augustine viewed
Pelagius as teaching that Adam left posterity only a bad example but never
maliciously tainted human nature, he argued that all human persons are, rather, ueteres
nascuntur on account of Adam’s transgression. In our sin we are all born “old”
and all are therefore in need of the rebirth which only baptism can bring (Cf. ep.
190.16; cf. ciu. Dei 16.27; ench. 13.45-46). Baptism is
understood in a complex relationship of both dying to self and union with
Christ. First, it is the putting of death of one’s Adamic sinfulness, namely a
life-giving death clearly meant for both infant and adult alike (Cf. ench.
14.52). In adults, it can also have the secondary effect of removing all actual
sins—“in baptism there is not a single past sin that is not forgiven” (ep. 158.39;
Teske, Letters [II/3], 200-201). Second, it is what joins us to the body
of Christ and makes us members of the totus Christus. Immersion into the
waters of baptism makes us Christ’s own, regardless of age or disposition of
virtue (Cf. pecc. mer. 3.4.7). And while the efficacy of baptism is permanent
and unrepeatable, the renewal into Christ which it initiates should never be
construed as a single moment of conversion.
Baptism removes all
sin but the work of the sacrament does not end here. Ever the pastor of souls,
Augustine is insistent that the healing and the renewal of baptism must be
lived out each day. Analogies help: it is one thing to be rid of the heat of a
fever, another to be rid of all the debilitating effects of one’s illness; it
is one thing to remove a foreign object from the body, Augustine’s example here
is that of a spear or arrow, a telum), another to heal the wound it
left. While baptism may be essential to Christian unity, it still remains the
initial step in humanity’s divine communion: “The first stage of the cure is to
remove the cause of the debility itself, and this is done by pardoning all
sins; the second stage is curing the debility itself, and this is done
gradually by making steady progress in the renewal of this image . . . by daily
advances while the image is being renewed” (Trin. 14.14.23; Hill, Trinity,,
389). Although baptism initiates a new and graced participation in God, it must
be nurtured and renewed daily. For this, Augustine offers us the daily regiment
of prayer, of charity, and of the Eucharistic sacrifice. (David Vincent Meconi,
The One Christ: St. Augustine’s Theology of Deification [Washington,
D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2013], 222-24)
