Tuesday, November 23, 2021

Carl R. Trueman on Grace as Transformative in Augustine’s Theology

  

But knowing the law is not enough. Because of the internal, existential problem of human sin, Augustine argued that the internal work of the Holy Spirit is also vital. It is the Spirit who writes the law on the heart of the sinner, something for which Augustine sees obvious biblical justification in Jeremiah 31:33 (On the Spirit and the Letter 19.33). Augustine draws this out dramatically in his work On the Spirit and the Latter when he compares the Israelites gathered at Sinai to the disciples gathered together at Pentecost:

 

Now, amidst this admirable correspondence, there is at least this very considerable diversity in the cases, in that the people in the earlier instance were deterred by a horrible dread from approaching the place where the law was given; whereas in the other case the Holy Ghost came upon them who were gathered together in expectation of His promised gift. There it was on tables of stone that the finger of God operated; here it was on the hearts of men. There the law was given outwardly, so that the unrighteous might be terrified; here it was given inwardly, so that they might be justified. (On the Spirit and the Letter 17.29)

 

Here the Spirit transforms both the sinner and the law by internalizing the latter. “Command what you will, and give what you command!” That intuitive cry in the Confessions now finds its theological expression in Augustine’s understanding of God’s grace, here focused on the word of the Holy Spirit in writing the law on the hearts of sinners. It is this work of the Spirit that makes the external law able to address the most fundamental problem of humanity, the internal and psychological consequences of sin. The Spirit works subjectively in the life of Christians to renovate them and to bring them back to the path of true freedom. (Carl R. Trueman, Grace Alone Salvation as a Gift of God: What the Reformers Taught . . . and Why it Still Matters [Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 2017], 80-81)