Because God’s justice prevented the damnation of anyone who was innocent
of all sin, Augustine inferred a new interpretation of Romans 5:12: all
his offspring had sinned in Adam; they came into the world bearing not only his
mortality, ignorance, and concupiscence, but also the guilt and condemnation of
that original sin. The perverted desires which derive from Adam, moreover, are
themselves in violation of the foundational command to love God fully and would
inevitably eventuate in choices which violate the love of neighbor. From this
doctrine of original sin, Augustine concluded not only that humans need God’s
forgiveness but that in their fallen state they have no power to avoid sin, to
will and perform good actions which would justly merit a reward from God. Even
the apparently virtuous actions of the pagans and schismatic Christians could
not be just and good, because God did not acknowledge and reward them as such.
Augustine added another argument against the claims of Pelagius and his
adherents outside Africa, that grace facilitates the use of the natural power
for moral good but does not confer that capacity upon humans. If anyone could
be saved through a capacity for good which survived the fall of human nature,
he observed, then the death of Christ—at least in that one case—would be in
vain and unnecessary (nat. et gr.
2.2). Instead he insisted that because the church’s sacraments were necessary
for salvation, the grace which they mediate was both essential and beyond the
capacity of fallen nature. The North African episcopate promptly confirmed
these teachings in regional councils and vigorously sustained them against all
opposition and hesitation. (J. Patout Burns, "Grace," in Augustine Through the Ages:
An Encyclopedia, ed. Allan D. Fitzgerald [Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans,
1999], 393-94)
In the contest with Pelagius, and eventually with Julian of Eclanum,
Augustine came to privilege other Pauline texts. Most notoriously, he
repeatedly invoked Romans 5:12, with the Western misreading of Paul’s eph’ ho as in quo, “in whom,” that is, in Adam, in support of his idea of the
seminal transmission of original sin. But his ideas on the vitiated will
and humanity’s radical dependence on grace well precede the Pelagian
controversy, and by 411 were independent of any one verse in Paul. (Paula Fredriksen, “Paul,”
in ibid., 624)