The following is from Augustine’s “Faith and Works,” translated by Marie Liguori in Treatises on Marriage and Other Subjects (The Fathers of the Church 27; Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1955, 1985):
There are certain
persons who are of the opinion that everybody without exception must be
admitted to the font of rebirth which is in Christ Jesus our Lord . . .
(Chapter 1 [p. 221])
If, however, a well
person asks for baptism and there is time to instruct him, when would it be
more propitious for him to hear how it behooves him to become a faithful
Christian and to live accordingly than the very time when, his mind attentive
and aroused by religion itself, he asks for the sacrament of life-giving
faith? . . .Do we also refrain from observing others who year by year
hasten to the cleansing waters of regeneration, and note how they
comport themselves during the days they are being catechized, exorcised, scrutinized:
their careful vigilance when assembling, their fervent zeal, and eagerness,
their solicitous suspense? (Chapter 6, 9 [p. 230]—Contrast this and other
like-statements in “Faith and Works” with some Protestants who object to adult
converts being catechised, whether by LDS, Catholics, etc., arguing it is
"works-based salvation" such as James G. McCarthy, The Gospel
According to Rome, p. 36)
To preach Christ
consists in declaring not only what must be believed about Him, but also what
precepts must be observed by one hoping for membership in the unity of the Body
of Christ. (Chapter 9, 14 [p. 237])
But what answer will
they give one who urges these questions and who declares, further, that nothing
should be said to him before baptism about the necessity of disavowing
idolatry; the chosen people heard nothing of such renouncement before they
crossed the Red Sea; the prohibition was contained in the Law that was given
them only after they had been delivered from Egypt. Surely, they would say to
that man: ‘You are going to be a temple of God when you shall have received
Baptism.’ Besides, the Apostle answers: ‘And what agreement has the temple
of God with Idols?’ (Chapter 12, 18 [p. 243])
(21) Therefore, let
us now see that must be torn away from the hearts of the God-fearing to prevent
the loss of salvation through a treacherously false security, if, under the illusion
that faith alone is sufficient for salvation, they neglect to live a good life
and fail by good works to persevere in the way that leads to God. Even in the
days of the Apostles certain somewhat obscure statements of the Apostle Paul
were misunderstood, and some thought he was saying this: ‘Now the Law
intervened that the offense might abound. But where the offense has abounded,
grace has abounded yet more.’ These words are true only because the receivers
of the Law were men presumptuous of their own strength, with too much pride to
beg God in right faith to help them overcome their evil concupiscence. They
were burdened, therefore, with many and serious sins and even with the Law
itself by reason of their perversion of it. Compelled by deep guilty, they took
refuge in faith to obtain for them the mercy of indulgence and ‘help from the
Lord, who made heaven and earth.’ With charity poured forth in their hearts by
the Holy Spirit, they effected through love and conquest of the concupiscence
of this world as predicted in the psalm: ‘Their infirmities were multiplied:
afterwards they made baste.’ When the Apostle says, then, that in his opinion
man is justified through faith without the works of the Law, he does not intend
by this decision to express contempt for the commandments and the works of
justice by the profession of faith, but to inform anyone that he can be
justified by faith even if he has not previously fulfilled the works of the
Law; for they follow when one has been justified, and do not come before for
one to be justified. There is no need, however, for further discussion of this problem
in the present work, especially since I have published a detailed answer to the
question in a book bearing the title, The Letter and the Spirit. Since
this problem is by no means new and had already arisen at the time of the
Apostles, other apostolic letters of Peter, John, James, and Jude are
deliberately aimed against the argument I have been refuting and firmly uphold the
doctrine that faith does not avail without good works. Paul himself does not
approve any kind of faith whatever as long as it achieves belief in God, but
only that salutary and definitely evangelical faith from which good works
proceed through love for he says very plainly: ‘but faith which works through
charity.’ That is why he claimed that the faith which seems to some sufficient
for salvation is useless, so that he says: ‘and if I have all faith so as to
remove mountains, yet do not have charity, I am nothing.’ It follows that where
charity is operative in the Christian, there is no doubt that he is living the
right kind of life: ‘Love therefore is the fulfillment of the Law.’
(22) From this it is
clear that Peter, in his second letter, had a special motive when he urged his
readers to holiness in living and character and declared that this world would
pass and that new heavens and a new earth were expected which would be given to
the just to inhabit. He wished that they might take care how to live, and might
become worthy of that dwelling. He knew that certain unjust persons had taken
occasion from some obscure passages of the apostle Paul to have no care for a
right mode of life, as if secure in salvation through faith alone. He mentioned
that Paul’s letters contained certain places hard to understand and that men
twisted them, as also other Scriptures, to their own ruin. When Paul refers
to eternal salvation which will be given only to them who had lived good lives,
he is in perfect agreement with the other Apostles. Here is what Peter
says: ‘Seeing therefore that all these things are to be dissolved, what manner
of men ought you to be in holy and pious behavior, you who await and hasten
towards the coming of the days of God, by which the heavens, being on fire,
will be dissolved and the elements will melt away by reason of the heat of that
fire! But we look for new heavens and a new earth, according to his promises,
wherein dwells justice. Therefore, beloved, while you look for these things,
endeavor to be found by him without spot and blameless, in peace. And regard
the long-suffering of our Lord as salvation. Just as our most dear brother Paul
also, according to the wisdom given him, has written to you, as indeed he did
in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things. In these epistles there
are certain things difficult to understand, which the unlearned and the
unstable distort, just as they do the rest of the Scriptures also, to their own
destruction. You therefore, beloved, since you know this beforehand, be on your
guard lest, carried away by the error of the foolish you fall away from your
own steadfastness. But grow in grace and knowledge of our Lord and Saviour,
Jesus Christ. To him be the glory, both now and to the day of eternity.’
(23) James was so
severely annoyed with those who held that faith without works avails to
salvation that he compared them to evil spirits, saying: ‘Thou believest that
there is one God, Thou doest well. The devils also believe, and tremble.’ What
cold be said more tersely, with greater truth and more vehemence? We also read
in the Gospel that, when the evil spirits confessed Christ to be the Son of God,
He rebuked them. He praised Peter for making this same acknowledgement. ‘What
will it profit, my brethren,’ James says, ‘if a man says he has faith, but does
not have works? Can the faith save him?’ and again, ‘faith without works is
useless.’ How long are they going to cling to deception and promise themselves
eternal life from dead faith. (Chapter 14, 21-23 [pp. 246-50]—here, Augustine
teaches that good works are necessary for increase in justification, that
justification is not a once-for-all event, and many other doctrines which are
antithetical to Protestant theologies of salvation)
To believe in Christ
is not to have the faith of devils, accurately termed a dead faith’ it is to
have a faith ‘which works through charity’ (Gal. 5.6). (Chapter 16, 30 [p. 259]—note:
while a Protestant may claim that Augustine, like James, is condemning mere intellectual
assent, in light of chapter 14 [see above], this is not the type of
faith Augustine has in mind, nor does Augustine think of works as the fruit merely
of “true faith”—he believes good works, after initial justification, to be
meritorious and adds to [progressive] justification).
This, then, is beneficial,
to believe in God with the right kind of faith, to worship God, to know God,
that He may help us to live the right kind of lives, and, if we sin, that we
may merit His pardon, not continuing with persistence and rash security in deeds
that are hateful to Him, but withdrawing from them and saying to Him: ‘I said:
O Lord, be thou merciful to me: heal my soul, for I have sinned against thee,’
a prayer which, for those who do not believe in Him, has no auditor. In vain,
too, do they utter these words who are estranged from the grace of the Mediator
because they have strayed far from Him. Therefore, we have those words from the
Book of Wisdom which I certainly do not understand how a rash confidence
interprets: ‘For if we sin, we are thine,’ since we have a good and great Lord
who both wills and has the power to heal the sins of penitents, One who by no
means would fail to destroy the persistently malicious. Finally, when Solomon
had said, ‘we are thine,’ he added: ‘knowing thy power, a power indeed from
which the sinner is neither able to hide nor withdraw. He went on to add: ‘But
we shall sin now, knowing that we are counted with thee.’ Who, worthily
reflecting on our habitation with God, to which all who are called according to
plan are appointed by predestination, does not strive to live in a manner
befitting that dwelling place? John, too, says: ‘these things I have written to
you in order that you may not sin. But if anyone sins, we have an advocate with
the Father, Jesus Christ the just; and he is a propitiation for our sins’ (1
John 2.1-2). He does not say this to give us protection in sinning. Rather,
that if we have sinned we may, by forsaking sin utterly, have every hope of
forgiveness because of that Advocate of whom infidels are deprived. (Chapter
22, 41 [pp. 270-71]—note how, through use of 1 John 2:1-2, Augustine does not
believe that, at conversion, one’s then-future sins have been propitiated/forgiven)
