St Augustine and the Orthodox Church: Saint, Teacher and the Limits of His Theology

Open the Orthodox calendar at June 15 and you will find Augustine of Hippo. The Orthodox Church in America's life of him says it in one line: "The Orthodox Church commemorates Saint Augustine on June 15, while the West commemorates him on August 28."¹ The Church sings to him in a troparion that begins "Let us praise the great Augustine."¹ Yet in some Orthodox circles his name is spoken as the father of Western error: the teacher of inherited guilt, of the Filioque and of predestination.

Both pictures contain something true. This article says why the Orthodox Church counts him a saint, what she condemned in Pelagius and what she did not follow in Augustine himself. For the wider question of how the Church weighs a Father's opinions, see Can the Church Fathers Disagree? and the Church Fathers guide; for the Orthodox reading of Adam's fall, Original Sin vs. Ancestral Sin; and for the whole case that the Orthodox Church keeps the faith of the Fathers, Why Orthodoxy.

In brief

Augustine (died 430) is a saint of the Orthodox Church. The calendar, the hymns, the icons and the way the Fifth Ecumenical Council names him all say so, though the OCA notes that no formal act of glorification is on record. His work against Pelagius is part of what the Church holds: the Council of Carthage (418) and the Council of Ephesus (431) condemned Pelagius and Celestius, and the East has received those acts. At the same time the Orthodox Church does not follow Augustine on three points: that every infant is born carrying Adam's guilt, that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, and that the elect are chosen by an unconditioned decree.

Thesis: the Orthodox Church honours Augustine as a saint and a teacher of repentance, rejects Pelagianism as firmly as he did, and for those reasons need not follow him where a Western Father went beyond what the Church had received.

Who he was

Augustine was born in Thagaste in North Africa, raised by his mother, St Monica, and came as a professor of rhetoric to Milan, where St Ambrose was bishop. In Milan, the OCA life says, "The Word of God produced in his soul a radical crisis"; he accepted holy Baptism, gave his goods to the poor and was tonsured a monk. He was ordained priest in 391, became coadjutor bishop of Hippo and then its bishop. "During his 35 years as bishop," the life continues, he "wrote many works devoted to combating the Donatist, Manichaean and Pelagian heresies." He died on August 28, 430.¹

His best-known prayer opens the Confessions: "You have made us for Yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You."² Fr Seraphim Rose, who defended Augustine against his Orthodox critics, wrote in a 1981 letter that "The one main lovable and Orthodox thing about him is his Orthodox feeling, piety, love for Christ."³

A saint on the Church's calendar

An OCA reply to a reader who had heard that Augustine "was never considered a saint" points to the Historical Dictionary of the Orthodox Church (Prokurat and Golitzin), which lists him as "bishop, theologian, Saint"; to the Moscow Patriarchate's 1998 calendar, which lists him as "the Blessed Augustine" on June 15/28; and to icons of him, one that hung in the old chapel of the Three Hierarchs at St Vladimir's Seminary and another in the office of Archbishop Augustine of Lviv. Orthodoxy has no step of "beatification" before canonization, so "Blessed" does not mean what it means in Rome. The same reply is candid on one point: "in terms of a formal 'canonization' or 'glorification' of Augustine by the Orthodox Church there is of course no record," and the Church's way of recognising saints is different.⁴ The reply gives his feast as "June 15 [New Calendar]/ June 28 [Old Calendar]." The Church has a troparion and a kontakion for him, and the troparion calls him "a divine Hierarch of Christ's Church and a wise guide."¹

The Fifth Ecumenical Council (553) mentions him three ways. The Emperor Justinian's letter, read to the Fathers (in the condensed English of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers), declares that "we hold fast to the decrees of the four Councils, and in every way follow the holy Fathers, Athanasius, Hilary, Basil, Gregory the Theologian, Gregory of Nyssa, Ambrose, Theophilus, John (Chrysostom) of Constantinople, Cyril, Augustine, Proclus, Leo." The Council's own Sentence speaks of "several letters of Augustine, of most religious memory, who shone forth resplendent among the African bishops," read to show that heretics may rightly be anathematized after death. And Pope Vigilius, confirming the Council, appeals to the example of "the blessed Augustine," who "retracted some of his own writings, and corrected some of his own sayings."⁵ The Council cites his letters on one subject, the posthumous condemnation of heretics, and the Emperor's list is a profession of loyalty, not a definition. They still show a Church that numbered him among the Fathers.

{{very-strong: Augustine is commemorated as a saint and hierarch on the Orthodox calendar (June 15), and the acts of the Fifth Ecumenical Council name him among the holy Fathers and call him "of most religious memory."}} The Church has not made him a standard of dogma on every question, and Fr Seraphim Rose, defending him, wrote in 1975 that he is "a Father of less weight than many others" and that the universal Orthodox tradition "accepts him as an undoubted Holy Father, although with a flaw in his teaching," a flaw he compared to that of St Gregory of Nyssa. In his book on the question he called the Orthodox view of Augustine "a balanced appraisal of him with due credit given both to his unquestioned greatness and to his faults."³

Pelagius and what the Church condemned

Pelagius was a monk who preached at Rome in the early fifth century. The Catholic Encyclopedia gives six theses of his follower Celestius, among them: "Even if Adam had not sinned, he would have died. Adam's sin harmed only himself, not the human race. Children just born are in the same state as Adam before his fall."⁶ The editor of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers adds that for Pelagius man "could live without committing any sin at all," and grace was only external: "the example of Christ, the teaching of his ministers, and the like."⁷

The African bishops met at Carthage "on the Calends of May" (May 1) in 418, with Bishop Aurelius presiding, and defined, among other things:

• "whosoever says that Adam, the first man, was created mortal, so that whether he had sinned or not, he would have died in body ... let him be anathema";
• that infants are baptized "for the remission of sins," because they "derive from Adam" an "original sin, which needs to be removed by the laver of regeneration";
• an anathema on anyone who says that grace "avails only for the remission of past sins, and not for assistance against committing sins in the future," or that "even without grace" we could "fulfil the divine commandments," for the Lord said: "Without me ye can do nothing."⁸

The Council of Ephesus (431), the Third Ecumenical Council, dealt with the same men while condemning Nestorius. Its first canon speaks of a metropolitan who "has adopted, or shall hereafter adopt, the doctrines of Celestius," and its fourth of clergy who "publicly or privately presume to maintain the doctrines of Nestorius or Celestius"; it deposes them. In its letter to Pope Celestine the Council says it had read what was done "touching the deposition of the most irreligious Pelagians and Cœlestines, of Cœlestius, and Pelagius, and Julian," and judged that "the determinations of your holiness concerning them should stand strong and firm."⁹ Celestius stands beside Nestorius because Nestorius had sheltered the exiled Pelagians at Constantinople, "and so all three were condemned together";⁷ the Catholic Encyclopedia says that when the Council "repeated the condemnation pronounced by the West," Pelagianism "was crushed in the East."⁶

The Canons of Carthage came into the Eastern canon law by a second door. The Council in Trullo (692), Canon 2, sets its seal on the canons of the earlier councils and names, "In like manner those of Sardica, and those of Carthage."¹⁰ The editors of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers add that by ratifying Trullo the Seventh Council "received the Canons of the African Code which include those of the Carthaginian conciliar condemnations of the Pelagian heresy."⁷ One caution: Carthage was a regional council, and what binds the whole Church is the Eastern reception and the verdict of Ephesus. {{very-strong: The Orthodox Church condemns the Pelagian denial of the effects of Adam's fall and of the necessity of grace; Ephesus (431) deposed those who held Celestius's teaching, and the East received the Carthaginian canons on the subject.}}

So the charge that Orthodoxy is "anti-Augustinian" fails at the first step: the East did not side with Pelagius.

Where the Orthodox Church does not follow Augustine

Inherited guilt and ancestral sin

Augustine's own words are clear. In the Enchiridion he says Adam's whole race, "being the offspring of carnal lust," was "tainted with the original sin"; mankind is "involved by one original sin in the bonds of an inherited guilt."¹¹ He read Romans 5:12 ("Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned")¹² in his Latin Bible as "in whom all have sinned," and concluded that "we have derived from Adam, in whom we all have sinned, not all our actual sins, but only original sin."¹³ He knew the reading was disputed and discussed the alternatives in Against Two Letters of the Pelagians: that all sinned in that man, or in that sin, or in that death.¹³ The Historical Dictionary of the Orthodox Church, quoted in the OCA's reply, sums up his view: "Everyone is born guilty of the original sin."⁴

The Greek Fathers read the passage differently. St John Chrysostom asks what "sinners" means in Romans 5:19 ("by one man's disobedience many were made sinners") and answers: "What then does the word sinners mean here? To me it seems to mean liable to punishment and condemned to death." That "when he had sinned and become mortal, those who were of him should be so also" he calls "nothing unlikely."¹⁴ What comes down from Adam, on this reading, is death and corruption, and with them the weakness that makes sin likely.

Fr John Romanides, in a study first published in 1955, put the Orthodox objection sharply: by "pushing to the foreground of controversy the problem of personal guilt in the transmission of original sin, St. Augustine introduced a false moralistic philosophical approach which is foreign to the thinking of St. Paul and which was not accepted by the patristic tradition of the East." He read the disputed words of Romans 5:12 as "because of which" (death) all have sinned. Even this critic calls him "St. Augustine."¹⁵

The Confession of Dositheus (Jerusalem, 1672) puts the Orthodox position in its own terms. "Hereditary sin flowed to his posterity; so that none is born after the flesh who beareth not this burden, and experienceth not the fruits thereof in this present world. But by these fruits and this burden we do not understand [actual] sin," such as "impiety, blasphemy, murder" and the rest, but "what the Divine Justice inflicted upon man as a punishment for the [original] transgression, such as sweats in labour, afflictions, bodily sicknesses, pains in child-bearing, and ... lastly, bodily death." The same Confession says that baptism is necessary even for infants, since they are "subject to original sin."¹⁶ The Orthodox Church therefore does not say that infants are untouched by the fall; she denies that a newborn is guilty of Adam's act. The Confession of Dositheus uses some Latin-sounding vocabulary, but it defines the inherited burden as Decree 6 does.

The Catholic Church also draws a line. The Catechism teaches that original sin is "a sin 'contracted' and not 'committed' - a state and not an act," and that it "does not have the character of a personal fault in any of Adam's descendants."¹⁷ That statement is nearer the Orthodox view than Augustine's phrase "inherited guilt." The Orthodox answer is that the Church's language should stay with the Greek Fathers and the Councils, and that the way Augustine made Adam's guilt and the transmission of sin through generation the engine of his doctrine is not part of the Church's faith.

Predestination

Late in life Augustine defined predestination this way: "between grace and predestination there is only this difference, that predestination is the preparation for grace, while grace is the donation itself."¹³ God, on this view, prepares from eternity the gifts that infallibly save those who are saved. The Orthodox Church receives the priority of grace: the Carthage canons already cited the Lord's "Without me ye can do nothing." What she does not receive is an account in which the saved and the lost are separated by a decision that does not depend on how they answer grace. The Confession of Dositheus says God "would have all men to be saved, and to come to the knowledge of the truth," and that "since He foreknew the one would make a right use of their free-will, and the other a wrong, He predestinated the one, or condemned the other."¹⁶ That language was written against Calvinism, but its ground is the Orthodox doctrine of synergy. See Grace and Free Will and Did the Early Church Teach Calvinism?

The Filioque

In On the Trinity Augustine says that "God the Father alone is He from whom the Word is born, and from whom the Holy Spirit principally proceeds," and adds: "I have added the word principally, because we find that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Son also." Later he writes that "the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father principally, the Father giving the procession without any interval of time, yet in common from both [Father and Son]."¹¹ That is a Western theologian's reasoning about the Trinity, and it keeps the Father as the principal source. Christ says the Spirit "proceedeth from the Father" (John 15:26), and the Creed of 381 confesses the same. The Orthodox Church holds that the Spirit proceeds from the Father alone and that the later insertion of "and the Son" into the Creed was an error; see The Filioque.

The Orthodox response to this is old. St Photios, in his Mystagogy, answered Latin-minded Christians who cited Augustine and Ambrose to override the consensus of the Fathers. He did not call Augustine a heretic. If these Fathers "happened to fall into something unbecoming," he says, "I would imitate the good sons of Noe [Noah] and hide my father's shame." They were admirable in other things, and a Father's slip is not a warrant for the Church to follow it.³

Objections

"A saint cannot have taught error." The Church has never said so. Fathers differ, and the Church distinguishes what they hand down from what they propose (Can the Church Fathers Disagree?). Pope Vigilius held up Augustine's own habit of retracting and correcting. What is asked of a saint is holiness and faithfulness to the Church.

"The Orthodox Church has always opposed Augustine." The evidence above says otherwise, though Orthodox critics exist and some have traced later Western errors to him. Bishop Mark of Berlin (of the Russian Church Outside Russia), reviewing a book by one such critic in 1986, wrote: "We all know the weaknesses in the writings of the blessed Augustine. But the Church never passed judgement on him for this, especially as he constantly emphasized that he was expressing his personal opinion and did not wish to impose it on others."³ The Synod of Jerusalem (1672) counts him among "the ancient Fathers": "Augustine saith that it is an Apostolical tradition, that children are saved through Baptism."¹⁶ Fr Georges Florovsky's essay on Tradition in the ancient Church (1963) takes its epigraph from Augustine and sets him beside St Basil, St Irenaeus and St Athanasius: "In the similar way Tradition, and especially the liturgical witness, of the Church was used by St. Augustine."¹⁸

"Rejecting Augustine on grace makes the East Pelagian or semi-Pelagian." It does not. The East received the Carthage canons that anathematise anyone who says grace only forgives past sins or only teaches us our duty, and that confess the need of grace for every good act. Rose notes that the Western St John Cassian "challenged (politely) Augustine's teaching on grace while accepting his authority on other questions."³ What the East rejects is a form of the doctrine of grace in which grace is irresistible and the elect chosen without regard to free response. The Council of Ephesus and the Council of Carthage condemned Pelagius; neither made Augustine's formulations of predestination or of inherited guilt a test of faith.

What we can say confidently

• Augustine is commemorated as a saint on June 15 on the Orthodox calendar, with a troparion and kontakion, though no formal act of glorification is on record.
• The Fifth Ecumenical Council's acts include the Emperor's letter naming him among the holy Fathers, and the Council's Sentence calls him "of most religious memory" and cites his letters on the posthumous condemnation of heretics.
• Pelagius and Celestius were condemned at Carthage (418) and their teaching at Ephesus (431), and the East received the Carthage canons through Trullo, Canon 2.
• The Orthodox Church holds the ancestral sin of mortality and corruption, not inherited personal guilt (Chrysostom on Romans 5; Dositheus, Decree 6).
• She holds that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father alone, and that grace and free will work together.

What remains disputed

• How far Augustine himself, as opposed to later Augustinians, taught the doctrines the Orthodox reject; whether his predestination is what Calvin made of it is argued by scholars.
• How best to translate the Greek of Romans 5:12 and how far Augustine's Latin text shaped his reading; the Church's teaching rests on Chrysostom and the councils, not on one grammatical point.
• How sharply to criticise his theology: Orthodox writers differ in emphasis, from Rose's defence to Romanides's sharp critique of his reading of St Paul, while the Church keeps his feast.

Conclusion

St Augustine ended On the Trinity by asking that whatever in it was "of my own" be "pardoned both by You and by those who are Yours,"¹¹ and the Church has taken him at his word. She keeps his feast, sings his troparion, reads the Confessions and holds to the Pelagian condemnation he worked to win. She also keeps what the Fathers handed down to her about the fall, the procession of the Spirit and the way grace and the human will work together. To see where these teachings come from, continue to Why Orthodoxy.

Notes

1. Orthodox Church in America, "Blessed Augustine, Bishop of Hippo" (Lives of the Saints, June 15), https://www.oca.org/saints/lives/2011/06/15/101736-blessed-augustine-bishop-of-hippo; and "Blessed Augustine, Bishop of Hippo - Troparion and Kontakion," https://www.oca.org/saints/troparia/2046/06/15/101736-blessed-augustine-bishop-of-hippo.
2. Augustine, Confessions 1.1, trans. J. G. Pilkington, NPNF1 vol. 1, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/110101.htm.
3. "The Blessed (Saint) Augustine of Hippo: His Place in the Orthodox Church: A Corrective," compiled by Patrick Barnes, Orthodox Christian Information Center, https://faculty.georgetown.edu/jod/augustine/bless_aug.htm (mirror). It reproduces letters of Hieromonk Seraphim Rose (1975, 1976, 1981; the page gives the 1996 edition of his The Place of Blessed Augustine in the Orthodox Church, pp. 93-101, as its source for the letters), an Orthodox Tradition answer quoting Rose's book (St Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 1983, p. 8), Bishop Mark of Berlin's review (Church Life, Nov./Dec. 1986, trans. Archpriest John R. Shaw), and Mystagogy 68-70 of St Photios (translator not named). The book itself was not opened.
4. Orthodox Church in America, Questions and Answers, "St. Augustine and Original Sin" (unsigned reply, no date shown), https://oca.org/questions/teaching/st.-augustine-original-sin1, quoting Michael Prokurat, Alexander Golitzin and Michael D. Peterson, Historical Dictionary of the Orthodox Church, pp. 48-49 (quoted at second hand).
5. Second Council of Constantinople (553), Session I (the Emperor's letter), the Sentence of the Synod, and the Decretal Epistle of Pope Vigilius, trans. Henry R. Percival, NPNF2 vol. 14, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3812.htm.
6. Joseph Pohle, "Pelagius and Pelagianism," The Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 11 (1911), https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11604a.htm.
7. "Excursus on Pelagianism," in Henry R. Percival, ed., The Seven Ecumenical Councils, NPNF2 vol. 14 (series editors Schaff and Wace), https://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf214.x.xvi.vii.html.
8. Canons of the Council of Carthage (418) on sin and grace, English from the NPNF series as hosted by Early Church Texts, https://earlychurchtexts.com/public/carthage_canons_on_sin_and_grace.htm (the canon numbers there are those of the 418 synod).
9. Council of Ephesus (431), Canons 1 and 4 and the Letter of the Synod to Pope Celestine, trans. Henry R. Percival, NPNF2 vol. 14, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3810.htm.
10. Council in Trullo (692), Canon 2, trans. Henry R. Percival, NPNF2 vol. 14, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3814.htm.
11. Augustine, NPNF1 vol. 3: Enchiridion, chs. 26 and 28, trans. J. F. Shaw, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1302.htm; On the Trinity 15.29, 15.47 and 15.51 (the closing prayer), trans. Arthur West Haddan, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/130115.htm (section numbers as on that page).
12. Scripture is quoted from the King James Version (1769 text), checked against the text served by this site's Bible reader (https://honestapologist.com/api/bible/connections/texts?v=kjv).
13. Augustine, anti-Pelagian writings, trans. Peter Holmes and Robert Ernest Wallis, rev. Benjamin B. Warfield, NPNF1 vol. 5: On the Merits and Remission of Sins 1.16 (https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/15011.htm), Against Two Letters of the Pelagians 4.7 (https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/15094.htm) and On the Predestination of the Saints, ch. 19 (https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/15121.htm).
14. St John Chrysostom, Homilies on Romans, Homily 10, NPNF1 vol. 11, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/210210.htm.
15. John S. Romanides, "Original Sin According to St. Paul," St. Vladimir's Seminary Quarterly 4, nos. 1-2 (1955-56), as reprinted by the Orthodox Church of the Mother of God, Mays Landing, NJ, https://churchmotherofgod.org/histories/original-sin-according-to-st-paul/ (pages 2 and 5).
16. The Confession of Dositheus (Synod of Jerusalem, 1672), Decrees 3, 6 and 16, in J. N. W. B. Robertson, trans., The Acts and Decrees of the Synod of Jerusalem (London: Thomas Baker, 1899), pp. 114-140, scan at https://archive.org/details/actsdecreesofsyn00orth (English only; not checked against the Greek).
17. Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraphs 404 to 406, https://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P1C.HTM.
18. Georges Florovsky, "The Function of Tradition in the Ancient Church," Greek Orthodox Theological Review 9, no. 2 (1963); Collected Works vol. 1, ch. 5, https://www.jbburnett.com/resources/florovsky/1/florovsky_1-5-func-trad.pdf.

Bibliography

Scripture

• The Holy Bible, King James Version (1769 text).

Fathers, councils and early texts

• Augustine of Hippo. Confessions; Enchiridion; On the Merits and Remission of Sins; Against Two Letters of the Pelagians; On the Predestination of the Saints; On the Trinity. NPNF1 vols. 1, 3 and 5.
• John Chrysostom. Homilies on Romans. NPNF1 vol. 11.
• Council of Carthage (418), canons on sin and grace; Council of Ephesus (431), Canons and Letter to Celestine; Second Council of Constantinople (553); Council in Trullo (692), Canon 2. NPNF2 vol. 14.
• The Confession of Dositheus (Jerusalem, 1672). Trans. J. N. W. B. Robertson, The Acts and Decrees of the Synod of Jerusalem. London, 1899.

Orthodox sources

• Orthodox Church in America. Life, troparion and kontakion of Blessed Augustine; Questions and Answers, "St. Augustine and Original Sin."
• Barnes, Patrick, comp. "The Blessed (Saint) Augustine of Hippo: His Place in the Orthodox Church: A Corrective." Orthodox Christian Information Center.
• Prokurat, Michael, Alexander Golitzin and Michael D. Peterson. Historical Dictionary of the Orthodox Church (cited through the OCA reply).
• Florovsky, Georges. "The Function of Tradition in the Ancient Church." Greek Orthodox Theological Review 9 (1963).
• Romanides, John S. "Original Sin According to St. Paul." St. Vladimir's Seminary Quarterly 4 (1955-56).

Catholic and scholarly sources

• Pohle, Joseph. "Pelagius and Pelagianism." The Catholic Encyclopedia vol. 11, 1911.
• Percival, Henry R., ed. The Seven Ecumenical Councils. NPNF2 vol. 14 (including the "Excursus on Pelagianism").
• Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraphs 404 to 406.