The Word in Focus with Dr Larry Taylor

Augustine of Hippo (354-430) was a brilliant theologian who contributed a great deal to our understanding of scripture. He lived in the era when Christianity was just becoming the official state religion of Rome, and therefore found himself struggling to reconcile the teachings of Jesus – especially those concerning nonviolence – with Roman power. He invented “just war theory” and asserted that one can simultaneously love and kill an enemy. 

He also invented the concept of inherited depravity. He took the biblical story of original sin in Genesis 3 and Paul’s teaching in Romans 2-5 and from them extrapolated that all humans are born sinful, depraved and hell-bound. Coupled with the teaching that humans are saved by being baptized, that led in the Middle Ages to prenatal baptism in which a priest would enter a woman’s birth canal to administer the sacrament of baptism to the unborn baby. Unbaptized still born babies, as well as any child who died before being baptized, was consigned to hell. 

Augustine also came up with the idea that God has chosen who will be saved and who will be damned. In the Protestant Reformation, those concepts were reinforced by John Calvin and Martin Luther. The result is what Reformation theology calls “double predestination” – some people are predetermined to be saved; others (the majority) are predetermined to be damned. There is nothing anyone can do to get out of either group. In the view of Augustine and Calvin, God is aloof, distant, stern, holy, and righteous. God has every right to do whatever God wants with people and God chooses some to save and some to damn. Who are we to argue with God? 

This Augustinian – Calvinistic system of theology is highly logical, but it’s not biblical. Virtually no one in the early church believed in total depravity or double predestination. When Isaiah speaks of all our righteousness being as filthy rags, and when Paul says all have sinned in Adam, they are referring to the propensity to sin in the general public. We all have a propensity to sin. We all use our free will to choose to sin, to give into that propensity. We are born into a broken world where we are subject to bad influences.

The foundational original sin in Genesis 3 was trying to find life, meaning, purpose, apart from God; seeking to know what only God can know; defining good and evil for ourselves; and setting ourselves up to judge others. 

Babies are not born sinful. We are born in original blessing. Every human bears the divine image of God, is unconditionally loved by God, is a person Jesus died for, and has unsurpassable worth. No one is condemned for Adam’s sin. Because we are created in God’s image, we have free will. We have agency. Our decisions are free and open. No one is predestined. God is not a puppet master. 

When a baby dies, she is safe with Jesus.