Quote of the Week – Entirely God’s Gift

Augustine of Hippo wrote the following circa 428 AD in Chapter 3 of his anti-Pelagian treatise The Predestination of the Saints. It is also cited somewhat periphrastically and in abridged form in the Formula of Concord, Solid Declaration II:27.

It was chiefly by this testimony [namely, 1 Corinthians 4:7] that I myself was also convicted when I held to a similar error, thinking that the faith by which we believe in God was not the gift of God, but that it was in us from ourselves, and that through that faith [from ourselves] we obtained God’s gifts that enable us to live temperately and uprightly and piously in this world. For I did not think that faith was preceded by God’s grace, in order that the profitable things we might ask for might then be given to us through that faith. I did know that we were unable to believe if the proclamation of the truth did not come first, but agreeing with the gospel when it is preached to us—I thought that was our own doing and was ours from ourselves. This error I had is on sufficient display in several small works of mine written before I became a bishop.

Source
Patrologia Latina 44:964