This might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but what follows is a fairly dense and lengthy examination of the doctrine of original sin in the thinking of Augustine of Hippo. Some people can give the impression that Augustine based his doctrine of original sin on a misinterpretation of a single verse in Romans, but this is far from being the case, as I explain below. Enjoy!

Introduction: The Necessity of Original Sin

The doctrine of original sin has faced significant challenges during the last two centuries in response to the findings of modern science.1 This has led to considerable attention being given to the doctrine in recent years.2 Augustine is acknowledged as the key exponent of the Western doctrine of original sin,3 building on foundations laid in the early church,4 and the doctrine assumed particular importance within Augustine’s own thought.5 In the light of this, it is worth examining Augustine’s writings on the topic. The focus here will be on Augustine’s interpretation of Pauline texts in relation to the doctrine of original sin.

It has been said of Augustine that ‘his approach to solving the problem of evil shaped his whole theological vision’.6 Initially, this was in response to his past in Manichaeism, which ‘has a dualist worldview that maintains that good and evil are two equally fundamental realities in eternal opposition’.7 It is within this context that his doctrine of original sin is best located.

The doctrine of original sin has two aspects. First, it describes the origin of sin in the disobedience of Adam: the ‘originating original sin’ (peccatum originale originans). Second, it describes the sinful condition with which every human being is born: the ‘originated original sin’ (peccatum originale originatum).8 It thus has both an explanatory and a descriptive role. For Augustine, the explanatory role of original sin is particularly significant.

However, Augustine tends to speak simply of ‘original sin’, as something contracted from Adam, without making those distinctions. For Augustine, this original sin consists in ‘concupiscence’.9 But why should concupiscence be called ‘sin’? Augustine answers, ‘It is called sin because it was produced by sin and it longs to commit sin. Its guilt is removed by rebirth; the conflict with it is left for our testing.’10 Because of Adam’s sin, therefore, we inherit a defect (original sin, concupiscence) which both renders us guilty (until baptism) and gives us a propensity towards committing actual sin.

In his monograph on original sin, Ian McFarland contests that the ‘proper dogmatic function’ of the doctrine is descriptive, not explanatory.11 However, he notes that ‘a central point of the Augustinian doctrine’ is ‘the importance of disjoining the origin of sin from the origin of human being as such’. Indeed, he asks, ‘Absent from such a historical grounding, will not any doctrine of universal sinfulness necessarily impugn the goodness of the Creator?’12 For Augustine, therefore, the doctrine of original sin serves an important purpose in terms of theodicy. This makes sense of Augustine’s growing emphasis on the historicity of the the fall-event described in Genesis 3. As McFarland explains,

Augustine’s own increasing stress on the literal truth of the first chapters of Genesis over the course of his career was closely correlated with his insistence that all human beings were united in sin by virtue of their common descent from Adam.13

Before examining the Pauline texts, it is worth pausing to note that Augustine’s doctrine of original sin has a certain necessity to it. If God the Creator is good, and if all human beings are born sinful—as will be shown that Augustine believed—then there must have been some ‘primeval catastrophe’14 in the past, which led to the corruption of humanity as a whole. Augustine’s understanding of the historical origin of sin, therefore, follows directly from his understanding of the sinful condition of humanity, as well as having an exegetical basis.

The first task in what follows will be to examine the basis in the Pauline corpus for Augustine’s conviction that all human beings are sinful from birth (the ‘originated original sin’). This will be followed by a discussion of Augustine’s use of those Pauline passages that deal with the sin of Adam (the ‘originating original sin’), and the nature of our connection with Adam.

Andrew Pinsent comments regarding Augustine’s writings on original sin:

It is much easier to study the later syntheses of the Augustinian tradition than Augustine himself because his views are scattered across a vast corpus and also because much of the pertinent material is not systematic but written in response to contemporaneous pastoral needs.15

The discussion below will therefore be far from comprehensive, and will seek to combine examples from Augustine’s writings with the conclusions of later interpreters of Augustine.

The Sinfulness of Humanity

It is in reflecting on the nature of salvation that Augustine’s understanding of the sinfulness of humanity is most clearly to be seen.

McFarland identifies ‘the Augustinian turn’ in the doctrine of original sin as the move from theodicy to soteriology.16 Augustine continued to use the doctrine in the service of theodicy, in order (for example) to explain why God could be justified in allowing infants to experience suffering.17 But he also connected the doctrine with questions of salvation. As McFarland writes,

for Augustine, human beings’ need of a Savior could only be consistently maintained on the supposition of their absolute captivity to the power of sin. This soteriological orientation marked a new turn in Christian reflection on the fall, in which ‘original sin’ refers not only historically to the first sin committed by Adam and Eve (which continues to be its primary sense in Orthodox theologies), but also ontologically to the congenital sinfulness of all subsequent generations of human beings as caused by that first sin.18

This explains Augustine’s emphasis on human depravity, since ‘to qualify the depth of human sinfulness is to qualify the glory and goodness of what God accomplishes in saving human beings from the power of sin’.19 Thus, if Jesus extends the good news of salvation to all, this implies that all (including infants) stand in need of salvation. For Augustine, it was a principle that ‘all people stand equally in need of Christ’.20 So Augustine writes of Jesus,

There is, then, one and the same savior for little ones and adults. The angels said of him, Today a savior has been born for you (Lk 2:11).21

A deepening of Augustine’s views on grace can be discerned in his exegesis of Romans 9, written for Simplician in ad 396.22 This may be compared with his earlier Propositions from the Epistle to the Romans, dating from ad 394–395. In both cases, we find Augustine reflecting on words from Romans 9:10–13:

10 Nor is that all; something similar happened to Rebecca when she had conceived children by one husband, our ancestor Isaac. 11 Even before they had been born or had done anything good or bad (so that God’s purpose of election might continue, 12 not by works but by his call) she was told, ‘The elder shall serve the younger.’ 13 As it is written,

‘I have loved Jacob,
    but I have hated Esau.’

In the earlier work, Augustine writes that God chose Jacob rather than Esau because he foreknew that Jacob would have faith, whereas Esau would not: ‘by foreknowledge he chose faith, so that he chooses precisely him whom he foreknew would believe in him’.23 Thus, although Augustine is at pains to distinguish between faith and works, there is still a distinction within humanity between those who will exercise faith, and those who will not.

However, in the latter work, we find Augustine speaking even of Jacob’s faith as having been given by God ‘as a free gift’.24 God’s reasons for showing mercy on Jacob and not on Esau are hidden from human knowledge:

He decides who are not to be offered mercy by a standard of equity which is most secret and far removed from human powers of understanding. ‘Inscrutable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out’ (Rom. 11:33).25

John Barclay describes Augustine’s approach in To Simplician using the notion of ‘perfection’, which is ‘the tendency to draw out a concept to its endpoint or extreme’.26 For Augustine, one of the ‘perfections’ in his concept of grace is that of incongruity. As Barclay writes, ‘This incongruous gift to the undeserving forms the bedrock of Augustine’s theology of grace’.27 Faith is seen as a gift of grace (1.2.7), as is the will, by which a person assents to God (1.2.12). Two texts from elsewhere in the Pauline corpus have particular significance here: ‘for it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure’ (Phil. 2:13, quoted in 1.2.12), and ‘What do you have that you did not receive?’ (1 Cor. 4:7, quoted in 1.2.9).28

Augustine’s concern to maximise the incongruity of God’s grace is clear in his discussion of Jacob and Esau. Phillip Cary writes,

As Augustine wrestles with this problem, it seems that any solution for Esau removes grace from Jacob, by attributing antecedent merit to Esau and thus to Jacob as well. … Antecedent evil merit in Esau seems to imply antecedent good merit in Jacob.29

This is to be avoided for Augustine, because if Jacob deserves God’s grace, then God’s gift of salvation is correspondingly diminished. Cary continues:

The solution only emerges when Augustine reckons with the possibility that Jacob has exactly the same antecedent merit as Esau, and that it is negative. Jacob merits only punishment, just like Esau. Merit therefore is present, but it does not differentiate between the two. Rather, it puts them both in the same undifferentiated mass of sin, from which God freely chooses to make one a vessel of honor and the other a vessel of dishonor. It is God, not human merit or faith, free will or works, that makes the fundamental difference.30

So Augustine later wrote in The City of God,

For when they were not yet born, and had not yet done any good works or bad, and when neither of them had committed any personal sin, and both were beyond doubt equal in respect of original sin, the younger was chosen without regard to merit, and the elder rejected.31

The conclusion is that humanity as a whole stands equally and utterly condemned. This leads to discussion of a controlling metaphor for Augustine: that of humanity as ‘one lump’ (Rom 9:21) or ‘one mass’.32 Augustine writes in To Simplician, discussing Romans 9:21–24:

From Adam has sprung one mass of sinners and godless men, in which both Jews and Gentiles belong to one lump, apart from the grace of God.33

Similarly, in The City of God, Augustine writes that ‘the whole mass of the human race is condemned’.34

This notion of humanity as a single ‘lump’ (massa) will be important in the following section, in which Augustine’s thought will be discussed on how this ‘lump’ of humanity found itself in a fallen condition.

One key Pauline verse, quoted repeatedly by Augustine in his anti-Pelagian writings, is Ephesians 2:3, which says that ‘we were by nature children of wrath, like everyone else’. For example, describing Christ as the Saviour even of infants, Augustine writes,

Only the physician who came, not on account of those who are in good health, but on account of those who are sick, only the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world (Jn 1:29), only the savior of whom the human race was told, Today a savior has been born for you (Lk 2:11), only the redeemer whose blood wipes away our transgression, sets people free from this sin, from this illness, from this anger of God. Even if they do not have personal sin because of their age, those who carry with them original sin are by nature children of this anger [Eph 2:3]. Who will be so bold as to say that Christ is not the savior and redeemer of infants?35

It would seem that Augustine finds sufficient reason in the Pauline corpus, as well as elsewhere in Scripture, for his belief in original sin as a description of the condition into which all human beings are born.

This then raises the question of the explanation of that condition. Given that God is good, and given that everything was created by God as good, how then is it that all human beings are born in a condition in which they are both implicated in sin and inclined towards sin? To answer this, we will consider Augustine’s teaching about the origin of humanity’s sinfulness in the sin of Adam, and the nature of our connection with Adam.

The Origin of Humanity’s Sinfulness

The key Pauline texts dealing with the sin of Adam and its implications for every human being are Romans 5:12–21 and 1 Corinthians 15:21–22. Augustine’s substantial expositions of these verses are to be found in The Punishment and Forgiveness of Sins and the Baptism of Little Ones36 (ad 411–237) and, at great length, in the Unfinished Work in Answer to Julian38 (ad 429–3039). In order not to enter fully into the lengthy debate between Augustine and Julian of Eclanum (which Peter Brown had previously dismissed as ‘an unintelligent slogging match’40), attention will be focused here on the earlier work. Although this was written relatively early in Augustine’s disputations with the Pelagians, it represents his thinking on these passages in a relatively concise format.

The questions to be addressed are related to Augustine’s role as an interpreter of these Pauline texts. What is the relationship between Augustine’s exposition and his theology of original sin? How does Augustine handle the text itself? What relevance does the wider context play, whether that of the letter, the Pauline corpus, the New Testament, or Scripture as a whole? What role is played by earlier commentators? And do Augustine’s conclusions—about the nature of Adam’s sin and its implications for humanity—follow from the passages he is discussing?

The work as a whole begins with a discussion of whether Adam would have died, had he not sinned.41 The Pelagians claimed that physical death is not a punishment for sin, and therefore that Adam would have died, even had he not sinned.42 Augustine, however, contests that Adam would not have died, on the basis of Genesis 3:19 (‘you are dust, and to dust you shall return’) and Romans 8:10 (‘the body is dead because of sin’), which are justifiably taken to assert that physical death is a punishment for sin. At the end of this section, 1 Corinthians 15:21–22 is quoted, along with Romans 5:12:

Similarly, how can the words, Death came through a man, and the resurrection of the dead came through a man (1 Cor 15:21), be understood otherwise than as referring to the death of the body? For he said this when he was speaking of the resurrection of the body, and he was arguing for it with great insistence and passion. He said, Death came through a man, and the resurrection of the dead came through a man. For, just as all die in Adam, so too all will be brought to life in Christ (1 Cor 15:21-22). What was he saying to the Corinthians in this passage but what he also said to the Romans: Through one man sin entered the world, and through sin death (Rom 5:12). Those people want to interpret this death, not as the death of the body, but as the death of the soul. They imply that he was saying something else to the Corinthians by the words, Death came through a man. Here they certainly may not understand the death of the soul, because the passage is dealing with the resurrection of the body, which is just the opposite of the death of the body.43

Two things are worth noting. One is the importance of the whole chapter in 1 Corinthians in interpreting verses 21–22: it is because the whole chapter is about the resurrection of the body that the contrast with death must be understood as physical death, rather than spiritual death. The other thing to note is the way Augustine brings the verse from Romans in as being particularly relevant. By ‘he’, Augustine is referring to the ‘the apostle’,44 i.e., Paul: ‘What was he saying to the Corinthians … but what he also said to the Romans’. For Augustine, therefore, Romans is particularly relevant for the interpretation of 1 Corinthians because they are both part of the Pauline corpus, sharing the same (human) author.

However, there is no discussion about the origins of sin in 1 Corinthians 15. Augustine explains this in the continuation of the above quotation, which brings the first section of the work to a close:

He mentioned there only the death that came about through a man and not sin, precisely because he was not dealing with the righteousness which is the opposite of sin, but with the resurrection of the body, which is the opposite of the death of the body.45

The next section of the work focuses on Romans 5:12–21 in relation to the transmission of sin from Adam to his descendants. This takes place, Augustine argues, not simply by imitation, as the Pelagians claimed, but by generation. Augustine summarises his understanding of the Pelagian position regarding Romans 5:12 as follows:

The death mentioned in that passage is not the death of the body which they deny Adam merited by sinning; it is, rather, the death of the soul which occurs in the sin itself, and this sin passed from the first man to other human beings not by propagation, but by imitation.46

Two textual issues occur in relation to Romans 5:12. The first is that Augustine’s Old Latin version omits the word ‘death’ from ‘and thus death was passed on to all human beings’. Hence, it is understood that the verse is describing the transmission of sin, rather than the transmission of death. The second issue is the infamous matter of ‘in quo’: ‘in whom’ (or ‘in which’) all have sinned. In this work, the phrase is taken to refer both to the sin (all sinned in Adam’s sin), and also to Adam (all sinned in Adam).47 In a later work, Augustine, with reference to the Greek, ruled out the former interpretation on the basis of the gender of the Greek words, ‘sin’ being feminine, and ‘Adam’ being masculine, whereas the pronoun (in Latin and Greek) could be either masculine or neuter (the Latin word for ‘sin’ is neuter).48 So Augustine writes in this later work:

But if one cannot understand ‘sin’ in the words of the apostle, in whom all have sinned, because in the Greek, from which the letter has been translated, the word ‘sin’ is in the feminine gender, it remains for us to understand that all sinned in that first man because, when he sinned, all were in him, and from him all contract by birth the sin which is removed only by rebirth.49

He then quotes from a fourth-century commentary on Romans by an unknown author, believed by Augustine to have been Hilary of Poitiers, then subsequently thought to have been Ambrose, but now referred to as ‘Ambrosiaster’ or ‘Pseudo-Ambrose’:

In fact, the holy Hilary understood in that way the passage, In whom all have sinned (Rom 5:12), for he says, ‘In whom, that is, in Adam, all have sinned.’ Then he added, ‘It is clear that all have sinned in Adam as in a single mass, for all whom he begot, after he was corrupted by sin, were born under the power of sin.’ In writing these words, Hilary indicated without any ambiguity how one should understand: in whom all have sinned.50

Here we see, prior to Augustine, a reference to humanity as a ‘single mass’, or ‘lump’.51 Strikingly, despite the detailed attention to the text, in neither work does Augustine consider that the Greek behind in quo was not ἐν ᾧ (‘in whom/which’), but ἐφ᾿ ᾧ (‘over/upon whom/which’), which itself is not easily interpreted. If ‘in whom’ had been the intended meaning, then ἐν would have been expected instead of ἐφ᾿. The phrase is often understood to mean ‘because’ or ‘so that’, but other interpretations are possible.52 What seems clear is that the Greek text does not support Augustine’s interpretation. The question to be considered in what follows, then, is whether Augustine’s doctrine depends on his interpretation of the end of verse 12, or whether it is supported by the rest of the passage.

For a contemporary reader, it is striking that Augustine does not make more use of the Greek text, even considering his limited knowledge of Greek.53 He clearly seems willing to grant the Greek text a greater authority than the Latin text (for example, using it to correct the Latin text of Romans 5:1454), but does not consider it necessary to refer to it as a matter of course. In this specific case, Gerald Bonner describes it as ‘something of a mystery’ why Augustine did not consult the Greek, and suggests that Augustine might have been ‘so absorbed by his theory that he did not give it the critical examination which it required’.55

Augustine draws parallels with the way blessings are transferred from Christ to those who are ‘in Christ’, or from Abraham to those who are ‘in Abraham’, which suggests that the idea of being ‘in Adam’, and hence sharing something with him, might not be alien to Pauline thought.56

Augustine sees evidence that we share in Adam’s guilt from verse 14 (‘Yet death exercised dominion from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sins were not like the transgression of Adam’): ‘For the reign of death means that the guilt of sin lords it over human beings’.57 The distinction between Adam and his successors is that the latter ‘did not sin, as he did, by their own personal will, but contracted original sin from him’.58 Here, and throughout, he makes a contrast between his doctrine of original sin, and the Pelagian doctrine that Adam’s sin causes all to become sinners merely by imitation.

Further support for Augustine’s doctrine is claimed from verse 16 (‘the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brings justification’): ‘judgment starts from the one sin and leads to condemnation, because it would be sufficient reason for condemnation, even if there were only original sin in human beings’.59 Contrasting ‘one trespass’ with ‘many trespasses’ in that verse, Augustine reasons, ‘Thus we have contracted from Adam, in whom we have all sinned, not all our sins, but only original sin. But from Christ, in whom we are all justified, we obtain the forgiveness not only of that original sin, but also of the other sins which we have added to it.’60 Similar support is found in verses 18 and 19.61

To summarise, although Augustine makes use of a misinterpretation of verse 12 in his account of original sin in Romans 5, it appears that his argument does not stand or fall on that point alone.

Conclusion

The doctrine of original sin occupies a prominent place in Augustine’s theology, and the interpretation of Pauline texts (especially Romans 5 and 1 Corinthians 15) has a significant role in his exposition of the doctrine. Augustine finds significantly more support for the doctrine in Paul than simply a misinterpretation of a single verse.

However, it does not seem to be the case that Augustine derives his doctrine simply from a dispassionate reading of those passages. Given his journey through Manichaeism to Christianity, and given his convictions about Christ’s salvific work, Augustine is led to the conclusion that all are in need of salvation from birth. As McFarland notes, ‘soteriologically, the claim that human beings are saved by grace alone means that they must be born sinners’.62

All biblical quotations apart from those included in quotations from Augustine’s works are taken from the NRSV.

  1. Ian A. McFarland, In Adam’s Fall: A Meditation on the Christian Doctrine of Original Sin (Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, 2010), p. 143. ↩

  2. For example, see Hans Madueme and Michael Reeves, eds., Adam, the Fall, and Original Sin: Theological, Biblical, and Scientific Perspectives (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2014); William T. Cavanaugh and James K. A. Smith, eds., Evolution and the Fall (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2017); Stanley P. Rosenberg, ed., Finding Ourselves after Darwin: Conversations on the Image of God, Original Sin, and the Problem of Evil (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2018). ↩

  3. McFarland, In Adam’s Fall, p. 61. ↩

  4. Tatha Wiley, Original Sin: Origins, Developments, Contemporary Meanings (Mahwah, New Jersey: Paulist Press, 2002), pp. 37–55. ↩

  5. Andrew Pinsent, ‘Augustine, Original Sin, and the Naked Ape’, in Finding Ourselves after Darwin, ed. by Rosenberg, pp. 130–142, 131n3. ↩

  6. Stanley P. Rosenberg, ‘Can Nature Be “Red in Tooth and Claw” in the Thought of Augustine?’, in Finding Ourselves after Darwin, ed. by Rosenberg, pp. 226–243 (p. 228). ↩

  7. Benno van den Toren, ‘Original Sin and the Coevolution of Nature and Culture’, in Finding Ourselves after Darwin, ed. by Rosenberg, pp. 173–186 (p. 183). ↩

  8. Ibid., p. 176; Henri A. G. Blocher, ‘Original Sin’, in Dictionary for Theological Interpretation of the Bible, ed. by Kevin J. Vanhoozer and others (London: SPCK, 2005), pp. 553–554 (p. 553). ↩

  9. Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, ed. by John Bolt, trans. by John Vriend, 4 vols. (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003–8), iii: Sin and Salvation in Christ (2006), p. 94. ↩

  10. Augustine of Hippo, Unfinished Work in Answer to Julian, in Answer to the Pelagians, iii, ed. by John E. Rotelle O.S.A., trans. by Roland J. Teske S.J., The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century i/25 (Hyde Park, New York: New City Press, 1999), i, 71; Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, iii, 95. ↩

  11. McFarland, In Adam’s Fall, p. 47. ↩

  12. Ibid., p. 144. ↩

  13. Ibid., p. 144. ↩

  14. Blocher, ‘Original Sin’, p. 553. ↩

  15. Pinsent, ‘Augustine, Original Sin, and the Naked Ape’, 131n3. ↩

  16. McFarland, In Adam’s Fall, pp. 32–35. ↩

  17. Ibid., p. 32. ↩

  18. Ibid., p. 32. ↩

  19. Ibid., p. 33. ↩

  20. Ibid., p. 38. ↩

  21. Augustine of Hippo, The Punishment and Forgiveness of Sins and the Baptism of Little Ones, in Answer to the Pelagians, i, ed. by John E. Rotelle O.S.A., trans. by Roland J. Teske S.J., The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century i/23 (Hyde Park, New York: New City Press, 1997), pp. 19–132 (ii, 29, 48). ↩

  22. Lewis Ayres, ‘Augustine of Hippo’, in The Cambridge Dictionary of Christian Theology, ed. by Ian A. McFarland and others (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), pp. 48–50 (p. 48); John M. G. Barclay, Paul and the Gift (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2015), p. 89. ↩

  23. Augustine of Hippo, Propositions from the Epistle to the Romans, in Augustine on Romans: Propositions from the Epistle to the Romans and Unfinished Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, trans. by Paula Fredriksen Landes (Chico, California: Scholars Press, 1982), pp. 3–51 (60.11). ↩

  24. Augustine of Hippo, To Simplician—On Various Questions, in Augustine: Earlier Writings, ed. and trans. by J. H. S. Burleigh, The Library of Christian Classics (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1953), pp. 376–406 (i, 2, 10). ↩

  25. Ibid., i, 2, 16. ↩

  26. Barclay, Paul and the Gift, p. 67. ↩

  27. Ibid., p. 85, emphasis in original. ↩

  28. Ibid., pp. 90–91. ↩

  29. Phillip Cary, Inner Grace: Augustine in the Traditions of Plato and Paul (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), p. 52. ↩

  30. Ibid., p. 52. ↩

  31. Augustine of Hippo, The City of God against the Pagans, ed. and trans. by R. W. Dyson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), xvi, 35. ↩

  32. Gerald Bonner, St Augustine of Hippo: Life and Controversies, 3rd ed. (Norwich: Canterbury Press Norwich, 2002), p. 373; Pinsent, ‘Augustine, Original Sin, and the Naked Ape’, p. 130. ↩

  33. Augustine of Hippo, To Simplician, i, 2, 19. ↩

  34. Augustine of Hippo, City of God, xxi, 12. ↩

  35. Augustine of Hippo, Punishment and Forgiveness of Sins, i, 23, emphasis in original. ↩

  36. Ibid., i, 8, 8–16, 21. ↩

  37. Peter Brown, Augustine of Hippo: A Biography, New ed. (London: University of California Press, 2000), p. 280. ↩

  38. Augustine of Hippo, Unfinished Work, ii, 35–223, vi, 31–37. ↩

  39. Brown, Augustine of Hippo, p. 380. ↩

  40. Ibid., p. 466. ↩

  41. Augustine of Hippo, Punishment and Forgiveness of Sins, i, 1, 1–8, 8. ↩

  42. Ibid., i, 2, 2. ↩

  43. Ibid., i, 8, 8, emphasis in original. ↩

  44. Ibid., i, 7, 7. ↩

  45. Ibid., i, 8, 8. ↩

  46. Ibid., i, 9, 9. ↩

  47. Ibid., i, 10, 11. ↩

  48. Ibid., i, 9, 10, p. 77, notes 14 and 15. ↩

  49. Augustine of Hippo, Answer to the Two Letters of the Pelagians, in Answer to the Pelagians, ii, ed. by John E. Rotelle O.S.A., trans. by Roland J. Teske S.J., The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century i/24 (Hyde Park, New York: New City Press, 1997), pp. 97–219 (iv, 4, 7), emphasis in original. ↩

  50. Ibid., iv, 4, 7, emphasis in original. ↩

  51. Bonner, St Augustine, p. 373; Wiley, Original Sin, pp. 51–52. ↩

  52. Robert Jewett, Romans: A Commentary, Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2007), pp. 375–376. ↩

  53. Bonner, St Augustine, pp. 394–395. ↩

  54. Augustine of Hippo, Punishment and Forgiveness of Sins, i, 11, 13. ↩

  55. Bonner, St Augustine, p. 372. ↩

  56. Augustine of Hippo, Punishment and Forgiveness of Sins, i, 10, 11. ↩

  57. Ibid., i, 11, 13. ↩

  58. Ibid., i, 11, 13. ↩

  59. Ibid., i, 12, 15. ↩

  60. Ibid., i, 13, 16. ↩

  61. Ibid., i, 13, 18–16, 21. ↩

  62. McFarland, In Adam’s Fall, p. 34. ↩