Schaff - History of the Christian Church Vol. 8 - Media Sabda Org

456
confess with Augustin, ‘that the will of God is the necessity of things, and
what he has willed will necessarily come to pass; as those things are really
about to happen which he has foreseen.” f830
But while his inexorable logic pointed to this abyss, his moral and religious
sense shrunk from the last logical inference of making God the author of
sin; for this would be blasphemous, and involve the absurdity that God
abhors and justly punishes what he himself decreed. He attributes to Adam
the freedom of choice, by which he might have obtained eternal life, but he
wilfully disobeyed. f831 Hence his significant phrase: “Man falls, God’s
providence so ordaining it; yet he falls by his own guilt.” f832 Here we have
supralapsarian logic combined with ethical logic. He adds, however, that
we do not know the reason why Providence so ordained it, and that it is
better for us to contemplate the guilt of man than to search after the bidden
predestination of God. “There is,” he says, “a learned ignorance of things
which it is neither permitted nor lawful to know, and avidity of knowledge
is a species of madness.”
Here is, notwithstanding this wholesome caution, the crucial point where
the rigorous logic of Calvin and Augustin breaks down, or where the moral
logic triumphs over intellectual logic. To admit that God is the author of
sin would destroy his holiness, and overthrow the foundation of morality
and religion. This would not be Calvinism, but fatalism and pantheism. The
most rigorous predestinarian is driven to the alternative of choosing
between logic and morality. Augustin and Calvin could not hesitate for a
moment. Again and again, Calvin calls it blasphemy to make God the
author of sin, and he abhorred sin as much as any man ever did. It is an
established fact that the severest Calvinists have always been the strictest
moralists. f833
INFANT SALVATION AND DAMNATION.
Are infants dying in infancy included in the decree of reprobation? This is
another crucial point in the Augustinian system, and the rock on which it
splits.
St. Augustin expressly assigns all unbaptized children dying in infancy to
eternal damnation, because of original sin inherited from Adam’s
transgression. It is true, he mitigates their punishment and reduces it to a
negative state of privation of bliss, as distinct from positive suffering. f834