Inner grace : Augustine in the traditions of Plato and Paul

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Title:

Inner grace : Augustine in the traditions of Plato and Paul

Author:

Cary, Phillip

ISBN:

9780195336481

Personal Author:

Cary, Phillip

Publication Information:

Oxford [u.a.] Oxford Univ. Press 2008

Physical Description:

XVI, 189 S. ; 25 cm

General Note:

Platonist grace : inner help to love -- Wisdom and virtue -- Conversion and purification -- Beauty and love -- Free will against autonomy -- From fear to love -- Against Augustine on the Jews -- Dialogue with Plato -- The widening scope of inner help -- Connections of love -- Pauline grace : human will and divine choice -- Divine good will -- The inward-turning will -- Willing becomes difficult -- Four stages -- The place of merit -- Early inconsistency -- Jacob and Esau -- The call to faith -- Assent or delight? -- No external cause of grace -- Reading Paul's admonition -- Anti-pelagian grace : clarifying prevenience -- The shape of the controversy -- The grace of participation -- Uncovering pelagian evasions -- Augustine's evasiveness -- The missing piece of the puzzle -- Taught by God -- Predestined grace : conversion and election -- The grace of beginnings -- Converting Paul's will -- Coercion on the Damascus Road -- The experience of grace in disarray -- God turns hearts -- Problems of perseverance -- Biblical election

Subject Term:

Augustine / Saint, Bishop of Hippo

Grace (Theology)

Bible / N.T. / Epistles of Paul / Theology

Copies:

Available:*

Library	Material Type	Item Barcode	Shelf Number	Copy	Status
Searching... 1:IIEMSA	1:GEN-BOOK	33168023697309	230.14092 C333.I 2008	1	Searching... Unknown

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Summary

Augustine's epochal doctrine of grace is often portrayed as a break from his earlier Platonism, but in Inner Grace Phillip Cary argues it should be seen instead as the way Augustine's Platonism developed as he read the apostle Paul. Augustine's concept of grace as an inner gift that moves, turns and strengthens the will from within requires a Platonist conception of the soul's inner relation to the Good. What he adds to this conception is that grace is needed not only for the mind to see God but also for the will to turn away from lower goods and love God as its eternal Good, and even for it to choose faith in Christ, the temporal road by which the soul journeys to God. Thus, over the course of Augustine's career the scope of the soul's need for grace expands outward from intellect to love and then to faith. At every stage, Augustine insists that divine grace does not compromise or coerce the human will but frees, helps, and strengthens it--precisely because grace is not an external force but an inner gift of delight. But as his polemic against the Pelagians develops, increasingly more is attributed to grace and less to the power of free will. At the end of his career, this results in an explicit doctrine of predestination, according to which it is ultimately God who chooses who shall be saved. Behind predestination, therefore, is divine election, which Augustine understands as God choosing some rather than others for salvation. This contrasts with the Biblical doctrine of election, Cary argues, in which some are chosen for the blessing of others: e.g., Israel for the nations and Christ for the world. In this Biblical doctrine, grace and blessing are external rather than inner gifts because they always come to us from others outside us.