The very last writing of St. Augustine was the Opus Imperfectum contra Julianum, literally, the “Unfinished Work Against Julian.” The name itself tells the whole story.
What was it?
Augustine wrote this work in the closing years of a life occupied with three great controversies, Manichaeism, Donatism, and Pelagianism the last of which ended with the Contra Julianum and the Opus Imperfectum contra Julianum.
Julian of Eclanum was a Pelagian bishop sharp, polemical, and relentless who had mounted a fierce intellectual assault on Augustine’s theology of original sin and grace. This debate ran from 418 to the year of Augustine’s death, 430, between two persons who never actually met during that entire time.
How did it end?
St. Augustine at his death left a work against Julian unfinished (the Opus Imperfectum contra Julianum) in which he had been engaged until the sickness of which he died put an end to his labours.
The pen literally fell from his hand mid-argument. This volume contains the last three books (four to six) of Augustine’s unfinished work against Julian of Eclanum since the Bishop of Hippo replies paragraph by paragraph to Julian’s work, the first six of them are preserved in their entirety. The remaining books simply stop. There is no conclusion. Death arrived first.
What was happening around him?
The context is staggeringly dramatic. By 430, the Vandals were laying siege to the city of Hippo. Augustine orchestrated the city’s final defenses from his deathbed. This soldier of Christ spent his last years in combat with the Arian heresy, dying in Hippo in 430 after three months of fervent prayer at the age of 76, with the city under siege by the Vandals.
**What about the Retractations?**
It is worth noting that just before this final battle with Julian, the Retractations (written towards the end of his life, 426–428) are a revision of the saint’s works in chronological order, explaining the occasion and dominant idea of each, they are a guide of inestimable price for grasping the progress of Augustine’s thought. But even that extraordinary act of self-examination was not his last word. His last word was an argument for grace specifically, the truth that humanity is helpless without it.
There is something deeply moving here. One of the greatest minds in the history of the Church died mid-sentence, defending the very doctrine that defines the Christian life: that without God’s grace, we can do nothing. He did not go gently into retirement. He fought for truth until his body gave out, the Vandals at the gates, the heretics on the page.
• Explaining the Retractions of Saint Augustine
The Misreading of the Retractations
The Retractations is not Augustine confessing error wholesale. It is Augustine clarifying, refining, and contextualizing his earlier positions, something very different from recanting them. He explicitly says he is offering (retractationes) which means “reconsideration” or “review,” not “retraction” in the modern sense of “I was wrong.”
This distinction matters enormously. Augustine is saying: “Here is what I wrote. Here is why I wrote it then. Here is how I would say it now, more precisely.” That is not the same as saying the earlier position was false.
The Predestination Question
The accusation comes chiefly from Protestants who encounter Augustine’s mature teaching on predestination and then claim he either (a) contradicted himself, or (b) taught double predestination the notion that God actively predestines some to damnation just as He predestines others to salvation.
Both accusations fail.
What Augustine Actually Taught
Augustine never taught double predestination in the strict sense. Here is what he actually said:
- God’s predestination is always to salvation, never to damnation.
- God foreknows with perfect, eternal knowledge who will persevere in faith. This is not the same as causing damnation.
- The reprobate are reprobate by their own choice and God’s just judgment of that choice, not by God’s active predestination toward evil.
- Damnation is the consequence of sin freely chosen; salvation is the free gift of grace.
The Retractations do not walk back this teaching. They clarify it.
What Actually Changed in Augustine’s Thought
What did evolve in Augustine’s thinking and this is where Protestants sometimes seize upon apparent inconsistency is his emphasis on the totality of God’s grace in conversion.
Early Augustine (before about 396) stressed human freedom and cooperation with grace more visibly. He was still combating Manichaeism, which denied free will altogether, so he emphasized: You must choose; grace assists your choice.
Mature Augustine (396 onward, especially after the Pelagian controversy erupted around 410) emphasized far more forcefully: Without grace, the will is bound. Grace alone liberates the will. God’s grace is not merely assistive; it is transformative and efficacious.
This is not a contradiction. It is a deepening. Early Augustine was saying, “Grace works with your will.” Mature Augustine was saying, “Grace works on your will freeing it, moving it, transforming it so that your willing becomes truly free.”
Why This Matters
The Pelagians accused Augustine of denying free will. They said: “If God predestines, then humans are puppets.” Augustine’s response in the Retractations and his later anti-Pelagian works is: No. Grace perfects nature. God’s grace does not destroy freedom; it restores it.
This is why Augustine is so often quoted by both Catholics and Protestants. Catholics appeal to Augustine’s insistence on the necessity of grace. Protestants appeal to his language of divine sovereignty. Both are right to quote him, but both sometimes misread him by treating isolated passages as though they stand alone, divorced from the fuller architecture of his thought.
The Real Issue
The real evolution in Augustine’s thinking is not that he changed his mind about predestination being true. It is that he became more insistent that predestination includes the predestination of the means that is, God predestines not only the end (salvation) but the way to that end (faith, grace, perseverance, prayer).
Early Augustine might say, “God predestines the elect to salvation, and the elect cooperate with grace.”
Mature Augustine says, “God predestines the elect to salvation and predestines all the acts of grace by which they will come to that salvation including their own free choice.”
This is not double predestination. It is single predestination to salvation which includes everything necessary to achieve it.
Why Protestants Find This Confusing
Many Protestants operate within a theological framework shaped by Calvin and later Reformed thought, in which “predestination” often means something closer to “God has divided humanity into saved and damned from eternity.” Augustine’s thought is more subtle. He holds:
- God predestines the saved to salvation through grace.
- God permits the reprobate to fall through their own sin and just judgment.
- These are not equal and opposite decrees.
The Retractations do not contradict this. They clarify it.
The Pelagian Error That Forced the Issue
The Pelagians were saying: “Humans have free will. We can choose God on our own. Grace is helpful, but not necessary. If you go to hell, it’s because you didn’t try hard enough.”
Augustine’s response was: “No. Without grace, the human will is bound by sin. You cannot choose God without God first choosing you and giving you the grace to respond. Predestination is real.”
But this immediately raised a horrifying question, one that haunts theology to this day: If God predestines some to salvation through grace, why doesn’t He give grace to everyone? Why are some left without it?
Augustine’s Answer: You Cannot Know Who the Unelect Are
Here is the crucial point that Protestants often miss, and it changes everything:
Augustine teaches that we do not know who the elect are and who the unelect are. This knowledge belongs to God alone.
- The person sitting next to you in church might be elect.
- The person you think is hopeless might be elect.
- The person you assume is saved might not be.
- The person you assume is damned might be.
Why? Because predestination is eternal, and human conversion can happen at any moment even at the deathbed. The thief on the cross was converted at the last moment. Who are you to say he was never among the elect?
This means: The Church must act as though everyone is among the elect, because we do not and cannot know the divine counsel.
What Did the Unelect Do Wrong?
Here is where the logic becomes subtle and where Augustine parts company with later Calvinism:
Augustine does not say the unelect “did something wrong” that caused them to be unelected. Rather:
- God, in His omniscience, sees the whole of human history at once, past, present, future.
- God knows who will, in their freedom, choose to turn away from Him.
- God does not cause that choice. He foresees it.
- God permits that choice to have its natural consequence: separation from Him.
So the unelect are not unelect because God arbitrarily withheld grace. They are unelect because God, seeing the whole arc of their lives, knows they will reject grace when it is offered.
But here is the critical move: Augustine never says all people are offered grace and some reject it. He says God, in His mercy, gives saving grace to the elect those He foreknows will persevere. To the reprobate, God gives sufficient grace enough to know His will and His law but not the efficacious grace that transforms the heart.
The Real Tension Augustine Never Fully Resolves
Here is the honest truth: Augustine does teach that God does not give saving grace to everyone. The question of why — why God withholds that grace from some? Augustine answers with: “Because God is just. Their damnation is just.”
But how is it just to withhold grace from someone who will inevitably fall without it? Augustine’s answer is:
- God owes grace to no one. Grace is a gift, not a debt.
- Those who are damned are damned because of their sin, either original sin (which all inherit) or actual sin (which they commit).
- God’s predestination does not cause their sin; it permits it and judges it justly.
This is where Augustine leans on the mystery of divine foreknowledge and human freedom, a mystery he acknowledges but does not fully resolve. He says, in effect: “God knows all things perfectly. God’s knowledge does not cause things. Human freedom is real. How these three truths cohere is beyond human comprehension in this life.”
How This Differs from Calvinism
Later Protestants, especially Calvin, sharpened Augustine’s teaching into something more rigid:
- Calvin taught double predestination, – God actively predestines some to heaven and some to hell.
- Calvin taught limited atonement, – Christ died only for the elect.
- Calvin taught irresistible grace, – if you are elect, you cannot resist God’s grace.
Augustine did not teach any of these things in this form. Augustine taught:
- God predestines some to salvation through grace.
- God permits others to fall through their own sin.
- Christ’s redemption is offered to all; its efficacy is applied to the elect.
- Grace is resistible you can reject it, but if you are among the elect, you will not ultimately reject it.
The Pastoral Consequence
Here is what matters most: Augustine’s predestination teaching was never meant to make people passive or despairing. He taught:
- You must pray as though everything depends on you.
- You must act as though everything depends on you.
- You must trust that everything depends on God.
The doctrine of predestination, rightly understood, is not an excuse for inaction. It is a comfort: God knows the end from the beginning. Your salvation is secure in His hands. Therefore, work out your salvation in fear and trembling (Philippians 2:12).
You are called to assume you are among the elect and to live accordingly in faith, repentance, and obedience. Whether God has predestined you is His business, not yours. Your business is to respond to the grace offered to you now.
The Honest Acknowledgment
Augustine himself knew this doctrine was difficult. He taught it because Scripture seemed to require it especially Romans 9, where Paul speaks of vessels of mercy and vessels of wrath. But he was humble about the limits of human understanding.
What he would say to a Protestant who reads his work and concludes “So I don’t need to do anything; it’s all predetermined” is: That is a perversion of the doctrine. Predestination is not permission for sloth. It is an incentive to holiness.
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