is best known for his ideas on the relationship between the will, grace, and predestination. Raised as a Christian by his mother, Monica, he reads Hortensius and becomes Manichaean. In 370 he begins a thirteen- year relationship with the mother (never named in his works) of his son, Adeodatus (born 372). In 383 he moves to Rome, is exposed to neo-Platonic idealism, and rejects Manichaeism. His mother joins him in Milan, forces him to send his child’s mother away, and arranges a marriage for him to a 10-year old Christian heiress. In 386 Augustine renounces his career and marriage, and is baptized by St. Ambrose. Augustine's core ideas even after his reconversion still reflect Manichaean concepts: Hell, Elect and Reprobates, hostility to the flesh and sexual activity, and dualistic theology. In 389, he writes Confessions, sells his patrimony, and gives the money to the poor. In 391 he is drafted as priest at Thagaste, near Carthage. In 410, Rome is sacked by Visigoths, and Christians are blamed for their unmanly, pacifist behavior, in answer to which he writes City of God. The Pelagian Controversy: Pelagius, a British monk, asserts that people are not born with a “sinful nature” and thus do not require the “cleansing” of infant baptism. He claims that people can choose to live a good life or a bad life, and can thus choose salvation or damnation. He sees in Jesus not an atoning death “to wash away the sins of the world,” but merely a divine model of virtuous life. He considers death to be natural to all men (since baptism doesn’t confer immortality). Like Pelagius, many early Church Fathers teach that humans have the power of free will and the choice over good and evil: Justin Martyr - "every created being is so constituted as to be capable of vice and virtue. For he can do nothing praiseworthy, if he had not the power of turning either way." Theophilus - "If, on the other hand, he would turn to the things of death, disobeying God, he would himself be the cause of death to himself. For God made man free, and with power of himself." Irenaeus - "But man, being endowed with reason, and in this respect similar to God, having been made free in his will, and with power over himself, is himself his own cause that sometimes he becomes wheat, and sometimes chaff." Clement of Alexandria - "We...have believed and are saved by voluntary choice." Before Pelagius, even Augustine suggests that the will is confronted by a rational choice between a life spent in the pursuit of what is temporal, changing, and perishable, and a life spent in the pursuit of what is eternal, immutable, and incapable of being lost [De Libero Arbitrio I.7]; and that God's grace is "a reward for human assent,” that will is independent to choose good or evil, and that salvation is thus in the hands of the believer. However, as Pelagianism spreads rapidly, especially around Carthage, Augustine changes his tune and reacts to this attack upon the sacraments by accusing Pelagius of heresy at the Council of Carthage in 418. Augustine’s logic is similar to Paul’s: if good deeds can save us, why did Jesus have to die on the cross? To defeat Pelagius and uphold the Sacramental Church, Augustine devises a system whereby salvation is gained only by “irresistible” divine will; namely, that people have no choice. Likewise, damnation is the result of divine grace withheld, in which case people again have no choice. “Grace irresistibly changes our will so that those chosen cannot reject it, and those from whom it is withheld cannot be saved.” [De Gratia et Libero Arbitrio xx and xxi]. Augustine is even pushed by the absurdity of his position to argue that unbaptized babies, and by extension miscarried or aborted babies, burn in Hell for all eternity. Also, misreading Genesis, Augustine maintains that death is a consequence of original sin (yet it is curiously not remedied by baptism or Jesus’ crucifixion). In order to maintain its monopoly on the machinery of salvation, the Church endorses Augustine. ~~~~~~~~