Eine wunderschöne Zusammenfassung der Gnadenlehre, wie sie Augustinus herausgearbeitet hat:
Augustine saw it all around him and felt it: human beings seek God and need him while at the same time they cannot and will not come to him. What is good in humanity is only the fact that they exist. Humanity as a whole is a “mass of perdition.” Sin is, above all, haughtiness—pride (superbia) in the soul and lust (concupiscentia) in the body. In Adam we all sinned, and thus sin became the fate of us all. It is a lack of God (carentia dei), a privation of the good (privatio boni), not just an act but a condition; it is vitiated nature, a defect, a lack, a corruption, an inability not to sin.
Salvation from this condition exists only by grace, which has its origin in predestination and is objectively revealed in the person and work of Christ. Objective grace is the sure and proper foundation of the Catholic faith but must also come into us subjectively as internal grace to infuse faith and love.
Herman Bavinck. Reformed Dogmatics. Prolegomena, 43.
