Augustine's writings against the Pelagians are some of the most debated texts in the Christian tradition. Many readers treat them as the place where Augustine went too far. Luther read them and was captivated. Dr. Alex Pierce explains why.

Episode summary

In their second conversation with Dr. Pierce, David and Maurice turn to Augustine, one of Alex's areas of expertise. Alex describes how he first found in Augustine a thinker who holds the faith together, and why many scholars read him instead as a dualist shaped by his Manichaean past and his Platonist sources. Alex argues that Augustine was a creative and faithful receiver of the tradition before him.

The conversation then turns to the Pelagian controversy. Alex walks through Augustine's life, from his baptism in Milan to his ordination in Hippo, and shows that Augustine affirmed the priority of grace years before the controversy began. He takes up the charge that the anti-Pelagian Augustine is a pessimist, and makes the case that a strong theology of creation requires a strong theology of sin. The episode closes with how the Lutheran confessions receive Augustine, setting guardrails against both Pelagianism and Manichaeism.

Main themes

• Augustine as a receiver and synthesizer of the tradition
• The priority of grace at the beginning of faith
• The relationship between the doctrines of sin and creation
• Human agency as most fully itself in dependence on God
• How the Lutheran confessions receive the Augustinian tradition

Key discussion points

• Why many scholars read Augustine as a dualist, and why Alex disagrees
• Neoplatonism, causality, and what is at stake for the sacraments
• Augustine's reply to Simplician and his change of mind on grace
• How the Pelagian controversy reached North Africa
• Pelagius's reaction to a line in Augustine's Confessions
• Augustine on Romans 7 and our daily need for grace
• “100% of God's grace and 100% of the human will”
• Christ as gift and example in Luther, and as sacrament and example in Augustine

Mentioned in this episode

• Augustine: Confessions, On the Trinity, On Christian Teaching, On the Punishment and Forgiveness of Sins, On the Spirit and the Letter, Retractations
• Martin Luther, A Brief Instruction on What to Look For and Expect in the Gospels
• Philip Melanchthon, Apology of the Augsburg Confession
• Dr. Alex Pierce, Augustine on the Mystery of Christ and the Sacramental Economy (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming)

Coming up

The season continues as we keep company with the lecturers from the 2025 NALC Clergy Retreat, turning to the next voice on the theme of the confessions as a way into the riches of Scripture.

Next episode: Lara Bhasin’s lecture: Confessions as Missional Engagement with Culture, releasing October 9.

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Cardigan & Collar is a podcast of the North American Lutheran Seminary. Find us on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify.

Episode summary

Dr. David Luy and the Rev. Dr. Maurice Lee sit down with Dr. Alex Pierce to follow up on his clergy retreat lecture. Alex argues that the Lutheran confessions do not limit our relationship to the broader Christian tradition. They open it up and give us a way into those riches with guidance and a framework in hand. When we confess the articles of faith, we take on terms and judgments that assume a great deal of the reader. Alex says this should leave us curious and eager to deepen our understanding.

The conversation then turns to the common pitfalls. Some readers look at the depth of the tradition and feel paralyzed. Others find a striking idea in the early church and take it out of proportion, letting it replace something central to our confession. Alex uses deification as a test case, showing how keeping Christ as sole mediator lets us venture out without becoming unmoored.

The second half explores Alex's own story. He studied at a pan-evangelical seminary and worked backward through the tradition, finding an Augustinianism within the Lutheran confessions that he found deeply satisfying. The episode closes with advice for pastors and lay leaders looking for a starting point: read the sermons of the early church.

Main themes

• The confessions as a path into the tradition rather than a replacement for it
• The breadth of the catholic faith held together with the gospel at its center
• Two common challenges: feeling overwhelmed, and losing a sense of proportion
• Christ as sole mediator, and how that fixes our coordinates for exploration
• The difference between being formed by history and mining it for proof texts
• Bringing the early church into the daily life of a congregation

Key discussion points

• "I only need the Bible" mirrors the attitude of "I only need the confessions"
• The confessions function like links pointing outward toward Augustine, Ambrose, and Gregory of Nyssa
• The student Marty and the two ditches on either side of the road
  Maximus the Confessor's cosmic vision, and the distance between a universalizing tendency and a universalist position
• Deification as an empty jar without historical context, and what the Smalcald Articles bring to bear
• Albrecht Ritschl's claim that the ecumenical creeds entered the Book of Concord as a political move
• Melanchthon placing Wittenberg teaching alongside Augustine, Aquinas, and Bonaventure in Apology Article 2
• How a confessional tradition opens space for Lutherans to explore and disagree with integrity
• The reformers working midstream rather than starting a new theology from the ground up
• How retrieval theology can turn into another form of proof texting
• Bringing the cloud of witnesses into parish life through the worship folder, the liturgical year, and daily devotions

Mentioned in this episode

• The Augsburg Confession, the Apology, the Smalcald Articles, and the Small and Large Catechisms
• Augustine, Expositions of the Psalms
• Origen's commentaries on the Gospels
• Athanasius on the Psalms
• Irenaeus, Against Heresies
• Maximus the Confessor
• B. B. Warfield and the old Princeton theologians
• Albrecht Ritschl
• For All the Saints: A Prayer Book For and By the Church

Listen and subscribe

Cardigan & Collar is a podcast of the North American Lutheran Seminary. Find us on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify. Part two of our conversation with Dr. Pierce is coming next.

Episode Summary

“We all revert to patterns of trying to be good enough. Trying to earn our way, trying to pull up our bootstraps. This is the Pelagian temptation.”

Recorded at the NALC Clergy Retreat, this week's episode features a lecture from Dr. Alex Pierce of the North American Lutheran Seminary: “Confessions and the Christian Tradition.” Hosts Dr. David Luy and the Rev. Dr. Maurice Lee introduce the lecture and reflect on what makes it worth a pastor's close attention.

Dr. Pierce begins with the relationship between the Lutheran confessions and the whole of the Christian tradition. The confessions, he argues, affirm the catholic tradition and depend on it. Like a pointing finger, they only make sense in light of the things to which they point. At the same time, they leave many rich veins untapped. They tell us what doorbells to ring, and ringing them leads us on a journey of deep theological enrichment.

From that wide view, the lecture moves into a single episode in the church's memory: Augustine and the Pelagian controversy. Dr. Pierce walks through the history, from Pelagius and Caelestius in Rome to the councils and condemnations of the early fifth century, and then draws out three soul-nourishing truths the church inherited from it, each woven into the confessions themselves:

1. Sin exerts a subversive power over human nature, placing us in a position of desperation.
2. In baptism we are united with Jesus Christ, our perfect mediator, who is full of grace and truth.
3. All of our faith and love are gifts of the grace of the Holy Spirit.

Along the way, the lecture considers the dangers of reading the tradition unprepared, including paralysis, getting over one's skis, and losing proportionality. Guided by the confessions, pastors and students can enter these deep waters with confidence, receiving the riches of the tradition as spiritual nourishment for ministry today.

In the coming weeks, David and Maurice sit down with Dr. Pierce to explore the lecture in greater depth.

Referenced in this episode:

• The Book of Concord, ed. Robert Kolb and Timothy Wengert
• The Augsburg Confession, Articles 2, 3, and 4
• The Apology of the Augsburg Confession
• The Formula of Concord on original sin and free will
• Augustine's anti-Pelagian writings
• Martin Luther, “A Brief Instruction on What to Look for and Expect in the Gospels”
• Romans 5:12; Galatians 5:6

Cardigan & Collar is a podcast of the North American Lutheran Seminary: theological conversations for the enrichment of pastoral ministry. Learn more at thenals.org.

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