From what I know of Calvinism, I cannot see Augustine's influence. Not when he exhibited great insight to the born again nature that Calvinism is blind to. What did Augustine teach that actually agrees with Calvinism that I can research?
So far, you may have to ask for Augustine's forgiveness. LOL
Look for the last 18 years of his life:
Augustine taught variants of these five points of Augustinian Calvinism the last eighteen years of his life. Previously he had taught traditional Christian views defending humanity's free choice to believe against the deterministic
Manichaeans, to which he had belonged for a decade before converting to Christianity.
[7][8] In this pagan group, a non-relational God unilaterally chose the elect for
salvation and the non-elect for
damnation based upon his own desires. Early church fathers prior to Augustine refuted non-choice predeterminism as being pagan.
[9][10][11] Out of the fifty early Christian authors who wrote on the debate between free will and
determinism, all fifty supported Christian free will against
Stoic,
Gnostic, and Manichaean determinism and even Augustine taught traditional Christian theology against this determinism for twenty-six years prior to 412 CE.
[12] When Augustine started fighting the Pelagians he converted to the Gnostic and Manichaean view and taught that humankind has no free will to believe until God infuses grace, which in turn results in saving faith.
[13][14][15]
Total Depravity and Unconditional Election in Infant BaptismEdit
The controversy over infant baptism with the
Pelagians was a major reason for Augustine's change.
Tertullian (ca. 200) was the first Christian to mention infant baptism. He refuted it by saying children should not be baptized until they can personally believe in Christ.
[16] Even by 400 CE there was no consensus regarding why infants should be baptized.
[17][18]The Pelagians taught infant baptism merely allowed children to enter the kingdom of God (viewed as different than heaven), so that unbaptized infants could still be in heaven.
[19] In response, Augustine invented the concept that infants are baptized to remove Adam's original guilt (guilt resulting in eternal damnation).
[20] Inherited original sin was previously limited to physical death, moral weakness, and a sin propensity.
[21]
Another key element within infant baptism was Augustine's early training in Stoicism, an ancient philosophy in which a meticulous micromanaging god predetermines every detailed event in the universe.
[22] This included the falling of a leaf from a tree to its exact location on the ground and the subtle movements of muscles in roosters' necks as they fight, which he explained in his first work, De providentia (On Providence).
[23] Augustine taught that God foreordained (or predestined) newborn babies who were baptized by actively helping or causing the parents to reach the bishop for baptism while the baby lived. By baptism, these babies would be saved from damnation. Augustine reasoned further that God actively blocked the parents of other infants from reaching the baptismal waters before their baby died. These babies were condemned to hell due to lack of baptism (according to Augustine).
[24][25] His view remains controversial, even some Roman Catholic Augustinian scholars refute this idea,
[26] and scholars cite the view's origin as derived as from
Platonism, Stoicism, and Manichaeism.
[27][28][29]
Augustine then expanded this concept from infants to adults. Since babies have no "will" to desire their baptisms, Augustine expanded the implication to all humans.
[30] He concluded that God must predestine all humans prior to them making any choice. Although earlier Christians taught original sin, the concept of total depravity (total inability to believe on Christ) was borrowed from Gnostic Manichaeism.
Manichaeism taught unborn babies and unbaptized infants were damned to hell because of a physical body. Like the Gnostics, the Manichaean god had to resurrect the dead will by infusing faith and grace. Augustine changed the cause of total depravity to Adam's guilt but kept the Stoic, Manichaean, and
Neoplatonic concepts of the human dead will requiring god's infused grace and faith to respond.
[31]