Actually, it’s a considerable stretch to call Augustine Calvinistic. He pretty much stood alone in the first thousand years and probably in error on his particular idea about original sin (sadly the West ended up adopting it though not as strongly until the early parts of the second millenium), without which you can never even begin to get to total depravity. And Augustine’s struggle with the idea of free will comes out on the wrong side more often than not. Again, he largely stood alone on that among the Fathers. And many of his works were not translated into Greek until much, much later (I’ve heard even a thousand years for at least some). And that’s sad, because while he had no peer at his time in the Latin West, there were a number in the Greek East who could have read and possibly corrected him.

However, I don’t tend to spend a lot of time with Augustine, though I have read significant parts of his writings. (I have not read the full Confessions — just excerpts.) He was schooled before his conversion in the neo-platonism of his day and it really shows through. His construction of original sin owes more to the philosophical idea of seminal reasons than anything in Jewish or Christian thought or the Holy Scriptures. It didn’t help that he didn’t like Greek and worked from Latin texts of the Scriptures that were either questionable or simply wrong in their translation in some places.

If you’re going to read my thoughts, I should warn you that I’m not a particular fan of Calvin. I encountered Calvinism fairly late and have never been attracted to it in the least. My reaction to total depravity was immediately pretty much like that of C.S. Lewis in The Problem of Pain. And while I understand the attraction to determinism, which almost ruled modern Western scholastic thought until the 20th century, I’m really not interested in it at all. On the scientific level, I agree with Stephen Hawking that Laplace was flat out wrong. I find no basis for the idea in reality at any level. Further, Calvinism is at its core virtually a form of monism. And if I’m going to take that route, I’ll take Brahman any day of the week. At least Brahman is impersonal. A personal God who is for all practical purposes the source of both good and evil is simply an evil God.

I have interacted and continue to interact with both Calvinists and people with Calvinistic leanings. A good friend of mine leans that way. And some of my family are Presbyterian, though I didn’t really know anything about that belief system until fairly recently. My aunt was in many ways probably a better Christian than I’ll ever be. So Calvinists don’t usually bother me at all. Calvinism does.

I’ll go check your post. As I reflected on some of the writings, I realized that oneness and the eucharist are very often interwoven ideas in the ancient church. I just thought I warn people up front. Especially the Baptists. I do love them and am always grateful that I “found” (doesn’t feel like exactly the best word, but can’t think of another) the faith among them. But they do tend to be a fractious lot.

One note about the belief in Baptist teaching in the early church; the early Church also (as far as I know?) have any structured teaching of Calvinistic thought until Augustine, but we consider that to be right as well. So perhaps both doctrines are in the same boat — though, granted, there were deterministic groups even in the Jewish groups (the Essenes, if I recall correctly; Josephus wrote about that somewhere), though this isn’t exactly the same thread.

It’s funny you brought up the part about unity — the post I just wrote for today is actually centered around the concept Check it out if you get a chance:

http://christspeak.com/2009/07/15/division-theology-warranted-2/