W. Robert Godfrey

But many said were saved by grace alone, mostly, and really thought that they were Augustinian, that they weren't betraying anything essential.

And what they meant and what people like Gregory meant by that is, we cannot be saved except by grace.

Now you see, that is Augustinian to a point.

Pelagius had said we can be saved without grace.

May not happen very often, but it's theoretically possible.

We can be saved without grace.

After the debate between Augustine and Pelagius, nobody in the West argued you could be saved without grace.

In that sense, Augustine had won the absolute victory.

You have to have grace to be saved.

But the question is, if you have to have grace to be saved, where does it come from?

How do you get it?

How do you keep it?

And that's where there was a movement away from the fullness and clarity of what Augustine had said.

And for Gregory, representing the kind of theology that would be frequently promoted in the life of the church, Gregory said, well, you see, grace is received in baptism.

So, of course you have to have grace to be saved, and you get grace in baptism, so you have to be baptized to be saved, and everybody gets grace in baptism, and then what are you going to do with that grace?

You have to make appropriate use of that grace, and the appropriate use of that grace

is in constantly confessing your sin, constantly hoping by grace to lead a better life, constantly making use of confession and the sacraments of the church to be progressing in the Christian life.

And what you had then in the theology of Gregory is a theology in which the whole of life is a struggle, is a repentance,

to hold on to the grace one has, to seek forgiveness for the sins one continues to commit.

A noble lady wrote to Gregory and asked him to pray for a revelation to him from God that she was saved.