Augustine (and therefore Calvinism) was influenced by BOTH pagan and Gnostic heretical ideas.

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There were NO CALVINISTS in the Early Church. No orthodox Christian theologian, apologist and/or leader taught the doctrines today associated with Calvinism. I've cited many of them in this blog and can post quote after quote, passage after passage from Church leaders in the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th centuries who TO THE MAN taught against the way Calvinists understand the Scriptures today. 

And WHO was to blame? Where did "Calvinism" come from? It ALL came from/through Augustine in the early 5th Century. Previously, it was believed that Augustine's change/shift came in AD397. More recent scholarship would argue that it wasn't until AD412. 

What is irrefutable is that it was Augustine who "introduced" the novel doctrines that today we call "Calvinism". 

The irony of ironies is that one can find the doctrines of Calvinism in the days of the Early Church. But, they are NOT being taught by the Church; rather, they are being taught by the heretics! This has been demonstrated exhaustively, and irrefutably in the Oxford Ph.D. dissertation, 

Augustine's Conversion from Traditional Free Choice to "Non-free Free Will": A Comprehensive Methodology - Dissertation Link: Ph.D. Dissertation


To quote the author at length as to the summary of his findings about the non-Apostolic, non-Christian influences on the theology of St. Augustine: 






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