The Historical Tracings of the Doctrines of Grace | Part 4

Key Scriptures

• Romans 4:4–5 – “Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due. And to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness.”
• Titus 3:5 – “He saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit.”
• Galatians 1:6–7 – “I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel—not that there is another one…”
• Romans 10:3 – “For, being ignorant of the righteousness of God, and seeking to establish their own, they did not submit to God’s righteousness.”

The centuries that followed Augustine’s death were centuries of spiritual decline. Though his theology of grace had triumphed in the councils, it slowly eroded in the practice of the church. Truth was confessed but not cherished. And when truth is not cherished, it is soon lost.

The Roman Empire was collapsing, literacy was vanishing, and the institutional church was rising to fill the vacuum of authority. Theologians no longer asked what Scripture said—they asked what the church said Scripture meant. Gradually, the light of revelation was dimmed by the shadow of tradition.

And in that darkness, the gospel was replaced by sacramentalism.

From Grace to Cooperation
At the heart of the medieval drift was a subtle shift—from grace that saves to grace that assists. The church began to teach that grace was something God infuses into the soul through the sacraments, enabling the sinner to cooperate with Him for salvation.

Instead of justification by faith, the church taught justification by participation: through baptism, confession, penance, and the Mass, grace could be received and increased. The sacraments became the pipeline of salvation, and the priest became the gatekeeper of grace.

This was semi-Pelagianism in full bloom. Man’s will, it was said, begins the process; God’s grace helps him finish it. In practice, salvation became a partnership, a joint venture between God’s generosity and man’s merit.

But Paul had already written, “To the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due” (Romans 4:4). A gospel of cooperation is not a gospel of grace—it is a gospel of wages.

The Rise of Scholastic Theology
By the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the medieval church began to intellectualize this system. Theologians such as Peter Lombard and Thomas Aquinas developed elaborate systems of thought to explain how God’s grace operated through the sacraments.

Aquinas, though brilliant, replaced the personal grace of God with a kind of spiritual substance. Grace became something that could be stored, dispensed, and measured. The righteousness by which a man was justified was not Christ’s righteousness imputed to him, but an infused righteousness gradually developed within him through the church’s ministry.

In other words, justification was turned into sanctification. Salvation was no longer a declaration of righteousness by faith, but a process of becoming righteous by obedience.

This shift turned the gospel inside out. Instead of resting in the finished work of Christ, sinners were taught to labor toward acceptance before God. Romans 10:3 describes it perfectly: “Being ignorant of the righteousness of God, and seeking to establish their own, they did not submit to God’s righteousness.”

The Power of the Priesthood
As sacramentalism grew, so did priestly authority. Since grace was believed to be mediated through the church’s sacraments, salvation became dependent on the church’s hierarchy.

The priest forgave sins. The priest distributed the grace of the Mass. The priest administered the sacraments that gave and sustained life. And the people, believing their souls hung in the balance, lived in perpetual dependence upon the clergy.

What had begun as the gospel of “by grace you have been saved through faith” became a gospel of “by grace you may be saved through obedience.” The church that had once condemned Pelagianism now practiced it.

The apostle Paul warned the Galatians, “I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel” (Galatians 1:6–7). The medieval church had done exactly that.

The Gospel Buried Under Ritual
By the late Middle Ages, ordinary believers no longer heard the Word of God in their own language. The Bible was locked away in Latin. Worship became a mystery conducted by the clergy rather than a gathering of the redeemed.

The central act of worship—the Lord’s Supper—was transformed into a re-sacrifice of Christ on the altar. Instead of remembering the once-for-all finished work of the cross, the Mass became a repeated offering for sin.

Penance replaced repentance. Superstition replaced faith. Merit replaced mercy.

But God was not finished with His church. Even in those dark centuries, a remnant remained—men who read Augustine, studied Paul, and believed that salvation must still belong to the Lord. They were the forerunners of a movement that would shake the world: the Reformation.

The Stage Is Set for Reform
The medieval drift made the Reformation inevitable. When the gospel is buried beneath ritual and superstition, God raises up voices to dig it out again.

By the fifteenth century, the cry for truth was beginning to echo once more. From John Wycliffe in England to Jan Hus in Bohemia, and later to Martin Luther in Germany, God was stirring hearts to rediscover the doctrine Augustine had fought for and Paul had preached—grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone.

The church had turned grace into a commodity; the Reformers would declare it a gift. The medieval mind had chained salvation to the sacraments; the Reformers would free it by the Scriptures.

And when Luther opened his Bible and read, “The righteous shall live by faith” (Romans 1:17), the embers of Augustine’s theology burst into flame again.

The centuries between Augustine and the Reformation remind us that truth, once won, must be guarded. The church that forgets grace soon forgets the gospel. And the gospel that is lost in ritual will always need to be rediscovered by revelation.

The next great chapter in this story belongs to those men who took up Augustine’s torch—Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, and others—who recovered the gospel from the ruins of religion and reignited the doctrines of grace for the generations to come.