One thing that I always find funny about Reformation thinkers is that they actually - successfully - carved their own ground for ignoring Augustine. In challenging Rome, they made space for an opposing understanding of church authority. Instead of Rome's view, of finding authority for its teaching in Scripture *and* clarified by the Church's custody of the deposit of faith, the Protestants simplified it: scripture is the sole authority.

There are obvious Catholic objections to this, and they were mostly made at the time by Luther's able opponents (Thomas More and Johan Eck are the two that leap immediately to mind), revolving around ridiculing the idea that there could be a clear and obvious meaning of Scripture once you put it in the hands of any old asshole to interpret. But the growing democratization of spirituality (again, dating back at least to the Devotio Moderna in the 14th century) in the later middle ages was a kind of can't-stuff-the-toothpaste-back-in-the-tube situation. Paired with a lively publishing industry and people were getting their hands on vernacular bibles, coming to their own understanding of the meaning of those texts, and then spreading those interpretations around.

Of course, this meant that at least one Catholic criticism of Protestant authority came true - that as soon as there was one group in schism there would be hundreds. And, notably, very quickly these emerging Protestant groups were just as antagonistic to Luther as Luther was to Rome (for some big fun, read Thomas Muntzer's "Sermon to the Princes"). But the principle of "read this and interpret with you own brain" was too appealing in a number of areas.

What this means, relative to Augustine, is that the early Reformers had a built-in excuse if somebody wanted to throw the authority of Augustine at them (my understanding is that Aquinas' thought remained kind of controversial outside the Dominican Order until the 17th century, so he hadn't caught on as the definitive theological authority in the church yet) which is to say "Who cares about Augustine? He's not the bible."

And yet, they felt compelled at every possible opportunity to square their thought with Augustine. That's an almost unfathomable level of influence, and it's not unreasonable to view the early thought of the Reformation and Catholic response as a struggle over ownership of Augustine. Summing up Augustine's relevant work here is difficult because there's so much of it, so maybe it's best to stick to the most accessible. "Confessions" is so, so early in his theology, but it's useful here (not least because it's so, so good) less as a genealogy of grace (which is how it's usually connected to Luther) and maybe more as a genealogy of sin.

Luther's issue was the Catholic church of the late middle ages was almost one of psychological paralysis: the web of rites that were meant to make him holy and suitable to God instead convicted him. Augustine puts himself in Paul's place in Confessions, unable to *be good* by his own effort and despairing of that outcome entirely and Luther makes precisely the same move in the 16th century. The idea that you can make yourself holy by participation in the ritual life of the church is pharisaical: the law condemns. He cops Augustine's genealogy of sin (again, described in achingly personal terms in Confessions) to describe this despair: no matter what he does, he can NEVER be suitable to God. If you want a shorter, more detached philosophical perspective on this, see Augustine's Reply to Simplicianus, which is a *very* detailed unpacking of Romans 7 and the idea of bondage to sin.

This bondage, where every action - even ones which can be coded as "good" - reinforce and even heighten the sin of the moral actor, was extremely striking to Augustine as he struggled, unsuccessfully, to live chastely. And it was a profound relief to Luther, suffering from scruples and never feeling genuinely freed from sin in the sacrament of confession. The depth of this bondage, where nothing good can ever belong to our own action, led to Luther's despair - until he decided to lean into the despair and find freedom there.

This freedom is the simul doctrine. The idea that God sees us for precisely the sinner that we are and saves us anyhow. In this case, the Fall and Christ's sacrifice on the cross are the only two events in salvation history that truly matter. Our works, presented to God to affirm our okay-ness, become idolatry - because what does it mean to believe that we can please God by our sad little actions? It means that Christ's death on the cross wasn't actually sufficient, and that what was needed for me to be saved was Christ to die, selflessly and gruesomely on the cross *and* for me to tell a priest that I looked at a barista's tits for a beat too long. In Luther's mind, this was obviously absurd, and Augustine's skillful unpacking of the depth of sin and our consequent state of depravity drove this home for him.

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"Walleye, a lot of things are going to go wrong in your life that technically aren't your fault. Always remember that this doesn't make you any less of an idiot"

--Walleye's Dad