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Direct Answer Based on Finny’s teaching, the most destabilizing detail is that Augustine is both late (post–Nicaea) and the first major figure to systematize doctrines Calvinists lean on, despite not being a native Greek speaker and despite notable doctrinal innovations like “original guilt” and just war theory. The timing matters because Finny treats Nicaea (325) as a “watershed” separating early Christianity from later developments.

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• Augustine born 354 AD—Finny notes he is “born 25 years after” Nicaea (325), calling Nicaea a “watershed between early Christianity and later Christianity.”
• Augustine spent “10 years as a Manichean,” and Finny identifies Manicheans as a Gnostic group (“pinnacle of the Gnostics”).
• Augustine “famously did not know Greek,” only tried late, so he’s “dealing with translations” though the New Testament was written in Greek.
• Finny: Augustine’s “theology changes in 412 AD”; he initially “believed and taught free will,” then later changed.
• He taught not only original sin but “original guilt,” including the idea that unbaptized infants would “die and go to hell.”
• Finny says Augustine (with Ambrose) introduced “just war theology,” which was not present in “the first three centuries.”