Augustine and Predestination

Greetings all. This post is more of a continued conversation that started with Prof. Graban after class on Tuesday, wandered into my bookshelf at my apartment, was emailed around and has now ended up here:

Augustine states that even a good sermon may not reach an audience. In pedagogical terms it boils down to: "Some people will just never get it." In a Christian context, I immediately thought that this might imply the concept of Predestination. For the sake of brevity, here's a quick sketch:

Only certain people predetermined by God to be considered good will be granted entrance into heaven. Everyone else is, well, damned to hell and (sometimes) purgatory.

Predestination had a major foothold among Calvinists (16th c. and on). Though it gained popularity much later, Predestination among a plethora of other beliefs pervaded early Christianity in the time of Augustine (including Manicheanish, Gnosticism, etc). These many beliefs persisted even for a time after the Council of Nicea (325 AD), which unified a lot of basic Christian beliefs.

Referring to the Oxford Illustrated Guide to Christianity, it states that Augustine propounded extreme ideas of predestination late in life. Since the last chapter of De Doctrina was written only 4 years before his death, I surmise that Augustine really could be implying Predestination here, which in my opinion greatly complicates the idea of "pleasing, informing, and enlightening the audience."

Sorry this got a little long, but I would love some more thoughts on this.