St. Augustine of Hippo: Father of the Christian Church (continued)
there were almost 700 bishops in Africa alone. Thus, in addition to assuming the responsibility of crafting effective and thought-provoking sermons, of which more than 500 surviving sermons attest to Bishop Augustine's gift of spiritual conveyance, a bishop in this time was compelled to address any number of diverse philosophical and theological queries that reached his office each month. In Augustine's case, over 200 such letters have survived. And of course, the bishop was expected to publish theses and treatises on issues of theological significance.
Diminishing health forced Augustine to rely on the constant services of stenographers, a perk common to his office, and he certainly kept them busy. Bishops had to hear appeals, but Augustine had to hear an even greater number of appeals for solutions to a wide range of issues because of his growing reputation and his own works. For example, Augustine continued his tireless criticism of the Manichaeans, as well as the Donatists, a Christian sect holding that the Church must be a church of saints, not sinners, and that sacraments such as baptism when administered by traditores were invalid. He also discussed the Pelagians, who viewed humanity as inherently good and morally unaffected by the so-called "fall" of Adam and Eve.
In the course of doing all this, Augustine became one of the most prolific writers of his time.
Scholars point to his Scripture commentaries, homilies of the Psalms, and his tracts on the Gospel and First Epistle of Saint John for insight into real "Augustinianism", which they view as a decisive turn in his thinking brought about by his being foisted into the priesthood.
Chapter 5: Later Years
In 397, after Augustine had been a priest for six years and a bishop for two, an outpouring of writings took place that some scholars have likened to an "implosion of his mind", reflecting the deep introspection Augustine was experiencing as a bishop. The best known among these writings was The Testimony (Confessions), written in an intimate form of writing quite different from the sermons, pamphlets, and letters he typically dispensed, and which scholar Garry Willis described as "an implosion of his mind, down into himself, back into his past, as the place where God could be found."* In Augustine's own words, "You were inside me, I outside me...deeper in me than I am in me." The resulting 13 books, completed in 401, are viewed today as a masterpiece that provides invaluable insight into Augustine's personal and spiritual being, as well as ideas that would shape the face of Christianity.
In Confessions, Augustine insists that true knowledge of the soul's nature can only be based on the "immediate deliveries of the self-consciousness," and that the soul's awareness of itself is of a trinity in unity that reflects "as in a glass darkly the being of its 'Maker.'" Augustine confesses that his knowledge of his own being, thinking, and will were unquestionably a product of ego, cognition, and conation, but that in none of these aspects is the ego "self-sufficient or independent," nor can it maintain its own being, produce its own knowledge, or satisfy its own
Wills, Garry. Saint Augustine. Page 88. desires. Augustine believed he had learned from the Platonists to discover and identify God as "the author of all existences, the illustrator of all truth, the bestower of all beatitude,"> but as his contemporaries and modern scholars emphasize, his cosmology, epistemology, and ethical perspective were all his own creation.
"T do not know how to explain the odd fact that we do not know certain things,'® he wrote. Yet for all the questions Confessions poses and then confesses to be unable to answer, Augustine presents all the themes that would ultimately come to dominate his later works: time, memory, the inner dynamic of the self, the inner dynamic of God, and the continual activity of God in the soul. These themes would establish him as one of the greatest thinkers in history, and while it had long been assumed that the proverbial "fire and brimstone" of his sermons could not be translated to the written word, Confessions demonstrated otherwise.
With his studies and introspection now diverted from philosophy to Scripture, the realities of ministering to "imperfectly" Christianized people of an African seaport, along with a veritable barrage of new Biblical topics to consider, made it impossible for Augustine not to see the glaring differences between Neoplatonism and traditional Pauline Christianity. It would be these differences that Augustine clearly struggled to resolve internally and frequently addressed in his writings. For the Neoplatonists, the soul's likeness to God is that of a "depotentiated divinity", deprived of potency or power, while for the Christian it is that of a "temporal and mutable image (prone to change) of the Eternal and Changeless." While wending his way through such difficult religious and philosophical issues, Augustine declared that it is the task of Christian philosophy, guided by Scriptural revelation, to seek God through his image in the soul, and it was this path that he would pursue in his great treatise, De Trinitate (On the Trinity).
Augustine placed De Trinitate in his Retractations among the works written [meaning begun] in 400. In letters dated 410, 414, and at the end of 415, it is referred to as still unfinished and unpublished, but a letter of 412 states that friends were at that time asking him to complete and publish it. Other letters suggest that it was still in hand in the year 416.
In the year 410, the Visigoth leader Alaric, a devout Arian Christian, captured the city of Rome, striking fear throughout Christendom and sending countless Romans fleeing into Romanoccupied Africa. Though both Roman Emperors continued to rule from their royal courts at Ravenna (in the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy) and Constantinople, Catholics in and around Rome were uncertain of their fate under Visigoth rule, prompting Augustine to respond from what would be considered the darker side of his teaching by reemphasizing the importance of "human will", a touchy subject for the Church. While working on three major theological works simultaneously, Augustine met his Church tasks, joined ongoing councils held in Carthage to discuss Church reforms, and dealt with the seemingly endless controversy concerning the 5 New Advent.org website, City of God, "Book VIII."
6 Wills, Garry. Saint Augustine. Page 98.
Donatists and the so-called "'Donatist Schism."
For the first 15 years of his ministry, Augustine's efforts were often distracted by the tedious and exhausting struggle to resolve the Donatist Schism in the African Church that had by this time persisted for nearly a century. The Donatists outnumbered Catholics in many areas of the African countryside, and they claimed to be the only true Church because their ministry was the only one whose succession had not been stained by apostasy (formal renunciation) during the Great Persecution of 303-313. Imperial attempts to suppress the schism had led to martyrdom and increased violence, while the Donatists drew increasing support from the native African population, whose complaints were more socio-economic than ecclesiastical.
The protests and violence culminated with Gildo's African Revolt against the Roman Empire in the year 398. In response, Stilicho, the imperial minister at Ravenna, issued the Edict of Unity in 405, denouncing Donatists as "heretics." Though Augustine fundamentally rejected the use of force to bring about adherence, he was nonetheless compelled to enforce Stilicho's policy in Hippo (his writing of this time reflecting his increasing intolerance toward civil disorder and religious dissent).
Ancient depiction of Stilicho (right) and his wife and son
In 411, Catholic bishops were directed to meet their Donatist counterparts at Carthage in what was termed the "Confrontation". The bishops were to address the rise in fanatical violence and charges of heresy, ultimately resulting in the imposition and enforcement of legal penalties that ranged from fines to confiscation, torture to death. In reaction, Arian emperors suppressed
Catholic views and ousted Orthodox Trinitarians who professed belief in the Doctrine of the Christian Trinity from their episcopal chairs. The Roman Emperors fueled the ongoing schism by doing the same to Arians, and Ambrose himself denied churches to Arians and synagogues to Jews. Religious intolerance and societal resentment began to spread throughout Christendom.
By the year 413, Augustine's observations regarding the severe disorientation Christians were experiencing due to the capture of Rome, which had been the epicenter of Christianity for nearly a century, became the theme of his De civitate Dei (The City of God), a two-part, 22-book treatise ultimately requiring 15 years to complete. In it, Augustine discusses the relationship between Christianity, pagan religions, philosophy, and Rome. Near the beginning of the work, Augustine explained the purpose for the work and explains its structure, writing: "However, this great undertaking was at last completed in twenty-two books. Of these, the first five refute those who fancy that the polytheistic worship is necessary in order to secure worldly prosperity, and that all these overwhelming calamities have befallen us in consequence of its prohibition. In the following five books I address myself to those who admit that such calamities have at all times attended, and will at all times attend, the human race, and that they constantly recur in forms more or less disastrous, varying only in the scenes, occasions, and persons on whom they light, but, while admitting this, maintain that the worship of the gods is advantageous for the life to come. But that no one might have occasion to say, that though I had refuted the tenets of other men, I had omitted to establish my own, I devote to this object the second part of this work, which comprises twelve books, although I have not scrupled, as occasion offered, either to advance my own opinions in the first ten books, or to demolish the arguments of my opponents in the last twelve. Of these twelve books, the first four contain an account of the origin of these two cities—the city of God, and the city of the world. The second four treat of their history or progress; the third and last four, of their deserved destinies."
Despite Christianity's designation as the "official" religion of the Empire, Augustine declared
The City's message, which presents human history as a conflict between the "City of Man" and the "City of God", to be spiritual rather than political, arguing that Christianity should be concerned with the "New Jerusalem" rather than mundane, earthly politics. The "City of God" is the realm in which the faithful are attuned with God's will and resist sin, while the "City of Man" is the realm of mankind's defective will, the result of the original sin perpetrated by Adam and Eve. Augustine is critical of pagans, but he also criticizes Rome even while describing its relationship with the Church, emphasizing that "Rome was never the city that could satisfy human hearts. Only the City of God can do that." perues neste eee
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15" century manuscript of Augustine's The City of God
Original sin was also a topic that Augustine discussed at length in several works, especially as he struggled to develop a framework through which to explain why original sin is inherited by all mankind. In On the Sermon on the Mount, Augustine tied it to man's selfish desires, writing: "Moreover, if unbelief is fornication, and idolatry unbelief, and covetousness idolatry, it is not to be doubted that covetousness also is fornication. Who, then, in that case can rightly separate
7 Wills, Garry. Saint Augustine. Page 114. any unlawful lust whatever from the category of fornication, if covetousness is fornication? And from this we perceive, that because of unlawful lusts, not only those of which one is guilty in acts of uncleanness with another's husband or wife, but any unlawful lusts whatever, which cause the soul making a bad use of the body to wander from the law of God, and to be ruinously and basely corrupted, a man may, without crime, put away his wife, and a wife her husband, because the Lord makes the cause of fornication an exception; which fornication, in accordance with the above considerations, we are compelled to understand as being general and universal..."
Augustine expounded on the concept of original sin in On the Trinity: "Why therefore is it enjoined upon mind, that it should know itself? I suppose, in order that, it may consider itself, and live according to its own nature; that is, seek to be regulated according to its own nature, viz., under Him to whom it ought to be subject, and above those things to which it is to be preferred; under Him by whom it ought to be ruled, above those things which it ought to rule. For it does many things through vicious desire, as though in forgetfulness of itself.
For it sees some things intrinsically excellent, in that more excellent nature which is God: and whereas it ought to remain steadfast that it may enjoy them, it is turned away from Him, by wishing to appropriate those things to itself, and not to be like to Him by His gift, but to be what He is by its own, and it begins to move and slip gradually down into less and less, which it thinks to be more and more."
Just as the "Donatist Schism" was reaching its conclusion, Pelagianism was beginning to threaten traditional Western Church doctrine regarding sin and redemption. In the year 413, the theologian Pelagius had declared his "dogma against the grace of Christ," setting himself against what he saw as slacking Christian moral standards that made excuses for those pleading "human frailty" as justification for their indiscretions. Pelagius insisted that God made every man free to choose and perform good, that avoiding sin and committing sin are both voluntary acts, and that man enters the world with as pure a nature as Adam had possessed in innocence. To Pelagius, if original sin was inherited, it meant that man did not have the freedom to avoid acts God forbids, and thus there would be no justice in God's punishments and rewards. With these teachings, Pelagius was directly challenging the Catholic doctrine of original sin and the practice of baptism for the "remission of sins" that babies inherit. Not surprisingly, Pelagianism was quickly branded as heresy.
17" century Calvinist depiction of Pelagius
Though Augustine was reluctant to involve himself in this dispute, perhaps in part because
Bishop Paulinus of Nola had voiced respect for Pelagius, and perhaps in part because he saw no point in appearing reactionary, he had already written two treatises in 413 refuting Coelestius' views without ascribing them to Pelagius. In 415, when Augustine read Pelagius's Nature, which argued that Adam's "fall from grace" did not cripple human nature, he recognized the potential danger of that work and countered with his own, Nature and Grace.
From Augustine's perspective, while the Pelagian position could be faulted for denying the virtue of Christian baptism, its primary fault was in presenting a fatal misconception regarding the relationship between man and God. Essentially, Augustine believed that Pelagius's assertion mankind can achieve righteousness by its own volition contradicts the fundamental truth that "God is the provider of all good." Accepting the premise that all men are complicit in Adam's guilt and subsequent punishment, Augustine contended that this involvement is due to man's own sexual passion, a conflict of "flesh against spirit" in which the "impotence of spirit to control flesh" is most evident.
In later years, Pelagian bishop Julian would charge that Augustine had lapsed into Manichaeism by equating man's impulses with evil. Theologians, however, contend that Julian missed Augustine's larger meaning: that the "fall" of man means that in all of us the "true order of love" has been violated. By this, Augustine is understood to have meant that by the act of self-love, man has departed from the love of God above to become subject to what is below. The subjugation of spirit to flesh is a kind of servitude that the will has no power to deliver itself from, meaning man cannot reverse the consequence of his fal/ by a similar exercise of will.
Indeed, delivery can only occur by the "gracious descent of divine love to seat itself within the sinner", the gospel of the Incarnation and of Pentecost. Pelagius, however, claimed to recognize the "grace of God" in creation and revelation, asserting that all men are created free to do what is right, and that Christians have already received moral enlightenment via Jesus Christ's teachings and examples.
Recognizing what he perceived as the weakness of that argument, Augustine responded, "Men will not do what is right, either because the right is hidden from them, or because they find no delight in it... But that which was hidden may become clear, what delighted not may become sweet—this belongs to the grace of God which aids the wills of men."® Augustine insisted that without this delight in righteousness, there can be no true freedom in well-doing, only servitude to law. Accordingly, the love of God, the very motive of Christian life, must be free, but as Saint
Paul wrote, "The charity of God is poured forth in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who is given to us" (Romans 5:5).
Augustine found it increasingly difficult to leave room in his doctrine of grace for a genuinely free response to the Holy Spirit's gifts on mankind's part, maintaining that God alone is the cause of every human movement towards good. His ongoing studies of Saint Paul subsequently led him to conclude that no event in time can alter the eternal setting of God's will toward any human soul; his elect were chosen "before the foundation of the world." Thus, God knows in advance how each individual will respond to the particular form in which grace is offered to him over the course of time, and only the elect receive the grace that will garner their acceptance.
Ironically, in the spring of 418 Emperor Honortus granted the African bishops an edict banishing the Pelagian "heretics", based in part on their view of original sin, but Augustine's own works had expressed a view of original sin that did not fall completely in line with that of the Catholic Church of Rome.
8 Meyer, Paul W. The Word in This World: Essays in New Testament Exegesis and Theology.
In 418, Pope Zosimus, a proponent of Pelagianism who had been condemned by the preceding pope (Innocent I) and expelled from Constantinople, asked the 64 year old Augustine to lead a panel of African bishops to settle an ecclesiastical conflict in Caesarian Mauretania near presentday Algeria. Augustine addressed several pertinent issues there, including the terms of the Donatist settlement, but when he returned to Hippo five months later, Augustine was confronted by opposition from a very unexpected source. During his absence in Caesarian Mauretania, Bishop Julian of Eclanum (near present-day Benevento, Italy), a close family friend and outspoken Pelagian leader, had begun spreading word that Augustine was still a Manichaean and secretly wished to destroy the institution of Christian marriage.
Months before, when Roman bishops had been compelled to sign a ban condemning Pelagius, Julian had left his diocese in Eclanum to join supporters in northern Italy calling for an ecumenical council to reinstate Pelagius. In response, Augustine issued a treatise to Emperor
Valerius vehemently denying any opposition to marriage, which Julian quickly countered with four treatments of his own. Not only did Augustine defend marriage, he thought it appropriate to legitimize sexual relations as part of God's intention for men and women, asserted that children are the first "good of marriage", and explained that women's purpose is to procreate. But while Augustine was successful in refuting Julian's attacks academically speaking, modern scholars point out that he gave the unfounded charges so much attention that he unwittingly gave them validity, which established an image of Augustine as being a man pessimistic about politics and other mundane human activity, burdened by a lingering Manichean awareness of the power of evil, and haunted by his own inescapable sexual past. It's also important to remember that this was happening at a time when the Church and several Eastern religions viewed women as temptresses who created conflicts in men between the realm of the spirit and world of the flesh.
Augustine's contention that mankind's sexual impulses are derived from Adam's "fall" did not come from Romans 5:12 ("Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin, and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned") but from a subjective reading of Scripture, Augustine's own view of the saving role of Jesus Christ, and the observation "that there is something askew in ordinary human nature". However, this made even his closest fellow clergymen begin to question the validity of his stance. More to the point, what set Augustine apart from all other theologians of his time was his assertion that sex, as part of the good human nature created by God, would have occurred in Eden even if there had been no "fall." This was wildly at odds with the prevailing theological perspective that without the "fall" there would have been no death in Eden, and thus no need to perpetuate the human race through sexual intercourse.
Augustine went even further by asserting that Jesus could have procreated if he had wanted to, and that Christ without virility (male sexual potency) would be without virtue. Christ's flesh was perfectly responsive to the spirit, meaning the question of having sex was not of capacity but of choice. Augustine even once argued that men can gain greater control over farting ("some...odorless sounds, a kind of singing from the other end'') than over their erections.?
For the last decade of his life, Augustine, the man who had once discounted miracles and martyr cults, now discovered justification to embrace both. During the 420s, a new wave of reported "miracles" rippled across Africa, along with the appearance of various sacred relics from the Holy Land. Renouncing some of his earlier perspectives, Augustine argued that a God who chose to assume a visible and physical form was not above corporal wonders, as his former
Neoplatonist self had once thought. He also sought to legitimize Donatists to the Church, which they had been compelled to join, and he even advocated that martyr cults were the authentic "African religion" Donatists were justifiably attached to.
Having essentially reassessed his own beliefs and product, Augustine undertook the laborious task of cataloging his own voluminous writings, creating Reconsiderations between 426 and 427. Meanwhile, Augustine's disciples, to whom his doctrine now seemed to make moral effort futile and praise and blame groundless, sought from him spiritual resolve, but Augustine would retract nothing. In his last completed treatises ("On Heresies," "On the Predestination of the Saints," "On the Gift of Perseverance," and "On the Usefulness of Fasting") he drew out the logic of predestination to its most severe conclusions. And while Augustine's dictum would never receive full Church approval, it would appear virtually verbatim in the works of both Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) and John Calvin (1509-1564), considered by many the most critical thinkers of scholasticism and socio-religious reform in history.
On August 28, 430, 75 year old Augustine died in Hippo Regius, Africa. According to subsequent accounts, Augustine's body was later removed to Cagliari, Sardinia by Catholic bishops expelled from North Africa. Around 720, his remains were moved again by Peter, bishop of Pavia, to the Church of San Pietro in Ciel d'Oro (Pavia, Italy) to protect them from Muslim raiders.
9 Wills, Garry. Saint Augustine. Page 139.