LECTURE 2b:
MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHY FLORIDA
INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY
LECTURE NOTES
AUGUSTINE
Beauty and the Baptists: the significance for recovering a
theology of beauty
St. Augustine
Considered to have straddled the Ancient and
Medieval Epochs
Some
salacious details of Augustine early life:
A Saint You
Should Know: Augustine of Hippo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNFpcUp5nBw
The first major medieval philosopher was
Augustine (354-430), who emphasized attaining knowledge through divine illumination and achieving moral goodness by loving
God. The details of his life are openly laid out
in his autobiography, titled Confessions,
which even today is considered a classic
of world literature. He was born in the
North African region of Tagaste to a devout Christian mother (St. Monica) and
pagan father. For much of his youth, his middle-class parents' greatest concern
was affording a university education for him. Once having attained this difficult goal, learning rhetoric at Carthage, Augustine's
zeal for studying theology became
his driving force.
But first came a period of trying out life's
alternatives. To his mother's great displeasure,
he became
entrenched in a new Persian religion called Manichaeism and then
joined a group of Neoplatonists. In both cases
he sought to understand how evil could
exist in a world that was created by
a good God. The Manichaean explanation was that the material world is inherently evil, but through special knowledge from God we
can rise above it. Neoplatonists argued that evil results from the physical world being so far removed from God, and thus absent from His goodness.
For fifteen years he lived with a woman and
fathered a son; but when his mother eventually convinced him to marry properly, he left his mistress. While awaiting his bride-to-be's coming of age, he took up with
yet another woman and prayed his famous prayer, "Lord, grant me chastity and continence,
… but not yet."
But his marriage
to either woman never transpired. While teaching rhetoric in the city of Milan, he
attended the sermons of the Bishop of that region St. Ambrose of Milan (339 AD –
397 AD)[1]
which gradually led to his Christian
conversion. What might have attracted him to Saint Ambrose is that St. Ambrose
had a reputation for being a dynamic preacher. As a teacher of rhetoric,
Augustine might have been intrigued by the techniques used by Ambrose to sway
and convince his audiences of the truth of the Christian message. In the end, Augustine himself became
convinced of the value of Christian teaching under the influence of Saint
Ambrose. (And the intercessory prayers
of his mother, St. Monica probably didn’t hurt either.)
Returning to North Africa, he was drafted
into the priesthood by the locals for his popular
preaching, and later became their
bishop, devoting the rest of his life to
writing and preaching in that region. He wrote, among other things, against Donatism[2]
and Pelagianism,[3]
two prevalent heresies his time. Augustine died at 75, even as invading barbarian armies were
tearing down the city walls of Hippo.
Augustine's literary
output was enormous, and he may be the most prolific writer of the ancient world. His most famous writings are his
Confessions and The City of God. While only a couple of his shorter
works are devoted exclusively to philosophy, most notably On Free Choice,
many of his compositions are interspersed with philosophical content,
and from these a complex system emerges.
On Christian
Doctrine
Begun in about 396 and completed in 426.
This work reflects not only the early direction of
the Christian Church, but the phenomenal influence of Plato and Neo-Platonists
Book One
Two things necessary to the treatment of the
Scriptures
1. A way of discovering those things which are to be
understood.
2. A way of teaching what we have learned.
Discovery:
·
great and arduous work
·
difficult to sustain
·
such a work lies in Him (God)
Note all things of value issue from the source of values – not the Form of the Good in
this case, but rather “God.”
So, God, in many ways, not unlike the Neo=Platonists
ho precede him, the “Form of the Good” occupies for Augustine the same place
and role that the Form of the Good occupied for Plato
II
Augustine
makes the distinction between signs and things.
Augustine maintains that signs are “things,” meaning
that their ontological value resides in their ability to cause one to think of something else beyond
the impression they themselves make upon one's mind. For Augustine, nothing is
learned from a sign, only from the thing that it represents.
For instance, the word “ox” is a sign that signifies
the animal. A thing, which is not a sign though, is
something that does not signify something else, such as the ox itself. To
use a figure of speech, say, “You’re as strong as an ox,” is to use the word
signifying “ox” to signify something other than the/ an ox itself. But in
book one, Augustine wants us to consider only what things are in themselves,
not what they might signify.
He is directing us to things, metaphysical items.
(“Things in themselves.”)
III
Augustine distinguishes among:
1. things to be enjoyed (make us blessed)
2. things to be used (sustain us as we move toward blessedness)
3. things to be enjoyed and used.
III
If we enjoy (and cling to with love) those things
which should be used, our course (to blessedness) will be impeded and sometimes
deflected.
We are:
“shackled by an inferior love”
Consider, for comparison, the Platonic dialogue The
Symposium where Socrates investigates how we come to know beauty. We may well begin by appreciating one beautiful
body. But the goal is not to stay at the
level of the beautiful body, but rather to ascend to higher and higher levels
of abstraction. This beautiful body
shares a common form with other beautiful bodies. And these beautiful bodies share a common form
and indeed share a form with beautiful personalities, and beautiful customs and
cultures etcetera.
Eventually we are to ascend to knowledge of the Form
of Beauty itself. If we stay mired at
the level of the initial object, that is, the initial beautiful body that
attracted our attention in the first place, we are impeded in our ascent to
where it is we truly want to/ need to go.
This is in Plato, but notice it is echoed in Neo-Platonism
(Plotinus, The Assent of the Soul) and now here again ins Augustine.
IV
·
To enjoy something is to cling to it
with love for its own sake.
·
To use something, however, is to employ
it in obtaining that which you love, provided that it is worthy of love.
·
An illicit use (i.e. to cling to with
love that which is only to be used) should be called rather a waste or an
abuse.
IV
“But if the amenities of the journey and
the motion of the vehicles itself delighted us, and we were led to enjoy those
things which we should use, we should not wish to end our journey quickly, and,
entangled in a perverse sweetness, we should be alienated from our country,
whose sweetness would make us, blessed.”
V
“The (only) things which are to be
(genuinely) enjoyed are the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, a single
Trinity, (a certain supreme thing common to all who enjoy it)
IV
Mortal life must not become “wandering from God”
VI
“I feel that I have done nothing but
wish to speak”
This speaks to the ineffable nature of the
Divine. But even calling God ineffable
is problematic, as Augustine points out, because your “effing.” Nevertheless, this to is an echo of the “via
negative” orientation of the Neo-Platonists and an acknowledgment of the
limits of human concepts and human language to describe and know God. (Neoplatonic apophatic theology/ via negativa.)
“This contradiction is to be passed over
in silence rather than resolved verbally.”
Worthy on note is that one of the most famous things
that 20th Century philosophy Ludwig Wittgenstein wrote in Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus was:
“What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.”
(Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.)
Wittgenstein left philosophy to become an elementary
school teacher until 1929, when returned to Philosophy, but with new
theoretical understandings. Did he at
that point become a mystic? Maybe even
before.[4]
XXXV
The end of the Law (telos) and of all the
sacred Scriptures is the love of a Being which is to be enjoyed.
And one might add, this is true of all things to be
used – Including Art. (Beauty?)
These next
three I put in just because I thought they show a more ecumenical side to
Augustine.
XXVI
“Whoever, therefore, thinks that he
understands the divine Scriptures or any part of them so that it does not build
the double love of God and of our neighbor does not understand it at all.”
“Whoever finds a lesson there useful to
the building of charity, even though he has not said what the author may be
shown to have intended in that place, has not been deceived, nor is he lying in
any way.”
XXXVI
“However, as I began to explain, if he
is deceived in an interpretation which builds up charity, which is the end of
the commandments, he is deceived in the same way as a man who leaves a road by
mistake but passes through a field to the same place toward which the road
itself leads. But he is to be corrected and shown that it is more useful not to
leave the road, lest the habit of deviating force him to take a crossroad or a
perverse way.”
XXX
“Indeed, if faith staggers, charity
itself languishes. And if anyone should fall from faith, it follows that he
falls also from charity, for a man cannot love that which he does not believe
to exist. On the other hand, a man who both believes and loves, by doing well
and by obeying the rules of good customs, may bring it about that he may hope
to arrive at that which he loves. Thus there are these three things for which
all knowledge and prophecy struggle: faith, hope, and charity.”
Consider Paul’s letter to the Corinthians:
1 Corinthians 13:13
13 And now these three remain: faith,
hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
XXXVIII
“Between temporal and eternal things
there is this difference: a temporal thing is loved more before we have it, and
it begins to grow worthless when we gain it, for it does not satisfy the soul,
whose true and certain rest is eternity; but the eternal is more ardently loved
when it is acquired than when it is merely desired.”
Faith, Certainty, and Divine Illumination
The starting point for Augustine's philosophy is his stance on the relation
between faith and reason. We've seen that there are at least two distinct ways of approaching the relation
between faith and reason: first, Tertullian's faith-only position, and second, the view that reason by itself
can go a long way in establishing religious truths independently of faith.
Augustine
strikes a middle ground between the two, advocating a position that he
called "faith seeking understanding." His inspiration for this was a passage from the book of Isaiah "Unless you
believe, you will not understand[5]." On this view, reason by itself is not good enough to give
us proper religious knowledge; instead, we have to begin with faith to set us in
the right direction
and, once we believe
in God through faith, we can seek to understand
the foundations of our belief through reason.
Augustine
and Philosophical Skepticism
A running theme throughout Augustine's writings is that knowledge is
indeed attainable, and
we should reject the efforts of philosophical
skeptics. By the time Augustine
came on the scene, different Greek schools of skepticism were well established, and for centuries had been producing arguments to show that we can know nothing at all for certain.
Every belief I have can be brought into
question they maintained; even my belief
that the tree in front of me exists is uncertain
since I might just be having
an hallucination. As
previously noted, this skeptical philosophy came to dominate what had become
the descendant of Plato’s Academy in late antiquity.
In opposition
to the skeptics, Augustine argues that
there are four main areas in which we
have genuine knowledge that even the skeptics cannot question. Right off, each of us has indisputable knowledge of our own
existence. He writes,
“On none of these points do I fear
the arguments of the skeptics of the Academy
who say: what if you are deceived?
For if I am deceived, I am. For he who does not exist
cannot be deceived. And if
I am
deceived, by this same token I am. [City of God,
11:26]
His point here is simple:
no matter how deceived I might
be - such as through
hallucinations or flawed sensory
perception - I still have to exist in order to be deceived.
This knowledge is so obvious and self-evident that it enables
me to go one step further and say that/ know that I know.[6] Knowledge is thus an indisputable fact.
Note how this anticipates Rene Descartes’s Cogito Ergo Sum.
Three
other areas of certain Knowledge according to Augustine
In addition to knowledge of one's own existence, we also have
certainty in three key areas: math, logic and immediate sense experience.
Mathematical truths, such as "three times
three is nine," are so compelling that it is impossible to doubt
them.
So too with
logical truths:
“I have learned through
dialectic [logic] that many other things are true. Count, if you can, how many there are: If there are four elements in the world, there are not five; if there is one sun, there are not two; one and the same soul cannot die and still be immortal; man cannot at the same time
be happy and unhappy; if the sun is shining here, it cannot be night;
we are now either awake or asleep; either there
is a body which I seem to see or there is not a body. [Against
the Academics, 3:13]
While Augustine recognizes that sense perceptions themselves are not always trustworthy, he nonetheless maintains that reports
of immediate experiences are indisputable, such as "the snow appears white to me." Even if in reality the snow happens to be a
different color, what remains indubitably true is that I perceive it as white. He writes:
“I do not know how the [skeptical] Academician can refute
him who says "I know that this
appears white to me, I know that my
hearing is delighted with this, I know that this has an agreeable odor, I know that this tastes sweet to me, I know
that this feels cold to
me." [Ibid 3:11][7]
These areas of knowledge, then, seem to be completely indisputable because of the self-evident nature of their specific truths. There are other areas of knowledge,
though, that lack 
this self-evidence and may indeed be fallible, such as the truths themselves of what our senses
report, and also the knowledge that we
gain through the testimony of other people. (Note some of the
Rationalist distrust of the testimony of our senses.)
Nevertheless, Augustine argues, in view of how much
important information they provide us, we can have reasonable confidence in them as reliable sources
of knowledge. Regarding our senses,
he argues,
"Far be
it from us to doubt the truth of
what we have learned by the
bodily senses, since by them we have
learned to know the heaven and the earth, and those things in them which are known to us."
So too with the knowledge that we gain through the testimony of
other people. While the reports of some people cannot be trusted, testimony is
nonetheless an indispensable source of knowledge. Even as a rationalist he
seems to be acknowledging that there are limitations to what we can gain
through a priori reason and innate ideas. It is a practical necessity
for us to rely on the testimony of our senses.
He writes from a student,
Far be it from us too to
deny that we know what we have learned by the testimony of others:
otherwise, we would
not know that there is an ocean, or that the lands and cities exist which
numerous reports mention to us"
(On the
Trinity, 15).
Granted, then, according to Augustine
we can know many things indisputably and other things with at least a
high degree of certainty. While certainty in these areas seems to be
a natural part of human thinking, knowledge
of other types of truth requires special help from God before we can grasp them. God illuminates our minds to enable us to see these truths,
and Augustine succinctly describes this theory of divine illumination here:
"The mind needs to be enlightened by light from outside itself, so that it can participate in truth,
because it is not itself the nature
of truth. You will light my lamp, Lord" (Confessions, 4:15:25).
Human nature is limited, Augustine believes, and thus
we're not in a position by ourselves to comprehend
the most important ones. Truths regarding virtuous living and religious
faithfulness are cases in point:
"Among the objects of the intellect, there are
some that are seen in the soul
itself, for example, virtues which will endure, such as
piety, or virtues that are useful for this
life and not destined to remain in the next, as faith" (Commentary
on Genesis, 31:59).
For us to grasp these
truths, God illuminates our soul, which triggers a special intellectual vision
by which we can “see” them. That something
is true is not sufficient for us to grasp that it's true. It must not only be true but our
grasping must be assisted by the illumination of God.
This is a sort of silly example, but I'll give it anyway. I have an app on my phone for playing Solitaire.
If you're familiar with the game, there
are certain moves that are licensed and it's not particularly complicated to be
perfectly honest. This might explain why
I play it so frequently. Nevertheless, I
am often surprised when there is a licensed moves staring me in the face, but I
don't “see” them. Red 9 on black 10. There it is. Obvious.
Not challenging. Not complicated
and, nevertheless, I'm oblivious.[8]
Then all of a sudden, I “see” it. And I wonder why has it taken me so long to
see this obvious truth.
My point here is that merely being in the presence of obvious
and objectively true realities does not guarantee that one will “grasp” them. There seems to be an interior dimension that
needs to occur. Absence this additional
component, understanding does not occur.
The intuition for what Augustine, I imagine, would refer to as the “illumination,”
like a cloud passing beyond the sun so now the sun can illuminate what has been
there before you the entire time, but which you couldn't see previously without
the illumination of the sun.
While Augustine is quite clear that humans stand in need of
divine illumination, he is less clear
about how this process takes place. Does
divine intuition unleash a flood of
specific innate ideas in our minds?
Is it more like a capacity that
allows us to detect and zoom in on the truth? One recent interpretation
is that we first develop beliefs on
our own, and then God illuminates our
minds so that we can see if they are true or false; God provides the “justification” for our beliefs where justification is
understood as a confidence of credence. I had an undergraduate professor who referred
to this as “the ring of truth.”
Evil, Free Will, Foreknowledge
Medieval philosophers developed very precise notions of God and
the attributes that He has, many of which
are even now well-known among believers. For example,
God is all-powerful (i.e., omnipotent), all-knowing (i.e.,
omniscient),
and all-good (i.e., omni-benevolent). Other
commonly discussed attributes of God
are that He is eternal, that He is present everywhere (i.e., omnipresent) and that He has foreknowledge of future events. While these
traditional attributes of God
offer a clear picture of the kind
of being that He is, many of them present special conceptual
problems, particularly when we try to
make them compatible them with potentially conflicting facts about the world.
The
Problem of Evil[9]
One of these is the famous problem of evil: how are we to understand God's goodness in the face of all the suffering that we experience? It's clear
that suffering is abundant throughout the world, and such suffering is a type of
evil. It's
also clear for religious philosophers that God is in control of things, which seems to imply
that God is the source of that
suffering and evil. But
if God is good, then it seems that He can't be
the source of evil. Thus, there
is a conflict between God's power and
goodness on the one hand, and
the presence of suffering on the
other. How can we resolve this conflict?
Augustine offers a three
part answer:
1) The first step, for Augustine, is to recognize that God has
only an indirect role in the
cause of some suffering, as he explains here:
[You ask whether God is the cause of evil. In response,]
if you know or believe that God is
good (and it is not right to believe otherwise) then he does
no evil. Further, if we recognize
that God is just (and it is impious
to deny it) then he rewards the good
and punishes the wicked. Such punishments
are indeed evils for those who
suffer them. Therefore, if no one is punished
unjustly (this we must believe since we believe that this universe is governed
by divine providence) it follows that God is a cause of the suffering
of some evil, but in no way
causes the doing of evil. [On Free Choice: 1:1]
For Augustine, God's goodness means that He does no evil.
Yet, God's justness means that He rewards good and punishes
evil. Thus,
God indeed causes
some suffering through
punishment, but He is not the cause of evil actions themselves.
The cause of evil
itself, according to Augustine,
is the human will, and thus all blame for it rests
on our shoulders, not on God’s. We willfully turn our souls away from God when
we perform evil deeds:
"look for the source of this movement and be sure
that it does not come from God" (On Free Choice, 2:20).
Even the punishment that God imposes on us for our evil
is something that we brought on ourselves and in fact testament to God’s perfection (Justice), since
"punishment is used in
such a way that it places
natures in their right order''
(On Free Choice, 3:9).
Thus, a first solution that Augustine offers
to the problem of evil is that
human will is the cause of evil and reason for divine punishment.
2) A second and related solution is that the evil we willfully create within our souls is only a deprivation of goodness.
Think of God's goodness like a bright white
light; the evil that we humans create is like an act of dimming that light, or shielding ourselves from it to create an
area of darkness. It is not like
we've created a competing light source of our
own, such as a bright red light that we shine around
to combat God's bright white light. Accordingly,
the evil that we create through our wills is the absence of good, and not a substantive evil in itself.
So from this perspective, evil has no
substance. Is not a thing
that exists. It is merely the absence of a thing that exists. Hence Augustine's notion of a “privation” or
“absence.” Darkness is not the existence
of something, but rather the absence of light. Likewise, evil is not the existence of
anything, but merely the absence of goodness and from the Neoplatonic
perspective, the absence of “Being.”
Note from this perspective, we can talked
about a perfectly good being (i.e. God: that which is “pure act” as
Aquinas would term it.). But one can't
talk about a perfectly evil thing. For something to be perfectly
evil. it couldn't have any degree of being whatsoever. That means it couldn't exist.
Thus
there could be no such thing as a perfectly evil thing. There could only be a thing with some degree
of goodness, that is, some degree of being, which was nevertheless perverted to
such a great extent that it is horribly evil.
This even suggests that the most evil thing in the world has a high
degree of being or perfection or goodness. This is consistent with Abrahamic
traditions about the nature of Satan. He
was (initially) an Angel of light, perfect and beautiful and nevertheless his
privation is what accounts for his deep evil.
Augustine
writes,
“That movement of the soul’s turning away, which we admitted was sinful, is a defective movement,
and every defect arises from non-being”
(On Free Choice, 2:20)
Drawing from Plotinus, “non-being” is
Augustine’s term for the complete absence of God.
3) Yet a third solution to the problem of evil is Augustine’s suggestion that the apparent imperfection of any part of
creation disappears in light of the perfection
of the whole. To explain, Augustine considers a common objection
that God seems to be the
source of suffering when our young children die with no clear purpose. His response is this:
“In view
of the encompassing network of the universe
and the whole creation (a network that is perfectly ordered in time and place,
where
not even one leaf of a tree is superfluous) it is not possible to create a superfluous person. Moreover, who knows what faith is practiced or what pity is tested when these children's sufferings break down the hardness of parents? We do not
know what reward God reserves in the
secret places of his judgment for these
children [On Free Choice, 3.27]
Augustine makes the analogy to a tapestry, where if one focuses
on a peculiar and particular element of
the tapestry, the color might seem ugly and undesirable, but if one steps back
and views the tapestry as the whole, one can then see how that ugly and
undesirable color actually contributes to the overall beauty of the work as an
entirety. Could we ever gain God's
perspective on this “tapestry” of reality, we would see how all the elements
contribute to the overall beauty and unity of the whole.[10]
Augustine is saying here that
troubling events such as the suffering of children are part of a larger system of things in the
world, and
even these events have a
place in contributing to the good of the whole. If we were capable of grasping the entirety of the creation, we would then see the role that each thing
plays in the greater
scheme of things, contributing to its
total perfection.
God's
Foreknowledge and Human Free Will
The tension between God and evil is just one of the problems
surrounding God's attributes. Another that Augustine considers is the possible
conflict between God's foreknowledge and
human free will. If God knows ahead
of time what I will do at midnight tonight, then when the time comes I must
do that, and thus have no free choice. The
problem can be laid out more precisely as follows:
If God foreknows all events, then all events happen
according to a fixed, causal
order.
If all events
happen according to a fixed,
causal order, then nothing depends on us and there is no such thing as free will.
God foreknows all events.
Therefore
There is no such thing as free will.
Augustine's solution
is to distinguish between
two distinct things about my future
decisions that God might focus
on. On the one hand, God might focus on and foresee my actions,
in which case it looks as
though my actions are already causally
fixed on the timeline.
On the other hand, however,
God might focus on and foresee what my choice will be, what mental decision I make. By foreseeing my
choice, God is focusing on a free will decision that will be left to me in the
future. Thus, God's foreknowledge of my actions is dependent upon what my
choice will be, and not on my action itself. He explains this
here:
Since God foreknows[11]
our will, the very will that he foreknows will be what comes about. Therefore, it will be
a will, since it is a
will that he foreknows. And it could
not be a will unless it were in our power. Therefore, he also foreknows this power. It follows, then, that his foreknowledge does not take away my power; in
fact, it is all the more
certain that I will have that power, since he whose foreknowledge never errs
foreknows that I will have it. [On Free
Choice, 3:3)
For Augustine, the issue comes down to this. Suppose that I somehow foreknew what choice you would make tomorrow at noontime. Would that necessitate you doing it? Clearly not.
Thus, God's foreknowledge of your choice does not interfere with
your freedom any more than my foreknowledge of your choice would.
Morality, Proper Desire, Two Cities
Augustine's moral philosophy rests on a
single theme: desiring all things in their appropriate manner and reserving
our most supreme
desire for God. Humans have the capacity to desire things with a wide range of intensity, from very low
to very high. According to Augustine,
our human psyches are designed in
such a way that the highest
intensity of desire should be our ultimate love for God. The intensity of our desires for other things - wealth, fame, material
goods - should be far less. Our principal moral task is to make sure that all of our desires are properly
ordered, that we desire things in the right way. When we fail to do this, our desires become disordered; that is, we
desire a lowly thing such as a coat
with the intensity that we should
otherwise devote to something much
higher, even God himself. It is this disordered desire that
motivates us to do evil: He writes,
When the miser prefers his gold
to justice, it is through no fault of the gold,
but of the man; and so with
every created thing. For though it is good, it may be loved
with an evil as well as with a good
love: it is loved rightly when it is
loved with proper order; evilly,
when disordered. [City of God, 15:22]
Not only is properly ordered desire central
to morality and virtuous conduct, but it is also the cornerstone to a good and just society.
Augustine's political views are mapped
out in his book The City of
God, which he initially
wrote against Roman pagans who blamed the 410 fall of Rome on the
domination of Christianity within society and their abolition of polytheistic worship. According to Augustine, we need to
see society as consisting of two "cities"
or cultures: an earthly one and a heavenly one. The defining difference between the two is that citizens of the
earthly city are motivated by disordered desire, while those of the heavenly city have properly
ordered desires. He writes,
“Two cities have been formed by
two loves:
the earthly by the love of self, even to the contempt
of God; the heavenly by the love of
God, even to the contempt of self. The former, in a word, glories in itself, the latter in the
Lord. For the one seeks glory from men; but
the greatest glory of the other is God, the witness of conscience. The one lifts
up its head in its own glory; the other says to its God, "You are my glory, and you lift up my head." In the one,
the princes and the nations it subdues
are ruled by the love of ruling; in
the other, the princes and
the subjects serve one another in love, the latter obeying, while the former
take thought for all. The one
delights in its own strength, represented in the persons of its rulers; the other says to its God,
"I will love you, Lord, my strength." [City of God, 14:28]
This
speaks to the Christian idea of kingship. Whereas, the worldly notion of “kingship” is
one of the dominance of the king over the ruled class, the notion of kingship
from the Christian perspective is one of sacrifice (agape) of the king
for the good of the people. Christians would
maintain that Christ, who is the very embodiment of divine kingship, ends up
offering himself as a sacrifice for the benefit of the people. He didn't raise himself up to be the dominant
power. His “throne of glory, on which He
was “raised up” was his crucifixion on the cross. Ultimate His self-sacrifice for the benefit
of his beloved people was his” crowning glory. When Jesus talks about “entering
into his Kingdom” and “being raised up in glory” he's talking about the
horrible death he suffered on the cross.
The Roman Empire
itself, Augustine argues, is a perfect example of an earthly
city that overindulged in disordered desires. This led to immorality, vice, crime, and its ultimate
downfall. Citizens of the heavenly city, who have
properly ordered desires, realize that the only eternal good is
found in God. They live by faith
and "look for those eternal
blessings which are promised" (City of God, 19:17)
People of
the heavenly city are obviously forced to live
here on earth among rival
members of the earthly city. However,
they consider themselves as resident aliens and follow the laws and
customs of the society they in which they dwell, but do not settle
down to enjoy them. He writes,
"So long as the heavenly city lives like a captive
and a stranger in the earthly city ... it does not hesitate to obey the laws of the earthly city, whereby the things necessary for the maintenance of this mortal life are
governed" (ibid).
The earthly city at its best seeks peace in this
life, a necessary condition for happiness. Accordingly,
"the earthly city, which does not live by faith, seeks
an earthly peace, and the end
it proposes... is the combination of men's wills to attain the things which are helpful to this life" (ibid).
The heavenly
city makes use of this peace only because it must.
St. Augustine of
Hippo On The Doctrine of Original Sin
(Article Summary)
St. Augustine of Hippo forever changed the landscape of Christian Theology. His writings on Original Sin permanently shifted how generations of Christians view their faith.
The doctrine of Original Sin is a central aspect of the Christian faith. As a prominent figure of the Christian faith, Saint Augustine of Hippo expanded upon this concept, providing insight into Original Sin in addition to the biblical text itself. The article referenced above explores Saint Augustine’s origins, providing a contextual understanding of his writings on Original Sin that he penned throughout his faith journey. Additionally, this article defines original sin and examines two of Augustine’s key works to gain insight into a seminal component of systematic theology, in the author’s own words.
Defining Our Terms: What is Original Sin?
The biblical doctrine of Original Sin asserts that people inherit a sinful nature (transgressing against God’s laws). This is unavoidable for all human beings. According to Anthony J. Smith, and a large portion of biblical scholarship, we can summarize the overarching idea in two distinct parts:
All of humanity is born into the default condition of Original Sin, which shapes the essence of human behavior. This sin was caused by hereditary transmission (or sexual activity) through Adam after he committed the sinful act of eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of good and evil.
Throughout the entire biblical metanarrative, these two ideas often interact with one another. Therefore, many denominations (or traditions) of Christianity adhere to this idea. Depending upon how different Christian traditions interpret the biblical texts, some may emphasize one of the two traits over the other when evaluating this doctrine. The significance lies in the theological assumption of an inherent separation from the Judeo-Christian God (the father) caused by sin, which then creates logical space for the atoning work of Jesus (the son). Christians believe that they are inherently sinful or “broken”, which prioritizes a savior to remedy that condition.
St. Augustine of Hippo, also known as Aurelius Augustinius, served as a bishop of the Catholic church. He lived most of his life in modern-day Algeria, and he lived from 354 CE to 430 CE. Augustine is regarded as one of the primary voices of the Church catholic (or “universal” church) in the fourth century, contributing to the foundations of theology (the study of the Judeo-Christian God) as we know it today. He is what many modern scholars would refer to as a Church Father.
Born into a privileged class of Roman society in North Africa, he was a highly educated student. Augustine went on to become a teacher of rhetoric and relocated to Milan to pursue his teaching career. It was in Milan where Augustine converted to Christianity and sat under the teachings of St. Ambrose, a Catholic bishop of Milan who incorporated a Neoplatonic approach to his teachings.
Augustine became an ordained bishop in the North African port city of Hippo Regius. As a Catholic bishop, he produced highly influential works that provide essential insights into Christian Theology. Some of his notable works include:
The City of God Against the Pagans (known commonly as The City of God)
Confessions in Thirteen Books (or simply Confessions)
On the Literal Interpretation of Genesis
Because Augustine came to faith in a community deeply influenced by Neoplatonic philosophy, his writing takes on somewhat of a dualistic tone, specifically emphasizing the importance of the mind over the body. This may explain why Augustine primarily associates the introduction of sin in the human family with sexual acts in his written works.
Pelagianism and Augustine’s Doctrine of Original Sin
Addressing the doctrine of Original Sin specifically, Augustine initially writes in open opposition to Pelagius, a European monk, and theologian. Pelagius advocated for a theological belief that denied the impact of Adam’s first sin on his descendants. Pelagius stated instead that all of Adam’s offspring did not suffer any repercussions from the event, and all of Adam’s offspring were actually born inherently good. Pelagius would later be deemed a heretic and excommunicated by the Catholic church for his ideas, which is due in part to St. Augustine refuting Pelagius’ claims in writing.
Saint Augustine’s Writings on Original Sin
One of the first instances of Saint Augustine penning a primary source discussing the nature of Original Sin is titled On the Grace of God, and On Original Sin. He wrote this work in approximately 418, primarily in response to the teachings promoted by Pelagius and his followers (Augustine makes reference to another man named Celestius, who was pushing these ideas as well). Pelagius disseminated the teaching of total free will, asserting that all human beings possess an equal capacity to do good deeds or evil deeds as they choose. Based on his theological conclusions, those who followed Pelagius’ teachings also believed that all individuals are inherently inclined toward good deeds upon birth.
In On the Grace of Christ, and On Original Sin, Augustine places a strong emphasis on refuting Pelagius’ philosophical arguments on the validity of total free will. Augustine does so by emphasizing the importance of God’s grace toward humanity, and delving into the exact nature of Adam and Eve’s mistake when they ate from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. This analysis is based on the Judeo-Christian text known as the book of Genesis and is located in Chapter 3. Toward the conclusion of the work, Augustine asserts his position in such a way that defines Original Sin and has continued to shape theological discussions for subsequent centuries after this work was published. He says:
“Now, whoever maintains that human nature at any period required not the second Adam for its physician, because it was not corrupted in the first Adam, is convicted as an enemy to the grace of God; not in a question where doubt or error might be compatible with soundness of belief, but in that very rule of faith which makes us Christians. How happens it, then, that the human nature, which first existed, is praised by these men as being so far less tainted with evil manners?”
On the Grace of Christ and On Original Sin, Book 2, Chapter 34
The above quote adequately summarizes Augustine’s remarks throughout the entire text. He states that the presence of “corruption” or sin in the first Adam was necessary in order for humanity to attain fulfillment in the second Adam, another theological term used in the New Testament and by early church writers to refer to Jesus. Augustine asserts that Pelagius’ proposed idea that the original Adam lacked a sinful nature is an incorrect conclusion. According to Augustine, if Adam was not inherently sinful against God, there would be no purpose for the salvific work of Jesus, as depicted in the Gospel writings in the biblical text.
The City of God Against the Pagans (referred to in its original Latin title as De Civitatei Dei, another published work by Saint Augustine, further explores Adam’s role in introducing Original Sin to the human family. This work is estimated to have been published in the early 400s, shortly after On the Grace of Christ. In City of God, Augustine devotes less effort to refuting Pelagius’ argument and instead spends more time referencing biblical texts to support his belief that Adam was inherently sinful and that this sin was subsequently passed down to future generations after Adam and Eve:
“Our first parents [Adam and Eve] fell into an open disobedience because already they were secretly corrupted; for the evil act had never been done had not an evil will preceded it.”
Book XIV, Chapter 13, The City of God Against the Pagans
This quotation is just a single example of the plethora of ones like it that Augustine expands upon in books 12 through 14 of this work. In summary, Augustine is attempting to account for philosophical differentiations in the “City of God” and the “City of Man” by highlighting the idea that man’s inherent sinful nature (Original Sin) was brought on by Adam.
Understanding Augustine’s writings on original sin provides a comprehensive look into the history of Christian belief and sheds light on the foundational tenets of the Christian faith. The doctrine of Original Sin is a topic in what is known as “Systematic Theology” which involves an interconnecting of beliefs and principles to establish a logical framework for discussing the Holy Bible and Christianity in general.
The Doctrine of Original Sin is a subsection of what is known as The Doctrine of Man or the Doctrine of Humanity. This particular concept of systematic theology holds great significance for Christians, as it accounts for humanity’s relationship with God, provides a sense of purpose in daily living, and offers a rationale for humanity’s need to be saved through the salvific act of Jesus dying on the cross for the sins of humanity.
Why Does it Matter? Original Sin as the Cornerstone of
Systematic Theology
Conclusively, St. Augustine of Hippo began his career as a famous orator in the bustling cities of the Mediterranean but he ended it as a bishop of a Catholic Church in a humble Berber town, producing written works that defined a whole host of Christian believers that came after him. Of all of his writings, works like City of God and On the Grace of God have played a pivotal role in shaping the perspectives of devout Christians on their own sin and their understanding of the saving grace of the Judeo-Christian God.