Augustine of Hippo
When
I thought of devoting myself entirely to you, my God . . . it was I that wished
to do it, and I that wished not to do it. It was I. And since I neither
completely wished, nor completely refused, I fought against myself and tore
myself to pieces- AUGUSTINE OF HIPPO
“Take up and read. Take up and read. Take up and read.”
Augustine was born in 354 CE, in
the little town of Tagaste, in North Africa. His father was a minor Roman
official who followed the traditional pagan religion. But his mother, Monica,
was a fervent Christian, whose constant prayer for her husband’s conversion was
eventually answered. Augustine does not seem to have been very close to his
father, whom he hardly mentions in his writings. But Monica did play an
important role—sometimes even an overwhelming
one—in the life of her only son.
Both parents were aware of their
child’s exceptional gifts, and therefore sought for him
the best education possible. To that end they sent him to the nearby town of
Madaura until their resources ran out, when Augustine had to abandon his
studies and return to Tagaste. There, according to his own report, he “wandered
with my companions through the public squares of Babylon and wallowed in their
mud as if it were cinnamon and precious ointments.”38
With these friends, he boasted of his sexual adventures—real
or imagined—and joined in capers that he would one day rue as
the sign of his own sinfulness.
Eventually, thanks to the support
of a certain Romanianus, he was able to travel to Carthage to pursue his
studies. Augustine was some seventeen years old when he arrived at the great
city that for centuries had been the political, economic, and cultural center
of Latin-speaking Africa. Although he did not neglect his studies, he also set
out to enjoy the many pleasures that the city
offered. Soon he had a concubine
who bore him a child. He named the boy Adeodatus, meaning “given
by God”—or “by a god.” As all young men of his time preparing for careers as
lawyers or public functionaries, Augustine was a student of rhetoric.
The purpose of this discipline
was to learn to speak and to write elegantly and convincingly. Truth was not at
issue. That was left for professors of philosophy. But among the many ancient
works that students of rhetoric had to read were those of Cicero, the famous
orator of classical Rome. And Cicero, besides being a master of language, was a
philosopher. Thus, it was reading Cicero that Augustine came to the conviction
that proper speech and style were not sufficient. One must also seek truth.
That search led the young student
to Manichaeism. This religion was Persian in origin, having been founded by a
certain Mani in the third century. According to Mani, the human predicament is
the presence in each of us of two principles. One, which he calls light,
is spiritual. The other, darkness, is matter. Throughout the universe
there are these two principles, both eternal:
light and darkness. Somehow—Manichaeans
explained it through a series of myths—the two have mingled, and the
present human condition is the result of that admixture. Salvation then
consists in separating the two elements, and in preparing our spirit for its
return to the realm of pure light, in which it will be absorbed. Since any new
mingling of the principles is evil, true believers must avoid procreation.
According to Mani, this doctrine had been revealed in various fashions to a
long series of prophets, including Buddha, Zoroaster, Jesus, and Mani himself.
Once at Tagaste, Augustine
sold most of the property that he had inherited, gave some of the money to the poor,
and with the rest he settled at Cassiciacum with Adeodatus—who
died shortly thereafter—and a few friends whose goal was
mystical contemplation and philosophical inquiry. Their objective was not the
extreme rigorism of the monks of the desert, but rather an orderly life, with
no unnecessary comforts, and devoted entirely to prayer, study, and meditation.
It was at Cassiciacum that
Augustine wrote his first Christian works. They still bore a Neoplatonic stamp,
although he was slowly coming to appreciate the difference between Christian
teaching and some elements in Neoplatonism. He hoped that the few dialogues he
wrote at Cassiciacum would be only the beginning of many years devoted to the
philosophical life.
Many of Augustine’s
first writings were attempts to refute the Manichaeans. Since he had helped
lead some of his friends to that religion, he now felt a particular
responsibility to refute the teachings that he had supported earlier. use those
were the main points at issue, most of these early works dealt with the
authority of scripture, the origin of evil, and free will.
The question of the freedom of
the will was of particular importance in the polemics against the Manichaeans.
They held that everything was predetermined, and that human beings had no
freedom. Against such views, Augustine became the champion of the freedom of
the will. According to him, human freedom is such that it is its own cause.
When we act freely, we are not moved by something either outside or inside of
us, as by a necessity, but rather by our own will. A decision is free inasmuch
as it is not the product of nature, but of the will itself. Naturally, this
does not mean that circumstances do not influence our decisions.
What it does mean is that only
that which we decide out of our own will, and not out of circumstance or out of
an inner necessity, is properly called “free.”
According to Augustine, the power
of sin is such that it takes hold of our will, and as long as we are under its
sway we cannot move our will to be rid of it. The most we can accomplish is to
struggle between willing and not willing, which does little more than show the powerlessness of our will against itself. The
sinner can will nothing but sin. Within that condition, there certainly are
good and bad choices; but even the best choices still fall within the category
of sin.
This does not mean, however, that
freedom has disappeared. The sinner is still free to choose among various
alternatives. But all of these are sin, and the one alternative that is not
open is to cease sinning. In Augustine’s words, before the fall we
were free both to sin and not to sin. But between the fall and redemption the only
freedom left to us is the freedom to sin. When we are redeemed, the grace of
God works in us, leading our will from the miserable state in which it found
itself to a new state in which freedom is restored, so that we are now free
both to sin and not to sin. Finally, in the heavenly home we shall still be
free, but only free not to sin. Again, this does not mean that all freedom is
destroyed. On the contrary, in heaven we shall continue to have free choices.
But none of them will be sin. At that point, our minds will be so overwhelmed
by the goodness of God that sin will be as unimaginable as not sinning is now.
Back to the moment of conversion, how can we make the
decision to accept grace? ccording to
Augustine, only by the power of grace itself, for before that moment we are not
free not to sin, and therefore we are not free to decide to accept grace.
The initiative in conversion is not human, but divine.
Furthermore, grace is irresistible, and God gives it to those who have been predestined
to it.
Two of Augustine’s
writings are particularly significant. The first is his Confessions,
a spiritual autobiography, addressed in prayer to God, which tells how God led
him to faith through a long and painful pilgrimage. It is unique in its genre
in all of ancient literature, and even to this day it witnesses to Augustine’s
profound psychological
and intellectual insight.
The other work worthy of special
mention is The City of God. The immediate motive impelling
Augustine to write it was the Fall of Rome in 410 CE. Since there were
many who still clung to ancient paganism at that time, some charged that Rome
had fallen because it had abandoned its ancient gods and turned to
Christianity. It was to respond to such allegations that Augustine wrote The
City of God, a vast encyclopedic history in which he claims that there are
two cities—that is, two social orders—each
built on a foundation of love. The city of God is built on the love
of God. The earthly city is built on the love of self. In human history,
these two cities always appear mingled with each other. But in spite of this
there is between the two of them an irreconcilable opposition, a fight to the
death. In the end, only the city of God will remain. Meanwhile, human
history is filled with kingdoms and nations, all built on love of self, which
are no more than passing expressions of the earthly city. All of these kingdoms
and nations, no matter how powerful, will wither and pass away, until the end
of time, when only the city of God will remain standing. In the case of Rome in
particular, God allowed it and its empire to flourish so that they served as a
means for spreading the gospel. Now that this purpose has been fulfilled, God
has let Rome follow the destiny of all human kingdoms, which is simply
punishment for their sins. But even so, Christians do well to learn even the
history of the human city, for as Augustine says in another treatise—“all
we may learn about the past helps us understand the Scriptures.”
Augustine was the last of the
great leaders of the Imperial church in the West. When he died, the Vandals
were at the gates of Hippo, announcing a new age. Therefore, Augustine’s work
was, in a way, the last glimmer of a dying age.
And yet, his work was not
forgotten among the ruins of a crumbling civilization. On the contrary, through
his writings he became the teacher of the new age. Throughout the Middle Ages,
no theologian was quoted more often than he was, and he thus became one of the
great doctors of the Roman Catholic Church. But he was also the favorite
theologian of the great Protestant Reformers of the sixteenth century.
Thus, Augustine, variously interpreted, has become the most influential
theologian in the entire Western church, both Protestant and Catholic.
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