As the adherents of the world\u2019s largest religious tradition spend the next month or so preparing for their celebration of the resurrection of their Lord, the time is as good as any for Christians (and everyone else) to acquaint, or reacquaint, themselves with Saint Augustine (354-430 AD), unquestionably among the most influential of Christian thinkers to have ever lived, and a philosopher of distinction in his own right.<\/p>\n
Indeed, an education in the history of ideas that constitutes Western civilization is woefully inadequate if it omits mention of Augustine, a North African bishop of the city of Hippo who stood at the intersection of late antiquity and the beginning of the medieval era.<\/p>\n
Augustine was at once a prolific writer as well as a master of the Roman oratorical tradition. From the time that he was a youth, Augustine was a student of rhetoric, and while he could read, speak, and write Latin fluently, the man who would become a Christian saint admits to having found Greek formidable. At least in part, though, this was because of Augustine\u2019s own rebellious nature. In his Confessions, <\/em>Augustine recalls his teacher\u2019s readiness to resort to beating those of his students who made mistakes during their study of the Greek language. Because of the man\u2019s penchant for corporeal punishment, the young Augustine refused to apply himself.<\/p>\n Augustine\u2019s rebelliousness would remain a constant in his life until, after much debauchery, including fathering a child out of wedlock and embracing heretical philosophies, he turned his whole self over to Christ and became a priest, a decision that would not only fundamentally transform Augustine, but the civilization that we have come to know, for Augustine\u2019s contributions to the development of the theology of his civilization\u2019s religion are immeasurable.<\/p>\n Reality & Knowledge<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n From early on in Christian history, debate raged between thinkers over what, if any, place the pagan philosophers had within Christianity.\u00a0 Some maintained that the Greeks had nothing to contribute to Christian theology (As Tertullian memorably put it, \u201cWhat has Athens to do with Jerusalem?\u201d).\u00a0 Others, like Augustine, held that from the pagans, or at least some of them, like Plato, Christians could gain insights into their own faith.<\/p>\n With this end in mind, Augustine turned to Plato, the <\/em>philosopher par excellence, in his estimation. Because of the extent to which he utilized Plato\u2019s ideas in the service of developing and systematizing Christian theology, it has been said that Augustine \u201cbaptized\u201d the ancient Greek into the faith.<\/p>\n Plato was a rationalist: Knowledge, as opposed to belief or opinion, is rooted in reason; <\/em>sense-experience could never supply genuine knowledge.<\/p>\n For Plato, what we know are \u201cIdeas,\u201d or \u201cForms,\u201d or \u201cEssences.\u201d\u00a0 Ideas are universals<\/em>.\u00a0 Some examples: Humanity is the Essence or Form of every particular individual human being; Beauty is the Essence or Form of every particular individual beautiful thing; Justice is the Essence or Form of every particular individual instance of justice.<\/p>\n It is the universal that makes the particular the kind of particular that it is.\u00a0 For some philosophers, and for many non-philosophers too, universals are just names, categories that human beings invent for classificatory purposes. Not so for Plato. Universals, for Plato, are not only real; <\/em>universals are more <\/em>real than sensible particular things.<\/p>\n In fact, ultimately, universals are maximally real, while the things of sense, though not unreal, nevertheless lack full being inasmuch as they are passing away.<\/p>\n Plato, then, is what\u2019s known as an \u201cultra-realist,\u201d for universals, for him, aren\u2019t just real. They subsist in their own independent ontological realm, and they are held together, as it were, by the most fundamental or primary of all of the universals: the Form of the Good. <\/em><\/p>\n Augustine endorsed both Plato\u2019s rationalism as well as his stance on universals. Yet needless to say, the pagan\u2019s views were revised in the light of the Saint\u2019s Christian qualifications. For example, knowledge, Augustine insisted, should be sought not for purely theoretical purposes, but for the sake of achieving beatitude, happiness.\u00a0 And beatitude is nothing more or less than union with God.<\/p>\n As for Plato\u2019s Forms, in Augustine\u2019s thought they become ideas in the mind of God, <\/em>or the \u201cDivine Ideas.\u201d \u00a0<\/em>Augustine writes: \u201cThe ideas are certain archetypal forms or stable and immutable essences of things, which have not themselves been formed but, existing eternally and without change, are contained in the divine intelligence.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s not that human beings, in knowing the Divine Ideas, penetrate into the far reaches of the mind of God.\u00a0 In order to head off this objection, which Augustine as much as any Christian would have regarded as blasphemous, the Saint introduced the concept of \u201cIllumination<\/em>\u201d:<\/p>\n God is like the sun. \u00a0Just as the sun provides us with sight and makes the things of sense seen, so God illuminates the mind by providing it with its own intelligible perception of the Ideas, the<\/em> stuff of knowledge.<\/p>\n Augustine moved Plato\u2019s Universals from their separate transcendental realm into the Mind of God, it\u2019s true. Yet he also used our knowledge of these universal ideas and principles in order to establish the existence of God.\u00a0 Augustine reasoned thus:<\/p>\n Just as the mutability of the human imagination reflects the mutability of its basis, i.e. the human mind, and just as sense impressions of corporeal objects are mutable because of the mutability of the objects themselves, so the immutability<\/em> of eternal, necessary, and immutable truths must reflect the immutability of their <\/em>ground\u2014which can only be God.<\/p>\n One needn\u2019t endorse Augustine\u2019s ultra-realism or his doctrine of Divine Ideas in order to appreciate the thrust of his reasoning here. All of us are aware of some eternal, necessary, immutable truths.\u00a0 Mathematical statements like 3+2=5, for instance, most of us accept as universally and invariably true.\u00a0 The principle of contradiction (the principle that a thing can\u2019t be and not be in the same respect at the same time), the most basic law of all thought, is universally and necessarily true. Yet such principles and propositions, such ideas<\/em>, though readily grasped by and regulative of the human mind, obviously can\u2019t spring from the latter, for they are of a fundamentally different character than that of the finite human mind. But, as ideas, they must belong to some <\/em>mind.<\/p>\n Thus, these timeless ideas point to a timeless Mind as their ground.<\/p>\n And this timeless Mind, it should go without saying, is the Mind of God.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Free Will & the Problem of Evil<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Even among Christians, many still seem to be utterly unaware of how to respond to that which is undoubtedly the most formidable of all objections to theism.\u00a0 The problem of evil (alternately known as \u201cthe problem of pain\u201d or \u201csuffering\u201d) is the philosophical or theological problem of reconciling belief in an all-powerful and all-loving God with the presence of evil in the world.<\/p>\n After all, if God is all-powerful, then He must be able to stop evil, and if He is all-good or all-loving, then He must want to stop evil.\u00a0 Since, then, evil exists, it follows that there can\u2019t be an all-powerful and all-loving God.\u00a0 This is how the problem has been formulated.<\/p>\n Augustine\u2019s solution, commonly known as the \u201cfree-will defense,\u201d remains the most intuitively appealing of all such solutions:<\/p>\n It is not God who is responsible for the evil in the world, the Saint insisted, but human beings. Everything that God created is good just insofar as each thing exists, for being, serving as it does as the basis for all good-making properties, is a good itself.\u00a0 Whatever has being has \u201cpositive reality.\u201d\u00a0 Now, evil, though real, has \u201cnegative <\/em>reality.\u201d\u00a0 It\u2019s crucial to grasp that the terms \u201cgood,\u201d \u201cpositive,\u201d and \u201cnegative,\u201d in this context, are not being used primarily in a moral <\/em>but in an ontological <\/em>or metaphysical <\/em>sense.\u00a0 As a Christian, Augustine accepted without qualification the Genesis creation account of a God who upon bringing the world into being ex nihilo <\/em>(from nothingness<\/em> or nonbeing<\/em>) declared His work good.<\/em><\/p>\n Since all beings derive their being from the Supreme Being, all beings, insofar as they exist, are good.<\/p>\n Now, the freedom of the will with which God endowed human beings is a good.\u00a0 God, in His eternal desire to share Himself with human beings, the only beings who He made in His own image and of whom He wants to make adopted sons and daughters, blessed people with the freedom to accept His offer of friendship.<\/p>\n God, you see, being Love itself, can\u2019t force persons to love Him. Every loving relationship between persons derives its special character from the fact that each person freely embraces the other.\u00a0 Love presupposes freedom.\u00a0 Puppets and robots can\u2019t love.<\/p>\n However, the freedom to accept God\u2019s invitation to friendship necessarily implies the freedom to reject <\/em>it.\u00a0 Each time a person disobeys God, he shifts his will from the Godward trajectory for which it was designed to the ego-centric track that is the legacy of original sin. Every act of disobedience is a turning away of the human will from its ground and creator.\u00a0 Augustine\u2019s analysis is rich with spatial imagery: When a will is obedient to God, then it is oriented inward<\/em> and ascending upward<\/em>.\u00a0 When it is disobedient, though, it is focused outward<\/em> and descending downward<\/em>.<\/p>\n The point is this: Evil is of negative reality inasmuch as it is a corruption of a good will.\u00a0 Evil is the absence of goodness, just as silence is the absence of sound, darkness the absence of light, and coldness the absence of heat. Evil is not, then, a creature, much less the creation of God.<\/p>\n So, it is not God who is responsible for evil, but human beings who decided to use the freedom that God has given them for wicked purposes. Evil is not a strength; it is a weakness, a deficiency.<\/p>\n Political Philosophy<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Augustine\u2019s The City of God <\/em>is a magisterial work in which the author articulates his views on a variety of topics, among which is that of politics.\u00a0 It is here that Augustine identifies what he presents as being the only two types of human association: the \u201ccity\u201d of God\u2014what Augustine also refers to as the \u201cheavenly\u201d or \u201ccelestial\u201d city\u2014and \u201cthe city of man,\u201d or the \u201cearthly city.\u201d<\/p>\n Underneath the rich diversity of manners and customs of the planet\u2019s peoples, ultimately, there are just these two types of human societies. Yet as long as this world of ours remains, \u201cthese two cities\u201d will be \u201c\u2018entangled\u2019\u2026and intermixed until the last judgment\u201d separates them from one another.<\/p>\n Augustine explains that these two cities \u201chave been formed by the 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.\u201d<\/p>\n Put another way, the City of Man, or the Earthly City, \u201cglories in itself,\u201d while the City of God glories \u201cin the Lord\u201d (150).<\/p>\n There is still another way of characterizing the difference between the two cities. The City of Man is composed \u201cof those who wish to live after the flesh,\u201d while the City of God is comprised \u201cof those who wish to live after the spirit [.]\u201d<\/p>\n Although Augustine clearly thought that the City of God is superior to the City of Man, and while he conceded that it\u2019s filled with its share of miseries, he did not believe that the latter was totally depraved.\u00a0 Peace<\/em>\u2014what Augustine refers to as \u201cthe tranquility of order\u201d\u2014is the end of all types of association, the greatest of all human goods. The City of Man, political life, aims at and succeeds in obtaining the peace that is proper to its nature, a peace that consists in \u201cwell-ordered concord\u201d among citizens.<\/p>\n And since the City of God is a \u201cpilgrim\u201d on earth, making its way through the earthly city, it needs the City of Man for the satisfaction of its basic necessaries.<\/p>\n The earthly city, though, insures its own ruin, however, when it either elevates earthy goods above the goods of heaven or fails to recognize altogether that there even are heavenly goods.<\/p>\n If the citizens of the earthly city \u201cneglect the better things of the heavenly city, which are secured by eternal victory and peace never-ending, and so inordinately covet these present good things that they believe them to be the only desirable things, or love them better than those things which are believed to be better\u2014if this be so, then it is necessary that misery follow and ever increase [.]\u201d (151).<\/p>\n As Augustine\u2019s analysis makes clear, the Saint makes two far-reaching contributions to Western political thought.<\/p>\n Firstly, he insists upon a sharp distinction between \u201cChurch and State,\u201d the realms of faith and politics.<\/p>\n Secondly, exactly because of this distinction, it follows for Augustine that, contra those philosophers and theorists who assign to rulers the ability to inaugurate utopias of one sort or another, the City of Man cannot <\/em>be engaged in the enterprise of perfecting men\u2019s souls.\u00a0 As Augustine writes: \u201cBut the peace which we enjoy in this life, whether common to all or peculiar to ourselves, is rather the solace of our misery than the positive enjoyment of felicity.\u201d<\/p>\n He adds: \u201cOur very righteousness, too, though true in so far as it has respect to the true good, is yet in this life of such a kind that it consists rather in the remission of sins than in the perfecting of virtues.\u201d<\/p>\n Augustine here locates himself solidly within the tradition of St. Paul, who in the Book of Romans <\/em>makes it clear that the secular authorities are to be obeyed because they have been ordained to wield the sword against criminals and the wicked.<\/p>\n Here is another critical respect in which Augustine the Christian parts ways with Plato the pagan.\u00a0 Though Plato was more likely than not merely entertaining for theoretical purposes the utopian fantasy of his ideal political society when he composed his Republic<\/em>, it would have been anathema to Augustine to have even theorized about such a thing, for true justice, for the Saint, could be had only after the City of God has been separated from this Earthly city and brought into the eternal Republic of Christ.<\/p>\n This is a reminder of their vocation of which American Christians in the 21st<\/sup> century are in much need.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As the adherents of the world\u2019s largest religious tradition spend the next month or so preparing for their celebration of the resurrection of their Lord, the time is as good as any for Christians (and everyone else) to acquaint, or reacquaint, themselves with Saint Augustine (354-430 AD), unquestionably among the most influential of Christian thinkers…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":399,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1965","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n