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Augustine of Hippo: the Relevance of His Life and Thought Today Nick Needham

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Augustine of Hippo: the Relevance of His Life and Thought Today Nick Needham Augustine of Hippo: The Relevance of His Life and Thought Today Nick Needham Nick Needham is Pastor of the Introduction traces of his existence. Though we Reformed Baptist Church of Inverness, Traditionally, four of the Latin fathers find among them many rich and Scotland. He also serves as Lecturer of powerful minds, yet we find in none of the church have been given the illustri- the forces of personal character, Church History at Highland Theological ous title “Doctor” (teacher)—Ambrose of mind, heart, and will, so largely developed and so harmoniously College in Dingwall, Scotland. Before Milan, Jerome, Augustine of Hippo, and working. No one surpasses him in this, he taught Systematic Theology at Gregory the Great. All four deserve our wealth of perceptions and dialecti- the Scottish Baptist College in Glasgow. affectionate acquaintance; but the great- cal sharpness of thoughts, in depth Dr. Needham wrote his Ph.D. thesis on and fervor of religious sensibility, est of them must surely be Augustine, in greatness of aims and energy of the nineteenth-century Scottish theolo- both for the sheer depth and richness action. He therefore also marks the gian Thomas Erskine of Linlathen. of his thought, and for his unparalleled culmination of the patristic age, and has been elevated by the acknowl- influence on subsequent generations. edgment of succeeding times as the first and the universal church A. N. Whitehead once quipped that the 1 history of Western philosophy was simply father. a series of footnotes to Plato. By a pardon- able exaggeration, one might say that the Huber does not overstate. For we are history of Western theology is simply a dealing in Augustine with one of the series of footnotes to Augustine. The fifth truly seminal minds of human history, century African father towers mightily and it is no self-depreciation on our part over the succeeding centuries like some to entertain a due sense of modesty and spiritual version of Shakespeare’s Julius humility. Few scientists will ever be Caesar: Einstein; few theologians will ever be Augustine. In the post-apostolic church, Why, man, he doth bestride the nar- he has been to Christian piety what David row world Like a Colossus, and we petty men is in the Psalms, and to Christian theology Walk under his huge legs, and peep what Paul is in his letters. The writings about. of Augustine have proved a perpetual stream of outstandingly fruitful influence We are sometimes fond of saying that on Christian spirituality and doctrine we stand on the shoulders of the great down through the ages. Many of the Christians who went before us. In the case noblest movements of church renewal of Augustine, I suspect most of us may have taken their inspiration from the feel less a dwarf on his shoulders than bishop of Hippo, notably the Lollards, an ant on his ankle. In the words of the the Hussites, the Protestant Reformation “Old Catholic” scholar Johann Nepomuk itself, the Puritans, and the Jansenists. Huber, Many of the most brilliant thinkers, Augustine is a unique phenomenon preachers, and saints of Western church in Christian history. No one of the history have been devout disciples of other fathers has left so luminous Augustine; one has but to name the 38 Venerable Bede, Anselm of Canterbury, squeezed into the mold of contemporary Bernard of Clairvaux, Thomas Aquinas, non-Christian culture. John Wyclif, Martin Luther, John Calvin, Third, there is Augustine’s decisive role Blaise Pascal, and B. B. Warfield. It seems, in the historical development of Chris- then, that if Western Christians are to tian doctrine. The church’s theology has understand their own heritage, they always been hammered out on the anvil cannot escape engaging with the titanic of heresy. Where would our understand- figure of Augustine. ing of the Trinity and the incarnation There are other reasons for acquainting be, without the purgative storms of the ourselves with the bishop of Hippo. Let Arian controversy? Men like Athanasius me suggest three. First of all, there is no and the Cappadocian fathers forged a personality of the ancient world, Chris- newly refined, more lucid and articulate tian or Pagan, so intimately known to us conception of the Godhead and of deity as Augustine. His Confessions more or less incarnate, in the context of the convul- invented autobiography, and give us the sive dispute with Arius and his ilk. This most entrancing and self-revealing por- refined theology was summed up in the trait of a soul in all literature. The father great Nicene Creed. Augustine’s friend, of the Renaissance, Francesco Petrarch, the celebrated Jerome, admitted that many after his mid-life conversion to Christ, of the utterances of the orthodox fathers carried with him a copy of Augustine’s prior to Arius did not quite come up to Confessions wherever he went. Countless the standard of this more coherent Nicene hosts have echoed Petrarch’s verdict. Can doctrine, wrought out in the furnace of the we neglect this unique literary monument fourth century debate: “It must be admit- of a soul’s journey, without succumbing to ted that before Arius arose in Alexandria the charge of being spiritual and cultural as a demon of the south, things were said ignoramuses? incautiously which cannot be defended Second, Augustine wrestles endlessly against a malign criticism.”2 with the most fundamental questions Augustine likewise was the principal of existence. What can the human mind theologian who wrought out a more truly know? What is God? What is truth? articulate and coherent doctrine of human What is beauty? What is time? What is his- nature, its fall and restoration, in the fifth tory? What is the soul? What is memory? century setting of the Pelagian contro- What is faith? What is reason? What is the versy. If we owe our developed Trinitarian relationship between faith and reason? theology and Christology to Athanasius What is justice? What is human destiny? and the Cappadocians, we owe our devel- What are the proper limits of political oped anthropology and soteriology, our action? Where does evil come from? How understanding of the Bible’s teaching on can we reconcile evil and suffering with the relations between human sin and a belief in a good and almighty God? divine grace, to Augustine. He carried Augustine sets the example par excel- the Latin West with him on these matters lence of a Christian thinker determined (although not the Greek East), embedding to view the whole of life in the light of in the Western Christian consciousness his faith, rather than give a little private a high, awesome, man-humbling, God- corner of it to Christ, leaving the rest to be exalting vision of original sin, predestina- 39 tion, and efficacious grace in regeneration, pretensions to a perfectly rational world- which has renewed itself in every epoch view seemed hollow when compared and endured to the present. If we would to the higher and deeper philosophy grapple with these tremendous issues, of Plotinus, father of Neoplatonism—a where better to go than the first and reinvention of Plato that transformed his greatest “doctor of grace,” the bishop of teaching into a mystical religious faith Hippo? in a Supreme Being, “the One.” Plotinus introduced Augustine to a truer con- Biographical Sketch ception of God as the absolute spiritual Let us now offer a sketch of Augus- entity, exalted far above space, time, and tine’s life, and then look in more detail matter, whose image was reflected in the at some of these weighty themes. Briefly, human soul. Aurelius Augustine was born in Tha- Intellectually liberating though this gaste in Roman North Africa in 354, to a was, Neoplatonism did not challenge Pagan father, Patricius, and a Christian Augustine’s moral lifestyle. This came mother, Monnica. His mother, a spiritu- through the preaching of Ambrose, ally minded lady, did her best to instill bishop of Milan, whose pulpit eloquence the Christian faith into her son, but the captivated Augustine. Here was an ortho- growing Augustine met moral shipwreck dox Christian preacher who both made on the shoals of his burgeoning sexuality. the faith of the church seem credible, and Abandoning the Christianity of his youth, lived it out in his own life of steely, shin- he began living with a girl whom he never ing integrity, before which even emperors married, by whom he had an illegitimate trembled (Milan was at that time the son, Adeodatus. Western imperial capital). To add to his mother’s anguish, Augus- Ambrose’s preaching soon induced tine also joined the cult-like Gnostic sect a spiritual crisis in Augustine. Let us of the Manichees. In desperation over hear him tell it in his own words. He is her wayward child, Monnica turned to a in a garden in Milan, overwhelmed by Catholic bishop who was himself a con- a consciousness of his sin, especially his verted Manichee, and pled with him to bondage to sexual desire: reason with Augustine. (By “Catholic” in I flung myself down, I do not know the early church period, we mean simply how, under a fig-tree, giving free the mainstream orthodox church, distin- course to my tears. The streams of guished from dissident groups like Mon- my eyes gushed forth, an acceptable sacrifice to You. And, not in these tanists and Arians.) The bishop refused. very words, yet to this effect, I spoke “Only prayer, not arguments, will bring much to You: “But You, O Lord, how long? How long, Lord? Will You be your son to Christ,” he insisted. When a angry for ever? Oh, do not remem- weeping Monnica persisted in beseeching ber against us our former iniqui- his help, the bishop famously said, “Go.
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