Eyes of Faith, 1. Augustine of Hippo A
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EYES OF FAITH, 1. AUGUSTINE OF HIPPO A. Life Born in Tagaste (Algeria) in 354; Bishop of Hippo Regius in Roman Africa for 35 years; lived during the decline of Western Roman civilization on that continent; died in 430, aged 76, with the Vandals at the gates of Hippo (Rome had fallen in 410). Stands at a watershed in the history of western thought, between the classical world of the Roman empire and the Middle Ages. Bridges the gap between ancient pagan Rome and the Christian middle ages. Enormous influence on Western theology, helped form Christian theology as a whole. Considered the greatest of the Fathers of the Western Church. “You are famous throughout the whole world; Catholics venerate and look upon you as a second founder of the old faith*, and — a token of yet more illustrious glory — all the heretics detest you. They persecute me too with equal hatred….” (Jerome, Ep. 195). “The great luminary of the Western world is, as we know, St. Augustine; he, no infallible teacher, has formed the intellect of Europe” (Newman: Apologia, Fontana, 1959, p. 296.) “an extraordinary sense of the glory and of the misery of man” (H. Chadwick, 1) B. Career Mother, Monica, a Christian; father, Patricius, Roman, baptised on deathbed. Ordinary schoolboy, keen on Latin, sponsored to university in Carthage at seventeen, took a concubine, spent dissipated youth, had son. Specialised in philosophy, found Bible primitive, and became Manichee, attracted by dualism between good and evil and explanation/justification of his immorality. Became disillusioned intellectually, developed highly successful academic career, appointed to chair of rhetoric for the imperial court at Milan in 384, aged thirty. Became Neo-Platonist. Intellectually impressed by Ambrose, bishop of Milan. Garden experience and baptism. Returned to Africa with friends to form a lay celibate Christian commune in Tagaste. Son died aged 17. Persuaded to become priest, later bishop of Hippo, a busy seaport, for 34 years, heading a monastic community. A formidable polemicist. C. Writings Two outstanding masterpieces: Confessions [Conf], describing his emotional, intellectual and moral conversion (later interpretation?); The City of God [CG]. In A.D. 410, Goths sacked Rome, and some Roman émigrés wondered if abandonment of heathenism was to blame. Augustine took fifteen years in writing City of God, providing a Christian understanding of history and a moral explanation of the failure of the Roman Empire. Very busy pastorally with regular popular sermons, detailed meditative scripture commentaries (e.g. John) and frequent letters. Highly influential theological treatments (Trinity, Christology, Church, sacraments, grace, sin, concupiscence) Engaged in ongoing controversies (Manicheans, Arians, Donatism, Pelagianism), hammering out his own theology. D. Some seminal ideas. Evil is not a power or agency, but the absence of good (against Manicheism). Stress on human postlapsarian depravity requiring continuous divine intervention and sovereignty of grace. Developed created grace(s) as divine aids; known as “Doctor of grace”. “just war” conditions, Against Faustus 22,74-75; City of God 19,7. Effects of sacraments unaffected by faith or worthiness of minister (ex opere operato: from the deed done). Psychological model of the Blessed Trinity. Threefold “goods” of marriage, offspring, fidelity, sacrament (indivisibility), needed to justify intercourse, which is morally suspect. Use of state power to enforce orthodox beliefs. Limbo (“edge” of hell) for children dying unbaptized in original sin (“minimal suffering”). Divine predestination of all human beings. E. On the Trinity. As trinitarian theology was developing, especially in Council of Constantinople (381) and later, analogies were sought to help understand (not prove) the mystery of how three “persons” could be united in one divine “nature” (Tertullian, 2-3c.). Can start from Three (East), or from One (Augustine), proposing the famous psychological analogy: If we are created in the image of one God, are there traces in humanity which can provide us with a clue to what the triune God, our origin, is like? Augustine’s final suggestion was that everyone has one spiritual soul or consciousness, but this has three distinct activities: our memory, our understanding and our will. So, is God in his inner life something/anything like that?. F. Controversies: On Donatism. Who are members of the Church if it is to be “without spot or wrinkle” (Eph 5.27)? After Catholicism accepted by state, Donatus (d. 355), bishop of Carthage, led a large rigorist and aggressive schismatic church in Africa. Opposed re- admitting lapsed members, and denied the validity of their sacraments. Augustine first tried to reconcile them: pleading that the church be one and universal, open to all, including penitent sinners; and insisting that Christ is divine minister of the sacraments (ex opere operato), Then he requested, and supported, government “compelling” policy against Donatists, citing Lk 14.23 – a dangerous precedent. “Dilige et quod vis fac” (love and do what you want) (Ep. Jo 7,8). Not a “situation ethics” slogan (as Fletcher): genuine love leads to the right action. On Pelagianism. Pelagius (c.360 – c.420), theologian and greatly admired ascetic lay preacher from Roman Britain. “Ponderous and stuffed with Scots’ porridge” (Jerome). Had travelled in monasteries in the East, so was highly positive theologically on human nature and its moral resources. An exemplary, vocal and influential reformer in lax Roman court and high society circles, full of “converts” after Emperor Theodosius had outlawed paganism and imposed (non-Arian) Christianity. Pelagius appalled to hear in Rome Augustine’s refrain which Pelagius considered moral mollycoddling: “grant what you command, and command whatever you want” (da quod iubes, et iube quod vis). Pelagius furiously insisted on free will and successful human effort in observing all the Commandments, without taking refuge in excuses, or undermining moral effort, especially in a Church full of mediocre “converts”. Pelagius maintained that Adam’s sin injured only himself, not the human race or infants, and that all humans are capable of acting well naturally and without needing grace. The human will needs no divine remedy or supercharger. Gathered many supporters. Augustine wrote often and at length to refute the Pelagians (hence his later title, “Doctor of Grace”), sharpening his own theological views (he argued that infant baptism proved belief in original sin). Secured rejection of Pelagianism in various local African councils, especially Carthage. Finally, the general Council of Ephesus (431) condemned Pelagian views (Augustine died in 430), as did Council of Orange II (529) and subsequently Council of Trent (16th c.) on rediscovering the Augustine-dominated Council of Orange. “Pelagian” later used as term of abuse by Reformers against Catholics. “Semipelagianism” is View that the very beginning of act of faith, leading to grace of justification, is purely natural, not requiring “preceding” grace. Term first used by Protestant Reformers against Scholastic theologians in controversy over justification, used by Jansenists in 17th century against opponents as redolent of Pelagianism .G. Original sin and grace. Greatly concerned at his moral powerlessness through the “disease of concupiscence” (Conf 8.7), Augustine was deeply influenced by Paul’s letter to the Romans, especially the reflections on the sin of Adam and its disastrous consequences for all humanity. For Augustine, longing for self-control over his unruly sinful feelings, the whole human race is revealed by Paul to be a condemned throng (massa damnata) poisoned from the start along with sinful Adam and Eve. “The law of sin which dwells in my members” (Rom 7.23) only too readily explained for Augustine his unruly sexual desires.Consequently humans can do absolutely nothing good without God’s grace: healing us, inspiring us, helping us, elevating us, a whole armoury of created graces in the soul. Adamology. One of the major themes of Paul’s theology concerned Christ as the Second Adam, restoring creation and life: to describe Christ’s salvation of all humanity he had to connect all the original humanity with Adam. Paul’s key comparison was, “Therefore , just as sin came into the world through one man and death came through sin, and so death spread to all because all have sinned … much more surely have the grace of God and the free gift in the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, abounded for the many” (Rom 5.12,15) The phrase “because all have sinned” translates Paul’s Greek phrase ’ω (eph ho), which literally means “since when”, or “as a result of which” all have sinned. But the Old Latin Translation of the New Testament, which Augustine and his contemporaries used (he had little Greek), translated Paul’s words eph ho as “in quo”, or “in whom all have sinned,” leading Augustine to understand that everyone born after Adam had sinned “in Adam”: “The Apostle says ‘In whom all have sinned’. ‘In whom’ can only be understood as in Adam, in whom he says they also die”. From this Augustine developed his theology of the corporate solidarity of all subsequent men and women “in” Adam, their first parent, thus involving all human beings, indeed, involving human nature as a whole, as penalised in Adam’s own fall from grace. Hence the conclusion which Western Christianity has held for centuries, that since Adam the whole human race is revealed by Paul to be “poisoned” from the start along with sinful Adam and Eve, all subsequent human beings starting life as a miserable lot of sinners, what Augustine called a massa damnata, a “condemned lump”, for whom only an atoning sacrifice on the part of Jesus – and the sacrament of baptism – would secure God”s forgiveness. “Hinc est universa generis humani massa damnata”, CG 21.12. Thus, the Old Latin version of the New Testament gave “an exegesis of Rom 5,12 which, though mistaken and based on a false reading, was to become the pivot of the doctrine of original sin”.J.