Approaches to Studying
Augustine
1. From the standpoint of his polemics against the Donatists,
Manikees and Plegious. The Manakees
located evil in matter and the body, based on a cosmic dualism. But, freewill can be misused and cause
evil. On the other hand, Augustine
emphasized grace in responce to the Plegians.
2. Augustine as the basis of Western theology. Pelikan: Western theology has been a
synthesis of Augustine. But, Augustine
also is similar to the Greek philosophies before his time. He looked back and forward.
3.Greer's thesis: Augustine's conversion was to Christian
Platonism. Clement of Alexandria and Origin were Christian
Platonists. See The Confessions, bk. 7. He
sees a light that amazes him. He was
impressed with the Platonic books. The
soul has the possibility of moving toward and participating in God. God is the ground of our being. God alone is the good, true, beautiful. We exist to the extent that we participate in
God. Moral purification turns the soul
in the right direction so it can move toward God. The soul could also move away from God in a
process of deprivation. But, unlike the
Christian Platonists, Augustine found that the roots of sin are hiden in the
soul which are not removed by purification.
The dark forces in the soul come from the sin of Adam: original
sin. The notion of original sin came
late in his work. Prevenient grace is
that which can turn the soul toward God; otherwise, deprivation occurs. These later ideas are within the Platonic
framework, but they turn his view into something other than his early view
which was Christian Platonism.
Contemporary Rival
Christian Movements: Manicians, Donatists, & Pelagians
The Manicians. Mani was born in 216 C.E. and was the prophet
of the Manicians. He lived in the Persian Empire in Babalonia. He had two visions. In his second vision, he
saw that he was an apostle of the light.
He travelled to India ,
but did not get to the West. But his
teaching got to Syria and N. Africa . Augustine
became a Manicee in N. Africa . The teaching of Mani: it adapted to the
religions of the areas. Buddhism in India , Christianity in the West,
and Zoroastrianism in Babalonia.
Difficult to combine these. His
system of belief is highly mythological: principles/worlds of light and
dark. A Zoroastrian influence
probable. Various divine aeons
emminating from the principle of light (in the North). The principle of darkness contains
matter. It also has divine aeons. The kings of the two orders of reality(the
two principles) are in conflict.
Augustine realized that these ideas did not accord with the science he
knew; this was his first problem with the movement. The Manakees were of the elect (celebacy and
ascetic) and the hearers(Augustine was one).
The object to free the spirit or light from matter. Manacians considered themselves to be elite
Christians. Augustine joined with that
in mind. But he had questions which were
not answered. He decided to leave the
movement after his questions were not answered by a Manacian bishop, but he
waited to leave for a time. When he went
to Rome in 383,
he was still a Manacian. He got a job
based on his Manician connection. See
Augustine's 'On Religion' to see his argument against the Manacians. He believed that evil does not come from
without, but from within one's soul.
The Donatists.[1]
In 303, the dioclian persecution of the Christians. This persecution by the
emperor Dioclian began with the expulsion of Christians from civil service and
military. Then, Bishops were called to
hand over church property. Those who did
were called triatus (traitor) Bishops.
These Bishops collaborated with the Roman government. What was the Church to do with them. In 311,
a Bishop was elected to the Church
of Carthage Church
of Carthage Constantine went with the Catholic Church against the
Donatists who had collaborated with Rome . Augustine was involved in the Catholic
campaign against the Donatists. The
Catholic Church in N. Africa was corrupt. Augustine sought to get rid of it. In 393, there was a Council or Carthage at which
Augustine preached against immorality and corruption in the Catholic
Church. In 405, the Roman emperor
decreed that Donatism was a heracy. The
early church did not put people to death for their principles. This was a Midaeval invention in the
Church. Rather, economic and social
pressures were used in the early Church.
In the end, Augustine resorted to force such as imprisonments to get the
Donatists back. The Emperor Cleontheos
held a council in 411 to resolve these problems. Donatist clergy were to be banished. The
death penalty was not applied. Augustine
was converted to the Catholic Church in Italy , but his mother was a N.
African Christian. He wanted to be part
of the universal church, so he went with the Catholic Church. Augustine supported the Catholic practice of
accepting other Christians by the laying on of hands, rather than re-baptism.
So, he recognized the sacraments outside the Catholic Church as valid. But, he did not regard them as effective. Augustine was also against the Donatists
because he thought they were separating the wheat from the chaff before the
harvest(the eschatological judgment). He
had the idea of the invisible church in heaven. Augustine held that there was
wheat and chaff in the Catholic Church, so why did he claim that baptism
removes original sin? The Donatist view
of the elect separated from the chaff before the final judgment is the source
Calvin's predestination.
Peligianism. Pelegius lived in the early 400's. He was in Rome
in 410 when it was sacked, so he went to N. Africa and then to Palestine .
He was very interested in the Desert Fathers (ascetical movement which
began in the fourth century as a reaction against the worldliness of the Church
then). Peligius spoke of the elite and
non-elite whereas Augustine held that there is both wheat and chaff in the
Church. Peligius emphasized the power of
free choice. Grace is divine assistence,
rather than being anticendent to virtue.
We are capable due to our free-will of taking the first step toward
God. Grace then assists us as rules and
guidance. All humans can make this first
step, but few actually would. He may be
more pessimistic than Augustine about who will be saved. Augustine did not have Plegius' elitism. Plegius did not believe in original sin. Augustine's view: because infants were
baptized, there are sins in them, but they don't know what they are doing and
so could not have sinned themselves, so it must have been the sin of their
parents...back to Adam and Eve that is washed away. The Eastern view was that baptism does not
wash away sin, but gives one entrance into the body of Christ by entering his
Church.
1/24/96
The Soliloques
Augustine was converted in 386. He soon thereafter wrote this text. It looks like a 'dress rehersal' to The
Confessions. He presupposes that
individuals are part of a world soul, so an individual soul is not cut off from
other souls. The soul is the image of
God. He had a view in his early works
that only a few would be saved. Greer:
this elitism is not in his later view; in fact, he later attacked the elitism
of Pleginism.
Bk
1: To describe broadly what it means for the soul to ascend to God. For this,
the soul must be immortal. Introduction: Prayer, Knowledge of God is unique,
Sensible and Intelligible vision, Examination of the moral state. Bk 2: That
the soul is immortal. Restatement of the
problem, Sense knowledge--truth is independent of perciprent, no absolute truth
in sense world, school disciplines=truth so the soul is is immortal,
difficulties, recapulation.
Bk. 1. The Prayer(i.2-6):
In the City of God, evil and good, seeing in the moral realm, are
ordered together ultimately by God. In
the Prayer here, however, there is not the emphasis on God's soverienty in
ordering the evil with the good. His use
of purification (i.3) shows that he is using Origen's three stages of ascent to
God: moral purity, intellectual understanding of God as the source of the
unitive order(illuminative), and union.
But for Augustine, there is only moral purification and mystical contemplation
and thus union with God. Moral
purification is a prerequisite to the vision of God. But Augustine also states (i.3) that prayer
(contemplation of God) leads to right conduct (moral purity). Greer: the relationship seems to go both
ways. He states that we can seek God
(i.6); what role does grace play? Is it
in our seeking? Does this imply no
original sin. Plato calls the first
principle 'being' (as truth, the good, and the beautiful), whereas Christians
usually call God 'He who is'. A personification. Augustine views God as 'my Father' as well as
being, the good, and the beautiful. He
places the soul between this and non-being.
The soul is capable within limit of having choice (within God's law) of
moving toward or away from God (i. 4).
Greer: this choice has to do with moral purification. By the end of book 1, admits that the will
can be trained to choose the Good, but that moral purification necessary for
contemplation and a vision of God is doubtful.
Against the Platonists, to know the good is not necessarily to do it(be
virtuous). For Augustine, sensuous
knowledge is the lowest form of knowledge, conception (arranging sense
perception) is next, then 'knowledge' (moral knowledge--how to live the right
life), and finally wisdom(being united to God, contemplative vision of Him).
Greer: In having the soul united with God, the creator/creation distinction is
risked; for Plato, this is not a problem because he view the soul as being of
God. Later, he will use knowing and
loving as the same thing. Even so, the
later Augustine uses 'love' moreso than 'knowing'.
Knowledge of God is Unique & Sensible and Intelligent
Vision. Augustine's doctrine of illumination.
See 7.12 and 8.15. Plato's Meno is a text on whether virtue can be
taught. Immortality of the soul is
presumed. All learning is
recollection. Souls have previously
existed in a heavenly realm; knowledge therein is 'remembered' when the soul is
in the world. Augustine's doctrine is
much like this. But he claims in his
Retractions that by illumination he did not mean something forgotten and
remembered. Greer: Augustine did not
believe in the pre-existence of souls (before the body exists). Also, Augustine does see a transcendence as
it can be illumined. Illumination is not
like knowledge of other people or like sense knowledge(iii.8). Knowledge of God is beyond these. The knowlege and objects of mathematical
knowledge are both different in kind from the knowledge and object of the
knowledge of God (v. 11). Knowledge of God
involves rejoicing whereas the other knowledge does not. Also, God as an object is different than
mathematical objects (see Confessions, bk. 10).
The image of God is lost even when found, unlike that of mathematical
figures. Also unlike math objects, God
draws us to Him. Also, the figure of a circle on earth is not the same as the
form 'circle'. God is of the
latter. Greer: So Augustine should not
say that school disciplines are truth; rather, he ought to say that God is
truth.
Sense
knowledge (darkness) is an impediment; he notes that darkness is one of his
loves, and this is an impediment(xiv.25).
Examination of the Moral
State
Bk. 2. Restatement of the Problem. I know that I exist and
think, but I don't know that my soul is immortal. Seems Cartesian. Greer: but he does not want to locate truth
in the reciprient but in God. Reality is
not here located in the perceiving subject. The subject does not give the object meaning
and order. Augustine did not have a
subject/object dichotomy. Sense
Knowlege--Truth is Independent of the Percipient, Truth is not in the senses,
as the latter can be confused and thus change whereas truth does not
change. In the sense realm, truth and
falsehood are intertwined. We should seek the absolute True. His proof on the
immortality of the soul: if truth is in rational disciplines, and these
disciplines are in the mind, then truth is in the soul. Truth does not change and is thus
everlasting. So, our souls are
immortal. Greer: but if the souls
perish, would not truth remain? So, that
the truth is everlasting does not necessarily mean that the soul is
immortal. Perhaps he is setting up a
straw-man argument that he would later demolish in a later book.
1/31/96
On True Religion
The Christian Platonist party-line. He wrote it in 390 after he had returned to N. Africa . More so
than an argument against Maniceeism, it is a work on his positive view of
Christianity. To Augustine, Christianity
existed before Jesus; that there were pre-Jesus people who have been
redeemed. Calvin, too, argued so--that
the elect include people who lived before Jesus. Greer: there are several universal salvation
passages in Scripture that Augustine and Calvin need to confront. The risk of a universalist position: if I'm
going to get there anyway, why try?
1-11 Christ has achieved what Plato sought in vain. Augustine has Plato's disciple want to be
purified morally--to have his focus on the eternal rather than the
transient. He calls for a man
(presumably Jesus) who could explain this to the people. Plato says that such a man would be inspired
by the wisdom of God. See Confessions, ch. 7.17. It falls short of the doctrine of the
incarnation. Was this to make Plato's
message here acceptable to the multitude.
Early Augustine had trouble with the doctrine of the incarnation. But in sec. 30, Augustine states the
incarnation, but this is party-line language of Nicene orthodoxy. So, this may not have been his real view.
Consider the function he posits of the incarnation: revelatory of truths about
God and mankind. He goes on to discuss Jesus'
teaching. So, he showed Jesus' message
as concerned with morals. It is by
persuasion, so no irresistable grace here.
Prevalient grace is absent here, unlike in the later Augustine. So, what of sin and the human condition?
12-20
Address to Romanianus. Hold to the
Catholic beliefs as well as to its community.
Growing in the Christian life had been internal--we have an innate
yearning for God that each of us can nourish(faith, as intuition, is within the
individual); Augustine held this, and added external devises such as the Church
and the Christian community as well.A corporate theme here. Is it that he did not trust himself?
21-44 Fall and redemption.
Sin is our fault, but is a good thing because it teaches us (we can
learn by our mistakes). Greer: this is a
basic Christian Platonist view. The view
was that sin is in choosing a lesser good over a greater good, rather than
choosing to turn from God(choosing to do something bad) as the later Augustine
would argue. This capacity to make
choices makes sin a necessary part of growing up from ignorance. The later Augustine claims that Adam did not
have ignorance but sinned anyway.
Augustine was the first to claim that Adam deliberately chose evil. In the early Augustine, the punishment for
Adam's sin (then seen as out of ignorance) is that our bodies became weak and
mortal as punishment. No hint of
spiritual and eternal death that the later Augustine includes in the
punishment. Thus it follows that man can attain the good. The early Augustine thought that Adam would
have passed into his resurrected body had he not sinned, implying that to be
immortal would be to include some instability between the soul and body, but
that we could attain the good anyway.
In contrast, the later Augustine claimed that there was some instability
in Adam's relationship with God before he fell. He sinned not out of ignorance,
but he knew that he was sinning. This implies that we would not have capacity
to attain the good even had Adam not fallen.
But, the early Augustine claims that Adam was perfect to begin
with.
Christian Platonism views sin as consequent of ignorance
rather than intension to turn from God.
It has a relatively positive view of the soul in ascending to God. God
orders good and evil together for the beauty of the cosmos. The soul is a part
of this whole. The later Augustine uses this, but is less optimistic of the
soul's ability to ascend to God, being less Platonic. But the later Augustine is more Plotonic in
seeing the human nature and the world of the senses as bad. The early Augustine was Platonic in
emphasizing the soul positively, but he takes Christian doctrines of
resurrection of the body and the good of creation to modify this stance,
claiming that the soul pulls the body along with it to God. Platonism: the body is left behind, and there
are the pre-existence and transmigration of souls (agn. Christian belief);
Augustine rejects this, and applies the rest of Platonism to Christian
doctrines. In the later Augustine, he is
both more and less Platonic than he was in his early writings.
Plotinus made a similar claim; namely, that the One orders
good and evil for the beauty of the whole.
Greer: he was concerned with outward evils whereas Augustine expanded
this idea to include moral evil.
Christian Platonism does not make a distinction between this life and
the life to come, while the later Augustine did. Human and angelic misuse of free will causes
sin. God set up the conditions for this,
though did not intend it. God does not
cause evil (as non-being), but set the conditions for it. Evil is not created. For the Christian Platonists, God permitting
evil chooses to limit his sovereignty, responding not coercively but by
persuation. The later Augustine refutes
any loss of God's sovereignty. God would
not have permitted evil had He not been able to use it for the greater good of
the cosmos. God brings good out of evil
not just by election, but by punishing evil.
He then elects the righteous out of mercy. Greer: but this is to say that God is
responsible for evil. The later Augustine emphased the distinction between this
and the after-life. We are foreigners,
happy only in hope for the after-life. Origen: universal salvation, so evil is
eventually done away with in the end.
Augustine: salvation for the elect, so evil is merely tamed in the
end. see John Hick, Evil and the God of Love.
45-71 God's methods: authority and reason
72-106 Obstacles to redemption. 1 Jn. 2.16
lust, curiosity, and pride. Lust
has to do with the body, curiosity has to do with intellect and knowledge, and
pride seems to be the opposite of love.
By lust, he is thinking of all bodily desires, including sexual
desire. Greer: Paul's 'there will be no
male or female' is not to say that the two genders are equal, but that there
will be no sex in the kingdom. Augustine
believed this at first, implying that Adam and Eve would not have had sex had
they not fallen. But later, Augustine
retracted this stance because it implied that beings are born in order to
die. On curiousity: ideally, it aims at
the joy of knowing things. He is
referring to wanting to know things that don't do one any good. On Pride: it is a turning away from God. These three may refer to the three stages of
ascending to God: moral purification, intellectual understanding of
God(illumination), and union with God.
But Augustine (and Scripture) do not order lust, curiosity, and pride in
this order.
The metaphor of the threshing floor is salient in
Augustine. For him, it is the church,
where the wheat is separated from the chaff.
But in the Donatist controversy, he reinterprets it to mean the end when
the separation will be done by God.
2/7/96
On Free Will
It is on the source of evil.
He started with book one in 387 just after being baptized; he wrote
books two and three in 394. Is there a
shift in his thought between these times?
Moreover, is the work a positive account of evil, or a reaction against
the Maniceeians? The Plegians picked up
this work in 412. Greer: it is not
primarily an anti-Maniceeian project, nonetheless, viewing evil as caused by
the human will contradicts the Maniceeian view.
In his retractions, Augustine wants to say that he is not a
Pelagian. Greer: it really is a treatise
on the origins of evil. So don't seek to understand his contradictions as being
from reactions to the Maniceeians and Pelegians. His method: faith seeking
understanding. From Anselm on, this
method has been understood that a demonstration of the faith would procede from
the understanding; implication being that there can be a rational demonstration
of one's faith. Augustine, in constrast,
does not emphasize understanding but faith is salient. So,
understanding is merely to make sense of the faith rather than to
demonstrate it. The Cappadocians: faith
giving fullness to reason; start with rational arguments and use faith to but
them together, ending in the mystery of faith.
If God gave us free-will which causes evil, then would not
God be the cause of evil? Also, if God
gave us freedom to choose the good, why would we choose evil? Why did Adam choose evil? Does Augustine compromise his claim that God
is good?
Evil is something we do, rather than the suffering
itself. It is choosing a lower love over
a higher love. The suffering is
retributive and educational, from God.
The Christian platonist narrowing of evil.
Lk. 13--Jesus rejects the moral retribution of evil. In the O.T., there is a strain of punishment
going through the generations and another strain of punishment as being
retributive--even extending to natural disasters. Augustine: the suffering from evil does not
extend to natural disasters. Greer:
Augustine emphasizes the origin rather than effects of evil, so questions on
suffering are not necessarily resolved by him.
So, he is not necessarily contradicting Jesus.
The origins of evil.
God gave man the capacity to know the good because the eternal law is
stamped on our hearts and minds. So, the
good will would be exercised with right reason if our will would go along with
this knowledge. Acting with right
reason and desiring happiness are the same.
So, it should be easy to will the good.
So, why are so many people unhappy? He distinguishes between our
capacity to choose and the condition of our wills. The former is undercut by the condition of
one's will. Free choice as distinct from
the will. Even though we want the good,
having the capacity to know and choose it, the condition of one's will causes
us to choose lessor goods and thus have unhappiness. So, the question that he is addressing is why
would one use the will wrongly. It was
not clear in his time what the will (wish, desire, will) is. What is a good will? He understands the will as a desire or wish
for a better orientation or disposition of the soul(basic personality). Free choices flow from such a
dispostion. The will represents the
motive for the free choices (the actual choices, seen here as actions) that are
made by the will. Like character and the
actions that flow from it. There is a
sort of original sin doctrine here in this penal state of the disposition. God has given us the capacity to know and act
on the good: implication being that we can save ourselves. But we don't, so there must be something in
us or our experience that gets in the way.
Esp. in The City of God,
he claims that the bodily passions rebel against the soul in the same way that
the soul rebels against God. The bodily
passions are thus a punishment. The soul
should control the body. The evil will
may well be equated with the passions.
The four virtues are of control over passions.
According to Greer, we are not able of ourselves to move
toward the good. The penal condition is
ignorance and difficulty, which do not seem to be debilitating. But, it is in despising the one who is
willing to heal these that we lack the capacity on our own to do the good. We retain one capacity: the ability to ask
for help, if we despise the one who can heal our ignorance and difficulty, we
would not ask for help and thus not be healed such that we could will and choose
the highest good. This is not a doctrine
of sovereign or prevalient grace. In the
later Augustine, grace comes to us rather than us asking for it.
According to Greer, to choose is like making a movement. According to Plato, we always seek to move
toward the good, even if it turns out that it was not in retrospect such a good
good. Augustine agrees with this in this
text, but the later Augustine claims that man can choose evil itself. To Augustine, the highest good is peace in
eternal life.
On morality: Augustine has certain virtues that one should
follow. Nothing in human life (including
human life itself) is eternal and unchanging, and thus the highest good. So, his virtues do not come out of human
experience but from the proper soul-God relation, out of which the body-soul
relation as proper is seen.
Augustine
may well be really concerned about the degree to which human motivation comes
from us as distinct from a source outside.
Good and evil are opposites that God orders together
by punishing evil to put it in its place. This is his immediate solution to the
problem of evil: evil is not gone, but is tamed. This is distinct from the view that evil is
the deprivation of the good and being. This implies that evil will go
away. The Greek philosophers, as well as
the Cappadocian fathers, used the deprivation framework.
2/20/96
City of God
In 410, Rome was sacked by Aleric. Much of the Roman aristocracy moved to N.
Africa. Augustine's polemic is addressed
to these aristocratic pagans. Greer: he
is really dealing with the problem of evil.
It pertained to a culture war.
Augustine is trying to impose a Christian culture on the pagan culture
which was at Rome and was being exported to N. Africa. Peter Brown: Augustine's culture is much looser
and freer.
On Scripture: it enables us to discover things that we could
not know by ourselves. A high view of
the importance of Scripture. The meaning
of Scripture coheres with the rule of faith.
The rule of faith acts as a criterion, making limits on validity, rather
than telling which interpretation is correct.
There could be a range of interpretations within this range. He also states that any interpretation that
is of compassion to our neighbor is valid: the rule of charity. Greer: the historical critical method
supposes one correct interpretation.
Hersh, Validity in Interpretation: it is possible to show incorrect
interpretations, but this does not mean that there is only one correct
interpretation. A problem with Augustine: what limits the rule of faith? Scripture. Greer: circular. Bishops and councils. Or, reception: the rule of faith is that
which is accepted by the church members.
Like the development of doctrine of Neuman: doctrine in a process of
organic growth. Augustine's Rule of
Faith is wider than the creed. Holding
fast to the Catholic (narrow--against Donatists) faith--the creed and the
beliefs of the Christians.
So, Augustine had two hermeneutical principles: rule of faith
and charity. Childs: does not go beyond
the text whereas Augustine does. Problem
with Childs: there can be many canons within the canon. Who chose between them? Rule of faith brings in a criterion external
to the text to limit the range of valid interpretations. To say that there is only one canon would be
to ignore the differences in Scripture.
But emphasizing the differences can lead to picking and choosing.
Augustine assumes that Scripture merely instructs rather than
changes people (like modern Protestantism).
Thus, he does not consider the relation of his two principles. For instance, would he have said that an
interpretation valid by the rule of faith would be invalid if it were applied
without compassion? Consider his
persecution of the Donatists because of an interpretation of the text that he
held to be valid according to the rule of faith.
Augustine uses not only literal and figurative but the
allegorical as well. For instance, he
sees the light of Genesis as referring to the angels' creation. He considers this to be the literal meaning,
using the text as narrative (story). But
it looks allegorical. To what extent is
the meaning of the text taken a function of the historical context of the
interpretor. Greer: a conflicted view of
Scripture. Augustine had used allegory
to accept the O.T., but by the later Augustine he is suspicious of the
allegorical interpretation, preferring the narrative meaning.
Augustine is troubled by why the angels fell. Two forms of the dilemma: 1. the angels were
created unequal. After the fall of the
bad angels, the good angels are vindicated in their persiverence. The assurance of happiness. 2. The angels were given different degrees of
grace. Greer: but these imply that God
caused the fall of some angels, rather than that the angels played a role in their
fall. The problem that worried him: if
the angels had the knowledge of the good, why didn't all of them act on
it. Plato would have assumed that they
would. Greer: the most evil thing about
evil is that it can't be explained; it is utterly meanless. But God is beyond
explanation too. The pear tree, for instance.
Throwing pears at pigs being evil implies that it is the motive that is
salient. So, Augustine is against a consequentialist
ethic. Augustine's question: can I
motivate myself? Does motivation come
from us or from God? He can't explain where the evil is coming from. Greer: if he is arguing that motivation is something that happens to us,
rather than being a coercive act of God, it begins to make sense. The late Augustine does not want to claim
that the motivation comes from our will, as that is determined by prevenient
grace.
Time is a way of talking about the fallen order. Time and becoming are both fallened. Eternity and being: a way of taking of the
restored order. Goal: being God. Greer: time in the created order can also lead
to fallen time (distentio). Moving from
such time to God's (intentio time) is by extentio(extended time). Time as becoming is a movement is not
necessarily evil. But Augustine
experiences time in its fallen mode (dispersion). He sees extended motion as leading us from
multiplicity to God's unity(intentio).
He wants to make clear that heaven is not co-eternal with God but does not
have a past, present, or future. So, the
creature in heaven does not become God but delights in God. The intentio of God is beyond time as we
know it but stops short of God's
eternity. It does not admit to the eschatological
timeless time or to the time before creation, but does not have a past,
present, or future. This is the city of
God. A timeless time.
Gregory of Nyssa: the highest form of the spiritual life is a
movement toward infinity--towards a mystical union with God. This seems similar to the movement toward God
described by Augustine. Both: God is
infinity. Plotinos: God is not just
being, but is beyond being. Plato uses
'being' in impersonal terms whereas Christians used it in personal terms. Greer: if God is infinity, he is beyond all
affirmations and denials. Even to talk
of God in personal terms then would be an anthromophism rather than an
affirmation of what God is. It would
seem an idolitry (worshipping ourselves).
But avoiding personal terms for God could get one to deism, pantheism,
or atheism. According to Brown,
Augustine's pilgrimmage: goes from neoplatonism to asceticism to Bishop. Thus, a trend of increasing corporality in
his thought.
2/28/96
City of God, Bks 13 and 14. 14.4: If you live by God's
standards, you would be gods. Theosis,
or divination: as coming as like God as possible, rather than actually becoming
God. Otherwise, it would break the
divide between Creator and creatures.
Plato thought it was man's goal to become as much like God as possible. Also, 2 Peter, becoming as much like God as
possible. 14.13: Adam and Eve would have
been more like God had they not sought to be like God but to be obedient to God
according to their own true natures.
Augustine: Adam would not have died had he not sinned. Death as unnatural to our true natures. Death is a penalty for sin. Augustine: there would still be a period of
growth for Adam and Eve for them to develop, even if they had not sinned. Does
this mean that God created them as having some instability--that they would
need to develop? As such, it was
possible that they not sin. Why then did
Adam and Eve not choose this? Their lack
of knowledge. 14.13: on the sin of
Adam. An evil will was the beginning of
the act of disobedience. Pride, the
longing for a perverse occupation, or loving oneself rather than God, is the
source of the evil will. So, the
punishment included rebellion of the flesh against the mind (just as the will
had rebelled against God). 14.16: Adam and Eve would have had passions in sex
before the fall. They would have had voluntary control over it. The same emotion can be good or bad (Gregory
of Nyssa); the idea of control is the key: when the mind controls the body and
personality, the passions are good. For
instance, sexual passions can be good or bad.
Adam and Eve would have had control over their passions rather than no
passion before the fall. So, sexuality is not a product of the fall.
After the fall, the mind does not have complete control over the body. So even in marriage, passions of sex are not
always used as they would have been before the fall.
Augustine sees large gaps between the pre-fall condition, the
earthly (fallen) state, and the world to come.
Does he make for a continuity through this? The consequence of the fall begins with the
death of the soul(spiritual death--being separated from God) immediately after
the eating of the tree. The death of
body(physical death) follows later. The spiritual death of the soul was
necessary for the first resurrection which is the beginning of the world to come. Sin followed by by death, but the redeemer
transforms the meaning of that death so it can give rise to death. As in Adam all died, all will live in
Christ. See Romans 5. Augustine: not that all will live in Christ;
rather, only anyone must go through Christ to be redeemed. At the end of the world, God will reunify
bodies and souls; the elect having in this a second birth to heaven and the
others having a second death to torment.
Christ makes death which is bad actually good for the elect. Greer: the meaning of Christianity is that
Christ is victorious over death (original sin--spiritual and physical
death). Later theologians held sin to
the problem rather than death. Cross of
a sign of victory or atonement. Since
then, the church has turned from an emphasis on sin to one of reforming
society's social ills.
Original sin and prevalient grace are major themes in the
late Augustine. Original sin: even the
good things we do are corrupted by mixed motivation; it is not that we can't do
anything good or have good motive; rather, it is that we now have bad
motives. God's justice is in the
punishment for Adam's sin and his mercy is in choosing the elect. Greer: is God's justice really separated from
his mercy. This separation may come from
Rom. 9: God alone chooses the elect.
Augustine: we can't explain or understand God's judgments. Both the wheat and the chaff are in the
church. Augustine's high view of prevalient grace became the ground floor of
Medieval theology out of which can the extreme of Calvin's double
pre-destination.
The Passions: Bk. 14. 14.6: the character of the human will
determines whether the emotions are good or bad. A rightly directed will is love and good
sense. 14.8: the emotions of the wise
according to the Stoics: will is good, desire is bad, joy is good, . Key: how the emotions are directed. The degree of control the mind has over the
body is thus crucial. If your love is
right, then all the accompanying emotions are right. So,
it is not the case that emotions should be eliminated. The emotions must be rightly ordered and under
control of the mind. In the resurrected
life, there is love and gladness but not fear or pain. Some emotions do not
continue. The emotions that continue are
ordered rightly and controlled by the will.
A trend toward unitary from multiplicity in the movement in the
resurrected life. Remembering,
understanding, and loving come together.
The persistance of the fall shows itself in that we still sin
and don't have perfect control of our passions (body). The elect sin but can't lose their relation
to God. Like the mortal and venial sin
distinction in later Catholocism.
3/6/96
City of God, Bks 15-16: Bk.s 15-18 concern tracing the development of
the two cities. It is not just
allegorical. Augustine used his Latin
O.T. which translated the Greek which translated the Hebrew. 15.9, for instance, the number of people is
to be taken literally. Later, the years
are our years. So, not all
allegory. In 15.16, he reconciles the
discrepancy in the time that it took Adam and Eve to have children that have
been given by the Greek and Hebrew versions of Hebrew scripture. He views some matters as historical and
others as allegorical. But he would not deny that a text passage can be taken
as historical and allegorical. The late
Augustine unlike the early Augustine does not see the link between the O.T. and
N.T. as being purely allegorically but allegorically and historically(narrative
meaning). Further, when the Hebrew and
Greek (Septuigent) can't be reconciled, go with the Hebrew version. This is not to say that he refutes that the
Septuigent is inspired. The Spirit says
somethings through the prophets and the translators (both/and), but also some
things only through the prophets and some things only through the
translators.
On relating the narrative meaning to the allegorical: this is
also a mess. Unlike the early Augustine,
the late Augustine takes some passages as being literal rather than
allegorical. For instance, he takes Abel
and Kain as being the first ones in the respective cities. He sees historical
lines coming out of them as constituting the two cities, respectively. But then he has trouble showing that there
are citizens (sons of God) of the heavenly city between the time of Noah and
Moses. It looks like they end before the flood. Also, he resists identifying
the earthly city with Rome and the heavenly city with the church(this would be
allegory). There is predestination in the text: by grace. Bk 15.2.
On how people can be citizens of the city of God before Jesus? Jesus' resurrection dedicated the city, thus
establishing it, so how can there be citizens of it before Jesus. 18.47: Job
demonstrates that there were those in Israel as well as of other nations
that were in the city. Proleptically,
they were elected by their foreknowledge of Christ. Christ, before he became a man,
fore-announced himself through the prophets to which the elect then could have
heard and turned around. See Romans 4:
Abraham justified by faith. Greer:
Augustine is not much interested in the relation of one time to another. Time, and Jesus, drops out of the
picture. Augustine views the successive historical
epochs as being like the growth of a human being. But does not everything get sucked into the
time of Jesus, abstracted from the way in which events unfold themselves in
time. Augustine wants to show how
everything is in Christ (and yet leaves Jesus out of the picture, focusing
instead on grace). He lies hidden in the
O.T. and revealed in the N.T. So,
whereas obedience to God led to friendship with God in the O.T., friendship
with God leads to obedience in the N.T.
Christ as a lense. Greer:
Augustine is not so much interested in the Christian story (he doesn't tell the
story of the N.T.) per se, but is interested in responses to Christ. History and Jesus himself are neglected by
Augustine as he abstracts the response-types to particular individuals and
epoches. For instance, Augustine takes
the church to be invisible, rather than that in history.
16.2: the unity of the historical and allegorical meanings
should be maintained. So, the O.T. text
has a double-meaning. A narrative of
history and a prophesy of the city of God . Only historical events which show a prophesy
of things to come are 'true narrative' and included. So, the Bible is a (selected) true narrative.
[1]
See
W. R. Friend, The Donatist Church.
