Western North African Christianity

Augustine of Hippo

For AugustineÕs Life:

See James J. OÕDonnell, Augustine the African

AugustineÕs Theology:

AugustineÕs thought can be conveniently divided into four main issues, with his responses to each of the four.

Manicheanism, Neoplatonism & the Problem of Evil

Much of AugustineÕs early intellectual pilgrimage was wrapped around his struggles with the nature of evil. AugustineÕs mother, Monica, had raised him as a north African Christian. Christianity in North Africa had a lively sense of the reality and pervasiveness of evil. As he was growing up, Augustine rejected the Christian (both Catholic and Donatist) anwer to the problem of evil, largely because he saw Christianty as an unsophisticated religion for peasants and women.

He turned first to Manicheanism, a dualistic religion that resolved the problem of evil by blaming it on the powers of an evil god, and explained the history of the universe as an eternal struggle between two equal forces. After a number of years as a Manichean "hearer", Augustine rejected the Manichean worldview because he believed it was based on bad science [Confessions Book V].

Augustine then turned to Neoplatonic philosophy, which allowed him to explaine the existence of evil in a way that satisfied him even after his full conversion to Christianity. For Augustine, evil has no reality in itself, but is merely the absence of good, just as darkness has no reality in itself, but is merely the absence of light Ñone does not "turn on" the dark, one "turns off" the light. As such evil, or sin, is the choosing of the lesser good when one ought to choose a greater good. For example, the sin of gluttony is the result of loving food too much, or loving food more than loving justice or good health.

Donatists, Predestination and the Nature of the Church

After he became a Christian, Augustine found himself drafted into become the bishop of Hippo Regis in North Africa. The first set of controversies he found himself embroiled in involved the Donatists, who drove him to consider the basic nature of the Church.

Donatists argued that the church was an assembly of righteous saints ranged over against an evil world, and validated their faith through the experience of persecution, which some Donatists brought on deliberately. Their understanding of the church was highly localized, and in their rigor they argued that the sacraments had to be administered by a priest who was himself righteous and in a state of virtue.

Augustine was far less optimistic about the possibility of ensuring a truly virtuous clergy and far more concerned about GodÕs role in the sacraments than in the role of the human agent. He distinguished sharply between the visible church, which he saw as a human institution, and the invisible church which he saw as the Bride of Christ and the company of all the saints. The visible church, he believed, mingled saints and sinners in an indistinguishable conglomeration that would not be sorted out until the day of judgement. The invisible church, he believed, consisted of those whom God had chosen to be his saints, not through any virtue of their own, but by GodÕs mercy and grace. God channeled his grace through the sacraments, administered by the visible church. Because Augustine stressed GodÕs role in the sacrament, he didnÕt really worry about whether the human agent Ñ the priest Ñ was a virtuous man. As long as he was properly ordained by the church as institution, he could validly administer sacraments whose real power and effectiveness came from the fact that God was at work through the physiucal elements of water, bread and wine. As WHC Frend phrased it "the church is the people of God bound together by the sacraments, whose head and root is not the individual pastor, but Christ himself."

Pelagianism, Original Sin & Salvation by Grace

AugustineÕs third great controversy was with Pelagius, a British monk almost his same age. Pelagius made a career for himself in Rome and then after Rome fell, in and around Jerusalem. He had gained a great reputation for being devout and austere. Pelagius believed that Christians were accountable for their obedience and that the Christian life was one of constant effort through which a Christian could overcome sin and win salvation.

For Pelagius it was very important that humans were free beings who made free choices, he held that the will was central to being human. He also believed that it would not be fair for God to punish sin if humans could not avoid sinning. Therefore he believed that it was humanly possilble to refrain from all sin. Along with that he held that humans tend to sin because they imitate their parents and all other persons around them, and have done so since Adam and Eve first sinned in the Garden of Eden.

Augustine encountered Pelagianism in North Africa in the person of Celestius one of PelagiusÕ followers who also escaped Rome, but had fled to Carthage, where he applied for ordination, but was denied on the grounds that his views were heretical.

Augustine attacked Pelagianism on two levels: the doctrine of original sin and its theological counterpart the doctrine of salvation by grace alone. In the first place Augustine believed that every human being since the fall of Adam and Eve has been inherently sinful. While Augustine did not deny that humans make free choices, he did deny that any of those free choices could avoid sinfulness. For him, the only human who could ever be free from sin was Jesus Christ. This then also meant that the only way out of sin, the only route to salvation was by the free grace of God, which has been given to each member of GodÕs elect. All the intititiative in the process of salvation, therefore, comes from God. Humans, according to Augustine, have nothing to do with their own salvation.

The Fall of Rome, history and the City of God

AugustineÕs final controversy came after the turn of the fifth century, as the barbarians sacked Rome, the first successful invasion in 800 years, and later invaded North Africa. Since the sack of Rome came within living memory of the abolition of pagan worship by the Emperor Theodosius in 391, Romans began to wonder whether embracing Christianity had caused Rome to fall. Augustine replied in his masterful work, The City of God.

In the City of God, Augustine wove together predestination, original sin and the contrast between the visible and the invisible church to create a Christian understanding of history.

Augustine began with the premise that the world is divided into two basic communities. One community consists of those who love God more than anything else (and so choose the greatest good over all lesser goods), who are predestined to eternal life, and who are members of the invisible church. The other community consists of those who love themselves more than they love God. Augustine called the first community the City of God and the second he called the City of Man. In his view Rome was a physical representation of the City of Man, while the church was a physical representation of the City of God. These two communities are ultimately irreconcilably opposed to one another Ñ this is the cosmic battle between God, his holy angels and the City of God on earth on the one hand and Satan, the demons, and the City of Man on earth on the other hand. Having said that, he also believed that the real members of the two cities were entirely mingled in this life, with members of the City of God scattered throughout the secular city, and members of the City of Man sprinkled throughout the church. He believed that priests and bishops could be and were not of the elect, but rather of the City of Man, finding pleasure and power in their ecclesiastical office and using their ecclesiastical offices to serve themselves rather than serving God. He also believed that the two communities can and do share many goals Ñ the example he used was peace. The City of Man values peace and works for it Ñ and Christians can help them work for earthly peace and forge an alliance with the City of Man in so doing Ñ but the City of God also seeks eternal peace with God and for God, and in that sense is utterly different from the City of Man.

Augustine used this model to explain why God, who had used the city of Rome to prepare the way for the coming of Christ, no longer needed it now that Christ had come and the gospel had spread. It therefore made all the sense in the world that God would cheerfully discard Rome to set up a new dominant world power

The place to begin further study of Augustine is: http://www.spu.edu/~hawk/augustineh.html A central site with lots of links to biographies and texts.

On AugustineÕs mother, Monica, see http://www.gospelcom.net/chi/glimpses/seventyfour.html

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Augustine of Hippo