Augustine of Hippo (354-430)

A Concise Encyclopedia of the Philosophy of Religion
by Anthony C. Thiselton, M.Th., Ph.D., D.D.

(Page 7 of 9)

Augustine of Hippo (354-430)

Together with Plato, Aristotle and Thomas AQUINAS, Augustine may be counted among the four most influential thinkers who shaped Western philosophy before the Renaissance. He is widely viewed as the first great Christian philosopher, and his theology permanently influenced Catholic and Protestant theology in the West. He produced the largest body of Christian writings of the first millennium.

LIFE

Augustine was born in Thagaste, North Africa, and was educated, and taught rhetoric, in Carthage. He did not come formally to Christian faith until the age of thirty-two. In spite of the influence of his Christian mother, Monica, he had found Christianity insufficiently compatible with reason to be credible. In early years he fell under the influence of Manichaeanism, which he found more intellectually acceptable than Christianity. However, disillusion set in. He remained closer to NEOPLATONISM, even if as a Christian who viewed the Incarnation as decisively distinctive of Christian faith.

Augustine taught rhetoric also at Rome and Milan, and came to Christian faith (386-7) partly through reading the Bible (the famous tolle, lege, 'take up and read', which prompted his reading of Romans 13:13-14), and partly through the influence of Ambrose, Bishop of Milan. He returned to North Africa (388), was ordained in 391, and was made Bishop of Hippo in 395 until his death in 430.

WRITINGS

The enormous range and scope of his writings may invite possible misinterpretations if specific treatises by Augustine are cut loose from their context and purposes. Many of his works attack 'heresies'. Thus much of his material on EVIL and CREATION forms part of his polemic against Manichaeanism; many observations on habit, will, GRACE and the Church form part of his attacks on the group known as Donatists; and much, but not all, of his work on FREE WILL and FREEDOM features within his attacks on a Pelagian notion of freedom as autonomous free choice.

Probably the least shaped by polemic are his widely read Confessions (397- 400), written in first-person narrative style, and the later Enchiridion (423), written as a 'little handbook' on Christian belief and discipleship. The framework chosen is that of the Creed and Lord's Prayer. Also in this late period Augustine produced his classic City of God (twenty-two books, 413-26), which addressed pagan interpretations of the fall of Rome to Alaric the Goth in 410. His philosophical theology can be seen in De Trinitate (On the Trinity, fifteen books, 400-16). Other works include numerous biblical commentaries and doctrinal treatises as well as letters and dialogues.

EARLIER WRITINGS: REASON, TRUTH AND KNOWLEDGE
OF GOD IN THE SOLILOQUIES (386-7)

The Soliloquies reveal an indebtedness to an earlier reading of Cicero's (lost) Hortensius for kindling Augustine's early interest in philosophy (consolidated in Confessions III: 4 and 7) as a search for wisdom, or 'blessedness'. A passion for intellectual enquiry remains common to philosophy and Christianity, and in his earlier works Augustine sees in this a close affinity in Neoplatonism. The Soliloquies are a dialogue between the writer and reason.

Nevertheless, Augustine argues, knowledge of God is unique. It is distinct both from knowledge of the sensual and from mathematical knowledge: 'My question is not what you know but how you know. Have you any knowledge that resembles knowledge of God?' (ibid., I: 5: 10).

Even in this very early work a perspective emerges which is common to such later Western thinkers as DESCARTES and KIERKEGAARD: the issue of knowing relates to a first-person 'I', whether it be the subject in Descartes or subjectivity in Kierkegaard. 'It is impossible to show God to a mind vitiated and sick. Only the healthy mind ... will attain vision' (ibid., 6: 12). reason is the power of the soul to look, but it does not follow that everyone who looks, sees ... 'Virtue ... is perfect reason' (ibid., 6: 13).

Truth, therefore, thereby concerns the will as well as the intellect (ibid., II: 5: 8). Augustine now moves into the area of Plato, Neoplatonism and PLOTINUS. What the senses perceive of the material world can be deceptive and false. 'Truth is eternal ... truth cannot perish' (ibid., 15: 27, 28). Truth, he then infers, belongs to the realm of 'the soul and God' who are 'immortal' (ibid., 18: 32).

LANGUAGE AND KNOWLEDGE IN THE TEACHER (389)

Augustine later expressed dissatisfaction with the Soliloquies as simplistic and confused. He develops his EPISTEMOLOGY further in De Magistro (The Teacher), but this time perceives the importance of issues about the currency of language. Some early sections may offer hostages to WITTGENSTEIN'S critique of REFERENTIAL THEORIES of meaning and OSTENSIVE DEFINITION. Yet even here Augustine recognizes that the circularity of explaining signs by other signs may reach firmer ground when we 'carry out action' (ibid., 4: 7).

Anticipating SCHLEIERMACHER and Wittgenstein, Augustine appeals to teaching, learning and training for understanding how we come to know meanings of signs in experience. Indeed, contrary to Wittgenstein's example from Augustine, 'pointing with the finger can indicate nothing but the object pointed out ... I cannot learn the thing ... nor the sign ... I am not interested in the act of pointing' (ibid., 10: 34). However, Augustine does perceive here the notion of 'Universals' as truth presiding over the mind.

EVIL AND FREEDOM IN ON FREE WILL (395-6)

De Libero Arbitrio (On Free Will) attacks the Manichaean account of the origin of evil. Augustine rejects their metaphysical DUALISM, as if evil were a positive entity at war with God. Evil has its origin in an evil act of will: 'God is not the author of evil' (On Free Will, I: 1: 1). Evil stems from a misdirected will behind the evil act (ibid., 5: 7). Contrary to some of his later anti-Pelagian writings, Augustine is here so concerned to emphasize the voluntary nature of evil acts that he portrays 'the rule of human mind' as able to resist the pull to evil (ibid., 10: 20). 'It is in the power of our will to enjoy or to be without ... a good' (ibid., 12: 26).

If God punishes evil deeds, 'that would be unjust unless the will was free not only to live aright but also to sin' (ibid., II: 1: 3). Even divine foreknowledge does not constrain free will. For divine omniscience means only that 'no future event [is] to escape his knowledge', not the imposition of compulsion to accord with some 'fixed' scenario (ibid., III: 4: 11).

All of this underlines the goodness of God. God's gifts are good, whether or not humankind chooses to misuse them. 'Why did you not use your free will for the purpose for which I gave it to you, that is, to do right?' (ibid., II: 1: 3).

SELFHOOD, SELF-AWARENESS: GOD AND
TIME IN THE CONFESSIONS (398)

This first-person narrative offers a retrospective interpretation of past moments and key issues from a theological perspective, in which God is addressed as Thou (see BUBER). Such first-person style places philosophy in a new key in terms of such issues as SELF, freedom and hedonism, subject and object, subjectivity and SELF-INVOLVEMENT and the experience of TIME. RYLE has illustrated the differences between 'observer' logic and 'participant' logic not only in such areas, but also in the generating of supposed paradoxes.

Augustine offers a sternly ethical and theological interpretation of the drive of the self for self-gratification and desire. The self is 'narrow' and capable of self-deception (Confessions, I: 4: 4; 5: 6). A child learns language to express the desires of the self (Wittgenstein's selective example of ostensive definition comes in ibid., 8: 13). Desire led, in his sixteenth year, to the theft of pears when 'my pleasure was not in what I stole but in the act of stealing' (ibid., II: 9: 17; cf. II: 4: 9; 6: 12).

Books III and IV recount Augustine's interest in philosophy, sparked by Cicero's Hortensius, his involvement with the Manichaeans, his study of Aristotle's Categories, and his first reflections on time as duration and timeliness (ibid., IV: 6 :11; 8: 13). Books VI and VII trace his journey through serious engagement with Neoplatonism to his eventual openness to the Epistle to the Romans and Scripture. While Platonism is right that 'God is for ever the same', God chooses to become humble and accessible through the bodily enfleshment of Jesus Christ (ibid., VII: 9: 14).

The theme of praise reiterates the privative view of evil. No one can 'find fault with any part of thy creation' (ibid., 14: 20). Yet this language closely parallels Plotinus and Neoplatonism. 'The evil which overtakes us has its source in self-will ... in the desire for self-ownership' (Plotinus, Enneads, V: 1: 1). 'The unchangeable was better than the changeable ... The mind somehow knew the unchangeable ... It arrived at that which is' (Confessions, VII: 17: 23, where Augustine recalls a visionary experience along Plotinian lines). Nevertheless, his Christian experience of revelation remains rooted in the Incarnation (ibid., 18: 24, 19: 25). His 'full' conversion comes in Book VIII, especially when a child's song (tolle, lege) takes him to Romans 13:13 (ibid., VIII: 12: 29).

The character of God is now perceived as transformative: 'Thou hast pierced our heart with thy love' (ibid., IX: 2: 3). Augustine has no philosophical difficulty about the effectiveness of the intercessory prayer of his mother Monica on his behalf (ibid., 10: 26), and her passing through death to life shortly after their fulfilment (ibid., 13).

In books X-XII Augustine leaves the events of his life to explore, still in first-person narrative before God as 'Thou', the themes of self-awareness, memory, time, the mode and time (or temporality) of creation and of God as 'Creator of all times' (ibid., XI: 13: 15). In his last Book, form and differentiation are perceived in relation to divine creation.

'In what temporal medium could the unnumbered ages Thou didst not make pass by, since Thou art the Author and Creator of all the ages?' (ibid., 13: 15). 'Thou madest that very time itself, and periods could not pass by before Thou madest the whole temporal procession. But if there was no time before heaven and earth, how, then, can it be asked "What wast Thou doing then?" For there was no "then" when there was no time' (ibid.).

Wittgenstein's quotation 'What is time?' (ibid., 14: 17) has as its target Augustine's formulation of a generalizing 'super-question' in the abstract. Yet just as Wittgenstein's critique of Augustine's allusion to ostensive definition tells only half of the story, the Confessions books XI are more subtle than we might imagine from the quotation.

Augustine raises the issues of time because it appears to raise problems about creatio ex nihilo, i.e. the doctrine that God has created all things without resort to 'earlier material'. Yet how can creation have its 'beginning' in and through God if time permits us to ask what was 'before' this beginning?

In practice Augustine shares with Wittgenstein a recognition of the logical muddle imposed by conceiving of time either as a receptacle into which the world was placed, or as a flowing river which permits the application of 'before' and 'after' to all events. Augustine allows that we may speak of 'before' in relation to given sets of events, but not to denote temporal priority before all events.

Human awareness conditions how we perceive time. For the past, the present no longer exists; the future is not yet; the present vanishes in the very moment of our reflection upon it. It is therefore not 'a thing-in-itself', but is present to the mind in memory, attention (strictly 'experience') and expectation (ibid., 20: 26). However, to deny its independent 'existence as an object' does not entail its unreality. The mind is conscious of duration and succession. 'Time ... is nothing else than extension (distentio), though I do not know extension of what' (ibid., 26: 33). Hesitantly he wonders whether this distentio, or 'stretching' extension, is the mind; yet he concedes that movement and measurement remain applicable to duration.

Augustine has reached as far as the logical tools of the premodern era will permit in appreciating the different logical currencies of time in relation to different contexts and questions. He lays a foundation for modern theories of narrative time, as Ricoeur shows through his use of Augustine's distentio in his Time and Narrative (Eng. 1984-8).

EVIL, FREEDOM AND GRACE: DEVELOPMENTS
OF THEMES IN LATER WORKS

In the later period important sources include the Enchiridion (423), On the Trinity (400-16), the series of anti-Pelagian writings (411-28); and the City of God (413-26; already introduced above).

In the later writings Augustine underlines even more heavily the privative view of evil. 'If you try to find the efficient cause of this evil choice, there is none to be found. For nothing causes an evil will' (City of God, XII: 6). His exposition (in partial or 'weaker' form) of the principle of plenitude draws on the visual analogy that for light to be seen as light presupposes shadow (ibid., XI: 23).

This is not unrelated to the Neoplatonist and Plotinian view of form as presupposing difference in the process of creation. The 'orderedness' of the created world yields necessary variety and unevenness: 'What is more beautiful than a fire? What is more useful, with its heat, its comfort ... ? Yet nothing causes more distress that the burns inflicted by fire' (ibid., XII: 4). The world as such is good, but it contains potential for the possibility of evil when evil choices misuse it.

The theme of structured order, in contrast to the chaotic and contingent, finds coherent expression no less in On the Trinity. The Divine Trinity exhibits unity-in-diversity. The Trinity exemplifies Being, Knowledge and Love. God is One; however, God chooses to become visible and knowable in the Incarnate Word, God the Son. Just as in Plotinus, the eternal One who is 'beyond Being' nevertheless reaches expression as Mind (Nous), but is both bound into a unity and yet becomes accessible as Soul or life. Against the Arians Augustine insists (with Athanasius) that the Son is coeternal with the Father, while the Holy Spirit exhibits the potentiality of 'gift' or 'giveableness' (On the Trinity, V: 3: 4; and 14: 15; 15: 16).

The anti-Pelagian writings sharpen Augustine's rejection of definitions of human freedom in terms of autonomy or equipoise. Human fallenness yields a habituated bondage which can be redeemed only by divine grace. Hence the emphasis shifts from his earlier work On Free Will in such treatises as On Nature and Grace (415), On the Spirit and the Letter (412) and On Grace and Free Will (426-7).

This distinguishes him sharply from Kant: 'ought' does not presuppose 'can' in ethics. The issue is whether the will and its habituated acts are orientated towards self-gratification or towards God. In common with Neoplatonism, this is related to the constraints of the temporal and contingent as against fulfilment and blessedness in the eternal and the true.

It will thus be seen that Augustine wrestles with a wide range of the philosophical problems that have occupied minds especially in the West over centuries. In some cases, including his work on selfhood, knowledge and time, he moved almost ahead of the premodern world. In other cases, the Platonic philosophical frame, within which much of his thinking developed, yielded constraints. Thus many would detect too great a readiness to accept, and to work within, a mind-body dualism, and an over-sharp contrast between the contingent and the universal. Yet his theology served to qualify this. The Incarnation and resurrection of Jesus Christ stood as the rock that separated Christian faith from Neoplatonism.

© 2002 Oneworld Publications All rights reserved.

About the Author

Anthony Thiselton is Emeritus Professor of Christian Theology at the University of Nottingham, and Canon Theologian of Leicester Cathedral and Southwell Minster, UK. His academic career has involved fellowships in both the UK and the US, he has lectured around the world, and has published seven books and over 50 papers.