History of St. Augustine: Sinner and Theologian
Augustine of Hippo, by Sandro Botticelli, 1480. Image: Wikipedia
HISTORY OF ST. AUGUSTINE
The Feast of Saint Augustine is celebrated on August 28, the date of his death in 430 A.D. Augustine is considered the most influential bishop in history; he is the patron saint of brewers, printers, theologians, and several cities and dioceses worldwide.
Most of what we know about him is from his writings:
- Confessions (397 A.D.) is an autobiography written in the form of a prayer to God about his spiritual struggles.
- Retractions (428 A.D.) is Augustine’s late-life review of his own writings, in which he revisited and corrected earlier works.
Who was this man beloved by Roman Catholics for his writing on ecclesiology (the Church) and by Protestants for his writings on soteriology (salvation)?
Significance of Augustine
Augustine of Hippo did more than any predecessor to clarify and systematize the meaning of the New Testament. He did it more brilliantly than anyone else had done before. The Protestant Reformation is essentially a restatement of Augustine.
- Martin Luther, the German Reformer in Wittenberg, was an Augustinian monk.
- Ulrich Zwingli, Luther’s contemporary, the Swiss Reformer in Zürich, was a devoted student and admirer of Augustine’s writings.
- John Calvin, the French Reformer in Geneva, said he could have answered the Catholic accusations of “introducing novelties to traditional Christian doctrine” by simply quoting Augustine.
All the Reformers read his writings over a millennium after Augustine lived.
“Augustine’s impact on Western Christian thought can hardly be overstated; only his beloved example, St. Paul of Tarsus, has been more influential, and Westerners have generally seen Paul through Augustine’s eyes.” –Diarmaid MacCulloch, A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years, 2009, p. 319
Augustine’s Early Life in Africa
Saint Augustine and his mother, Saint Monica (1846) by Ary Scheffer. Image: Wikipedia
He was born in Roman North Africa, in Tagaste (now Souk Ahras, Algeria), in the same region as the once-powerful Carthage (near modern Tunis, Tunisia), home over five hundred years earlier of Hannibal.
He had a godly mother, Saint Monica, a Christ-follower, and a pagan father, a minor Roman official.
He lived a rather lustful life in his youth, following the sensual morals and promiscuity of his pagan culture. He had an illegitimate son at the age of 17 or 18. He sought peace in literature; he became a follower of Manichaeism.
Augustine in Rome
He was a desperate man. Desperate men do desperate things. He went from Carthage in North Africa to Rome to teach rhetoric. It was later, in Milan, that he became drawn to Neoplatonism.
He almost died of illness before he went north to Milan to accept an appointment as imperial court rhetorician (essentially the city’s official orator).
Augustine in Milan
In Milan, he heard the preaching of St. Ambrose, a superior rhetorician and preacher. Impressed by Ambrose’s character and explanation of the Christian faith, Augustine found that his doubts about Christianity slowly dissolved. After being impressed by reading Romans 13:14…
“But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.”
The Conversion of St. Augustine, by Fra Angelico. Image: Wikipedia
One of his most quoted lines from Augustine’s Confessions is his prayer:
“Grant me chastity… but not yet.”
He returned to Africa, where he would write his Confessions.
Augustine’s Return to Africa
A well-known, if perhaps apocryphal, story illustrates Augustine’s changed character upon his return to Africa. When he arrived at the dock, one of his favorite paramours met him at the ship. She was thinking something like, “Oh boy, Augustine is back; happy days are here again.” She ran up to him and said, “Augustine,” and he turned his face from her. She thought that was strange, so she ran up to him again and said, “Augustine,” and he turned away from her again. So finally, she ran after him, grabbed him, and said, “Augustine, Augustine, it is I!” He turned to her and said, “It is not I, but Christ.”
He emerged from his conversion with a profound sense of his sin.
Augustine in Hippo
Saint Augustin Basilica from the ruins of Hippo. Image: Wikipedia
He preached extensively in Africa, around 6,000 to 10,000 sermons, though only about 800-900 are accessible today. Some of his sermons would last over an hour, and he’d preach several times weekly. He was ordained a priest in Hippo Regius (now Annaba, Algeria). Later, as “Bishop of Hippo,” he preached and interpreted the Bible to his congregation and led a monastic life in the church residence there.
Augustine’s Theology
The issues he addressed concerning theological anthropology (the study of man) were:
- Does man have any innate ability to affect in any measure his standing before God?
- Is there any goodness in man that would cause God to look upon him with favor?
- Is man totally depraved?
- Can man do anything to save himself?
Augustine strongly affirmed the existence of original sin (he popularized the term), the need for infant baptism, the impossibility of a sinless life without Christ, and the necessity of Christ’s grace for salvation.
Augustine Disputing with the Heretics, by Vergós. Image: Wikimedia
At first, he had believed predestination was based on God’s foreknowledge of whether individuals would believe in Christ, and that God’s grace was “a reward for human assent.” Later, in response to the heterodox teachings of the monk Pelagius, traditionally identified as British, Augustine said that the sin of pride consists of assuming “we are the ones who choose God or that God chooses us (in his foreknowledge) because of something worthy in us” and argued that God’s grace causes the individual act of faith.
“And what is written, that He wills all men to be saved, while yet all men are not saved, may be understood in many ways, some of which I have mentioned in other writings of mine; but here I will say one thing: He wills all men to be saved, is so said that all the predestinated may be understood by it, because every kind of men is among them.”
Pelagius taught that the events described in Genesis 3 were a myth. He denied the fall of man and the idea of original sin (innate, inherited depravity of the mind and spirit). Man can save himself, Pelagius taught, and has no need for God’s grace. Man sins by choice, and he can choose not to sin – and it is in choosing not to sin that he saves himself.
- Pelagius: “We are sinners because we sin.”
- Augustine: “We sin because we are sinners.”
Augustine taught that man cannot repent unless the grace of God draws him and transforms his heart. God appears so loving, so kind, and so benevolent that we are compelled to be willing. And when we are willing, he saves us.
Augustine then taught that men fell from innocence in Adam; man is born in sin because he was born in Adam. Man is totally depraved, unable in any way to affect or influence his position before God. Salvation, therefore, can only be God’s gift apart from any human contribution or lack of it. Pelagianism was condemned at the church Council of Carthage in 418 A.D. and reaffirmed at the ecumenical Council of Ephesus in 431 A.D., but it did not disappear.
Augustine and Monergism
For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.
The Protestant Reformation subsequently adopted it: Lutherans, Calvinists, Presbyterians, Low Church Anglicans, Puritans, Dutch Reformed, and Reformed Baptists.
Augustine on History
St. Augustine in the Nuremberg Chronicle. Image: Wikipedia
Augustine also postulated a providential theory of history, one that is more linear than progressive, though it had both components. His theory was both interventionist – God can intervene supernaturally in history (miracles) – and eschatological – there is a climax, an end to the history of the present age.
He captured these thoughts in his book The City of God, which was occasioned by his observing the sack of Rome in 410 A.D. by Alaric. His theory was embraced for over a millennium until the Enlightenment in the 18th century, whose materialistic and empirical approach precluded the possibility of supernatural intervention.
Bill Petro, your friendly neighborhood historian
billpetro.com
