Much is known about the life of Augustine due to the vast quantity of his writings. He was born in the town of Thagaste in North Africa in 354. While his father was a pagan, Augustine’s mother, Monica, was catholic.
During his adolescent years, Augustine attended the academy of Carthage. It was here that he was drawn into two arenas of interest. First, Augustine became involved in what he would later come to characterize as debauched sexual activity. In addition, he began to accept the religious system of Manichaeism.
Manichaeism was a system of religious thought that has been closely associated with Gnosticism. Adherents to Manichaeism believed that there was being played out a “cosmic drama” between Light and Darkness in which the purpose of creation was to rescue pieces of Light that had become trapped within Darkness during a battle that had initially occurred between the two opposing forces.[1] After some time Augustine began to become skeptical about Manichaeism and left Carthage for Rome shortly after the great Manichaean teacher Faustus was unable to address some of Augustine’s questions.[2]
In Rome Augustine encountered two things that significantly affected his life and thinking. First, he became impressed with the rhetoric of the preacher Ambrose. Augustine would reflect that although his conversion did not come until a short time after, it was while listening to the preaching of Ambrose that he became convinced of the truth of the Christian faith. The second thing in Rome that impacted Augustine’s thought life was his study of Neoplatonism. Neoplatonism was a religious philosophy in which it was believed that there existed a hierarchy of emanation—a hierarchy of ontology from which each succeeding level of being proceeded from the previous level within the hierarchy.[3] Within Neoplatonist philosophy, evil was not understood to be an active existing force, but was understood to be the absence of good or “non-being.”[4] This would become one of the paradigmatic features in Augustine’s thinking about the nature of evil.
Augustine was converted in the summer of 386. While grievously contemplating his life after reading from Paul’s Epistle to Rome, Augustine recollects hearing words spoken by a child saying “take up and read, take up and read.”[5] Augustine interpreted this as a message from God to return again to the Apostle’s letter. It was there that he read “let us walk honestly, as in the day; not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying. But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof” (Romans 13:13-14). Following his reading of this passage, Augustine experienced a deep assurance and security which he understood to be the grace of God. This marked the beginning of his Christian life.
Following his conversion, Augustine undertook monastic orders in Milan. He then decided to return to North Africa where he intended to launch a monastery. In 395, Augustine became a co-bishop to the bishop of Hippo. Upon the death of the bishop in 396, Augustine became bishop of Hippo. It was in this office that he served until the time of his death in 430.
While serving as bishop, Augustine fought vehemently against several influences that he believed were both in opposition to the truth and dangerous to the church. First was Donatism. The Donatists were a schismatic sect whose adherents believed that priests were substantial in their dispensation of the sacraments. In other words, a priest “had to be holy and in proper standing with the church for the sacrament to be valid.”[6] In contrast to this, Augustine believed the role of the priest to be instrumental rather than substantial. Hence, a sacrament remained effective even if God administered that sacrament through a corrupt official.[7]
The second influence which Augustine believed to be dangerous was the Manichaeism to which he had previously held (see above). Initially Augustine had been drawn to Manichaeism because it provided a solution to the problem of evil. But Augustine now sought to discredit Manichaeism and to demonstrate how the existence of evil could be accounted for apart from a dualistic explanation such as was offered by Manichaeism.[8]
Another force which Augustine recognized as a threat to the church were the heresies of Pelagianism and Semi-Pelagianism. Augustine had written a prayer which contained the phrase: “Grant what thou commandest, and command what thou dost desire.”[9] Pelagius understood that the implications of this passage penned by Augustine included the notion that man was not in and of himself able to turn from sin apart from God’s grace. And so Pelagius feared that this ideology would lead to a sort of antinomianism in which Christians would not fight against sin since they themselves did not have the capacity to resist sin. Rather, he feared that such Christians might do nothing while they waited on God to enable them to overcome their sins. Pelagius was of the position that a moral responsibility implied the ability to carry out that responsibility. If God determined that a man ought to do something, then Pelagius believed that a man was capable of doing that which God required of him.
In this debate, Augustine holds to a monergistic view of salvation. Monergism is “the view that the Holy Spirit is the only agent who effects regeneration of Christians.”[10] In such a view, God is the only one who affects the salvation of the individual. Such a view is opposed to synergism—the Pelagian view. Synergism is a view in which “the human will cooperates with the divine will in achieving salvation.”[11] And so God and man work together in order to bring about salvation. It is worth noting that this marks the beginning of a debate that has continued over the course of Church history (e.g. Luther and Erasmus, Calvinists and Arminians, etc.).
The Plight of Man
Concerning The Plight of Man—Augustine’s eighth chapter in Enchiridion on Faith, Hope, and Love—it is important to note that it was not so much a response addressed to the factions to which Augustine was opposed, rather it was addressed to the church over which Augustine presided. This is clear from his opening comments in which he evidences his concern for his people when he says that he is writing in order to inform his readers about the basics of what they “need to know about the causes of good and evil.”[12] This is further illustrated in that he is writing to encourage his readers that they “ought not to doubt in any way that the cause of everything pertaining to [their] good is nothing other than the bountiful goodness of God himself.”[13] This implies that his readers already held to a Christian perspective but that Augustine did not want opposing views to cause them to doubt their current beliefs.
In The Plight of Man, Augustine briefly summarizes the origin of evil—a summary, which in its historical context, is an obvious explanation of Manichaeism. As mentioned above, Manichaeism taught that ultimate reality was composed of two opposing forces—Light and Darkness. And so adherents to Manichaeism accounted for the existence of evil by way of this dualistic philosophy. In The Plight of Man, Augustine argues that evil is the result Adam’s choice in Eden. Augustine writes that before sin entered into the world mankind was “mutably good.”[14] Augustine believed that prior to the fall, the nature of man was such that he had both the ability to sin and the ability not to sin. Hence to be “mutably good” was to both be good and to have the capacity to become evil. Thus it was by an act of the will that Adam abused his freedom and actualized his mutation from good.
It is significant that Augustine views Adam’s sin (and all other acts of sin) as a “privation of the good.”[15] This demonstrates his Neoplatonic influence. Augustine has here adopted the Neoplatonic view, understanding Adam’s sin to be not so much an action in which Adam accomplishes and succeeds at doing that which is evil, but rather as an act in which he has failed to do that which is good. Adam had not turned to something but had turned away from something, namely that which was good.
Augustine continues, describing the result of Adam’s choice as having brought about a perversion of the human nature in which “there crept in…ignorance of the right things to do and also an appetite for noxious things.”[16] And so it is that, according to Augustine, this corruption of the human nature is what leads to error and sorrow. Augustine further explains that the resulting situation is one in which all of humanity, having descended from Adam, has received this corrupt human nature. He maintains that it is therefore the case that all of the sorrow and suffering in the world has come about as a result of this series of events.
Another distinctive of this treatise on the origins of evil is evinced in Augustine’s characterization of the fallen human will. Augustine describes the sinful desires of fallen humanity as “tainted springs of action.”[17] Here Augustine is indicating that it is the sinful desires of fallen man that lead his will to act. This would be consistent with what Augustine has written elsewhere concerning the human will, saying “it was by the evil use of his free will that man destroyed both it and himself.”[18] This point is also evident in Augustine’s concluding sentence. He describes Christians as those upon whom God has determined to bestow pardon though they were unworthy of such pardon. And so it is not based on any worth, merit, or action of the individual person working in harmony with God (such as in a synergistic view), but rather it is God’s choosing to pardon based solely on the fact that He is merciful (a monergistic view). Hence Augustine is also addressing the Pelagian heresy.
Augustine brings his exposition to a close as he explains God’s mercy and graciousness in the midst of world in which the experience of evil is a reality. He argues that even though God would be perfectly just in withdrawing His sustaining hand from the fallen angels, He graciously continues to sustain their existence. Augustine states that God continues to provide man with the opportunity and existence in which he can beget children, exercise control over his own body, experience enjoyment, and eat food that brings nourishment to his body. Ultimately, Augustine concludes saying that even though God would be perfectly just in condemning all mankind, He determined “to show far more striking evidence of his mercy by pardoning some who were unworthy of it.”[19] Ultimately, such statements not only laid the foundation for the doctrine of predestination, but are also a powerful illustration of God’s mercy in the midst of a fallen world.
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Endnotes
[1] S.N. Lieu, “Manichaeism,” New Dictionary of Theology, (Downers Grove: Intervarsity, 1988), 410.
[2] Garry Willis, Saint Augustine, (New York: Viking, 1999),34.
[3] Everett Ferguson, “Neoplatonism,” Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2001), 821.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Roger E. Olson, The Story of Christian Theology, (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 1999), 259.
[6] Victor L. Walter, “Donatism,” Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2001), 352.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Olson, 262.
[9] Augustine, Confessions, (10, 29, 40).
[10] Donald K. McKim, Westminster Dictionary of Theological Terms, Louisville: John Knox, 1996), 177.
[11] Ibid., 275.
[12] Augustine, Plight of Man (23).
[13] Ibid.
[14] Ibid.
[15] Augustine, Plight of Man (24).
[16] Ibid.
[17] Ibid.
[18] Augustine, Enchiridion, (27, 30).
[19] Augustine, Plight of Man (27).
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