St. Augustine was born on November 13th, 354 AD at Thagaste, North Africa (located in modern day Algeria). Although Algeria is today a Muslim country with few Christians, during Augustine's day North Africa was a Latin speaking Roman colony with a very robust Christian presence. North Africa produced some of the great theologians of the Patristic period such as Tertullian and Cyprian. Augustine's mother Monnica was a devout Christian who persevered in prayer for the conversion of her wayward son, but his father Patrick was a pagan who did not 'convert' to the Christian faith until he was baptized on his death-bed. The fourth century witnessed a very dramatic changes for believers living in the Roman Empire. Beginning with Constantine in the early fourth century, the state-sponsored persecution of Christians came to an end and in 381 AD Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire under Emperor Theodosius I. The age of Roman Catholicism had officially begun. It was also during Augustine's life that the Roman Empire experienced significant threats from the Goths and Vandals and the weakening of its military defenses. The city of Hippo, where Augustine served as bishop for many years, was under siege by the Vandal army when Augustine died within the city walls in 430 AD.
In 366, the young Augustine moved to Carthage in order to begin his formal education. He testifies that he hated school, resented corporal punishment and struggled to learn Greek (a fact which should be comforting to every Seminary student and pastor!). At this time in his life (age 17), Augustine decided to take a concubine from a lower caste (whom he never names in any of his writings and rarely mentions) and they had a son named Adeodatus. Augustine faithfully lived with her for over fifteen years, although Roman law and custom prevented their marriage. At age 18, Augustine read a book called Hortensius by Cicero which had a profound impact on him. From Cicero, he became convinced that happiness was not found in the pursuit of pleasure, but in the quest for truth. It was around this time that he picked up a copy of the Old Latin Bible in search of truth and quickly put it down. The educated and refined Augustine was offended by the barbarity of this rough Latin translation and offended by the morality (especially the polygamy) of the Jewish patriarchs in the Old Testament. As a result he placed the religion of his mother to the side was drawn instead to a Gnostic movement called "Manicheism". The founder of this movement (an Iranian gnostic named Mani) taught a radical dualism, where good and evil were locked in a never-ending cosmic battle. According to Mani, evil exists in this world because the 'good god' is unable to ultimately defeat the 'evil god'. Moreover, the Manichees believed that the physical world (especially the human reproductive system) was absolutely evil. Certain Manichees abstained completely from sex, while others were permitted to have intercourse providing that they took measures to ensure that they did not produce any offspring and thus entrap more divinity in the physical realm which was characterized by darkness. It is somewhat ironic that Augustine was drawn to this ascetic sect, since he struggled as a young man to keep his own sexual appetite under control (and often failed as we will see).
The now educated Augustine began a school of Rhetoric in Thagaste but soon relocated to Carthage. From Carthage he moved on to Rome where he could charge higher fees for his services. The dishonesty of his students in Rome pushed him take a vacant post in Milan. By this time in his career, it appeared to many, including Monnica, that the gifted Augustine was destined for great things - but there was one little problem! His low caste mistress was inhibiting his climb to the upper echelon of Roman society. Monnica knew that the concumbine had to go so that he could marry a wealthy Roman girl from a higher caste in order to secure a dowry that would fund his secular career. Tragically, Monnica convinced Augustine to put away the mother of his son, which he eventually did. There is no evidence that would suggest that they ever saw one another again although this may have happened upon the death of their son several years later. Monnica arranged a marriage with an young girl, but because she was still under 12 and not of legal age for marriage, he decided to take another concubine in order to gratify his sexual cravings.
The crisis surrounding his marriage drove Augustine away from gnostic dualism and into skepticism. For a short period of time he became convinced that mathematical knowledge was the only certain kind of knowledge and abandoned his quest for ultimate truth in the metaphysical sense. It was not long, however, until Augustine met a group of Platonists in Milan who introduced him to the Neo-Platonic religion of a man called Plotinus and his disciple Porphyry. Neo-Platonism explained evil by reference to a series of 'emanations'. They believed in a supreme being called 'the One' who was the supreme embodiment of beauty. The first emanation from this perfect being was the 'mind' and the second emanation resulted in the physical world of matter. Evil was therefore, not explained in terms of an good but powerless deity, but in terms of a series of descending emanations or "steps" from a perfect Being which made evil a real possibility. Plotinus taught that the purpose of life was to experience mystical union with 'the One' by transcending both the physical world and constraints of mind and thought, and he claimed to have experienced this ecstatic union on four different occasions. Augustine took up Neo-Platonism with the same zeal as he had previously taken up Gnosticism and desperately sought after this mystical experience which he believed would bring ultimate happiness and meaning to his life. He claimed to have had one mystical experience by following Plotinus' method which was incredibly brief and left him morally unchanged and disillusioned.
It was around this time that Augustine began to attend church with his mother to listen to the "golden throated" bishop Ambrose. This was the first time Augustine had met his intellectual equal in a Christian and he began to seriously consider the writings of Paul once again. In 386, while sitting in a garden in Milan, Augustine the pagan philosopher became Augustine the Christian. He was baptized in 387, and returned to Thagaste after the death of Monnica in 387. Tragically, his son died two years later in 389. Augustine was ordained a Presbyter against his will in 391 and was consecrated as the Roman Catholic Bishop of Hippo in 395. The Confessions was written sometime between 397-400. Although it contains a great deal of autobiographical information, it is much more than a simple autobiography and is a deeply theological work.
Augustine went on to have a prolific theological career, weighing in on the heated Donatist controversy in North Africa, the Pelagian controversy (regarding the doctrine of original sin and human depravity), and writing a very important work on the Trinity. During the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century, St. Augustine became a primary source of inspiration for Luther and Calvin as they pushed back against the Semi-Pelagian theology of the medieval Roman Catholic church and its emphasis on the ability of humans to co-operate with God in securing salvation. His emphasis on sovereign grace which is so important to Orthodox Protestant soteriology has not gone unnoticed by the Roman church and they have designated him as the "Doctor of Grace". Although Augustine enjoys an exceptionally favourable reputation among conservative Protestants, his legacy been equally important for Roman Catholic theologians who have appealed throughout history to his ecclesiology (doctrine of the church) for a defense of the structure of the Roman church.
Hey John,
ReplyDeleteI didn't know that there was a Latin translation of the Bible before Jerome. And I know that Augustine played a role in that process (though, not with the translation itself), since Jerome didn't want to include the intertestimonial books in the work, but did at Augustine's insistence.
Was the power of the papacy already as far stretched out as Hippo? I'm curious about your addition of "Roman Catholic" to his title of bishop. I don't have a problem with you doing that, but am curious.
Pete
Hey Peter,
ReplyDeleteThe Roman church had expanded to north Africa by the 4th c. although they were a minority. The strict Donatists were in the majority in Hippo and were not friendly with the more irenic Catholics. Most north African cities had two rival bishops. Given the situation it's interesting that Augustine doesn't even make reference to the Donatists in the Confessions.