Augustine’s treatise was started shortly after the sack of Rome in 410 AD. It combines ancient history, theology, a defense of Christianity against the charges by pagans that impiety was the cause of the Visigoth invasion, and speculative eschatology designed to bolster the contemporary faithful. Augustine is constantly in conversation with Roman pagans, classical Greek philosophers, Neo-Platonists, Manichaeans, Gnostics, Arians, and various other contemporary heretic sects of Christianity floating around North Africa. Throughout his densely meandering twelve hundred page exposition, Augustine’s scope broadens and narrows dramatically. He deals repeatedly, and in detail, with the concepts of faith, grace, mercy, sin, and death.
First, Augustine defends the paradox of humanity’s free will with the concept of God’s omniscient foreknowledge. “It is not true, then, that, because God foreknew what would be within the power of our wills, nothing therefore lies within the power of our wills. For when He foreknew this, He did not foreknow nothing. Therefore, if He who foreknew what would lie within the power of our wills did not foreknow nothing, but something, then clearly something lies within in the power of our wills even though God has foreknowledge of it. We are, then, in no way compelled either to take away freedom of will in order to retain the foreknowledge of God, or (which is blasphemous) to deny that He has foreknowledge of things to come in order to retain freedom of the will. Rather, we embrace both. Faithfully and truly do we confess both: the former that we may believe well, and the latter that we may live well.”
Much of Augustine’s work is a juxtaposition between the eternal City of God and the temporal City of Man. In Augustine’s treatise, the preeminent City of Man is often held to be Babylon, whereas Jerusalem stands for the City of God. However, Rome is also often held up as a paragon of the worldly virtues. “But the heroes of Rome were members of an earthly city, and the goal of all the services which they performed for it was its security. They sought a kingdom not in heaven, but upon earth: not in the realm of life eternal, but in that region where the dead pass away and are succeeded by the dying. What else were they to love, then, but glory, by which they sought to find even after death a kind of life in the mouths of those who praised them?” Augustine quotes Virgil, “Let other men with gentler touch fashion bronze into lifelike forms, and bring forth living faces from marble, and plead cases with more skill, and map the paths of heaven, and tell of the rising and falling of the stars. But thou, O Roman, remember that thy task is to subject peoples to thy sway. These arts are thine: to establish ways of peace, to spare the fallen and subdue the proud.” For Augustine, the Christian life and its purpose, even while on earth, was diametrically different. “Thus, when the apostle has exhorted us to present our bodies as a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, our reasonable service, and not to be conformed to this world, but to be transformed in the renewing of our mind, that we might prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect will of God, that is, the true sacrifice of ourselves…. This is the sacrifice of Christians: ‘We, being many, are one body in Christ.’”
Next, Augustine tackles the concept of human reason and how right reason leads naturally to a profession of faith. “But just as the sentient nature, even when it suffers pain, is superior to that of a stone which cannot suffer pain, so the rational nature is more excellent even when it is miserable than is that from which reason or sensation is absent, and which can therefore experience no misery. Since this is so, then, it is clearly a fault in such a rational nature if it does not cleave to God. For it has been created with an excellence such that, though mutable in itself, it can nonetheless achieve its blessedness by cleaving to the immutable Good, the supreme God.”
Augustine explicitly spells out the dichotomy between the earthly and heavenly cities. “Two cities, then, have been created by two loves: that is, the earthly by love of self extending even to contempt of God, and the heavenly by love of God extending to contempt of self. The one, therefore, glories in itself, the other in the Lord; the one seeks glory from men, the other finds its highest glory in God, the Witness of our conscience. The one lifts up its head in its own glory; the other says to its God, ‘Thou art my glory, and the lifter up of mine head.’ In the Earthly City, princes are as much mastered by the lust of mastery as the nations which they subdue are by them; in the Heavenly, all serve one another in charity, rulers by their counsel and subjects by their obedience. The one city loves its own strength as displayed in its mighty men; the other says to its God, ‘I will love Thee, O Lord, my strength.’ Thus, in the Earthly City, its wise men, who live according to man, have pursued the goods of the body or of their own mind, or both…. In the Heavenly City, however, man has no wisdom beyond the piety which rightly worships the true God, and which looks for its reward in the fellowship not only of holy men, but of angels also, ‘that God may be all in all.’”
Augustine continues with theological history. “Now Cain was the first son born to those two parents of the human race, and he belonged to the City of man; the second son, Abel, belonged to the City of God…. So it is that each man, because he derives his origin from a condemned stock, is at first necessarily evil and fleshly, because he comes from Adam; but if, being reborn, he advances in Christ, he will afterwards be good and spiritual. So it is also with the whole human race. When those two cities began to run through their course of birth and death, the first to be born was a citizen of this world, and the second was a pilgrim in this world, belonging to the City of God. The latter was predestined by grace and chosen by grace; by grace he was a pilgrim below, and by grace he was a citizen above…. As I have already said, man is first reprobate. But though it is of necessity that we begin in this way, we do not of necessity remain thus; for later comes the noble state towards which we may advance, and in which we may abide when we have attained it. Hence, though not every bad man will become good, it is nonetheless true that no one will be good who was not originally bad…. It is written, then, that Cain founded a city, whereas Abel, a pilgrim, did not found one. For the City of the Saints is on high, although it produces citizens here below, in whose persons it is a pilgrim until the time of its kingdom shall come.” Augustine later expands, “Therefore the place of this promised peaceful and secure habitation is eternal, and rightly belongs eternally to Jerusalem the free mother, where the true people of Israel shall dwell; for the name Israel is interpreted as ‘Seeing God’. It is in the desire of this reward that we are to lead a godly life through faith during this miserable pilgrimage.”
Next, Augustine circles back to theological questions. He expounds on the nature of the Supreme Good in the life of man. “If, therefore, we are asked what response the City of God makes when questioned on each of these points, and, first what it believes concerning the Final Good and Evil, we shall reply as follows: that eternal life is the Supreme Good…. For this reason it is written, ‘The just man lives by faith.’ For we do not yet see our good, and hence we must seek it by believing. Moreover, we cannot live rightly unless, while we believe and pray, we are helped by Him Who has given us the faith to believe that we must be helped by Him.”
In seeking the virtuous life on earth, Augustine returns to the personal life. It is through faith, trust, and hope that man can reach his highest virtues. “True virtues, however, can exist only in those in whom there is true godliness; and these virtues do not claim that they can protect those in whom they are present against suffering any miseries. True virtues are not such liars as to claim such a thing. They do, however, claim that, though human life is compelled to be miserable by all the great evils of this world, it is happy in the hope of the world to come, and in the hope of salvation…. ‘For we are saved by hope. Now hope which is seen is not hope; for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for? But if we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it.’ As, therefore, we are saved by hope, it is in hope that we have been made happy; and as we do not yet possess a present salvation, but await salvation in the future, so we do not enjoy a present happiness, but look forward to happiness in the future, and ‘with patience’. We are in the midst of evils, and we must endure them with patience until we come to those good things where everything will bestow ineffable delight upon us, and where there will no longer be anything which we must endure. Such is the salvation which, in the world to come, will also itself be our final happiness.” Finally, Augustine returns to the beneficence of the City of God. “The Supreme Good of the City of God, then, is eternal and perfect peace. This is not the peace which mortal men pass through on their journey from birth to death. Rather, it is that peace in which they rest in immortality and suffer adversity no more.”
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