Saint Augustine: Philosophy, Christianity and the City of God

Saint Augustine and the Crisis of the Roman Empire

Primarily during the late Roman Empire, Platonic thought dominated the intellectual world. In 391, Christianity became the official religion of the Empire, and by the early fifth century the Empire was weakened and its frontiers were threatened by barbaric peoples. In 410, the sack of Rome by Alaric marked the definitive collapse of the Empire. Augustine worked within this context of philosophical thought.

Augustine's work was framed by a new situation for philosophy and Christianity: Christianity and history (creation), Christianity and truth (truth revealed by God), Christianity and the image of God (creation-father), and Christianity and the concept of the soul.

The Life of Augustine

Augustine, born in Tagaste in 354, moved to Carthage to study rhetoric. During his stay in Carthage he had one son with his lover. He was then a follower of Manichaeism. Reading the Enneads of Plotinus profoundly influenced him, and he began to read the New Testament, from which he drew the need to live in accordance with Christian wisdom.

After meeting Simplicianus and being moved by the conversion of Ponticianus, Augustine experienced his own conversion. The teaching of Ambrose, received during an illness, led to a deeper reflection on the Christian religion using concepts and tools from Neoplatonism. In this period, Against the Academics was written. Afterwards he wrote the Soliloquies and the Confessions, and in 413 he began the twenty-two books of the City of God. Finally, he died in Hippo in 430 as bishop.

His work, produced over many years, comprises books that deeply influenced medieval thought. Rome was then under attack, and Augustine sought to find meaning in the event and to defend Christians against pagan accusations.

The City of God

The book contains two parts: books I to X, which refute pagan accusations and polemicize against polytheist religions, and books XI to XXII, which comment on the central texts of the Christian faith.

In these works Augustine presented the first interpretation of the confrontation between the City of God and the city of this world. Starting from the premise that any society is founded on a stable love, there are two classes of love that give rise to two distinct societies. The love of God, carried to the point of forgetting oneself, forms the celestial city; the love of oneself, carried to the point of forgetting God, forms the earthly city.

Creation, the Trinity and the Soul

Taking the Genesis account, Augustine analyzes the relationship between the Creator and creation. Any question about the creature can be asked: who made it? God. How? By the Word (the Son of God). Why? Because God is good (the Holy Spirit is divine goodness). Augustine relates this to the divine Trinity: the being of God exists, and the Word knows and loves; this shines through divine goodness, the Holy Spirit.

The Trinity is also reflected in the human soul, which is the image of God. Thus the soul exists, works, and knows itself and loves itself, and both are united in the Holy Spirit. In this way, Augustine explains his understanding of divine illumination and of how God creates. In the text one also finds the concept of self-consciousness, much like Against the Academics.

Properly speaking, Augustine was not a philosopher in his works; he did not coin philosophical concepts through which his thought and Christian doctrine could be transmitted. He offered the first complete formulation of Christian Platonic thought, a hybrid, though he also said that his thought was similar to that of Aristotle from one point of view.

The Augustinian influence was decisive in the next major philosophical current, Augustinianism, which together with Christian Thomism formed the two main directions of Christian thought. Augustine also anticipated the cogito of Descartes, which is present in Pascal as well.

Four Great Novelties Introduced by Christianity

Christianity introduced four great novelties into philosophical thought:

• First, the apostolate of Christianity was monotheistic, which differed from Greek philosophy.
• Christianity says God created the world from nothing, where the efficient cause is God the Father, the formal cause is the Son, and the final cause is the Holy Spirit.
• As creator of the universe, God is not a supreme being among others.
• Christianity rests on the belief that divine doctrines are revealed, and that the truth is free from error.

Revealed Truths

Christian truths of existence are of two types: natural truths, which can be reached by reason itself, and supernatural or mysterious truths, which exceed rational capacity and which we would not know had God not revealed them. These latter include:

• The one God subsists in three persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
• The Son became man and redeemed mankind through his death and resurrection.
• Redemption refers to the order of restoration of grace destroyed by original sin in the first individuals.
• There exists a true life in the world to come, which constitutes the final destiny of each human life.
• The Final Judgment begins the process of salvation, in which God judges not only actions but also intentions.

These supernatural truths have a special relation with God's intervention in human history in two different ways: providence, through which God, from above, shows himself to the human being who occupies a place in his affairs; and the Incarnation, through which the Providential God is forced to adopt human nature and enter history, which is in turn the beginning and end of time.

Faith and Reason

Augustine's attitude was opposed to a fideist reason, considering that faith and reason work together to lead to truth. Reason, so that with the light of faith it may help faith in its search, tries to conform things to the unchanging and perfect criteria found in the mind of God.

The Human Being

In general, the human being is seen as a composite of body and soul. How do they relate? When in Saint Augustine Platonism is dominant, the human being is presented as a soul which makes use of a body. However, when his Christian component predominates, he contemplates the body and soul as a unity.

What is essential in Augustine's view is that the human being is not a generic being but a concrete one, each being an irreplaceable individual. He explains the transmission of original sin through traducianism. Universal Neoplatonism held that all souls had been created by God only in Adam and Eve, and that these are reproduced from generation to generation.

Knowledge and the Inner Life

To know oneself, Saint Augustine proposes a turn inward, a deep look at the soul. In this inner journey, the human being discovers the soul, and through the soul, God. Knowing oneself as an image leads us to know God. Saint Augustine offers several proofs of the existence of God. He does not claim to convince unbelievers with evidence, but he rationally confirms what is known and admitted by faith. He does not limit himself to addressing the evidence but explores the question in its depth.

Human reason can know the three attributes of God, which are being, truth, and goodness, which correspond to the persons of the Trinity: God the Father is being, the Son is truth, and the Holy Spirit is goodness. These three properties of God are what can be known of the Mystery, and they are present in the human soul, which is an image of the divinity. Thus the human soul can say,