SAINT AUGUSTINE IN 50 PAGES A QUICK LAYMAN S GUIDE TO AUGUSTINIANISM

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2 SAINT AUGUSTINE IN 50 PAGES A QUICK LAYMAN S GUIDE TO AUGUSTINIANISM TAYLOR MARSHALL, PH.D. PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY PRESIDENT OF THE NEW SAINT THOMAS INSTITUTE SAINT JOHN PRESS MMXIV

3 Copyright 2014 Taylor Reed Marshall, Ph.D. All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the permission in writing from the publisher or author. Sacred Scripture citations are generally from the 1899 edition of the Douay-Rheims (Challoner) Bible or the Revised Standard Version-Catholic Edition or a translation of my own rendering. Marshall, Taylor Saint Augustine in 50 Pages A Quick Layman s Guide to Augustinianism / Taylor Marshall 1 st ed. Includes bibliographical references and index ISBN: 1. Augustine. 2. Catholicism. 3. Theology. I. Title. Published by Saint John Press 800 West Airport Freeway, Suite 1100 Irving, Texas Printed in the United States of America Acid-free paper for permanence and durability Covert Art: Steven M. Nelson {smnelsondesign.com} Please visit Augustine in 50 Pages on the web at:

4 This book is dedicated to the faithful and generous readers of my blog at: taylormarshall.com.

5 Contents ACKNOWLEDGMENTS... 1 INTRODUCTION... 2 WHO WAS SAINT AUGUSTINE?... 3 AUGUSTINE OF AFRICA... 3 AUGUSTINE THE CHILD... 4 AUGUSTINE THE TEENAGER... 5 AUGUSTINE LEAVES HIS CONCUBINE... 5 AUGUSTINE THE CONVERT... 6 AUGUSTINE THE PRIEST AND BISHOP... 7 AUGUSTINE AND THE DONATISTS... 9 DEATH OF AUGUSTINE AUGUSTINE S CONTRIBUTIONS NATURE AND GRACE ORIGINAL SIN IN THE BIBLE TRADUCIANISM VS. CREATIONISM ORIGINAL SIN AND CONCUPISCENCE AUGUSTINE S THEOLOGY OF THE BODY A DOMESTIC SPAT CELIBACY OR MARRIAGE? THE GOOD OF MARRIAGE AUGUSTINE S LEGACY AUGUSTINE AND FIELD TRIPS AUGUSTINE AND MR. MIYAGI AUGUSTINE THE NEOPLATONIST AUGUSTINE ON THE TRINITY THE PROTESTANT REFORMATION MARTIN LUTHER, THE AUGUSTINIAN PRIEST CALVIN THE PSEUDO- AUGUSTINIAN AUGUSTINE AND JANSENISM THE JANSENIST ERROR: NATURE VS. GRACE AUGUSTINE S CONTEMPORARY INFLUENCE iv

6 LIST OF BOOKS ON AUGUSTINE FOR BEGINNERS THE WRITINGS OF AUGUSTINE THE WORKS OF AUGUSTINE BY DATE v

7 Acknowledgments I would like to thank my wife Joy for pushing me to write this book and finish it. Long ago, Joy told me to write this book and I resisted. I must say that I have had more fun writing this book than any of my previous works. Thank you, Joy! I d also like to thank the 15,884 daily subscribers to my blog for supporting me and encouraging me. I put up a poll on my birthday, March 29, 2014, asking the readers to choose a book idea. They chose Augustine in 50 Pages, and so here it is. For me the gift was in writing it. As odd as it might sound, I would like to thank Saint Augustine. I could literally feel his presence in the room with me. I can only say that writing this book was an anointed experience. Any good in it comes from his intercession. Anything bad or any errors come from me. 1

8 Introduction This little book of fifty pages is only a brief introduction to the thought and influence of Saint Augustine. I kept it to fifty pages to attract readers who might otherwise not find interest in a 1,600 year old saint from Africa. This little book serves as the worm on the fishhook. After you bite the worm, I hope that you are forever hooked on Augustine. I have focused primarily on Augustine s biography, his doctrine of original sin, nature and grace, his conflict with heresy and schism, and how all of these relate to his understanding of human sexuality. There are many areas of his life and thought that I was not able to squeeze into fifty brief pages. Much more could be said about his Trinitarian theology, his political philosophy, and his major works like the City of God. At the end of this book, you will find a list of recommended books and resources, and I hope you will be inspired to continue the reading journey. 2

9 Who was Saint Augustine? Augustine of Africa Saint Augustine was born on the continent of Africa North Africa to be exact. He is and will remain one of the brightest jewels of the African intellectual tradition. Even secular scholars of European and African history recognize that Augustine of Hippo rivals the greatest minds of antiquity and the greatest minds of our own era. Ethnically, Augustine is descended from the ancient Phoenicians, who gave us, among other things, the alphabet. i A sizable population of Phoenician people migrated to Carthage, North Africa. These Punic people traced their origins to a group of settlers from Phoencia just north of the Holy Land. Other famous North African Punics include: 1. Hannibal (famous general who used elephants against the Romans) 2. Septimius Severus (Roman emperor) 3. Tertullian (theologian) 4. Saint Perpetua (martyr) 5. Saint Cyprian (theologian, bishop, and martyr) The Punic people, strictly speaking, were Semitic. That is, they are ethnically and linguistically related to the Jews. Religiously, however, they were altogether given over to the worship of Baal and child sacrifice. Their access to the sea and international commerce brought them into contact with the religious and cultural traditions of Rome and Greece. Augustine s ethnicity was Punic, but he likely had a few drops of Berber blood as well, since the Phoenicians and native Berbers did intermarry over time. Although his ethnicity is Punic/Berber, his cultural heritage was Latin and aristocratic. So 3

10 what did he look like? He likely resembled a contemporary Berber African. If you are interested in what modern Berber people look like, Google images of Berber footballers Zinedine Zidane or Karim Benzema. Augustine the Child Augustine was born with the Latin name Aurelius Augustinus in the year A.D His name Aurelius suggests that his father's ancestors were freedmen of the gens Aurelia and given full Roman citizenship by the Edict of Caracalla in 212. His mother Monica gave birth to him in the town of Thagaste, which is modern day Souk Ahras in Algeria. His mother was a convinced Catholic Christian and his father Patricius ( Patrick ) was a Punic pagan. Providentially, Patricius did confess his faith in Christ and entered the Catholic Church on his deathbed. No doubt, Saint Peter s prophecy came true in the person of Saint Monica: Likewise, wives, be subject to your own husbands, so that even if some do not obey the word, they may be won without a word by the conduct of their wives, when they see your respectful and pure conduct. (1 Pet 3:1) Augustine s family belonged to the annexed Roman nobility. For this reason, little Augustine was fluent in Latin from his earliest years. Augustine was sent to formal schooling at Madaurus (present day M Daourouch) which lay about twenty miles from his hometown Thagaste. During this time, he recounts how he and his friends stole fruit that they did not want to eat. They stole, he relates, for the thrill of stealing. This experience later gave Augustine insight into the nature of concupiscence and original sin doctrines we will study in the pages to come. 4

11 Augustine the Teenager When he was 15, Augustine began to read the writings of Cicero, the famous Roman orator and Stoic. Cicero sparked his love for reflective thinking, oratory, and philosophy. At the age of seventeen, Augustine moved on to the equivalent of going to college. He enrolled in formal training in the major metropolis of Carthage to study rhetoric. Like many young men who leave home for college, Augustine did not embrace his mother s faith in Christ after he left home. Instead, he joined the popular and exotic sect of the Manichaeans. The Manichaeans were a dualistic sect that held that the immaterial spiritual realm was good while the material physical realm was evil. Young men were attracted to this sect because it was intellectually idealistic but made allowances for sins of the flesh. Within the context of college life and Manichaean teaching, Augustine began to explore the world of illicit sexuality. Like a good Manichaean, it was during this time that he famously prayed, Grant me chastity and continence, but not yet. ii At the age of 19, Augustine began an affair with a young lady in Carthage. Augustine never mentions her name even though they cohabitated for over thirteen years and she gave birth to his only son, whom he named Adeodatus Latin for Given by God. It is believed that he never married this woman because she was likely low-class and deemed below his aristocratic rank. Augustine Leaves His Concubine In the year A.D. 383, when Augustine was 29, he founded a school of rhetoric in Rome. He struggled as a professor. At that time, students did not pay tuition to a university system, but directly to the professor. When tuition time came, his students fled or hid. Augustine fell on hard times. Fortunately, Augustine was hired to teach rhetoric in the imperial city of Milan the next year. At this time in his life, 5

12 Augustine began to reassess his life in two important ways. First, he began to distance himself from Manichaeanism. He was attracted to the philosophy of Neoplatonism the study of Plato as interpreted by Plotinus. Second, Augustine fell under the influence of the local bishop of Milan named Ambrose. Ambrose was an excellent preacher and Augustine admired the bishop s rhetorical style in the pulpit. Augustine would later credit Ambrose as his father in the Christian Faith. These sermons and his mother s constant prayers would lead him back to the Christian faith. When he was 31, Augustine abandoned the mother of his only child to marry a young girl that belonged to his noble peerage. His mother Monica had never approved of Augustine s relationship with the low-born Carthaginian woman, primarily because it was not based on the Catholic teaching of sacramental marriage. Monica traveled from North Africa to Milan in order to convince Augustine to break ties with his concubine. Augustine agreed. Meanwhile, Monica arranged a marriage between Augustine and a young girl of the nobility. There was, however, a legal problem. His new fiancée was only eleven years old! Augustine would have to wait for her to come of age. Augustine, as you know by now, was a lusty man and he could not wait. In the meantime, he acquired a new concubine in Milan. Augustine the Convert Augustine s conversion happened through the influence and mediation of friends. When he was 32 years old, in the summer of A.D. 386, his friends acquired and read the Life of Saint Antony of the Desert. Augustine was impressed by Saint Antony who, as a Christian, lived a life of poverty, chastity, and solitude in the Egyptian wilderness. 6

13 Augustine fled to the garden to contemplate the model given in this story. He explains that he heard a childlike voice saying tolle, lege, tolle lege take and read, take and read. He opened a Bible and read from Saint Paul s Epistle to the Romans, chapters Augustine was cut to the heart when he read these words: Not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying, but put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh to fulfill the lusts thereof. (Romans 13:13-14) In reality, it was Augustine s love for sexual license that had kept him away from Christ all these years. His Manichaeism and his Platonism were just theoretical cloaks for his predominant vice inordinate sexual lust. At this moment, relates Augustine, he knew that God had pegged him. After his conversion, Augustine dismissed his new concubine, and under the influence of his friend Alypius, Augustine broke off his engagement to the child bride chosen by his mother. Monica s disappointment turned into joy when she learned that Augustine had arranged for instruction in the Catholic Faith. At the Easter Vigil of A.D. 387, Ambrose baptized Augustine along with his son Adeodatus. Augustine was 33 years old when he became a Catholic the age of Christ at His death and resurrection. Augustine the Priest and Bishop In A.D. 388, when Augustine was 34, he authored his first book, On the Holiness of the Catholic Church. It was his first contribution to Catholic apologetics and the first fruits of scores of books to come in the following decades. Augustine, his son Adeodatus, and his mother Monica left Milan to return to North Africa. While they waited for passage back to Africa in Ostia, Italy, Monica died. She was buried there. After Augustine and 7

14 Adeodatus arrived back at their family s estate in North Africa, Adeodatus also died. The joy of his conversion to Christ had turned to mourning over the deaths of his mother and son. Undoubtedly this was a time of great discouragement. Augustine, in the pattern of Saint Antony of Egypt, sold everything his family had owned and turned their villa into a monastery where he studied theology. Saint Augustine s monastery and rule became the model for the Augustinian Order, which remains to this day. At the age of 37, in A.D. 391, he was ordained a priest for the city of Hippo Regius (modern day Annaba). Bishop Valerius of Hippo had taken great interest in the young priest s zeal for monasticism and scholarship. As Valerius became weak with age, he appointed Augustine as his successor. At the age of 42, Augustine was consecrated as the coadjutor bishop of Hippo Regius with the right to succession after the death of Valerius. Before the legalization of Christianity in the Roman Empire, the life of a bishop was one of persecution and eventual martyrdom. After the legalization of the faith, the office of bishop became a sign of prestige clothed with political influence and secular power. Augustine, however, sought to impose upon himself the rigor of episcopal sacrifice of the early Church. Without the pressure of imperial persecution, a new model arose by which bishops voluntarily lived lives of sacrifice and penance. Augustine is a watermark in the history of the episcopate because he left behind the legacy of the monastic bishop. As the apostolic zeal of the persecuted church and her leaders softened under post-constantinian Christianity, Christians sought new ways to take up their cross. Saint Augustine signals this turn. As bishop of the city, Augustine had to leave behind his monastic community but he carried its spirit with him. He kept a strict life of poverty and required the same from his clergy. The Rule of Saint Augustine became the model for clerical monks seeking an active life of pastoral ministry in the context of 8

15 mystical contemplation. This is one reason why Saint Dominic would choose the rule of Saint Augustine for his own order eight centuries later. It outlines the path for preachers and teachers to live simply and honestly. The episcopal residence of Augustine became the prototype for thousands of Augustinian monasteries in the subsequent centuries. Not surprisingly, no less than ten of Augustine s friends filled the bishops ranks as time passed, because they also lived the life of apostolic simplicity. iii The sermons of Saint Augustine show a careful balance between robust orthodoxy and the application of the doctrines to the everyday lives of Christians in his diocese. We get the impression from these sermons that Augustine was chiefly a preacher and a theologian second. He preached up to five times a day. iv His sermons expound on topics relating to personal holiness, Christian doctrine, the life of prayer, and the Church s moral teachings. Notably, our saint was at the center of several church councils. He played a prominent role in the four Councils of Carthage in A.D. 398, 401, 407, 419, and the Councils of Mileve in 416 and 418. The Councils of Carthage were instrumental in establishing the canon of Sacred Scripture. While his friend Saint Jerome had initial doubts concerning the seven deuterocanonical books of the Old Testament, Saint Augustine explicitly sought to ratify their inclusion in the biblical canon. v Augustine and the Donatists The Donatist schism became the chief pastoral problem for Augustine during his long episcopate. The Donatists (followers of a Berber bishop named Donatus Magnus) were a schismatic sect that quickly gained adherents in Augustine s North Africa. The Donatists arose after the Roman persecutions in response to a theological question: If someone publicly denies the Lord Jesus Christ in order to avoid torture or martyrdom, can that same 9

16 person be readmitted into the Catholic Church? There were many such traditores traitors of the Catholic Church in North Africa and especially in Carthage. Understandably, the local Christians viewed the traditores with a great deal of suspicion. Imagine if your father, aunt, and brother were brutally murdered for their Christian faith. Now imagine that there were people in your community, people you used to go to church with, who openly denied Christ and perhaps turned over members of the clergy or the laity to the authorities. Could these people be forgiven? Could they be saved? Could they be readmitted to the Eucharist? The Donatists took the extreme position of not readmitting the traditores. If you denied Christ, you were not allowed back into the Church. Furthermore, they taught that if you received baptism or the sacraments from a priest or bishop who had been a traditor, those sacraments were invalid and null. This latter point became a point of contention because it held that the moral excellence of the minister established the validity of the sacrament. Hence, if an evil priest had baptized you, the Donatist would claim that you were not truly baptized. Likewise, if your priest were evil, then the Eucharist you received was merely bread and not the true Body and Blood of Christ. The Donatists, then, were an extreme sect who viewed the mainstream Catholic Church as lax and immoral. The Donatists also used violence to take churches, attack bishops, and protest Catholic liturgies. The size of the Donatist schism is revealed when we consider that a conference between the Catholics and Donatists in AD 411 included 286 Catholic bishops and 279 Donatist bishops nearly a 50% split! Augustine served as the voice for the Catholic bishops at this meeting, and here he explained that the Christian sacraments may be administered by evil men without rendering the sacraments invalid. According to Augustine, it is Christ who directly administers the sacrament to each believer and not the clergyman himself. Since it is Christ 10

17 who ministers, the sacraments are fully valid and efficacious. Of course, the Church desires holy clergy (as exemplified by Augustine s monastic norms for his clergy), but the faithful do not need to fear invalid sacraments ministered by evil men. Christ ratifies the sacraments, not the merely human clergyman. Augustine also affirmed that mercy and forgiveness could be granted to the most offensive sinners even toward the traditores. The theological position of Augustine was accepted and ratified and due to his success, the Donatist schism began to die out from that point forward. The Donatist laity gravitated back to full communion with the Catholic Church. Augustine s presentation of Christ as the chief sacramental minister and his theory of the Catholic Church as valid despite the immorality of its leaders is a hallmark of Catholic teaching. Some might say that this opened the door for tolerance toward lecherous priests. One could even conclude that the moral slip of the post-constantinian Church was partly due to Augustine s so-called lax sacramental theology. In reality, Augustine reasserted the canonical image of Jesus Christ who associated with prostitutes, forgave Jewish traditores in the form of tax collectors, and reconciled the Church s first pope and first penitent traditor, Saint Peter. If priests could strangle the flow of grace through their sins, then the lay faithful would be cut off from Christ. Augustine s position is a testament to his status as the Doctor of Grace. If Christianity is not first one of mercy and grace, then it fails to rightly communicate the Good News of Jesus Christ. Death of Augustine In the spring of A.D. 430, when Augustine was 76 years old, the Germanic tribe known as the Vandals besieged the city of Hippo. According to Augustine s biographer Possidius, the bishop fell ill and was confined to his bed. He had two last requests. First, he asked for the penitential Psalms to be hung on 11

18 his wall so that he could read and pray them for himself and for the city. Secondly, he asked the clergy of the city to preserve all the books in the cathedral s library. He died on August 28, 430. When the Vandals did sack the city of Hippo, they burned everything except for Augustine s cathedral and library. 12

19 Augustine s Contributions Augustine s formative years were spent as a disciple of the Manichaean religion. The sect is named after the Persian teacher Mani. Mani s parents belonged to a Gnostic Christian sect called the Elesaites, which blended Christian teaching with aberrant beliefs about Christ, reincarnation, circumcision, the Mosaic law, and rebaptism. Mani built a new religion based on a dualistic understanding of the universe. Mani explained that there were two divine powers a good power of light and an evil power of darkness. Manichaeans revered Mani as the reincarnation of Buddha, Lord Krishna, Zoroaster, and Jesus Christ. My speculation is that Augustine as a young man was attracted to Manichaenism because it explained the tension that he felt within himself. He wanted to be a virtuous philosophical man like Socrates or Plato, but his lustful flesh pulled him back to sexual sin. The Manichean doctrine that the world is in perfect tension between the spiritual world and the world of the flesh mirrored the tension within Augustine s soul. Manicheanism tried to solve the philosophical problem of evil by simply admitting that that evil had an equal footing with the good. Good and evil would always be opposed to each other. This was a moral compromise built into the cosmos and it was a moral compromise favorable to the young Augustine. It is no surprise that Augustine s conversion centered on this Pauline verse: put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh to fulfill the lusts thereof (Rom 13:13-14). Augustine discerned that the Lord Jesus Christ could overcome the desires of flesh. Good could and will conquer evil. Nature and Grace Augustine s moral breakthrough led to his doctrine of nature and grace. God, Who is all good, can and does share His divine 13

20 power and life with humans. This divine life and power is called grace. In A.D. 415, Augustine wrote his famous book On Nature and Grace. In this work, he combats a heretic named Pelagius, who denied the doctrine of original sin and alleged that man could be redeemed without grace or the sacraments. All of us have a natural tendency toward Pelagianism. We like to think that we have natural powers that impress God or earn us points on God s scorecard. Whenever we judge others, have prideful thoughts, or think we have done something good without God s help, we are following the teaching of Pelagius. In fact, Satan was really the first Pelagian. He thought he could achieve divine status by his own natural powers. Ever since then, the serpent has been trying to deceive humans into believing the same lie you will become like unto gods if you reach out and take! Augustine s arguments against Pelagius are thorough. He demonstrates that man cannot by his own powers earn or attain salvation and sanctity. Augustine knew from his own experience that he could not achieve victory over his tendency toward sexual immorality. Rather, the divine power of God s grace from above gave him this transformation. Christ chose an ex-manichean in Augustine to devastate the arguments of the heresy of Pelagius because Pelagiansim s optimism about nature stands in opposition to the Manichaean pessimism regarding the evils of creation. The Manichaeans taught, God and Satan are equals. The spiritual is good. The natural is evil. The Pelagians taught, You don t need God to become good. You are naturally good. Look to yourself. Augustine reasoned that neither Manichaenism nor Pelagianism rightly represented reality. The Bible taught him that God was good, that creation was good, and that man was good but fallen. Nothing in nature, not even human nature, could attain to the supernatural by its own power. If humans were to have a relationship with God, it would have to be initiated by 14

21 God. Only someone who possessed both a divine nature and a human nature could repair a relationship between God and humans. Moreover, this salvation would necessarily be mediated by grace. Christianity, then, was the only way humans could find divine love, holiness, and salvation. For Augustine, true religion is based on Christ, who is the God-man. This God-man distributes bundles of grace to man through instruments called sacraments. However, there is in humans something that obstructs the flow of God s grace and love. It is an inward selfishness that turns the soul away from God, something not inherently natural in created man, but something deriving from the original human experience of sin. This is called concupiscence. To this day, Saint Augustine is known as the Doctor of Grace. He is second only to Saint Paul in proclaiming the free and unmerited grace of God. Saint Paul explained that we are saved by grace and not by nature: For by grace you are saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, for it is the gift of God; Not of works, that no man may glory. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus in good works, which God hath prepared that we should walk in them. (Eph. 2:8-10) The heretic Pelagius had said that a human could avoid sin entirely in this life by simply observing his natural moral compass. Pelagius taught that a person could achieve salvation and sanctity without baptism or grace, because he denied the doctrine of original sin. But for Augustine, grace was not there to usher in natural human perfection; rather, it elevated man to a beatific dignity. Augustine did not limit salvation to God restoring us merely to the Garden of Eden. Rather, he foresaw our union with God in and through the union of Christ s human nature to His divine nature. 15

22 Original Sin in the Bible If you begin reading the Bible from the beginning, it doesn t take long to discover that humans are flawed. Our story quickly moves from paradise to murder, deception, rape, and idolatry. The story of the Bible (and for that matter, every story told in history) reveals that there is something askew within our hearts. Why is there evil and why is there evil inside us? I ve long believed that Christianity is the only right religion because it s the only religion with the doctrine of original sin. As G. K. Chesterton quipped, Certain new theologians dispute original sin, which is the only part of Christian theology which can really be proved. vi Although Jewish rabbis will say that Judaism has never believed in original sin, I do not really believe them. vii The Torah begins with Adam and Eve in righteousness and the Garden of Eden. They sinned, and the world has been darkened ever since. Babies, who have never committed a personal sin, sometimes die painful deaths. Good people make bad mistakes. Loving, dutiful mothers get cancer and die, leaving behind sorrowful children. Even great saints struggle with temptations. This is not how things are supposed to be, and it is clear in Scripture that the sin of our first parents brought death and misery into the world. For the Jewish prophets, history was a descent into further grades of sin all following that original mistake made by Adam and Eve. They look forward to the coming of the Messiah, who will heal man s brokenness. When Christ preaches, His self-given title of Son of Man indicates that He is somehow the corrective answer to the original man s sin. Saint Paul clearly explains how this can be: Therefore as sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all men sinned sin indeed was in the world 16

23 before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law. Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sins were not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come. (Romans 5:12-14) This passage in Saint Paul is the locus classicus for the doctrine of original sin. Not surprisingly, there is a lot of debate surrounding how to best translate it. It s important to know that scholars to this day believe that Augustine was working with a bad Latin translation of this passage and that he wrongly assigned a meaning to it that is not found in the original Greek. The original of Paul s Greek in Romans 5:12 is eph ho pantes hermarton, but it is difficult to translate. The older Latin versions that Augustine read translated it literally into Latin as in quo omnes peccaverunt or in whom (Adam) all sinned. An extreme reading of this passage is that all humans have somehow literally sinned in Adam. The alternative reading from the Greek would be translate it as because (Adam sinned) all sinned. The former (Latin translation) implies are presence in Adam when the sin occurred. The latter (alternative translation) implies a causative relationship. Adam sinned and so we all sin. Augustine affirmed the former and it related to the way he and other Catholics understood human conception and the soul as either derivative of the parents or created new. Traducianism vs. Creationism This Latinate interpretation of Romans 5:12 might imply that we were all somehow inside Adam when he sinned and, in that way, we all share the same guilt. The Lutheran doctrine of traducianism seems to follow this extreme reading of Romans 5:12. Traducianism is the false teaching that the soul of an infant is derived from the soul of the two parents. This would mean that the corrupt souls of the parents (Adam and Eve) passed 17

24 corrupt souls to their children, all the way down to us. The Catholic Church rejects soul traducianism and instead teaches that God creates a new soul from scratch every time a baby is conceived. This Catholic view is called soul creationism. Augustine himself admitted that he did not know whether to believe in soul traducianism or soul creationism. Writing to Saint Jerome, Augustine confessed: If that opinion of the creation of new souls is not opposed to this established article of faith [i.e. original sin] let it be also mine; if it is, let it not be yours. viii The softer reading of Romans 5:12 is that all humans were represented in Adam s sin. Saint Irenaeus of Lyons (d. 200) espoused this milder reading of Romans 5:12. According to Irenaeus, we human descendants have solidarity with our first parents Adam and Eve. They lost sanctifying grace and righteousness and so we do not inherit these divine gifts. We are born spiritually poor. Although we were not historically present in Adam, we were nevertheless represented by Adam. In a similar way, we were not historically with Christ when He died on the cross, but we do have solidarity with Him. We can see here that Irenaeus teaches a theology of recapitulation. Christ recapitulates Adam and becomes the New Head of all humanity. This is the Catholic understanding of original sin. Although Saint Augustine seems to waffle between the harsher and softer reading of Romans 5:12, he nevertheless locates the discussion in the context of salvation and recapitulation in Christ. For Augustine, the doctrine of original sin in Adam points to final salvation in Christ. The two go together. Original Sin and Concupiscence The heretic Pelagius taught that there was no such thing as original sin. Instead, there is only sinful example. According to Pelagius, sin is only passed down from generation to generation through bad example. A child born into the human community 18

25 observes hatred, racism, murder, sexual license, idolatry, and greed. The child then begins to copy what he sees. Augustine and the Christian tradition grant the negative impact of bad example, but argue that there is an additional interior brokenness within every human person. According to Augustine, a human child could be isolated from society and raised privately by angels and yet she will face temptations and even fall into sin. The reason for this is concupiscence. Concupiscence comes from the Latin word concupiscentia, meaning desire. It comes from some Latin words that you might recognize: con is a prefix meaning with and cupi or cupid means desire. It means doing things with illicit desire. Cupid, the Roman god of arrow-slinging fame, is so named because he is the god of desire. Concupiscence is essential to understanding Augustine s theology. Concupiscence is the inordinate desire for anything from stolen pears to illicit sex. From his own experience, Augustine believed that our proper desire to love and be loved had been twisted by sin, and one of the effects of this was an irrational desire for sex. Augustine s Theology of the Body It is unfortunate that many of the contemporary explanations of Saint John Paul II s Theology of the Body dismiss Augustine s contribution as irrelevant. There is a concern that Augustine demonized sex and that he retained a crypto-manichaean suspicion of the physical body. But the truth is that there could be no Theology of the Body without our bishop of Hippo. Augustine builds his theology of the body on the image of a marriage between the body and soul. He says to us: your body is your wife. ix The soul is the intellectual principle wedded to the physical principle of the body. Augustine sees the human as complete and perfect only in the union of the soul and body. Even in death, the human soul is imperfect because it lacks its 19

26 body. This is why Augustine affirmed the final resurrection of the body and the veneration for human remains. A Domestic Spat Augustine depicts the effect of original sin on the human person as a domestic spat between husband and wife. The soul/husband and the body/wife are in an abusive relationship. Instead of living in harmony, the soul and body find themselves at war with each other. Augustine derives this from Saint Paul s epistle to the Romans: So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin which dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I of myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin. (Romans 7:21-25, emphasis mine) The Christian tradition identifies the greatest war as the war between the soul and the flesh. Augustine brings the image closer to home by making it a troubled marriage. Before original sin, the soul and the body were in complete conformity with one another. The soul did not puff up with pride and abuse the body. Similarly, the body did not desire to eat too much ice cream, seek intoxication, or overindulge in any respect. Notice that Augustine does not blame the body. The body is not evil. The body is integral part of the human person. The Manichean desire to shun the body as evil is entirely absent from Augustine. 20

27 Celibacy or Marriage? Augustine does speak well of Christian marriage, even though he did not enjoy its fruits. In his Confessions he writes: Neither of us acknowledged that the beauty of having a wife lies in the obligation to respect the discipline of marriage and to bring up children. To a large extent what held me captive and tormented me was the habit of satisfying with vehement intensity an insatiable sexual desire. x Augustine admits that his sexual turmoil prevented him from seeing the beauty of having a lawfully wedded wife. During the final years of Augustine s life, a debate was raging between two Christian monks over the merits of marriage. Jovinian openly celebrated the vocation of Christian marriage. Saint Jerome in response called Jovinian a heretic. Jovinian in some ways sounds like modern popularizers of the Theology of the Body. xi He taught that Christian celibates should not look down on married Christian couples. Jovinian also taught that the married state was meritorious and for the good of the Church. Jovinian, however, did fall into heresy. In his zeal to defend the married state, he also wrongly denied the perpetual virginity of Mary claiming that Joseph and Mary had relations after the birth of Christ. Saint Jerome wrote vehemently against Jovinian and his errors. Unfortunately, Jerome s rhetoric was so harsh that even his orthodox friends felt that he had overstated the merits of celibacy and denigrated married life as a lesser of two evils. Augustine realized the need to steer a middle ground between Jovinian s celebration of marriage and Jerome s dismissive defense of celibacy. In response, Augustine authored a theological treatise titled The Good of Marriage. 21

28 The Good of Marriage In The Good of Marriage, Augustine explains why celibacy is the highest calling in the Church while defending the married vocation as good, holy, and commendable. Augustine notes that Christ Himself spoke of the higher calling of volitional eunuchs for the Kingdom of God: For there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by men, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. He who is able to receive this, let him receive it. (Mathew 19:12) The Apostle Paul also taught that he who marries does well, and he who refrains from marriage will do better (1 Corinthians 7:38). The New Testament honors the celibate state with special esteem. Yet this honor does not denigrate holy matrimony. Saint John Chrysostom writes: He who denigrates marriage also diminishes the glory of virginity. Whoever praises it makes virginity more admirable and resplendent. What appears to be good in comparison with evil would not be truly good. The most excellent good is something better than what is admitted to be good. xii Augustine tries to establish this careful balance by establishing the three goods of holy matrimony. First, there is the procreation of children. Secondly, there is the fidelity of the couple. Third, there is the sacramental bond. The family, as Christianity has always emphasized, is the building block of the nation. Augustine writes, 22

29 For this reason God wished to create all humans from one couple, so that they would be held together in their social relationships not only by the likeness of race, but also by the bond of kinship. Wherefore, the first natural bond of human society is the union of husband and wife. xiii Augustine turns to Adam and Eve so as to fully understand the theological significance of marriage, family, and society. God ordained that a man and woman would populate the world through matrimony. The first man was not a monk. The first woman was not a nun. Natural kinship is the means by which God called man to cultivate society. When God asked Adam to cultivate the garden, He did not refer merely to flowers and plants. Culture requires cultivation. People were required to fill the garden and cultivate it. God told Adam and Eve be fruitful and multiply. Regrettably, sin obstructed our path to this cultivate garden of grace and righteousness. Just as matrimonial sex was the means by which Adam and Eve would cultivate a garden of paradise, filled with children and future generations, so sin corrupted the sexual gift and introduced shame. Through original sin, Adam and Eve became naked and ashamed. This is where Augustine deserves more credit and attention. The original blessing of procreating future humans in paradise was undone by original sin. This gift was corrupted. Nakedness became shameful. As we discussed above, Adam and Eve wore fig leaves because they could not control their members. This is to say, concupiscence led sex to be divorced from its goal of procreation. This is what makes sex so dangerous for Augustine, and we should consider his words. Sex is one of the most pleasurable human experiences and it is ordered to procreation. Concupiscence leads men and women to pretend that sex is 23

30 something else. Some men rape women to demonstrate power not to have babies. Some women seduce men to prove their power and feel desired. Some people use sexual deviancy to sell records or make political statements. None of these goals appreciate the primary and natural goal of human sexuality. Marital sex is an instrumental good for society and so it is a good for the married couple. No marriage? No virtuous children. No civilization. No church. No nation. Marriage is a meritorious act. What we discover in Augustine is that sex is not an end in itself. It is ordered to the common good of humanity. It s at the service of mankind. Augustine does, however, teach that a married spouse who seeks sexual intercourse solely for selfish or lustful reasons has committed a venial fault. This same teaching was recently reiterated by Saint John Paul II when he, to the shock of the world, suggested that even a married man could wrongfully lust after his wife if he treats her only as an object to satisfy instinct. xiv Augustine uses the term venialis culpa to describe the relations of a married person for the sake of objectified lust. In Latin, venialis means forgivable or concessional. xv While not gravely sinful according to Augustine, marital sex for lust is disordered in a way so as to displease God. The pursuit of fidelity in marriage is still a self-giving of one spouse to the other and vice versa. Fidelity is marked by love and charity for the other spouse. Whenever spouses come together out of allegiance or fidelity to their union, there is no fault. This is one reason why Augustine sought to dissuade married couples from taking a mutual vow of celibacy. xvi Augustine even promised that married people could attain perfect sanctity in the married state by observing fidelity toward one s spouse. xvii Augustine, like the Catholic Church today, taught that the sacramental union between Christ and the Church is mysteriously signified in every Christian marriage. The 24

31 monogamous arrangement (unlike the sanctioned polygamy and divorce under Moses) hearkens back to prelapsarian arrangement of Adam and Eve in the garden. By committing to holy matrimony, a man and a woman are voluntarily seeking to reenter paradise to cultivate the garden of grace. They take up the blessed identity of Adam and Eve as well as the eschatological sign of Christ and the Church. Human society honors man functions and orders, but Christian society honors matrimony in a special way. Augustine sees the sacramental bond of marriage as sanctioning a friendship of grace that seeks procreation and mutual fidelity necessary gifts to establish a Christian culture. 25

32 Augustine s Legacy Augustine is the most quoted and celebrated Doctor of the Catholic Church. The Latin word Doctor translates simply as teacher. Augustine was, and still is, a great teacher. He was a famous preacher and it is said that he had to ask his congregation to stop applauding during his sermons. He also gathered followers who sought to learn from him. What made Augustine a teacher for his time and for all the centuries to follow? Augustine and Field Trips As a professor and educator, I have observed that education in the United States focuses too much on homework and other benchmark tasks to prove to the teacher that the student is really committed. If we look at Augustine s approach, we find none of the educational methods in vogue today. If Augustine were to educate your child, here s what he would do. He would travel and take the young person to sites to experience new things. (I don t remember what my teacher taught me in elementary school, but I do remember the field trips!) Secondly, Augustine would focus not on the acquisition of facts, but on the journey for meaning. Augustine would then have a living symposium of Socratic dialogue. A person learns when he articulates something for himself. And he learns most profoundly when he must explain his position to someone else and then must answer objections and questions. The Socratic dialogue is a journey of discovery in its own right. Finally, Augustine wanted to cultivate a habitual love for learning. As we will see in his doctrine of the Trinity, the mind must love its knowledge. The habit of learning centers on a desire for awe. Thomas Aquinas says that it is our desire for awe (desiderium admirationis) that leads us to pursue the contemplative 26

33 life. Every Christian should have this desire for awe bubbling out of his heart. If there is a Trinity, and there are angels all around me, and there are virtues to master and higher realities to see, then I should be giddy about learning more and more about it. Augustine and Mr. Miyagi Augustine was systematic in his approach, and this systematic approach to theology still shapes the Catholic Church to this day. Augustine s writing style is point by point. He is not as outlined as Saint Thomas Aquinas, but he demonstrates a love of order. He is a teacher and he has his method. It s like teaching a student to perfect a golf swing. It s best to focus on one element at a time. Reminding the student all at once about his foot position, hand angle, shoulders, hips, spine angel, grip, and ball placement will cause him shatter under anxiety. It s too much information at one time. Instead, master the grip first. Then master foot position. And so on. Augustine would have admired Mr. Miyagi from the Karate Kid. Mr. Miyagi required Daniel-san to master each move ( wax on, wax off ) before going to the next task. So even when Daniel was taken down by the Cobra Kai gang, he still left the All-Valley Karate Tournament with the trophy, Elisabeth Shue, and his self-respect. Augustine was great at writing and disputation. He kept the quill in his hand. His books and sermons reveal a man gifted for infusing heartfelt passion into theology so as to make it practical. He did not treat his parishioners as ignorant peasants. He challenged them to ascend the heights of theological truth. How exciting it is read it on paper! How much more invigorating it must have been to see him gesticulating in the pulpit? While previous theologians encountered and challenged heresies, philosophies, and other religions, Augustine was the first to run at them all with his heart, mind, and strength. There 27

34 is something enduring about Augustine because he drank the poison of heresy and lived to tell us about how he survived it. We have a man who immersed himself in the waters of Plato, Cicero, Plotinus, and Mani and did not drown. He symbolizes the Christian s ability to soak himself in the acid bath of philosophical criticism and rise unharmed. It is clear that the time spent among these thinkers was not time wasted: the writings of Plato, Cicero, and Plotinus trained him in philosophy, and his experience with Mani allowed him to argue convincingly against the heresies of his day. Many commentators of Augustine have noted his Neoplatonism. Some have said that Augustine is the Christian Plato and that Thomas Aquinas is the Christian Aristotle. I think this simple identity is exactly that: simple. Thomas Aquinas, through the influence of Dionysius the Areopagite, had a solid Platonic streak. Nevertheless, Augustine shows affinity, even love, for the Neoplatonic vision of the universe. Augustine the Neoplatonist The framework of Platonism grew over the centuries since the time of Plato, absorbing elements of Stoicism and Pythagoreanism. It became more and more religious. Augustine s mind reveals that Academic Neoplatonism could never fully become a religion in its own right. In fact, all that was good and true in Neoplatonism was found already historicized in Jesus of Nazareth and the Catholic Church. Augustine could see Plato s Form of the Good in the incarnation of Jesus Christ. The Logos of all rationality lived among us. Through Christ, we can break out of the dim cave of error and come to participate in that heavenly realm of the Ideas. Augustine successfully transformed the Platonic solution of matter participating in form with a theological twist of nature participating in grace. 28

35 Augustine on the Trinity Augustine s metaphysical interests led him to produce a profound corpus of thought regarding the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. In the East, the Arian controversy from the beginning of the fourth century had led great theologians such as Saint Athanasius, Saint Basil of Caesarea, Saint Gregory Nazianzus, and Saint Gregory of Nyssa to forge a thorough orthodox presentation of the one essence or ousia of God subsisting in three Divine Persons who were co-eternal, consubstantial, and worthy of divine worship. In the West, Tertullian had laid the groundwork for a Latin Trinitarian theology, but Tertullian s distrust of philosophy and Greek metaphysical distinction left an incomplete Trinitarian theology in comparison to the intricacies established by the Greek Fathers. Among Latin authors, Saint Hilary of Poitiers (A.D ) had initiated the translation of the advanced Greek Trinitarian theologian into Latin parlance. However, it was Saint Augustine who canonized the Trinitarian tradition and language for the Latin west. There is a beautiful legend about Saint Augustine that helps us appreciate Saint Augustine s doctrine of God. Once, our saint was walking along the seashore of the Mediterranean Sea racking his brain over the mystery of the Holy Trinity. He came upon a small boy running back and forth from the sea to a hole in the seashore. The child was using a seashell to carry the ocean water from the sea. He would fill the shell with water, carry it up the beach, and then pour it into the hole he had dug out in the sand. Augustine asked him amazement, My son, what are you doing? The innocent child looked up at him smiling. I m trying to carry the sea into this hole. But this is impossible! protested Saint Augustine. The hole cannot contain all the water of the sea. 29